My shoulders sag. “And… I liked it.”
Her lips quirk up on one side - a minute gesture that I find so infuriatingly attractive, that I start to think this little human is going to ruin me for all future breeding contracts. Honestly, it’s a startling question to ask myself, but I genuinely wonder if I’llever be able to get my cock erect for a female that isn’t her? Will I have to imagine Niska when I’m mounting my next bride?
I shake my head, trying to knock loose the wildly inappropriate and disrespectful thought.
“What’s so bad about liking it?”
I sigh. “Maybe we need to rethink this contract.” Even as I say the words out loud, I want to stuff them back into my mouth with my fists and swallow them back down like a mad-male. “Let me walk you back to your rooms.”
Niska crosses her arms and cocks a brow at me, and I know right then and there that I’m actuallyalreadyruined for all other females. Why is my heart racing right now?
“Actually, I think I’m going to stay right here for the night.”
“In my simulator?” I ask, feeling caught off-guard, and genuinely puzzled.
Niska scoffs and playfully slaps my bare chest as she walks straight past me and out into my bedchambers, delicately peeling off the patches at her temples as she goes. “No, I thought we could have a little sleepover.”
“I… do not understand.”
“You keep beating yourself up over nothing,” she says, handing me the simulator patches back. “And I’m going to prove to you that it doesn’t matter how vulnerable I am with you. You’re not going to hurt me. I trust you. So I’m going to spend the night here, with you,” she pauses and puts her hand up, “just sleeping. No more funny business.”
“Funny…business.” I stare at her after repeating her words, not quite seeing the humor in all of this. “That was funny to you?” I ask, hooking my thumb over my shoulder to indicate back at my simulator. If this is true, then I have a lot more research to do on human culture and what they find amusing.
“No, I mean, we’re not going to do anything sexual. We’ll just share a bed. We can lay down together… talk… and cuddle maybe.”
She says all these words as she’s climbing up onto my bed. The Xaviann-size piece of furniture somehow making her look even smaller as she has to heft herself up onto the mattress. Momentarily, my focus is caught on the way my shirt rides up on her soft thighs, and I remember that she’d left her undergarments back in my simulator room. She is bare.
She is on my bed, and she is bare.
“Kiahn?” Niska asks, her voice coming through the fog of distraction like she were far away. She’s peering at me from over her shoulder, and that look in her eye tells me I’ve been caught staring. “Are you coming to bed?” she giggles as she peels back my blankets and starts to tuck herself in.
Fuck, ifthat’snot a sight to behold.
I rub at my horn and then drop my hand so that I can palm the back of my neck. “Xaviann’s… don’t really… share bedchambers, let alone beds. And especially not with their breeding brides.”
“Really? Never?”
I shake my head.
She looks around, the certainty and playfulness gone from her expression. “Should I go? Is it disrespectful for me to be here?”
I can’t help it, my feet take me a step closer and I reach out as if I were about to physically stop her from leaving. “No!”
Judging by the way her head whips my way, I may have startled her with the ferocity of my reaction. I’d never considered sharing my bed with someone. I know Zann sometimes falls asleep in other people’s quarters after mating in the flesh, but he has always been one to go against the grain, and personally, I’ve never seen the appeal.
I do now, though.
“No,” I repeat more softly now, my arms out in front of me, palms down as I approach the side of my bed. “Please stay. That sounds…”fucking amazing and agonizing at the same time? Like both torture and a gift?“…nice.”
The word doesn’t seem enough, but I stop analyzing words and their worthiness when Niska smiles at me. “Yeah, nice,” she murmurs, her features beaming like there’s a light-source somehow inside her.
In a daze, I watch her eyes trace down my body, and I try not to make it too obvious that I’m trying to square my shoulders, and puff out my chest under her inspection. But then her gaze snags on my pants and her smile changes as she bites on her bottom lip.
I follow her line of vision.
Ah.
Right.
