by Cara Bristol
“You mean you left the hospital just to see me home?” From wrist to elbow, his right forearm was wrapped in white bandages, as was his torso under the T-shirt I’d purchased for him at the pharmacy since his buckskin had been too bloody to wear. He’d carried it in a plastic bag, which he’d left inside the Uber. The driver had agreed to wait for him while he saw me to my door.
“If I had escorted you home from the tavern, none of this would have happened.”
“If I had been more vigilant, less preoccupied, this might not have happened.”
“Your planet is dangerous,” he said.
Under the circumstances, it would be hard to marshal a good argument to refute his statement, and I wasn’t up to my fighting form anyway. With my left hand, I fumbled in my purse for the key. Once I got it out, I dropped it then couldn’t get it in the lock.
He pulled the key from my fingers and opened my door. I leaned against the jamb and stared up at him. The hall lights cast shadows and cut hard angles into his masculine face. His horns seemed to be pulsing. My gaze drifted to his mouth then up to his eyes.
“I’m glad you have lips,” I said, recalling my first impression of Sixx vs. the Lorexan.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “Uh, um, I’d better get in. I have to get up in a few hours,” I said.
“To do what?”
“Work.”
“Work?” He eyed my splinted, wrapped right hand. “No, you need to rest.”
Wasn’t that just like a man to issue orders? “We’ll see,” I said. The Zephyr deadline loomed, and I needed every second to meet it. “Are you free Saturday?” The words popped out of my mouth.
A slow smile spread across his face. His horns pulsed. “For you, I’ll make myself free,” he said.
My stomach fluttered at his mesmerizing gaze. I’m going to do this. See where it leads. I deserve a life outside of work. “Okay. Um. Good. Maybe we could get together in the afternoon and go somewhere?”
“Anything you want.” He cupped my face with his palm. For a heart-stopping moment, I thought he intended to kiss me, but he brushed his thumb over my cheek and then dropped his hand. “Go inside.” He gave me a gentle shove.
I stepped inside and shut my door.
* * * *
“It’s about time you decided to show up,” Miles said.
I swiveled in my chair, resting my splinted, bandaged hand on my knee. Jordan, the intern I’d nabbed to assist me, glanced at Miles then focused on the screen, hunching his shoulders as if wishing he could disappear. A computer whiz, Jordan was as shy as he was smart. Then again, the EGGhead intimidated a lot of people.
“For god’s sake, what happened?” He eyed my hand, twisting his mouth with annoyance.
“I was mugged, but I’m fine. Thank you for your concern.”
Forgetting to set my alarm, I’d fallen into bed and overslept, awakening later than normal, groggy, achy, and not at all motivated. I’d considered calling in sick, but I kicked it into gear and raced to work. “I was only a half an hour late,” I said.
“Two and a half hours. You’re always here by 5:00 a.m.”
“Technically the office doesn’t open until seven.”
“We’re under a time crunch. We have a whole advertising campaign planned around the release date. We have to meet the deadline.”
“Why are you being such an asshole?” I waved my bandaged hand. “I was mugged. You’re damn lucky I’m here at all.” I glanced at Jordan. The tips of his ears were red, and he looked like he wanted to slide under the console and hide.
Miles and I had too much history for his bark to scare me. While occasionally he did bite, I bit back, so although he gave me shit, he knew when to back off. I glowered and may have even bared my teeth. Today was not the day to mess with me.
“You’re right.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Sorry.”
Smart man.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked with some degree of sincerity.
“The asshole mugger stomped on my hand and broke my thumb and forefinger. He knifed my friend,” I said.
“Your friend?” His eyebrows rose.
“I had a date.”
“I didn’t know you were seeing somebody.” His eyes narrowed, and I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. If I had time for a personal life, then I should have more time to devote to Zephyr. That’s probably what he was thinking. I didn’t often schedule personal plans, but when I did, Miles’ sixth sense managed to create a crisis requiring me to cancel them. I’d swear his fire drills were aimed at me, except everyone worked crazy hours. When you came to work for EGG you signed away your social life. Among other things.
“Well, I am.” I shrugged. It was too soon to say I was “seeing” Sixx. One date did not a relationship make, but I’d committed to a second date, and I owed Miles no explanations.
“I’m calling a work session tomorrow.”
See? Sixth sense. He couldn’t know I had a date, yet he managed to throw a wrench into my personal life. Fuckery was his super power. Well, after last night, I wasn’t letting anybody fuck with me. Except maybe Sixx, but that would be a different type of fuckery. “I’ve made other plans,” I said.
