I nodded my head, unable to do anything else but cry out his name as the heat of him filled me, and I unraveled too.
Limp and sated, I let him clean me up moments later. We snuggled on the couch for a while, murmuring vicious little promises of revenge on anyone who ever crossed us again, exchanging lazy kisses and words of love, too. But eventually, we had to go back to his estate since we agreed the bed in the cruiser was unfit for sleeping or anything else now. We bathed, we slept, and the next morning I stirred in Yiri’s arms, my body floating as he carried me.
“Shh,Aneah,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”
Sleeping was easy to do. Whether it was the stress of being kidnapped and killing two men, or just an aftereffect of the drugs Xokat used, my body sagged with exhaustion. So I tucked my face into the crook of Yiri’s neck and let my mind drift back into dreamless sleep.
Hours later, I woke in a new bed in the cruiser, the gentle rocking of the vessel telling me we were sitting on water. Following the delicious aroma of food cooking, I found Yiri in the kitchen, making breakfast. The hatch was open, the deckextended, and sunlight—daylight—pouring in. Mr. Darcy bread-loafed in the middle of the floor, soaking it up.
“There’s my beautiful wife,” Yiri greeted me.
“And there’s my wicked husband,” I said, wrapping my arms around his waist from behind, pressing a kiss to his bare back.
Yiri chuckled. “Speaking of wicked things,” he chuckled. “I looked over the cruiser’s recs. Caught every minute you were here with them.” He turned, drawing me to his chest and kissing the top of my head. “You told me what you had to do, but you left out the part where you stopped for a snack between killing one male and drugging another.”
“I thought it would settle my stomach,” I said indignantly.
“And the sellah break after you threw Masoh’s son to the cekets?”
“To settle my nerves.”
“You didn’t look nervous,” he grinned. “You looked pissed off. Dangerous. Wicked.”
“I was channeling my inner mob wife,” I grinned. “Can I go for a swim?”
“Of course,” he nodded, letting me slip from his arms. “I’ll bring the food out in a minute.”
The turquoise water showed no signs of the frenzy from the day before. Possibly that should have been unnerving, but I was learning to appreciate the cekets’ efficiency rather than fear it. Stripped down to my skin, I dove off the deck, and though I hadn’t seen any circling fins at first, a grandmother and a youngling swam slowly by as I resurfaced. They skimmed close to me, but showed no aggression at all. If I didn’t have a lifetime of preconceived notions about sharklike creatures, I might have said they looked happy to see me.
I was floating on my back when Yiri joined me. The little hover boat followed him to my side, carrying a beautiful spread of fresh fruit and cooked veggies. As my alien husband, who wasnot a good man, and definitely in the alien mafia, fed me cubes of zibe fruit between long, languid kisses in the warm salt water, I thought,A girl could get used to this.
CHAPTER 45
X-TRA TEA EXCLUSIVE!
X-tra Tea’s Amanda Jones Spends a Morning With Cora Keaton-Ahlon
We’re sitting down with Cora Keaton-Ahlon for an exclusive interview, talkingIbarchosen mates, becoming a style sensation, Bion’s biggest rock star, Venastea’s most notorious mobster, and leaving Earth behind for love.
Cora’s infamous husband, Yiri Ahlon, owns a gorgeous estate in Covara, but that’s not where I was invited to meet with Venastea’s most mysterious Earth expat. Instead, I’m delivered to a stunning private lagoon teeming with rosy cekets which Mrs. Keaton-Ahlon assures me are only the “grannies and the kids” this early in the day. She seems perfectly comfortable dangling her feet off the edge of a sundeck, one of the charming features of her husband’s vintage cruiser, or what we displaced Earthlings call a flying saucer. That’s right, friends. Cora calls aflying saucerher home, and with its mid-century modern interior, cozy living quarters, and bungalow-esquekitchen, I can see why she loves it.
“We take it wherever we need to when Yiri’s working or we want to go into Covara,” she says, kicking her feet slowly in the crystal blue water of the lagoon as a pink striped ceket swims close enough to touch. “We bring it back herealmost every day, and I get to wake up to this.” Her gesture encompasses the brilliant daylight of a cloudless sky, the sparkling waters, and a horseshoe (if you’ll excuse the Earth term) of rose-quartz beach, dappled by shading palms and tropical foliage on all sides not facing the sea. Even by Eissoi’s extremely high standards, it’s an unparalleled paradise.
“And you don’t mind the neighbors?”I ask this as another ceket swims up and bumps her foot with its snout before moving on.
Cora’s laugh is a joyful sound as she fondly stretches her toes out to touch the creature when it circles back to her. Meanwhile, her cat—a common household pet on Earth—named Mr. Darcy zips around the lagoon, chasing after the smaller cekets in a floating saucer meant to hold refreshments and other items while you swim. To an Earthling eye, the device looks like a miniature flying saucer, with an extraordinarily adorable pilot. The cekets don’t seem to view him as prey, either. Some of them ignore the cat, and others seem to be playing a careful game of tag with him.
“They’re very gentle with us,” Cora says, “but I was terrified at first. Yiri has spent years with them, gaining their trust and love. We think of sharks on Earth as mindless terrors, but cekets aren’t sharks, no matter how similar they appear. I never swam with sharks back home, but I have come to recognize a lot of intelligence and emotion in these animals. Maybe I misjudged sharks, too, but I didn’t have anyone like Yiri to introduce me to them.”
“You’d be hard pressed to find someone else with that kind of connection to cekets here as well,” I say. “Even with the barriers that prevent them from coming too near popular beaches, there are attacks every summer here in Eissoi.”
“I certainly don’t recommend jumping in the water with them to most people,” she agrees. “But I’m glad I get to see a softer side of them.”
“Some might say you get to see a softer side of another dangerous creature here on Venastea.”
Her smile is loving as she thinks of her husband. “Sometimes. But Yiri is who he is. He’s very authentic.”
“What you see is what you get?”
