“Jon?” I asked, suddenly nervous.
His eyebrows drew together, and he frowned slightly, as if picking up on my anxiety. This expression made him suddenly look older, more wary and full of cares. “What’s wrong, Kitty?”
I swallowed. Get yourself together, girl. “We didn’t talk about birth control,” I said.
“That’s not a problem,” he said.
“What?” I was confused. “What about preventing a pregnancy?”
He lifted a hand to brush my hair from my forehead and cupped my face in his broad palm. “The two cocks have a purpose. One is for breeding, and the other is for… Well, actually, nobody knows exactly what the other one is for. It was theorized that it was for pleasure, but both of them are for that.”
I blinked. “And which one is for breeding?” I held my breath.
Do you want to be pregnant by him?
I didn’t know the answer to that question, and that scared me. I had known Jon for less than a day and already I was thinking of making half-human babies with him? What was wrong with me?
“The bottom one,” he said. I slipped back against the pillows, breathing a sigh of relief, though my stomach flipped uncomfortably as well. If there was one thing that I didn’twant, it was an unplanned pregnancy, right? Let alone one that would cause a child that I could not explain.
A sudden thought of me and Jon with a chubby purple baby, with a little tail and spots across their face made me feel warm inside.
“And I have regular medical checks, as well as the transportal screening for anything that shouldn’t be transported from one location to another.”
“Is that why you turned up naked?” I had wondered about that.
“Yes.” He laughed. He dropped a kiss to my forehead and pulled me against him to snuggle into his warm embrace.
I sighed contentedly. I could get used to this snuggling. It was… nice. I yawned, and he pulled up the blankets to cover me against the increasing chill of the early afternoon. He was leaving, we already knew that. So I’d best get used to the idea.
But we still had time. I’d just close my eyes for a moment.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jon
Iwatched Kitty’s eyelids flutter close as she drifted off to sleep. She was turned toward me, her fingers a lightly curled fist she rested on my chest. I stroked her back, listening to her breathing deepen. A small smile played across her lips; her face soft in repose. I let my hands settle on her back, the other on her waist, and I leaned back against the pillows.
This was more than I had ever hoped. A complete surprise. When I had licked her neck during our mating, I knew she was mine. My mate.
But would she ever accept me? We were two very different species. There were so many cultural differences that I could not wrap my mind around them all.
I sighed, staring up at the ceiling as my thoughts raced. The dimming light of the day told me I had only a few hours left before the transportal would close. There was no question in my mind that I had to leave. I could not stay here.
I smoothed the curl back from Kitty’s face, and she snuggled into me closer. A deep warmth spreading through my chest. I turned my head, dropping my nose to her neck and breathing in deeply. There was nothing to stop me from tasting her skin and branding her with my bite.
No. Not without her full consent. The thought of claiming her without her knowledge was abhorrent.
I could feel the press of time, but these moments were so precious to me I stayed with her in my arms. The fading light cast shadows across the room. There were pictures on the walls that I had not noticed, being so focused on Kitty. They were photos of people, and one of Kitty as a small child caught my eye. I smiled, thinking of her as a youngling. Would she have been shy? Adventurous? Challenging?
The image of a little girl with her curly brown hair, my purple skin, and a tail popped into my head. My breath caught. The picture was so real to me, and I wondered if it was a premonition. Our child?
My stomach flip-flopped. That was enough wondering.
I couldn’t ask her to come with me. It was too much. To leave her planet, a pre-spaceflight planet? No. How could she ever cope with all the differences between us?
What if she regretted it and I couldn’t return her to her home? The problem with transportals, and why they were banned from use, was because they were unsafe to use. You could program in the destination, and you would arrive, but there was no guarantee of when. Space and time were fickle things, as my ancestors had discovered. The only guarantee we had secured was the return window when testing the transportals. The window would be kept open, and the return trip would take place only minutes from the originaldeparture, even if it had been the equivalent of years on the destination planet.
Consequently, space and time travel in such a manner was only for the desperate or foolish. And I would not subject my mate to such vagaries of fate.
