My first? “First what?”
“First mating?”
Does she mean having sex? “I’ve had sex before. Uh, fornicated.” Damn, even the word sounds too filthy to use whenit comes to her. Farli would never fornicate. She would make love. Hell, and now I sound like a lovesick poet. “Not in a long time, though. Haven’t wanted anyone to touch me.”
I feel her fingertips dance over my chest. “Is it all right if I touch you?”
I think I’d die if she stopped. I swallow hard. “Yeah.”
“You will be my first,” she tells me. “I have waited for my mate.”
Just like that, my heart stutters. “Your first…mate?” Is she a virgin? When she nods, I groan and press my forehead to hers. She’s more innocent than I thought, and I wonder if she’s going to regret being here with me, touching me. Doing lascivious things with her mouth. I’m craving her like Trakan craves his carcinogels, but I’m not an asshole. Very slowly, I detangle my tail from hers and pull her hands away from my chest. I press my mouth to one palm. “Maybe you should go back home and wait to resonate to another nice guy, the one you want to marry.”
She’s quiet, and then she gives another light giggle. “You only resonate to one person ever, silly.”
What? “Are we talking about the same thing? I’m talking about sex.”
“I am talking about resonating. When your khui chooses someone for you.”
Farli’s throwing me mixed signals here. “If it chooses for you, I don’t understand what you mean by ‘you waited.’”
“Mating with someone is nothing,” Her tail flicks on the blankets, and I wonder if she’s growing frustrated with me. “People take pleasure-mates all the time. It is like…scratching an itch. But you only resonate to your true mate.” Her fingers touch my chin again, as if she is trying to force me to concentrate. “Like I said, the khui chooses. It selects the male and the female that will be best together so it can bring about the strongest kits.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Everything inside me screeches to a halt. I swallow hard. “Kits?”
“Yes. The khui chooses the perfect person to father my young. It always chooses, and it chooses well.” I can practically hear her smiling in the dark. All the while, her chest is doing that thrumming, purring thing. “I have waited for resonance, because I have waited for my mate. I have had offers to share my furs, but it has never interested me…until now.”
Because she wants to make babies? Somehow, I don’t think that’s it. She really believes that if she purrs to me that we’re somehow destined to be together and I’m going to make her pregnant? That’s the craziest thing. I don’t know what to make of it.
I also don’t know what to make of the jealous surge that rises in me at the thought of her getting all kinds of offers to ‘share her furs.’ I shouldn’t be this possessive of her, this fast. Maybe she’s right about the ‘resonance’ thing, but I’m not sure I’m grasping all of it. “But I’m not resonating, Farli.”
“Not yet.” She pats my chest as if to soothe me. “You do not have a khui yet.”
Her parasite? “I don’t think I want one.”
“But…you have to.” A note of panic enters her voice. “You cannot live if you do not have a khui. Those without one will sicken and die. You cannot stay here with me without one.”
I remain silent. Stay…here?
On this iceball of a planet? The familiar terror lodges in my chest.
Left behind.
It won’t happen. Ever. I pat Farli’s shoulder awkwardly in the dark, not wanting to tell her my thoughts. I don’t want to hurt her feelings. “You should get some sleep.”
She doesn’t fall for it. Her arms go around my neck andshe presses quick, frantic kisses to my face, as if terrified. “Mardok,” she breathes. “Tell me you will stay here with me. Please. I just found you. I cannot bear to have you leave me.”
I stroke her back, and lust rises inside me again.She’s naked and pressing herself against me,I tell myself. Any man would feel hunger in this situation. But it feels different with Farli. In the past, when I was freshly discharged from the military, I’d get approached by women in spaceport bars looking for a quick, rough hookup. Some of them were far more forward than Farli is, and yet I felt…nothing for them.
I’m afraid I’m feeling too much for Farli.
At the same time, I can’t imagine living in this frigid, desolate place. Being stranded here, forever. I close my eyes, pushing past the memories that threaten to rise. “I haven’t seen much of your planet,” I hedge. “You could come with me.”
“No, I cannot. You cannot remove a khui once it has become part of you. The humans say that there is no leaving once you are here.”
That sounds like even more of a death sentence. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
I expect her to protest again, but she only presses another kiss to my mouth. “Yes, in the morning I will show you my world. You will love it.”
