Unbondable(Kindred Birthright #1) - Evangeline Anderson Page 0,52
grinned at her. “Why baby girl—you getting hot feet? Wanna turkey out?”
She frowned. “For a Kindred who’s never been to Earth before, you’re not bad at the idioms. But it’s ‘cold feet’ and ‘chicken’ out. And no, I’m not getting cold feet. I’m just wondering what the natives of Yi’pisselon will do to us if they figure out we’re not one of them.”
“They’re never gonna figure it out,” Raak said confidently. He strapped on the harness and knelt so that his broad back was facing her. “Come on, baby girl—climb on and I’ll show you.”
Reluctantly, Kara slipped her legs into the two loops hanging down on either side of his hips and seated herself in the leather saddle-type seat which rested at the small of his back.
“There,” he said. “Comfortable?”
“I suppose so. It reminds me of the way you held me when we climbed up Rainbow Mountain,” Kara remarked, looking down at the way she was attached to him with her legs on either side of his hips and her arms around his neck. It was nice being so close to him again—close enough to breathe in the warm, spicy scent that smelled so good even if she was positive it couldn’t be his Mating Scent.
“It is like our first adventure together, isn’t it? Except for the harness.” He turned his head and grinned at her. “But this way we can stay together as long as we need to—no worries about you getting tired hanging on. Plus, we have to have four arms, like the natives.”
“Four arms and two heads,” Kara remarked. “But are you sure the holo-projection will really make us look like we come from Yi’pisselon?”
“Take a look for yourself and see.” Raak activated the holo collar he was wearing and, with a soft buzzing sound, they were suddenly covered in flowing green fabric which hid the fact that Kara was a separate person riding on Raak’s back.
She looked in the 3-D viewer to their right to gage the full effect and had to bite back an exclamation of surprise. It wasn’t just the holo-fabric that hid the fact that they were two instead of one—the shapes and coloration of their faces had been changed as well.
Instead of her blonde tresses and Raak’s wild black mane, they both had muddy-green hair now. The long, straggly strands looked like limp seaweed scraped over their scalps. Their eyes were different too—vivid yellow with slitted pupils like a reptile’s—they stared out of the 3-D viewer with an alien expression that was hard to read.
Their skin tones were now a muddy gray and scaled, a little like an alligator’s, Kara thought. Their arms—all four of them—protruded from the sweeping green holo-garment making them look like a single person with two heads and four upper limbs.
“We’re fucking gorgeous, right, baby?” Raak asked, grinning at her as she studied their new look in the viewer. “But this is the way the Yi’pisselons look. So we have to look the same.”
“It’s definitely different, all right,” Kara admitted, shivering as she took in their extremely altered appearance.
She still felt uncertain about the plan but she had to admit that infiltrating a closed planet and disguising themselves as one of the natives definitely fell under the heading of “adventure” which was what she’d asked for.
It was just that riding “piggy-back” on the big Unbondable’s back and pretending they were one person instead of two was a little bit weirder than any adventure she’d ever imagined.
Still, she decided to go with it. Even if being this close to Raak and his warm, enticing scent was kind of distracting…
Suddenly she felt a tingling in her upper jaw, where her fangs had been.
Oh no! Are they growing back out again?
Hastily, Kara felt her teeth with her fingertips. But to her utter relief, her fangs were still tiny and blunt. Hmm, the tingle must have been her imagination.
“Well, baby—are you ready to go down to the surface and do some trading?” Raak asked her.
“Of course!” Kara smiled brightly which looked awful in their current disguise. “Let’s go.”
She just hoped her former fangs didn’t start tingling again. It was a strange sensation and it bothered her more than she liked to admit.
Twenty-Four
“Okay, I’m going to be the main head and you’ll be the secondary,” Raak told her as they walked into the Yi’pisselon town he had chosen for trading. Or rather he walked and Kara rode on his back. “That means everything I say, you just agree with me. Got it?”