"What are you? Who—?" Myro and I turned to the voice, to the wall of chest and golden skin that blended in so perfectly with the golden, glittery walls that I hadn't even noticed him.
I noticed him now, and I certainly noticed his wide hands as they moved toward us. Ready to strike.
I didn’t think, I reacted. It was lucky I did, because while I probably couldn’t handle this behemoth on brute force alone, I was faster. My knife darted forward, the tip hitting against the wall of muscle of his stomach. He grunted at the impact, the grunt turning to a gasp as the point of the knife gave way with a pop, and warm blood speckled over my hand.
"Shit!" Myro snapped as the man collapsed and the knife slid from his belly, more warm blood coating my hand. Myro barely caught him before he hit the ground.
"Double shit." I said, not nearly as concerned or alarmed as I should be, given that I’d killed a man. "Sorry. Reflex."
"It's okay," Myro said with a grunt as he hoisted the guy over his shoulder, more blood splashing over the floor.
"What are you doing? We can't take him with us. And all of this blood..." I had cleaned up blood before, but nothing like this. There were great big puddles of it splashing over the golden, glittery floors, inviting anyone who stepped in here to know exactly what had happened. Stupid aliens and their giant bodies full of too much blood.
"They are used to blood on this ship. I promise you; no one will notice." I doubted that.
"Yeah, but we can't take a body with us," I might have been whining, but this was not the time to be carting a stabbed and groaning man around an unfamiliar ship where, if we were found, we would be killed.
Not that Myro cared, he was already moving, and fast. I stumbled after him, trying not to slip on the mess I’d made. The gutted Coxian moaned as Myro grabbed his hand, holding it against the grey pad besides the door.
The thing slid open without complaint, revealing not a hall, but what looked like a dormitory with stacks and rows of bunks. I had a feeling that without his hand print we wouldn't have been able to get in here.
"We can't hide here," Myro said nothing, and was already dropping the body and grabbing the grey clothes that seemed to be the uniform for this ship.
"We are going to the state room. It's always set aside for more prestigious visitors than Grymm, but with that bastard on board it will be empty. We have to get there." Myro was already stripping, throwing his clothes in the corner and pulling the grey in place. I wasn't about to leave the one fitting shirt and bra I had behind, so I layered, using Myro's cast aside shirt to wipe what blood I could from my hands.
It did little more than leave streaks of yet more gold behind. Again, could their planet make any other colors?
"If I coated myself in this stuff maybe they wouldn't notice I was human." The idea seemed sound to me so I didn’t wait, I started wiping Myro’s blood-covered shirt all over my arm. "They would think I was a Coxian, same as you."
Myro appraised me, then laughed loudly and had to slap his own hand over his mouth.
"What?"
"They won't think you a Coxian," he chuckled, shaking his head at me like I was a misbehaving teen.
"Why not?" I looked at my arm and then at him. "Do Coxian women have like five boobs and ass for days or something? I mean, I think this color is pretty close."
"Oh it is," Myro stepped around the splayed body of the Coxian, his hands firm on my hands as he pulled me into him, his fingers tangling with mine as he lifted my arm, inspecting the color with a grin. I only saw a flash of his teeth before he pressed those perfect lips to my arm, trailing a line of kisses up my exposed skin, carefully avoiding the blood streaked bits.
"Then what is it?"
"You would stick out like a Barzulian Grog, regardless of your skin tone." Choosing to ignore the whole alien idiom thing, I thought I understood what he meant. In all the time that I’d spent with my boys, learning about their planet and their rulers, no one had ever mentioned any women.
“You have no women.” It wasn’t a question.
He nodded, continuing praising my body with his mouth and hands. It didn’t escape my notice that he was currently sending gentle pulses of desire toward me. The fact that he was trying to seduce me in the middle of evading capture, having killed a man, while covered in alien blood didn’t escape my notice either, but I was having trouble forming coherent thoughts at the moment.
"There are no Coxian women," he continued, then broke his trail of kisses, planted a firm one on my mouth, then took my hand to leave. Leaving the now lifeless body, he pulled me down one hall and then another, a deep rumble shaking the floor. We must be nearing takeoff. "All of the children that are born are male, that's why we leave the planet to find women to please us and continue our race."
"Except human women," I cut in, doing a quick step so that he wasn't pulling me quite so much. "We're scary or something. I’m still hoping I get to be a superhero."
"You're something." Myro gave me a grin, golden eyes and white teeth glinting as he pulled us to a stop and placed his own palm against the pad beside the door.
The door clicked, but it didn't move, the gears ground as the floor continued to rattle, and voices carried to us from down the
