“That look on your face,” Stay-see says with a giggle. “That wasthe exact expression you wore. You’re no good at hiding your feelings, Pashov. Never have been.”
I rub my jaw, feeling a bit foolish. “I do not understand why you wish to eat it burned. I am sure it is fine.”
Her smile grows broader, and my khui begins to sing low in my chest at the sight of her delight. When she is happy like this, her eyes shine and her round face grows wide with her smile. Did I think humans had odd faces? Stay-see’s is lovely in the firelight, for all its strangeness.
“You brought the dvisti over,” she continues, her voice low and smooth and almost hypnotic. “And you started to carve it up right in front of us. I think you told me later on that you meant to pick out the best parts for the humans to impress us, but we thought you were being mean by butchering it right in our faces. I was sitting nearest to you, and you opened the thing’s mouth and…” She makes a slashing gesture with her hand. “Wham, you cut the tongue out of it. Then you turned around and offered it to me.”
I nod slowly. “The tongue is most delicious.”
She makes a face. “At any rate, you were holding this big, drippy, bloody tongue out to me, and I thought it was some sort of weird come-on.”
“A come-on?” I am not familiar with the human term.
“Like you were flirting with me in a gross sort of guy way.”
With a dvisti tongue? When her cheeks turn redder, I realize what she means. Tongue. Ah. I think of the other night, when I buried my tongue in her cunt. Nothing has tasted good since. My mouth waters even now, thinking of it. I want to taste her again, soon. I must be patient, though. “I would not do such a thing.”
“I know that now. You were just being polite. And I didn’t know what to do, so we just kind of stared at each other for several minutes. Then your expression changed. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with you until I felt it, too.” Her hands press to her breast, and my khui thrums even louder in my chest. “We were resonating. It was the weirdest and most beautiful moment in my life.”
I feel an ache in my throat. “What was it like?” I can feel the low, soft song of the khui in my chest, but it does not feel how I imagined resonance would. I have been told that it is all-consuming and maddening in its intensity. This is just pleasantness, like Stay-see’s smiles or when Pacy giggles. It makes me feel good, that is all. I like it, but I wonder what the other side of it is like…the hunger. I am sad I have no memories of this. I want them, as much as I want memories of Stay-see and Pacy.
Her eyes close, and her face is even more beautiful. “It is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. You feel this…thunder in your chest. It comes up out of nowhere and just builds and builds, and it’s so strong that you feel a bit like your entire body is quaking with the force of it. And as you look at your mate, the world seems to narrow in on just the two of you. It’s like nothing else exists but you and the person you are resonating to. And there’s this…” Her cheeks grow red. “Um, well, there’s an overwhelming feeling of desire. You instantly need that person, and you want to mate.”
She opens her eyes, but her gaze won’t meet mine. She is shy about this.
“Tell me more,” I ask her. I am full of yearning. I want to know what she experienced. What I experienced. I hate that I cannot remember this. It is the moment every hunter dreams of, and mine is gone from my mind completely.
Stay-see licks her lips, and I am fascinated by the flick of her pink tongue against her mouth. “Well…I don’t know if I can go into too much detail on that. Not comfortably.” She presses the back of one hand to her flushed cheek. “I hope that’s all right.”
“Of course.” I am disappointed, but I understand. Stay-see is not ready to speak of mating to me, despite the fact that we have mated in the past. I am sad. She still thinks of me as a stranger. I must get us past this. “So then we made a cave together?”
She shakes her head, and the amusement returns to her face. “Oh, not right away. I was pretty terrified of what was happening. I made you wait.”
“You did?” I am surprised.
Stay-see gives a solemn nod. “A whole day.”
I am startled. A day?
She laughs, pleasure making her eyes sparkle. “Right? I didn’t hold out for long. It was…inevitable, I guess. It felt very right to me, though. I never second-guessed a single moment. You took me aside and talked to me, just talked, like we had all the time in the world, and I thought you were the sweetest blue-skinned, horned alien I’d ever met. So I jumped you.”
It is this I wish to remember, more than the initial feeling of resonance. I want to know what it was like to see the fire in Stay-see’s eyes when she looked at me. I want to know what it felt like to touch her that first time.
She shrugs to herself, continuing, “After that moment, we were pretty inseparable. I’m sure some of it is the resonance, but…” She spreads her hands. “We just kind of got along really well. You were so funny and sweet and protective, and I loved being with you. I don’t think we’ve been apart since we resonated, except for a few extended hunting trips you had to go on.” Her lower lip quivers. “I think that’s why I took your…injury hard. I lost my mate and my best friend at the same time.”
I absorb her words. She still feels like she has lost me. It is going to take more than a conversation to convince her that I am the same person. “I will get my memories back,” I vow to her. “Just give me time.”
She nods. “It’s just hard.”
“I am trying.”
Her expression grows soft, and she reaches over to touch my bone-dust-covered hand. “I know. I’m trying, too. But I am going to try harder. I promise.”
7
STACY
We sleep apart at my suggestion. I’m not ready to have a bed-mate, not when I’m all mixed up inside. I want to get back to where we were, but I also don’t want to jump into things again and hurt both of us. I know that my rejection of him after sex the other day hurt, so I’m being more careful—with him and with myself.
