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)
The male in front of me is a mixture of youthful eagerness and responsible adult. He looks like he could be my age—thirty two—or maybe older. There’s an innocence to his gaze that makes him seem boyish, though. Or maybe it’s his long lashes and the curve of his mouth that hasn’t hardened into a permanent frown I see on so many world-weary types. I continue eyeing him. He’s wearing the smooth gray uniform of the Port Custodians, with the collar done up to his neck. It looks chokingly tight but he doesn’t tug on it, and peeking out from the collar are what look like tattoos. He has no piercings that I can see, not even on his ears, and his capped horns look to be plain and without the ornate styling I saw on Lord va’Rin’s fancy horns.
He taps a few more things into the pad and then turns his head, checking something in the office behind him, and I notice his neck is rather thick and corded. His arms are, too, now that I peer a little more, like the absolute creeper I am. His uniform is definitely tight across the biceps, and I’m a sucker for nice arms.
“Colonist? Is everything all right?”
I snap to attention, blinking at him. “Hmm?”
“Is something wrong with my appearance?” He gives me a puzzled look. “You were staring at me.”
Ooof, busted. “Um…sorry. I’m just, well…I forgot what you asked me.”
“How would you categorize your distress?” he asks again, poised to type on his data pad the moment I answer.
Instead, I stare at his hands. Gosh, they’re nice hands. His nails are blunted, his fingers long and yet somehow meaty. Boy, I must really be pumped full of hormones if I’m noticing a stranger’s hands. He’s still waiting for an answer, I realize, and I look up.
I should tell him I’ve been hoodwinked. Tricked. That someone laid a trap and I fell for it.
I should tell him I need someone to make a baby with me, stat.
Instead, what comes out is, “I need to get laid.”
Chapter
Two
AINAR
The big problems always show up when I’m at the Custodial office alone. It doesn’t matter if Rektar or Khex take only one day off during the month—inevitably on that day, something will happen and anxious human females will flood into the office looking for assistance. Normally Sinath takes charge of things. He gets less flustered around the pretty females. Says he grew up with sisters and he just thinks of them all as his sisters. I think he’s a liar, but as long as he handles things, I can busy myself with paperwork instead of having to actually talk to the humans. The newest recruit, a young soldier named Paxon, is out doing his rounds, which means I’m the only one here.
So of course she shows up.
Colonist Flannigan is beyond pretty. She’s delicate like all humans are, with dark eyes and dark hair. She has a bump on her nose which I find strangely adorable, and when she smiles at me her teeth are small and white and even. Her voice is sweet and gentle, and she seems distracted enough that she doesn’t notice how flustered I am in talking to her.
Ainar vo’Lon has a terrible history with romance. When I first got here, I was besotted with a female colonist who made it clear she was interested in me. I wooed her—probably a bit too rapidly, according to Khex—and offered to mate her. She refused me. But then she kept showing up in Port, and so I’d offer again, only to get turned down once more.
It was only after Khex took me aside and pointed out that human females think differently than we do that I realized I was scaring her instead of wooing her. Back on Homeworld, if you lose your heart to a female, you want to mate her and take care of her forever. I didn’t grasp what he meant by females just wanting a “good time” or to “flirt.” That constantly asking a female to mate you comes across as ‘stalking’ and not enthusiasm.
It’s just…back on Homeworld, the vo’Lon family is dirt. Worse than dirt. We’re garbage collectors and prison spawn and our family name is worthless. No female worth anything would ever look at me, and I’ve always known that I’m nothing in the eyes of a mesakkah female. Coming here and being surrounded by pretty humans that wanted to talk to me? That didn’t care that my family name was trash?
It felt like the answer to every dream I’d ever had.
But my eagerness scared away the female I wanted. It was a painful lesson, made all the more painful when I saw the object of my affections flirting with someone new a few months later. The answer to me was obvious—I come on too strong. Human females don’t want a male that is utterly devoted from the first breath. They apparently want to be chased.