“Why are you smiling?”
“I weigh too much now, but I swung on some when I was little.”
“Did you?”
“Not here, but, yes. Well, on Earth, not Kuria.”
“You don’t have playgrounds there?”
“No.”
“What do the kids play on?”
“They just play on the soil. Climb the mesas. That kind of thing.”
“Do you have trees at least?”
“Not many.”
“Wow. That’s…”
"They don't know any better," I say, "but I have to admit that the playgrounds here are some of the reasons why I loved to come with my parents to Earth. They didn't always bring me and had one of their friends watch over me when they were gone. I didn't care for that once I was old enough to realize what was going on."
She nods and swings her legs and flies up higher and higher.
I move behind her, and when she swings backward, I push her forward. Ava gives a little shriek, and now, she's really flying.
Back and forth she goes, and I push her each time. She goes higher and higher, and then she jumps. She flies up a little before she comes down, landing on one foot and almost the other knee, her back leg bent. Her hair is crazy, all around her, and she laughs as she stands and brushes her hair back, turning to look at me. Her eyes are sparkling.
“Are you having a good time?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
“Good.” I cross over to her. “Do you want to head to my ship now?”
“Your ship?”
“Yes. I can finish showing you the rest of the ship, finish the tour.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, there’s one room I want you to see.” I grin.
I can’t help myself. She looks so damn beautiful, and I love the sound of her laughing, but I want to know what sounds she makes when she’s being pleasured, when she’s being fucked. I didn’t want to go on this date specifically to see if we’ll end up in bed together, but I can’t help it. That’s what I want now.
There’s just something about her. She’s a loner, but she doesn’t have to be.
“Let me guess,” she says dryly, “your bedroom?”
“If you like.”
Her face is an emotionless mask. I can’t tell what she’s thinking, and her eyes contain no spark. That can’t be good.
“You thought that if I had a good time, that you would get lucky, huh? I guess I should give you credit. You didn’t stipulate that I had to give you sex to get the plasma morpher.”
I open my mouth, but she holds up her hand and tosses me the ignitor for the centuricar.
“You can drive it back, can’t you? You know the way? If not, I’m sure you can ask around since you make friends with humans so easily. Maybe you can find another female to fuck if you’re in the mood.”
“Ava,” I call after her, but she’s already walking away. “Ava!”
She just throws her arm behind me, and I know that I screwed up royally.
Ovian.
Fuck.
8
Ava
It's a long walk back to my place, but I make it easily enough. Anger helps to fuel me, but I'm angrier with myself than I am Rix. How gullible can I be? Did I honestly think that he wouldn't want to have sex? How many guys—Earthling guys, that is—would want sex on the first date? Most of them. Rix isn't any different. If anything, his being part-Novan will make him want sex all the more.
The waitress flirted with him, but he didn’t pay her any attention. So did some of the moms of the kids at the park, but he didn’t seem to notice. Probably because I was there, though. He’s probably out cruising now, driving around to find another woman to shove his dick into because I know all about the Novans. They have to ejaculate if they have an erection, and I doubt very many of them use their hands. What do you want to bet that it’s the same for the Kurians? Or else they’ll just use their fathers as an excuse to have to ejaculate each time. I do know of a guy who pretended that that was the case for him, that he had to ejaculate if he got hard. I didn’t buy it, but from all reports, that is the truth for the aliens.
The first thing I do once I return to my place is double-check that the plasma morpher is still there. It is. Then I look over and double-check my calculations. They all seem sound.
By now, it's late, very late. While I could use my lamp to stay up and start to get to work, I'm too anxious and frustrated. From experience, I know that means I shouldn't work on anything. I tend to get upset, and when I get upset, things tend to break, and I've worked too hard on this particular project to risk anything happening to the pieces.
So I lie down. Sleep doesn’t come easily, and I debate going for a walk to try to eat up some of my angered energy, but I don’t. Now that the moon’s made her appearance, I don’t want to leave the plasma morpher alone. It’s one thing for me to leave while the sun’s up. I have some measures to protect my stuff, cameras and more, but I just don’t feel comfortable. Not at all.
Eventually, sleep comes anyhow almost despite myself, and I wake up feeling exhausted yet. Plus, I have a headache. Awesome. Just what I wanted.
You would think that with my notes and planning, it wouldn’t take long at all for me to finalize everything, but that’s just not the case. It takes so much longer than I plan, and it doesn’t help that I’m so uneasy that I keep glancing around to make sure that no one is coming by, especially not Rix.
It's not until dinnertime that I stop and get something to eat. I tend to do that, skip meals when I'm in the zone, and I just eat some more of that pig, and then it's back to work.
This time,
