More time passed without her decision.
“Do you need help? Are you hurt?” Quist came toward her and crouched at her side. Her heart pounded.
“No.” Yahiro curved into herself. “I’m just trying to protect myself...”
“From what?” His hand settled on the whip at his side. After a moment of narrowed perusal, he returned his gaze to her. “We’re safe. They’re no ak’rena nearby, although my brot—”
“Have you seen a-a naked female of your kind before?” she blurted out.
“—brother—There are no light female valos.”
No females? Too many philosophical questions came to mind. “How is that possible? How do you even know what a female is then?”
He smiled down at her, his hand still poised on his weapon. “Other valos have females. Lusheenn has a sister, the Creator of blazes, but the light is only populated by males.” He spat the last part, his brow furrowing in anger. “He gave us sex organs,” Quist grasped the bulge between his parted knees, “but no place to put them, no way to use them, instead gleeing when we’re forced to use our hands. He created us as half of a whole and for that... he must die!”
Yahiro flinched back but was caught with a powerful grip on her wrist. She tugged, but he kept her trapped.
“Galan, my older brother, has suffered the most. He was created when Lusheenn was hard as Sundamar has told us. The miserable, endless need in him has never left, not in the hundreds of thousands of dawns, noons, and dusks that have passed. Our Creator spoiled us from the inside out, rotting with whatever whim he had the day he made us. There was no mercy, no forgiveness, and it’s my duty to seek him out and deliver his death. Even if it means killing the sun above and sending my brothers and me back into the abyss.”
She had stopped fighting him, hearing his words but not understanding them.And I thought I would cause culture shock with my nudity but this... Him... Quist and this alien world are nothing, nothing like home.Her mind reeled.
The only thing she could think of to say was, “I’m sorry.” And she truly was. Her concerns were miniscule compared to his.
He let her go. “Why?”
“I’m trying to understand but... this,” she waved her hand around her, “confuses me. You confuse me,” she finished in a whisper. “I wanted to take a bath, to clean myself, focused on the now, but-but here you are, an alien, one on a planet god-knows-where, with more on his mind thansurvivaland I’m afraid stripping naked in front of you would getme—ushurt. I guess I’m sorry because I don’t understand and—” She took a quaky breath. “All I can think about is getting out of this uniform and sinking into that water. You’re thinking about destroying the—the sun.”
Oh god.
She missed her papa in that moment more than she ever had when she was still on Earth. More than the endless months kept prisoner underground and in outer space.
Quist sat back, the anger melting from his face, his hand still cupping the now obviously erect alien dick in his hand. “A bath is important to you, Yahiro of Quist. My vengeance has spanned the ages of Sonhadra and can span another day. Bathe and know that when you’re in my sights, nothing will harm you, and that I won’t harm you. I keep my oaths.”
That makes one of us.She glanced back at the twinkling water. “Promise?”
“Oathed?”
“Yes.”
She turned away from him and stepped into the water, loving and hating the cool feel of it over her skin. Loving and hating it as much as her turmoiled emotions. Once she was crouched with her waist below the shallow middle, she tugged off her orange pants and clutched the material in her hands while she dared a look back at the alien.
His eyes bore into her and his wings were as stiff as two towers at his sides. “What does nudity mean in your world?” she asked, her belly rolling and her heart racing, her fingers playing at the bottom edge of her shirt.
“It has no meaning.”
“So this,” she indicated herself, “has no meaning?” Yahiro hoped.
“It does and it doesn’t.”
“I don’t understand?”
“I’ve never wanted to see what happens next so much as I do now.”
“That helps not at all,” she sighed, loving the water against her bare legs. She sank further in.
“My body feels connected to yours and yet I don’t know what to expect. All I know is that my member has swelled for you. That I hope to see a place where it’s meant to be, and that this is all for naught.”
Yahiro coughed and sputtered and turned fully away from him. The knot in her belly grew worse and she tried to ignore it, but his presence made it hard for her to do so. She looked down and watched the water sweep the dirt away from her skin.
