Total pages in book: 33
Estimated words: 31116 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 124(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 31116 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 124(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
Actually, it could be the view from my farm. I point at it, curious. “Did you—”
“It’s an old feed,” he says quickly. “From before you took over the farm. But yes, it’s yours.” His tail wags back and forth in a wild arc. “I just…even if you didn’t want to see me, I wanted to be close to you.”
I smile, because that’s rather sweet.
“Before I met you, it was a view from the roof at Port.” Ainar gives me a sheepish look. “I like to wake up and see the world outside, and we don’t have windows here in the building. But seeing the fields and the settlement, it reminds me how lucky I am to be here and not back home, in an overcrowded neighborhood where my life was all planned out for me. I am grateful.”
I completely and utterly understand that. He’s moving forward with a healthy appreciation for where he’s going, just like me. “Well, if we’re talking about things we’re grateful for, I’m grateful that your bed is bigger than mine.”
His tail starts to thump against his leg. “I am grateful for that, too.” He gestures at the casserole in his hands. “Do you wish to eat?”
“I could eat. Show me where your warmer is?”
We head into the tiny kitchen and conversation is easy between us, despite the week apart. I feel as if I’ve known him forever. We laugh over the same jokes, talk about farming and the weather, and he tells me all about how Sinath had to get an oversized rodent out of a colonist’s barn, only for her to want to keep it as a pet.
“You should have seen the look on his face,” Ainar tells me between bites of the food. “Here he is, ready to twist the beast’s head off and the female is saying ‘I shall call him Jerry.’”
I snicker at that, imagining the oversized squirrel-like rodents I’ve seen in my barn once or twice as a pet named Jerry. “Pets are a big deal back home. I bet she’s lonely.”
“Poor Sinath didn’t know what to do,” Ainar continues. “The thing was scratching his arms and he was trying to hold it while she found a cage and—”
There’s a thump on the wall behind him. A moan. Another thump. “Harder,” a woman’s voice says, muffled through the wall. “I said harder!”
“Wow,” I manage, choking on my noodles as the bed (at least I think it’s a bed?) in the other apartment thumps even faster. “Thin walls, huh?”
Ainar nods, poking at his food with his eating sticks. “My neighbor is a praxiian dock worker. Very polite. Lately he has been dating a…” He struggles for a way to describe her, his face distinctly uncomfortable. “…human woman.”
A praxiian and a human? Not the most usual pairing amongst the women I know here on Risda, but there are a few that are married to the cat-like males. “That’s sweet.”
“It is…something,” he agrees, strangled.
Immediately, there’s another hard thump on the wall. “Fuck me harder, you brute,” the shrill voice demands. “Fuck me like you hate me!”
My eyes go wide. It’s something all right. “I guess this is a good thing,” I murmur to Ainar, leaning over the dinner table. “It’s a good reminder that whatever we do, we need to be quiet.”
He nods in agreement. “And that I will need to fuck you like I hate you, even if I do not, just so you do not yell at me.”
Oh, a silly sense of humor. I really am in danger. “I don’t hate you,” I say softly. “So I wouldn’t ask it.”
The look he gives me is smoldering. “Then how would you ask me to fuck you?”
“Like I’m the best thing you’ve ever seen. Like I’m your entire world and you’ll die if you don’t get to touch me in the next moment.”
“But that is how I always fuck you,” Ainar says in a low voice, his gaze locked on my face. “Because it is the truth.”
Lord have mercy. My face feels hot—actually, all of me does. “Before we move forward, Ainar, I want to talk about you and me and the baby first.” I bite my lip, hoping that we’re both on the same page, relationship-wise. It would be hard to turn back right now, but I would if I needed to. “I like you a lot—”
“But you are not certain if you want me to be part of the baby’s life?” he finishes. “Because you do not trust me yet after me being a ghost this past week?”
I want to giggle at his phrasing, but this moment feels too momentous. I nod. “I started this with the intention that I’d be the only parent, and just because you and I are getting along right now doesn’t mean we will be in six months. You know? So I don’t want you with me because you feel like you have to be a parent, and I don’t want to feel like I have to stay with you because you’re the one that got me pregnant.”