Page 3 of Topping Off the Alien

“I’m not taking anyone from the crew,” Solverian says. “I’m taking the human.”

“With respect, he doesn’t even know what he’d be agreeing to. Let one of us do it. This is not a burden you need to carry alone.”

“It is not a burden I intend to share.” He says it calmly, but without any room for dispute. “You’re all dismissed.”

They look like they want to argue more. One of them opens his mouth, closes it. Then they move aside, slowly, and they watch us the whole way.

“Follow me,” Solverian tells me over his shoulder.

I follow him through corridors that turn and split.

“So,” I say, “Your Highness. Should I bow? I feel like I should’ve bowed, and now the moment’s passed, and it’s going to be awkward if I bow in the hallway.”

“You don’t need to bow.”

“Great. Crisis averted.”

We stop at a door that opens for him without him touching it, which I choose to pretend is normal. Inside is a chamber, and it’s huge. There’s a bed on a raised platform, wide and low, a desk area with things I can’t identify, and through an open door what looks like a bathroom. Everything is spare, like a monk’s cell designed by someone with an unlimited budget.

“So,” I say when the door closes behind us, because silence makes me nervous and nervous makes me talk, “is this where you’re going to kill me?”

Solverian turns to face me, and I finally get a full look at him in real light. The joke dies in my throat.

He’s stunning: light-brown hair, a symmetrical face, and steel-gray eyes that don’t move off mine. His skin has a faint green sheen to it, a pale wash over everything, like light through leaves. I keep waiting for my brain to explain it. Spray paint? Body makeup? Maybe it’s the lighting?

But without a doubt, Solverian is the best-looking person I have ever seen, and I have nowhere to put this thought, because I’ve never had it about a man before.

I realize he’s saying something, and I scramble to catch up, coming in halfway through.

“...need to be clear about what I am asking before you agree to anything.”

“Sorry. What?”

“I need to have sex with you, Weston.”

2

Weston

“I’m asking plainly because I don’t want any confusion between us,” Solverian says. “I don’t want you to agree because you’re afraid, or because you believe you’re trapped here, or because you think refusal will bring you harm. It won’t.”

He’s standing three feet from me, hands folded behind his back like he’s delivering a briefing, and he’s just asked me to have sex with him.

I look at the bed at the far end of the room, raised on a platform and covered in dark fabric, and swallow. It’s a very large bed.

“If you say no, my crew will take you home and you’ll never see us again.” He pauses. “I need to know if you truly want it.”

The laugh comes out of me before I can stop it.

“What’s amusing?”

I wipe my eyes. “Sorry. It’s just… A seven-foot guy in a wetsuit tuxedo propositioning me is the last thing I expected when I left the house today.”

“I see.”

“And listen, I’m flattered, really. If I were into guys, you’d be, you know. Hard to beat. But I’m straight. So.”

Solverian tilts his head a fraction. “I must have made a mistake.”