More than anything, I want to kiss her. I want that even more than I want to have sex with her again.
I just want her. All of her. Whatever I can get.
Is that so wrong?
In the eyes of Overlord Nestrol, it is.
But I can’t handle that. I don’t care what he wants. Right now, I can clearly see that she’s hurting, and I want to ease her suffering any way that I can.
“Adir.”
“Yes?” I blink, trying to stay focused on the here and now and the beautiful woman in front of me.
Ovian. I may have grabbed her, but she also has a hold on me, one that I can’t shake no matter what I do.
And I have to shake it. I’m playing a very dangerous game here, and I am this close to becoming unglued. The overlord could take everything away from me, and then what? I’ll be lost without her. I’ll drown.
How in the ovian world did this happen? I just randomly picked her door—
Maybe it’s not random.
Maybe it’s fate.
Novans don't believe in fate. At least, we didn't use to. But everything came together after the Grots came and destroyed our home and killed off all of our women and children. Then, we had a new purpose in life. It's almost as if we were meant to have the females killed so we would have the drive and determination to do what needed to be done to save the entire universe from the threat that had been the Grots.
And now maybe that same fate has led me to Callie. It’s why I picked her door and not the door of another female. Maybe we’re meant to be together.
Or maybe I’m just trying to tell myself that because I so desperately want to kiss her. Do I want to kiss her because she wouldn’t let me before? Is that the only reason why?
I’m so utterly confused.
“Adir,” she says.
“Yes?”
She giggles. “You aren’t listening to me at all, are you?”
“No. I’m sorry. I… I have a lot on the brain.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Do you believe in fate?”
“Fate?” Her eyes widen. “I haven’t thought about fate much.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think that things happen at random,” she says slowly. “I do think there’s a grand design, a master plan.”
“Who is the master?”
“God.”
“God?” I tilt my head to the side, my hand itching to activate my chip for a definition.
“God is the Creator. He created humans. Earthling, Novans… the Grots… all of the planets, the animals, the plants.”
“God must be powerful then.”
“He’s all powerful and outside of time.”
I frown. “Outside of time?”
“Yes.”
“Can we meet him? Where is he?”
“We can meet him after we die.”
“Oh.”
“What do you think happens when we die?” she asks.
“We become dust in the cosmos,” I say.
“Oh.”
I grin, liking that she echoed my earlier sentiment. “That’s not what you believe.”
“I think I believe in Heaven and Hell. A place of happiness with God forever or a place of misery separated from him for all of eternity.”
“You think you believe this?”
Callie sighs and walks over to her bed, but she doesn’t sit. After a moment, she turns back around to face me. “I believed with my entire heart when I was younger. As I’ve gotten older, it’s harder to believe. I mean… to learn that aliens exist and for the first aliens to want to destroy us… Why? What did we do to deserve that? What did your females do to deserve what happened to them? Life isn’t always fair.”
“No, life isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean that there can’t be happiness now and maybe after we die too.” I hesitate. “Do all Earthlings believe in God?”
“No. Some believe in different gods, and some don’t believe in him at all.”
“Interesting.”
“Cosmic dust, huh?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Ashes to ashes,” she murmurs.
I frown.
She waves her hand. “I think that fate is more or less God’s guiding hand.”
“You think an all-powerful being has been pulling our strings? Making us do things?”
“Not quite pulling our strings,” she murmurs. “We have free will. We can make our choices, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know what choices we’ll make already.”
I furrow my brow. “How does that work?”
“If I give you the choice between sleeping with me or sleeping with a man, would you pick me?”
“Every time.”
She smirks. “Well then?”
“Ah, I see. So he knows each of us well enough to know what we’ll pick before we pick it.” I rub the back of my neck. “So you think he is happy that you’re here?”
Her expression crumbles. “I don’t know,” she mumbles.
“What’s wrong?”
“He… He doesn’t like sex outside of marriage.”
“Why?”
“Because sex is supposed to be about making babies, and that should happen between committed spouses.”
“Well, the females who have become pregnant are marrying the ones who got them pregnant so…”
“Still technically backward,” she says with a rueful smile.
“Does that mean that you don’t want to be with the breeders anymore?” I ask a little too eagerly.
She lifts her eyebrows and crosses her arms. “You… You shouldn’t be worried about that.”
“If they’re hurting you—”
“I told you that today, they didn’t.”
I scowl. “Why? What’s different? Why did they hurt you before but now you’re fine?”
Callie exhales a breath. “Maybe because I was thinking about you,” she admits.
My heart races, and I cross over to her in two strides. She might not want a kiss on the lips, but I cup her face and kiss her forehead.
“Adir,” she murmurs.
My cock jumps at hearing her soft voice say my name. I hold her close against me, letting her feel how much I want her, but letting her be in control. If she wants me, she’ll let me know.
I inhale the clean scent of her hair, detecting the faint aroma of flowers, and then I smell her. She’s aroused.
"Adir," she repeats, and she wiggles back from
