“Here.” As I switch on the accessibility options, a metallic voice picks up reading from where it left off last time.
Lydia frowns. “Don’t you need your tablet for your work?”
“Not today.”
“I see.” Her voice is icy cold. “Your determination to get rid of me would be insulting, if I weren’t already so fucking desperate to leave.”
I drop the datapad onto the table as if it has burned me, hating myself, but knowing that she would hate me even more if she knew the truth of my desires.
I find temporary refuge among the trees, hiding in the forest as if I can hide from my overwhelming need.
With my eyes closed, it is incredibly easy to imagine Lydia standing before me again. My scales tingle with the pretense ofher touch, so light and so insubstantial I find myself tracing my hand down my chest before I can stop myself, pushed to my limit by weeks of exhaustion and temptation. And years of loneliness.
I want to be everything she wakes up thinking about and the only one she dreams of. I want our futures to entwine so tightly that they can never be separated—not by memories of LOVE GALAXY, not by the destructive interference of John Smith. Not even by Lydia’s determination to leave and my unrelenting guilt about her being forced to stay.
My hand drifts lower, to the bulge at the apex of my thighs that is covering my hardening cock. This is the first time I have touched myself since the Humans’ captivity on Ril II, and it is certainly the first time I have allowed my thoughts to linger on Lydia.
Lydia, who possesses the ability to infuriate me faster and more thoroughly than anyone I have ever met.
John Smith might have pushed us together because he knew we could clash and fight, but he failed to recognize one important thing.Ifailed to recognize one important thing about myself. I would never have been happy with a shy and meek female.
Lydia challenges me. Excites me. Fascinates me.
I can never quite predict how she will react, for all that I am slowly learning the shape of her personality. And every new thing I learn about her makes me more sure that I am falling irreversibly in love with her.
Applying pressure to my slit, I release my cock. It arches up toward my stomach, and I must clamp a hand over my mouth to stop from moaning aloud as I take myself in my fist.
It is a punishing pleasure, one filled with as much shame as desire. I should not be doing this, acting like an untried youngling, too obsessed by his own needs to think clearly and act rationally.
Afterwards, I promise myself.I just need to take the edge off.
I push into my fist, one hand around my cock, a hand on my chest, and my third hand over my mouth, trapping any involuntary moans in my throat.
I do not think I could stop for anything now that I have let myself think of Lydia in this way. It is as if I have widened a cave tunnel and all the water which was trapped is flowing free. I cannot undo what I have started, and so I continue to thrust into my fist, my movements becoming jerky and uncontrolled as my pleasure threatens to undo me.
I come in long spurts, my body shaking with the force of my climax. Milt splatters the leaf-covered ground in stripes, and I sag forward, catching myself on a tree before I hit the ground. My legs weak, my head spinning, and my vision blurred.
My foul temper follows me into the caves. I ready the net but cannot start properly until Roan joins me. Which further infuriates me—that I cannot complete the work of our farm myself. I would certainly be more efficient than my brothers, especially with their attention divided unevenly between our tasks and their new Mates.
Lydia, I think darkly, is the only one who works as hard as I do, for all that she has no connection to the farm. For all that she has no reason to help.
I am grinding my teeth and reliving the catastrophe of my last interaction with Lydia in my imagination when Roan and Harlee finally reappear.
I point to Harlee. “What is a Human bak-ree?”
“Oh.” Her eyes widen a fraction in…surprise, I believe. “It’s a shop where someone sells bread and pastries?—”
“Which are?”
“You don’t have bread?” She looks at Roan, who shrugs. “Well, bread is a type of food. And pastries are like…a sweet bread. You eat them as a treat when you want to feel good about the world,” she says, as if that is explanation enough. “I’m guessing you’ve been talking to Lydia. She’s a baker back home. So she makes the bread and pastries for other people to buy.”
“And what is a Human period?”
“Oh, wow.” Harlee splutters. “That’s not what I thought your follow-up question was going to be.”
“I think you mean aper-oid,” Roan says, patting Harlee on the back. “My clever Mate has told me much about the Human female reproductive cycle. It is...unnecessaryily complicated,” he concludes, with a sly glance at Harlee, as if such a look will stop her from taking offense.
Frustratingly, it seems to work. She grins, then turns to me. “Is this about something else Lydia has said?”
