Humans just seemed to have more fun.
Now Pavel was suggesting that she celebrate her birthday, which she secretly wanted to do, and she didn't know how to respond to that.
"Why is my birthday so important to you?" she asked.
He looked at her. "I don't know. I just think we should celebrate life's milestones when we can. You and I are warriors, and in proper Kra-ell tradition, we might die in battle."
She chuckled. "You need to decide who you want to be when you grow up. You can be either a traditionalist or a progressive. You can't be both."
"Why not? Why can't we take the good parts of each?"
She opened her mouth to answer and then closed it. "I guess that's an option."
He smiled. "It must be my lucky day. You actually agreed with me for once."
"For once you made sense." She turned away from him and looked at the water again.
"So? Are we planning a party or not?" he asked.
"I'll think about it."
"That is more than I expected."
"I didn't say yes. I said I'll think about it."
"Fair enough."
The space between them on the rock had grown smaller somehow, but she didn't remember either of them moving. Maybe she'd shifted toward him while looking at the water, or maybe he'd shifted toward her, or maybe the rock itself had compressed the space between them somehow. The distance was no longer half a meter. The distance was something closer to a hand's width, and his thigh and hers were close enough that she could feel the warmth coming off him through the fabric of their pants.
Drova did not move away.
She did not move toward Pavel either. She just stayed where she was, and the warmth between them intensified, and her heartbeat was suddenly faster than it had been a few minutes ago.
It was so damn embarrassing.
A proper Kra-ell female did not pine. A proper Kra-ell female did not wait. Kra-ell females invited males to their bed, and in most cases the males accepted the invitation because to decline wasconsidered a great offense, and given that males outnumbered females four to one, that almost never happened.
Kra-ell females didn't lie awake at night pining for a male and replaying every moment they'd spent with him.
She could invite Pavel.
The form of the invitation was simple, and the male's response was supposed to be equally simple, and the entire transaction was supposed to take less emotional energy than this stupid extended sitting-on-a-rock pretense she was currently engaged in.
But she did not want to invite him.
She wanted him to want to be invited. She wanted there to be something between them first, the kind of feelings she'd read about in her books. She wanted Pavel to look at her and feel whatever it was that the heroes in the books felt when they looked at the heroines, and she wanted him to act on that feeling rather than on an invitation that obligated him to say yes.
She was contaminated.
That was the only word for it. She had been contaminated by human stories. She had been infected with a sentimentality that had no place in Kra-ell society.
Pavel had already dismissed her as being too young for him. She wasn't going to humiliate herself by asking him.
Besides, she wasn't ready.
How could she invite a male to her bed when she'd never been touched? Never been kissed?
If not for the human contamination, she probably would have thought nothing of it. But now she couldn't think of anything else.
