“How many did you have before me?”
He blinks.
I realize I don’t actually want to know how many dicks he’s sucked. It doesn’t matter anyway. He likes mine best. “Do you have human friends?”
“I do not.” He flicks his tongue over his lips, wetting them. “There are others here who have companions as well. They are not like you.”
I don’t imagine they are. I wonder if they’re more like those zombified people at the clinic, desperate to get off. The thought makes me feel weird.
“Vyastil tend to prefer a certain…temperament in their humans. They are unused to a tongue like yours.”
I flick mine out, and he rolls his eyes, but I know he doesn’t mean that literally. “So, why me?”
“You were different,” he says. “Your taste. Your scent. And…and the manner in which you like to challenge me.” He pauses, then flicks his ears again. “I liked it.”
I don’t know why that makes me want to curl up like a little pill bug on his chest, but I do. The beats of his hearts soothe meagain, just like the rumble of his purr, and the way his tail gently vibrates.
Sleep is tugging at my edges.
“Tomorrow, we will see Erethar.”
My head shoots up. “Seriously?”
“Mm.” He nods once. “There are rules you must follow. Rules you cannot break. But if you promise to restrain yourself, my little human, I will give you free rein over my apartment and perhaps take you to the caves.”
The caves. Holy fuck. I don’t even know what that is, and I already can’t wait.
“Sleep now,” he tells me. “You’ve exhausted yourself.”
I want to argue, but he’s not wrong. Even with the promise of stepping through the portal—and all the anxiety that comes with it—I can’t run from my fatigue.
“Wake me for dinner,” I murmur.
He says nothing, just holds me tighter, and it’s not long before I’m slipping away, dreaming of an orange and purple sky with four moons and, in the distance, pink trees.
Rathyn doesn’t wake me for dinner. He lets me sleep, so when I finally peel my eyelids back, I’m famished.
“Seriously, dude. Next time, wake me up,” I say as I shovel food into my mouth. “You need to make sure I’m fed, not just bred.”
Rathyn’s ears flicker as he stares down at me. I’m at the kitchen island, and he isn’t sitting next to me. He’s just lingering like a ghost.
“I cannot breed humans. You do not have an egg.”
I snort as I shove some bacon into my mouth. “Yeah, I just have delicious cum or something. I never did ask why you need it.”
He doesn’t answer that, just nods. “You do taste…good.”
He picks at a bushel of the moss-looking stuff that he pulled from the fridge, and I nod toward it. “What is that called?”
“You would call it lettuce?—”
“No way, we’d call that moss—and we don’t eat moss, but go on.”
He stares at me in annoyance for interrupting him. “—but we call it kirrashev.”
“Hm, is it good?”
“It is…enough.”
