He hums in the back of his throat for me to go on. I can’t tell if he’s bored or not. Like Rathyn, this Cielo is a master of the poker face.
“Do any humans speak your language?”
He rumbles a laugh and shakes his head. “Nooooo,” he pauses, then sticks out his tongue further than I’ve ever seen Rathyn extend his. It almost reaches his chest before he snatches it back into his mouth. “Nooooo.”
He’s probably not wrong. The sounds they make in the backs of their throats and in their chests—I don’t even think we have instruments that can do that.
“Humans have non-verbal languages too, you know,” I tell him as I shove a strawberry into my mouth and chase it with a swallow of coffee. The combination of flavors is not good. “Signed languages. You seen those?”
He blinks at me.
I lift my hands. I took two years of ASL in my high school when it was offered, and then never used it again. But I remember a little. “Name-me-EVEREST,” I tell him.
He looks startled and lifts his hands, repeating what I’ve said without a single mistake.
Goddamn, that’s creepy the way they can just absorb things. Maybe they didn’t need school. Or school lasts ten minutes for them.
“Mostly it’s for people who can’t hear or can’t speak.”
“Herrrrr?” he repeats.
I tap my ear. “Yeah. Like Deaf.” Tilting my head to the side, I regard him. They seem to have a cure for just about everything, so do they even have disabled monsters? “No sounds. You have that?”
His lip twitches, and he nods.
Okay. Well, that’s something.
“And I know you all have militaries and…what? Presidents? Kings? Who rules your people?”
He says a word I won’t even try to attempt to pronounce. God, I’m not getting anywhere with this, am I?
This was not how I pictured my morning going. I expected to wake up, flirt with Rathyn, maybe get my dick sucked a couple of times, then ask him about last night.
Instead, there’s this monster babysitter who can’t speak my language more than a few words. I mean, I can work with that, but it’s annoying as fuck.
“Well, anyway, I think I’m gonna go to the store.”
He stares. “Sthhhore?”
“Yeah. Where you go in and spend money and take things home? I don’t have my car, but I think there’s a store down the street, so I can walk. This place needs food with more sustenance than strawberries and coffee.”
“Gooooo…outhhhh?”
It takes me a minute to realize he’s sayingout. “Yep.”
“No.”
Well. That word was perfectly clear, just like the command behind it was. I scoff and stand up. “I’m going whether you like it or not. You can tag along or stay here and jerk off—or whatever you Vyastil do to entertain yourselves when you’re alone.”
He doesn’t stop me when I stand up and head toward the bedroom to fetch my hoodie, but I wonder if he’s going to put up a fight when I try to leave.
I suppose that’ll be the real test then, to see if this contract has made me a prisoner or not.
thirteen
EVEREST
Ido manage to go out. It seems Cielo wasn’t quite sure what to do when I barged out the front door, but he didn’t try to stop me. I’m coming to the conclusion that humans usually do what the Vyastil say, but they’re all in for a rude awakening because that is not in my plans.
