I don’t know why I do it, to be honest. It was completely impulsive and childish. Maybe I just wanted to see what he would do?
Vel snorts again beside me. Az had started to offer Lois items from the various dishes in front of us, but he stops to watch his brother. Something tells me, Prince Kiahn isn’t used to being denied things, and everyone wants to see his reaction.
His jaw ticks as he stares at me, the high back of the chair he’d offered still in his grasp. But a look of interest flares in his eyes, and I can feel his gaze on me as he comes around the back of my seat and sits the other side of me, instead of at the head where I guess he’s used to being placed.
Az smirks at his brother from the opposite side.
“This is a lot of food,” Jaya comments, apparently completely oblivious to everything else. “Why is there so much? It’s only breakfast.”
“Oh,” Vel says, looking down at her table. “I… I’ve been informed that a human breakfast is the most important of the day, so I made sure to include a full spectrum of nutrition.”
“And I made ice cream,” Az declares proudly, holding up a bowl of what looks like a creamy soup. “Granted, I made it hours ago, but, it’s still good,” he says, taking a ‘sporkful’ and slurping it down before seemingly offering to spork-feed Lois himself.
I stifle a giggle watching them, but Kiahn doesn’t seem to be following the display in front of us, since when Lois grimaces and shakes her head, he leans into my space and whispers, “you challenged me just then.”
Goosebumps stand erect over my skin at the silky-smooth timbre of his voice. “Did I?”
“You did,” he says, reaching over and using golden-tipped tongs to select various food items that look like they might be sweet pastries and fruits, placing them on the plate in front of me. “You should keep doing that,” he adds, filling his own plate, too.
“Maybe I will,” I mutter under my breath, picking at a golden pastry that has some kind of bright green, jam-like substance in the middle of it. The first mouthful tastes good, so I continue, all too aware of how Kiahn is still watching me from my side. “This must be your lunch now, considering we woke so late,” I say, trying to shake off that tension between us and just make normal small talk.
“Oh,” Az mumbles before swallowing a big mouthful, “Kiahn and I waited for you. Vel, Aunt Zalora and Zann already ate.”
I don’t know why, but I can feel my cheeks bloom with heat at hearing that. It’s so… sweet. And unnecessary. “You didn’t have to do that.” I murmur without looking at the huge male beside me.
Prince Kiahn grunts and leans over me with a small, teaspoon-sized spork to take a dollop of something with the sticky consistency of honey. But instead of a golden color, this stuff is a deep, plum purple. “Open,” he demands, offering to feed me the substance himself. His green eyes glint withmemories of him offering me his own venom last night, and how I’d so quickly obeyed.
My lips part as per his instruction, and I can’t help but delight in the way his gaze gets fixated on my mouth as he feeds me the strange, sticky purple honey. The taste bursts on my tongue, all at once sweet and tart, with an underlying flavor of something vaguely warm and spicy like cinnamon or nutmeg. “Good girl,” Kiahn rumbles just for me as he slowly slides the spoon from between my lips. “You should eat. You have a contract to sign today.”
* * *
The rest of breakfast turned out to be fairly uneventful - even if I spent most of the time too aware of Kiahn right beside me. He and Az stayed right up until the time it became very obvious that Az wasn’t going to stop offering to hand-feed one of everything laid out on the table to Lois - who definitely did not want that.
“Come, brother,” Kiahn had said, standing once he’d clearly witnessed enough. “Let us leave the females to their meal. We have work to attend to.”
Az had looked at his brother with a clear look of confusion, like the concept of any kind of work with Prince Kiahn is a foreign one. But one stern look from the prince, and Az relented, leaving us be - even if he’d looked a little sad about the whole thing.
Once they’d left, Lois, Jaya and I felt like we could finally go to town on all this food.
And I’m paying for it now.
The food was delicious. Some of it was strange, and I couldn’t liken it to anything from back on Earth, and some of it was clearly the result of Vel trying to replicate different humanfoods with the chef again. Either way, I amstuffed, and kind of regretting pigging out now that I sit here in the conference-like room again, feeling as bloated as a parade balloon.
Vel sits beside me, sipping on a hot drink that is definitely not coffee, since it’s firetruck red with a pink froth on top. She has a small plate of what the Xavianns call ‘pippicakes’, too. Though, to me, they just look like mini sugared donuts. “So, the contract is pretty standard,” she tells me, her finger slowly swiping on her tablet as she reads through what Kiahn has already signed. “The only thing that he seems to have amended on his end is the period of active breeding.”
My brows pinch together as I look at her.The what?
The amount of time he’ll be fucking me.
As soon as I think it, my face feels like it’s suddenly on fire.
Vel glances at me before going back to her tablet and continuing. “The standard starting time for one of these things is for three of your fertility cycles, then, if there’s no sign of the contract bearing fruit, it’s either ended or extended. Kiahn, however, has asked for a period of active breeding that lasts for twenty of your fertility cycles.” She looks up at me again, scoffing this time, like we’re both in on some kind of joke. “The audacity of that male! No contract haseverstarted out that long in the whole of Xaviann history!”
“Oh,” is all I can muster up to say before I shake myself. “It’s probably because he’s comfortable with me. He doesn’t want to move on so quickly and risk biting someone.”
Vel snorts as she shakes her head, tapping here and there on her screen. “Yeah, well, I’m sure he won’t be complaining once he finally gets down to business,” she dismisses. My gut does this weird little uncomfortable roll at her words. “What shall we amend it to? Two fertility cycles? He’s already signed the thing so we could do one if you only want to endure it for a short while.”
I gulp as I look at her, waiting for my reply with her fingers hovering over the tablet screen, ready to action anything I say. “Put down three,” I rush out, “since that’s the usual length. I don’t want it to look suspicious to him.”
