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Threxin’s thumbs swept along her cheekbones, his eyesflicking between hers. He didn’t answer and her heart sank, because it wouldn’t be enough. Not ever.
Threxin released her and got into the bed, lodging himself against the wall, as if it were already a foregone conclusion that he’d be staying. That was good, right? Was that what she wanted?
The cabin light faded to nothing, as he pulled her down beside him, pulling the cover over her naked body. They lay on their sides facing each other, the cold cyan glow of Threxin’s apertures bathing everything in slits of light and shadow—the wall, the ceiling, her skin.
Alina clamped her teeth over her lower lip and cast her eyes down. It was impossible to look at him like this, knowing she would never be able to do this fully with him. She suddenly remembered howotherhe was. He was big, and glowing, and so alien—why the hell was he here, with her? Was he just keeping himself amused? Did he have a real uhyre girlfriend on the side?
“Are uhyre monogamous?” Alina blurted out before she could think better of it.
“Monogamous?” he said, and damn it, that was not an answer.
“Never mind,” Alina huffed and moved to roll over. Having her back to him would make this much less awkward.
“No,” Threxin grunted, planting a hand firmly across her shoulder and pulling her back to face him. “Explain.”
“It’s when you only have sex with one person, okay? Forget it. It was a stupid question.”
They hadn’t evenhadsex. Alina stared at the puckered scar on his chest because no way was she capable of meeting his eyes just then.
Threxin sighed, his grip on her loosening but hand remaining in place on her shoulder. “We fuck. Eventuallymost pick one mate. It is not mandated, but handling multiple females can be… difficult.”
Alina snorted a small scoff. As if handling multiplemenwould be any easier.
She wanted to stop tiptoeing through the asteroid field and know more about what he wanted instead of just speaking in generalities about his kind. Instead, she gave him a curt nod, pulled the blanket up to her chin, and made a very competent show of going to sleep.
CHAPTER 43
THREXIN
Threxin had spent each night since their return to terms in Alina Argoud’s cabin. The positive effect the smaller space had on his sleep quality could not be overstated. Except he knew well enough by now that the smaller space accounted for only some of the change.
It was her. Every morning that he crept quietly from her cabin and ducked into the nearest blood passage to avoid detection, he counted the ticks to being back there with her pressed firmly against him. The physical draw of her aside, once it was all set and done she made him sleep like a hakstone.
She had begun an extremely inconvenient topic four nights before, when she had asked about uhyre mating processes. She was his—he knew that much, and had been forced to recognize it.
But her loyalty was with her people. She had clearly known something about the dockmaster. She had warned him as best she could, but she did not say all. Threxin had a cohort to lead and care for, and their respective loyalties were a wedge he was not yet sure could be overcome. A vaccine could go a long way to overcoming it, but it had not yet been developed.
No… There were too many unknowns to make Alina promises or proclamations. Threxin was only certain of one thing: he would protect Alina Argoud until the ends of the universe, whether she was with him or not. And in the meantime he would be selfish and sleep at her side and spend hours consuming every part of her body except those that he craved most.
It was becoming harder to resist the increasing urge to take her everything as her touch ignited him… Her mouth, her cunt, her ass. But mostly her cunt… That foreign undulating channel that clamped tight around his fingers.
Threxin willed himself to focus as he buckled into the commander’s seat and held his wrist up for the sampler. Renza was already there. It was the day of the supply delivery.
He had banished all humans from the command bay save the comms specialist, whose human voice he would require to speak with the incoming ship.
The night before, Alina Argoud had talked about making herself present in the arrival dock on the common residence deck to “keep an eye out for anything weird,” a prospect Threxin had shut down immediately. If “anything weird” were to happen, Alina Argoud would be as far from it as possible.
She had recognized his command too readily to be believed, however. That was why upon quietly leaving her cabin that morning, Threxin hadColossallock her door. Her subsequent chimes through her comms bracelet were difficult to ignore, but he had a delivery to focus on.
The cargo ship was a pulsing dot projected on the hull of the thermaview.
When the supply vessel identified asA025-Kirkmade its seal with hisColossal, Threxin had made clear via the comms officer that only one crew member was permitted to dock. He kept the vid feed of the CRD dock up, watching intently for the slightest suspicious move.
The human female who emerged from the entry seal was hidden behind her helmet and a full black and orange suit. Threxin expected she would remove it at some point, but that time never came. She walked at a sharp clip to the dockmaster’s office with a tablet in hand. Once inside, Threxin piped the feed from the cam he’d activated there to the thermaview, the mic feed going only to his earpiece.
“Sign this.” The woman’s voice was muffled behind her helmet. A moment later, an exasperated sigh. “No NS?”
“Network issue,” the dockmaster, a stout man, said. He’d better not let the arrival notice his shaky voice.
