AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ve seen grown men beat the shit out of each other on the factory floor because of less life-or-death situations like love triangles and cheating. But another man inadvertently almost causing the death of someone you lo-” Shit. “-live with,” I amended with a hot flush. “Yeah. I mean. I get why you did it.”
I also kind of liked it. Way too fucking much.
But Silar probably didn’t need to know that.
I gave him a firm pat on his chest, his skin still damp from my drying tears.
“How about we just don’t do any more attempted murder. Deal?”
Silar didn’t say a word. He also didn’t move. Or blink.
“Deal?” I asked again, narrowing my eyes at him. The dude looked like he was going to stroke out on me or something. I wasn’t even sure that he was breathing.
“Silar-”
“That’s it?”
I pursed my lips, my brows coming lower over my eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I tell you that… That I nearly murdered a man in front of you… And you’re not…” He angled his head back slightly, regarding me intently down his nose, as if he needed a little more distance to see me properly. “You are not angry?” His voice cracked. “Or… Or frightened?”
Ah. Shit. He was definitely picking up on my horny glee over this whole thing. Not that I was actually horny or gleeful for Fallon to get hurt. Just over the fact that my stoic, impossible-to-read husband actually cared enough about me that he would cut a bitch to protect me or avenge me. But clearly, I needed to tone it down. Silar was looking at me like I was, well, an alien.
Probably good he doesn’t know about that whole breaking a man’s nose with my cast iron pan situation…
“I’m not angry,” I told him sternly. “I’m… disappointed.”
Like hell I was.
But I guess Silar believed me. My words made that massive wall of a man flinch as if I’d gone ahead and punched him in the gut. Or, you know, did something as innocuous and gentle as put my hands on the man’s shoulder. You could never quite tell with him.
“Come on,” I said, giving him a smile. “Let’s go. I think Fallon’s head will explode if we don’t reappear soon.”
22
CHERRY
Fallon’s head was still very much intact when we re-emerged. He’d also eaten all his sausages and was eyeing the other plate with a slightly hilarious look of longing in his eyes. I started to push the other plate towards him when Silar slammed his hand down on the table, slid the plate back to me and said, “That’s my wife’s.”
“It was actually your portion, but you didn’t seem that interested in eating it,” I told Silar as I sat down in the chair across from Fallon. “Hi, Fallon. I feel like we didn’t get a proper introduction before. I’m Cherry.”
I stuck out my hand. Like an idiot.
What was it with me and constantly trying to shake these alien men’s hands?
Fallon stared at my hand like it was a puzzle to be solved. Then, he stuck out his hand exactly opposite mine, like a mirror image. We couldn’t exactly shake hands like that, so I bumped the back of my hand against his palm in a wonky high five and then retreated.
Now that my hand was no longer confusing him, his gaze returned to my face. And stayed there.
So did his dreamy grin.
I kind of got the impression that he was using my features as a sort of stand-in to imagine his own future wife. And I couldn’t even be mad about it. The guy just seemed so fucking excited.
He was so different from Silar. Fallon was chatty and smiley, sitting across from me like a friend while my husband stood beside the table, glowering down at us like some kind of Old-Earth gargoyle. A hot, grumpy, golden one.
Fallon’s colouring was different from Silar’s as well. He had a warm, deep, sunset-orange hue to his hide, and his long shimmery hair was a gorgeous gold-tinged white, the kind of colour that women spent hours frying their ends off to achieve. I’d even tried to get my strands that shade once myself as a teen, but I’d only ended up with hair even brighter orange than Fallon’s skin tone. Where Silar’s eyes were a deep blue with electric veins of aqua, Fallon’s were a rich dark brown, the branching bits a little lighter, like the colour of astronomically expensive Terratribe II maple syrup. Everything about him screamed warmth.
