I pause, eyeing the glass, and then Niska’s smiling face. I do not know at what kind of rate humans become intoxicated, but she looks like she’s on her way.
“Unless you’re scared I’m going to burst into flames?” she grins, nudging me with her shoulder.
She is so adorable it hurts. And she’s so beautiful, it is kind of hard to look at directly. This close up, she’s like a supernova or something. She’ll ruin my sight for anything else.
I clear my throat and decide to focus on filling our glasses. “Zann was probably talking about a Zaruheez. They are a very physically intolerant people who spend most of their time living in green mud on their planet.” Once I finish mixing our drinks, I hand one to Niska. “I once witnessed one explode because someone touched him with a texture his gelatinous skin wasn’t used to.”
She blinks at me.
Because I’m babbling like an idiot about exploding gelatinous mud-people, obviously.
But then, Niska’s mouth pulls up on one side as she clinks the side of her glass against mine, and says, “here’s to making each other explode, Prince Kiahn.”
And I-
Fuck, my fangs ache.
I down my drink quickly, and pour myself another.
This contract - no,this female- is going to be the death of me.
* * *
It is two hours, and far too many drinks later that I walk the females back to their room. There is no formal meal tonight - thank the Goddesses. Vel had found us all in our intoxicated states and sent for various snacks to help soak up the liquor. I tried a replicated human delicacy called ‘chips and dip’ and promptly filled my belly.
The evening needed to be wound up once Lois started trying to teach Az some kind of human mating dance called the why-emcee-ay. When she stood up on that table andmanually rearranged his arms into different ridiculous poses, she accidentally touched his horns and then proceeded to tease him for getting what she called ‘a fang boner’.
I knew I had to shut everything down when Az - without a shred of embarrassment - just grinned at her and asked if she wanted to touch them.
And Lois was just about intoxicated enough to do it, too.
I’d sent Az off to go sleep it all off in his temporary chambers, and then lingered for far too long outside his old rooms, where my Niska is now inside. I do not know why. We had talked and talked while drinking. She had told me all manner of things about her home planet and the people and places there. It was all fascinating, and suddenly I can see why Vel is such a fan of the species.
Or, perhaps, that is just the effect Niska has on me.
I think she could regale me on just about any subject and I would be enamored by her.
I can hear the human girls erupt into a fit of laughter from behind the closed door to their rooms. My feet move closer and I raise a fist as if to knock on the door but pause. What am I doing? Sighing, I shake my head and make my way back to my own chambers. I’ve taken up enough of Niska’s time today. Besides, soon, I will have her in ways that make me want to fist my cock at the mere thought of.
Or…
Later - when I’m sober - I will probably blame my decision to go straight to my simulator on the amount of drink I have consumed. But for now, once I’ve attached the neuro-patches to my temples, and I’m standing here in the stark-white room with a perfect replica of my sweet, tempting Niska in front of me, I don’t care about any of that. All I care about is using her permission to get a taste of what I’ve longed for since first setting eyes on that curvy little human.
19
Chapter 19 - Niska
Jaya is softly snoring beside me when I turn over for what must be the twentieth time now. Normally, when I drink, I peace out into sleep pretty quickly after my head hits any kind of pillow - and that has included a few of my friend’s couches over the years, too. My head is a little clearer than it was before, and that serious case of the giggles we all got has mostly faded. I think normally by this point, if I’m not already asleep, my stomach would start to protest the amount of alcohol I’d subjected it to and would start acting out its impression of a tumble dryer.
But there’s none of that, either.
‘God bless this alien alcohol’is all I’ve got to say about it.
Even if it doesn’t seem to want to let me sleep.
I can’t stop thinking about Prince Kiahn. About how he would look at me while I must have been babbling away about all kinds of stupid stuff. I’m sure at one point, I explained myfavorite parts of the movie,Pretty Womanto him, for Christ’s sake!
I grin up to the dark ceiling when I recall how he’d offered to force some poor Xaviann tradesperson to pretend to be mean to me so that I could have a‘big mistake! Big! Huge!’moment of my very own.
