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“Why didn’t you bring your covered wagon? You’re two claws deep in dust. And where’s your shirt? You didn’t think you needed a shirt to get married this morning?”
I couldn’t make out the words in the answer, but I heard the low rumble of a response. The fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck rose. That was the voice of the alien male I was about to marry.
“She’s going to take one look at you and run the other way, boy,” Warden Tenn growled. “Go get your idiotic tail under the hose.”
I was going to take one look and run the other way?!
Well that was fucking ominous. My curiosity and sense of self-preservation suddenly overtook my earlier nervousness. I let go of the chair and hurried over to the window to catch a glimpse of just what the hell it was that I’d be dealing with.
I didn’t get a good look at my husband-to-be. The near-blinding sun was straight ahead and behind him, casting Silar into hulking shadow. All I saw was the silhouette of a large figure with a hat seated atop a huge, four-legged mount that reminded me of… something…
An Old-Earth horse.
Like lightning, it hit me all at once. I remembered what it was that the hats were reminding me of. Seeing shadowy Silar in his saddle, turning his mount by pulling reins and leading it around the side of the building, I finally latched onto a word from my childhood, pulling it from memories of Old-Earth movies I’d watched with Mama.
Cowboy.
I was about to marry an honest-to-goodness alien fucking cowboy.
The cowboy in question was now completely out of sight. I jumped and stifled a small gasp when the sound of hooves and then boots hitting dirt came through the glass of another smaller window on the other side of the room. I sidled furtively up to that little window, feeling absolutely ridiculous as I did so, and peeked out.
Silar was no longer a shadow. With the angle of this window, the sun outside was now at my back, and it drenched my groom in clear, cutting light. His broad, bare back was to me, and I watched the muscles bunch beneath his reddish hide with an odd knot of fascination forming low in my belly. He was currently rubbing down his big alien horse thing, which obviously wasn’t a horse, but I didn’t know what else to call it. It was very horse-like in shape, though its tail was short and upright, like an arrowhead pointed at the sky, and it had two large, curving horns erupting from its head.
Silar’s hands were big. Really big. Vaguely human-shaped, with five fingers and all that jazz, but just so much bigger than any human’s hands had the right to be. And with sharp claws, a dark reddish-brown similar in colour to his hide. His hair hung in a long, loose tie down his back, also a rust-coated brown sort of shade. He had a spot on the back of his belt for his tail to hang, but it wasn’t looped there now. No, his tail was currently snaking along the ground, wrapping around a hose, and pulling that hose over to an empty wooden bucket. Once the hose was in position, his tail unfurled and went to a tap directly below the window I peered out of. Agile as a third hand, it turned the tap. Water flowed into the bucket, and when the container was full, Silar’s tail turned the tap off, looped around the handle, and dragged the bucket until it was directly beneath his mount’s head.
The horse-thing drank gratefully, taking big, sloppy gulps while Silar continued to wipe down its coat and clean its horns. He seemed to be gentle but firm in his ministrations, and it was obvious the animal trusted him completely. That had to be a good sign, right? If Silar was kind enough to his mount to earn that sort of bond, then maybe he’d be kind enough to me, too.
Silar produced something from his pocket and his mount immediately stopped drinking to nose at his hand. The animal munched, and afterwards it made a snuffly sound and bumped its nose against Silar’s hat, nearly knocking the thing off. Silar patted its neck in return, a gesture that was somehow both brusque and tender, as if he were mildly embarrassed by the animal’s show of affection but secretly pleased by it anyway.
This is a good man.
The thought came without warning, as loud and as clear as if someone had spoken it aloud.
I went over the words more intentionally for a second and a third time, letting them roll around in my head.
This is a good man.
In that held-breath moment, watching my husband-to-be in silence from my unseen place, I decided it was true. Mama always told me that what people did when they thought no one was watching told you who they really were. Silar may not have bothered with the formality of wearing a shirt to meet his future bride, but the big man took care of his animals. And that said a hell of a lot more than fancy, formal clothing ever could.
It was probably a damn good thing I thought so, because the very next moment Silar disposed of the few garments of clothing he was wearing. My hands shot up to cover my mouth, my eyes widening as, without warning, Silar kicked away his boots and shucked off his trousers, tossing them all in at heap beside him and placing his hat on top.
OK, Cherry. Time to go.
I’d already spied on his quiet moment with the horse. It was well past the point of decency to continue to peep on him now, when he was bare-fucking-naked beneath the bright alien sun.
I may have decided my groom was a good man. But I guessed I just wasn’t a decent woman. Because when Silar used his tail to turn on the hose once more and hold it over his head like a shower’s spray, I could not tear my eyes away.
Sparkling beads and rivulets of water rolled downward from his head to his body, and I gaped at the result. It was as if every drop of water was actually vivid paint, because by dousing himself in the stuff he changed colour before my very eyes. He stood gleaming and wet, no longer a male with reddish-brown hair and reddish-brown hide to match the reddish-brown dust, but a figure of startlingly saturated colour.
With his tail holding the hose in place overhead, both his hands went to work, scrubbing and swiping at his limbs as the dust was rinsed off of him like blood. His muscles tensed and lurched beneath smooth hide newly-revealed to be a rich yellow-gold colour. His hair’s transformation was even more shocking, the dull grime rinsing away to slowly reveal bright blue strands that were highlighted turquoise where the sun hit just right.
Watching this slow, melting reveal of new colour felt somehow even more intimate than his original undressing. I’d once seen a picture of an Old-Earth tropical beach, and Silar’s colouring reminded me of that. The deep gold of the sand and that heart-achingly pretty sort of blue that you could just tell had to be an absolute dream to swim in. Not that I even knew how to swim. Lakes on Terratribe I were very cold and very, very polluted. But there were certain shades of blue in certain bodies of water that seemed to invite you right the hell in, swimming abilities be damned.
Silar’s hair was that sort of blue.
It was long and straight, hanging nearly to his waist. He wrung the water out of it, then scraped it back into a somewhat-tidy tie at the nape of his neck. His tail remained in constant motion, rinsing off the rest of his body as he dealt with his hair, sending water rolling down the dips and harsh curves of a muscled frame that, now shiny with moisture, looked like it had been carved from solid gold.
Seriously. Solid gold. The male looked like some artisan had lovingly crafted him into existence. An artisan with a real hard-on for masculine musculature, because Silar had that in spades. And it wasn’t just rippling muscles he had to spare, because when he tossed down the hose and turned around, I came face-to-dick with the biggest phallus I’d ever seen.
