As soon as I lie down, my thoughts and worries and fears all fade away, and I sleep easily.
A hand touching my forehead brings me back to awareness.
“That’s not my cock,” I mumble.
“It’s not my mouth either,” Isabella says with a laugh. “What happened to you not needing to sleep?”
“Do you know how long you slept for, woman?” I ask as I sit up.
"A long while. Too long for you to stay awake, apparently."
“Yes, well, I know what I want to do to prove to you that I’m a daredevil.”
“Do you now?” Her eyes lit up, but then she narrows them suspiciously. “It better not have something to do with a sex position.”
I roar with laughter. “No, no, nothing like that, but I do appreciate that you have sex on the brain early in the morning.”
“It’s past noon,” she says dryly, crossing her arms and staring down at me with a cocked eyebrow.
"Yes, well, breakfast first, maybe?"
“You can cook it yourself.”
“Certainly. Do I need to hunt or gather it?”
“No. I already killed a deer. It’s a doe, a small one, but it’s more than enough meat for us both. I have some salt in a bag I brought so we can try to preserve more of it and then let nature have the rest.”
She leads me to the deer, and I grin. “You already carved it.”
“Yes. Just start the fire up.”
I can feel her eyes on me. She’s trying to see if I can light a fire as easily as she had, and I accomplish that easily with a simple snap of my fingers.
Isabella purses her lips, and she glowers at me.
A laugh rumbles out of me, and I show her the kurital flint I attached to my fingers. “It’s a special piece of flint from a metal we uncovered on Kuria. It makes strong sparks. Here.”
I remove the pieces from the tip of my finger and thumb and place them on her. Her skin is so very soft, and I can’t help running my hand up her bare arm to her shoulder. She’s wearing a shirt called a tank top, but I wish the grass was wearing it instead of her.
“You try,” I whisper in her ear before I step aside.
She stares at me and bites her lower lip suggestively and then even licks her plump lips. Ovian, she’s playing, getting back at me for stroking her, and I wish we could stop with this dance and go ahead and fuck already.
Isabella shifts her gaze from me to her hand, and she snaps her fingers. Sparks fly every which way, and she has to stomp out a smoldering bit of grass.
“That’s amazing,” she gushes, her dark eyes shining.
“Isn’t it? I enjoy playing with it as a child. So much so that my father…” I trail off.
“He took it away from you?”
“Yes,” I say shortly.
She glances at me curiously and hands me back the kurital flint. "I'm glad you had it on you, but if you want to learn how to make a fire without cheating—"
“It’s not cheating,” I protest, but I’m grateful for the change in subject. She knew and recognized that my father is not a subject for us to talk about. It’s almost as if we can sense things about each other and recognize what is taboo and what isn’t.
Isabella just shrugs. “If you say so, but…”
“It’s not. It’s resourceful to use what resources you have. It’s not my fault that Earth is lacking.”
“Earth doesn’t lack for much,” she says.
“Of that I have no doubt,” I murmur.
I turn aside and cook the meat. The deer meat is delicious, so very tender, and I can’t help moaning. Isabella laughs at that, and once she’s finished eating, I catch her licking her lips.
“I don’t have anything to wash my hands with,” she mumbles.
“I would’ve licked them clean for you,” I say, winking.
“And you wouldn’t have stopped there.”
“No, probably not,” I admit, “but would you have wanted me to stop?”
“You said you know what you want to do?” she asks, coming over to the deer. I’m not sure when she left to fetch her bag, but she’s starting to salt and pack away meat from the deer. Probably when I cooked the meat.
“Yes,” I inform her. “Where can we get a hold of centuricmobiles?”
“You do know that we tend to have centuricars on Earth, not centuricmobiles, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes,” I say a bit impatiently. “Do you know where some are?”
“Have you ever heard the expression good things—”
“Come to those who wait, yes, but the early bird gets the worm, doesn’t it?” I can’t help it. I thrust my pelvis in her direction.
Even though she’s not looking directly at me, I can tell she saw because the corner of her lip that I can see is curling upward.
“You’re not the most mature of Kurians, are you?”
“Actually, I’m one of the most mature ones,” I assure her.
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
“Have you met any other Kurians?” I ask, my hands dropping to my hips.
“No, but that just means that I don’t know for certain that what you say is true.”
“Have I lead you astray yet?”
“Ah, that’s the keyword. Yet. And I do believe that leading women astray is something you excel at.”
“Possibly. At times. Maybe once or twice.”
“Help me with this meat, and then—Don’t you dare make a comment about meat,” she warns.
“I would never.”
“You protest too much.”
I help her, and in no time at all, a good portion of the meat is salted and packed away. The fire’s put out, and we leave the mountain.
It takes us a few days to reach our destination. We spend that time talking and laughing, enjoying each other’s company, and while we don’t have sex again, we do tease each other, and at night, after she’s asleep, I have to take
