Gemma’s eyes find mine, and her back straightens.
I try not to scowl.
Why does she remain tense around me?
“I will not hurt you,” I snap, and she flinches, her eyes going back to the food. I slide to the burner and roll the food over with my tailtip.
“Don’t! You’ll burn yourself,” she gasps.
It’s the first thing she’s said to me today.
I pick up the food and set it down. “I feel nothing but warmth through my scales.” Does she know nothing about this place and my kind? Wouldn’t she have the same technology as I? Do I have to teach her the ways of this world, and the ways of her people too?
She shivers and leans closer to the burner. I leave to find a plate, bringing it back.
“I don’t understand how it’s working,” she mumbles, still staring at the burner.
“Batteries. Power?” I pick up the ration and put it on the plate for her.
I may not burn easily, but she does. Humans—as far as I know—don’t have scales.
“Batteries die, erode, and power needs electricity. Both are things that Earth should no longer have.” She shakes her head.
I turn off the burner. She blinks, rubs her eyes.
Lost in thought, my female is. Lost in thoughts that are not of me.
“Earth has both. But you need to know where to look for them,” I explain. I like hearing her speak, the sound of her voice. It’s not often I hear anything more than the buzzing of my machines or the hum of my heart, the orb, or screens in my den. A real human voice, with real inflection, is strange and exciting. “Everything living died, not the things made by the living,” I add.
“But preserved without upkeep? For so long?” She pokes her ration. Steam wafts from the perfectly formed rectangular shape. “Human tech and Lurker tech?” She blows on her food.
A growl sounds from her belly when she does.
I settle across from her and watch. It will be interesting seeing her eat.
She visibly shrinks from my gaze when she realizes I’m staring.
I keep my scowl off my face. The tension between us bothers me. She is afraid of me.
“Both, perhaps,” I answer.
“You don’t know?”
“I never cared to find out what was made by who, only how the things worked and how they could be useful to me.” My gaze shifts to the many objects around my den. “The rest has never mattered.”
“And you? Where did you come from?”
“Me?”
Her face turns to my tail, to its long length, until she’s facing me head-on again. “You are not human,” she clears her throat, “Not entirely. Nor are you a Lurker or—or a Kett, or any other sentient species in the universe I know of, and I know all of them. Where did you come from, why are you here, and how do you know the common tongue?”
“You know little,” I say.
Her brow furrows. “I assure you I know plenty.”
“Yet you don’t know what’s around you, or the home you originated from, and your men are struggling to navigate both. That is clear. Even from the forest, that was clear.”
“How would you know that? We’ve only just arrived.”
“They would have never given you to us if they did.”
A pink glow rises to her cheeks that compliments her hair. I ache to sink my fingers into those strands again and bury my face in her tangles. They would be beautiful spread across my nest. They would also be beautiful wrapped around my member, soaked in my spill.
“We can’t find the technology. Using it isn’t the problem.”
“It will be. Eat,” I demand. The steam rising from her ration has diminished greatly in the last few minutes.
She opens her mouth then closes it when a soft rumble from her belly sounds the space again. She gently picks up the ration and nibbles the side of it. Her eyes go distant as she chews.
I lean forward. She only has blunt teeth, no fangs. I’m amazed that her teeth are sharp enough to tear into the ration. My fingers twitch to pry open her lips and see.
Her throat bobs, and she lifts the ration to peer at it. “Interesting,” she says. She takes another bite, this one bigger, more assured. I don’t know how she does it. I’ve eaten these rations twice before when I could not rise after a terrible wound, and I had to force them down my starving throat.
I still don’t know what was worse, the gash to my lower tail tendon or the taste of the ration.
On her third bite, I ask, “Interesting?”
“It tastes like chocolate. Really weak chocolate.”
“I cannot stand the smell or taste.”
“Chocolate is a delicacy for humans. It only grows on Colony 6.” She finishes the ration, and her eyes meet mine. She flinches like she always does when she notices me watching her and wipes the back of her hand across her mouth. “We’ll figure out how to use the technology once we find it. We have experts,” she says, returning to the previous subject now that the food was gone. “People who have spent their entire lives studying Lurkawathians and their technology.”
She licks her lips and my blood races. Her lips seem soft and sweet. The need to ravish them claws at me. To do more than that feasts on my instincts. Even if she tastes like rancid chocolate...
This is a dance I do not know.
I thought I knew how mating would work, but this is not what I imagined. It’s confusing. After fantasizing about having her in my nest and taking my member inside her, the fact that I’m desperate for just a touch of her eyes eats up my insides.
She is repulsed—frightened—when I mention joining with her though.
She chose Azsote.
I do not understand why. I want to convince her that she should have chosen me all along, that I am worthy of her, but she wants to talk about other things.
Unimportant things. Things that simultaneously alarm me and bring back the curiosity of
