I draw back, wounded. “What did I do?”
He shakes his head and says something new, something different, and then offers me his other hand. Strange. I touch the glove again, and he nods, indicating I can continue. All right. I pull the glove off and notice his strange markings on his face continue onto his skin here. “So beautiful,” I breathe, tracing the whorls and dark lines. “What does it mean?”
He says nothing, and I wish we understood each other better. I will just have to learn patience. I cannot wait to hear all the exciting things he will tell me.
He is not pulling his hand out of my grip this time, though, and I smile at him, stroking his palm. It is hard and callused, like that of any hunter. He does not feel as warm as I do, but I do not mind. He is mine. I take his hand and place it on my teat. “Mate? I am ready.”
I feel his shock ripple through his body. His mouth opens slightly, and he stares at me in surprise, but he does not remove his hand. My khui sings so loudly between us, and I am practically throbbing with the song of it. I am nervous, too. Will he take me up on my offer, or will he fight against it,like Jo-see did to Haeden? I ache to feel his big hands everywhere. I want everything he has to offer me, and more.
His voice is very soft when he speaks again, and he pulls his hand slowly away. “Na mahas tikla qi tqand.”
I do not know his words, but when he puts his glove back on, it feels like rejection. Hot tears flood my eyes. “Do you…not like me?” How can my mate reject me so quickly? Is there something wrong?
The stranger shakes his head, saying more of the jarring words, and brushes the tears off my cheek before they can freeze. His touch is instantly comforting, and I want to burrow against him and feel what it would be like for his arms to go around me. I always wondered what it would be like to resonate to someone, but I never imagined it to be this overwhelming this fast.
A familiar bleat sounds in the distance. Chahm-pee is returning. I pull away from the stranger and turn around. My fat dvisti stands a short distance away, galloping forward and spraying snow in that funny, kit-like, eager way he does to make me laugh.
My mate grabs me by the arm, shoving me behind him, and bellows out a word. “Skavash!”
“It is my pet,” I tell him, patting his shoulder even as he pulls something from his belt.
I do not know what he’s doing until his hand moves, and then there’s a sizzling sound. Something flashes. Chahm-pee gives a cry of pain and collapses to the ground.
“No! Chahm-pee!” I scream, rushing forward. The male tries to hold me back, but I shove his arms away and rush forward to my pet. My poor, sweet Chahm-pee. All he wanted to do was greet me. I drop to my knees at his side. He is wheezing, blood spilling into the snow. The smell of charred fur and cooked meat makes me want to vomit, as does thelook of pain and fear in his liquid blue eyes. I stroke his nose gently. “It is going to be all right,” I whisper to him. “I am here.”
3
MARDOK
Gods damn it, I think I just shot her keffing pet.
I put my blaster away, tucking it back into its holster as the strange, nearly naked woman sobs over the furry herbivore. I’m disgusted that I overreacted. Now that I have a moment to catch my breath, I realize that the thing is a four-legged plant eater, shaggy, ugly, but harmless. I just saw it charging toward us and reacted like a soldier.
But I’m not a soldier any longer, and I keffed up. Bad.
The woman sobs over her pet, stroking its nose as the creature wheezes its final breaths. There’s blood everywhere, and I have the awful, terrible sensation that I’ve messed this up, bad. I shouldn’t have shot first. This strange, wild girl clearly loves her animal, and she wanted to be my friend.
I think of the look on her face as she put my hand on her breast, full of need and longing. Yeah, she wanted to be a lot more than friends. And now my cock hurts in my pants, and my heart hurts because I just murdered something sheloved out of a knee-jerk reaction. I need to fix this, but how? I move closer, edging forward. The creature isn’t getting up. His head is in her lap, and he breathes shallowly, making little sounds of pain as she cries over him. He’s been gut-shot, and while he’s bleeding a lot, he’s not exactly dying fast.
Keffing awful.
If it was just me and he was an enemy soldier, I’d give him a second blast to the head to ease his suffering. But I don’t think the strange, beautiful female would like that. Not in the slightest. So…what?
I’m full of remorse. Not that I shot the creature—because any soldier wouldn’t hesitate to take down a charging animal—but that it clearly means something to her and I’ve destroyed that. She tosses a look in my direction, and her face is wet with tears. She spits words at me, and I don’t have to speak her language to know what she’s saying.
How could you?
I rub a hand over the bristle on my skull. All right, what now? Wait for it to die? Put it out of its misery? I think of the way she smiled at me, putting my hand on her breast, the trust and happiness in her face. I haven’t seen that in…kef, who knows how long.
And I want it back. I feel a violent surge of possessiveness toward the woman. I saw her first. She’s mine. I think of Trakan heading out of the ship to smoke one of his carcinogels. Would she approach him with her smiles and nakedness? Put his hand on her breast and invite him with her eyes? I clench my hands so tight I can almost hear the metal creak in my bionic arm.
All right. If she’s mine, then I need to fix this. I slap my communicator on my wrist, turning it on, and lift it to my mouth. “Niri, head to med bay, would you? I’m coming in and you’re needed.”
She immediately clicks back. “Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?”
“Just go to med bay,” I tell her, and move forward. I head to the other side of the smelly, furry creature and heft him into my arms. He’s enormous and probably weighs twice what I do, with long, dangling legs and so much fur that I’m going to be pulling it out of my molars for weeks to come. But he’s not fighting me, and his head is limp. I tilt so the majority of his weight falls on my bionic arm, and then stagger toward the entrance of the ship.
The woman follows after me. I almost expect her to shout in her angry, babbling language, or to hit me with those delicate hands of hers, but she doesn’t. She hovers at my heels, her sniffs the only sounds she makes.The hatch opens automatically, and I head inside, turning sideways to go through the narrow entrance. The creature’s bleeding all over me and all over the floors, but right now that doesn’t matter. What matters is making sure it doesn’t die, because I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it if this strange woman looks at me with hate…or worse, disappointment. Hate can always be flipped back to friendship, but disappointment lasts forever.