I could practically see the steam shoot out his ears, but he spun on his heel and left the room.
“I don’t think he’s pleased,” Jordan said.
“No, he’s not.” I grinned.
“You’re brave. He could pull you off Zephyr.”
“He won’t.”
“No, he won’t,” Jordan agreed. “You’re his favorite employee.”
“His favorite one to badger,” I said. He threw crap at me he didn’t dare throw at anybody else.
“Everyone knows you’re his number one go-to person.”
“Everyone like who?” I asked.
“Everyone.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear.”
Jordan glanced behind him and then said in a low voice, “So then Zephyr wasn’t your idea?”
“Who told you that?”
He shrugged. “Watercooler gossip.”
If that’s what people were saying and Miles caught wind of it, he would go ballistic, and I could lose my job. Hell, he could sue me. I needed to nip these rumors in the bud. “I worked on the initial concept, that’s all.” A confidentiality agreement imposed on all employees prevented me from revealing anything about the game. In truth, Zephyr had been my baby—from conception to birth. I’d pitched the idea to Miles and written 80 percent of the original code for the prototype.
I’d assumed I’d be listed as an author on the game, but upon rereading my employment contract, I discovered EGG owned all rights to any code developed during employment—on the clock or off. Sometime between college and founding the company, Miles had morphed into a shark.
I’d considered quitting, but it felt like I’d be abandoning my child. Besides, now that the blinders were off, why not go to school on EGG? Why not see Zephyr through development, testing, and marketing? Learn everything I could about taking a game to market on EGG’s dime—and then break away and launch my own company? Side projects had to be kept on the QT because if Miles discovered I had a game in the works, legally he could lay claim to it. And he would. He was that much of an asshole.
Zephyr had progressed to beta testing, and I now led the team to fix bugs before mass market distribution.
It wouldn’t be much longer before I could quit. I’d have to wait a year before I could start my own company and release T-Rex Island. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t kick myself for not reading the ultra-fine print of my employment contract before signing.
Live and learn.
I rolled stiff, achy shoulders. I’d gotten more banged up than I’d thought. “We shouldn’t be talking about this,” I said to Jordan.
“The walls have ears,” he murmured.
“Eyes, anyway.” I shifted my gaze to a camera spying on us from above.
I shrugged. “Miles was always security conscious, but after the attempted break-in a couple of months before you started, he kind of went nutso.”
“But I thought they weren’t able to break in.”
“They weren’t.” Burglars on a crime spree had hit and trashed a flower shop, a coffee stand, and a Mexican restaurant in the same block. Due to Miles’ already tight protective measures, EGG remained unscathed, but he’d ramped up security to a quantum level of manic.
“It seems a little excessive,” he said.
“Not everybody is as balanced as you,” I replied.
“Nobody’s ever called me balanced before.” He laughed. Normally very serious, he was a cute kid when he smiled. A former child prodigy, Jordan was even younger than he looked. He’d graduated MIT at eighteen, and, at twenty, had almost completed his master’s, except he’d taken a semester off to travel—and then accepted the EGG internship. If Miles had his way, Jordan would never leave. To his credit, Miles recognized brilliance when he saw it. Thus far, Jordan hadn’t committed himself beyond the internship, demonstrating how much smarter than me he was.
“Thought any more about what you’ll do after you finish your master’s?” I asked.
“I’m considering a doctorate, but I might continue to work for a while to get more real-world experience, as they say.” He grinned.
“Can I give you a word of advice?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t sign any employment contracts with EGG without reading every single line.”
Chapter Six
Sixx
Dodging traffic, the dark sedan car sped over the busy boulevard in hot pursuit of a white vehicle. The light changed from red to green, and a female holding two small kits by the hand started across the street. The sedan’s driver swerved hard, cutting in front of a truck, causing it to knock over a stack of boxes before the truck rammed into a light post and exploded, shattering nearby windows. The sedan itself hit the curb and went airborne, spiraling like a football, flying over the family’s heads to land wheels down on the road and continue the chase.
“Whoa!” murmured my mate, staring wide-eyed at the big screen.
I popped a handful of fluffy corn into my mouth and watched her. I enjoyed her reaction to the movie more than the movie itself.
“Booya!” She punched the air with her fist.
Moxie had picked me up at the barracks and asked if I would like to experience “a little bit of Americana”—an action adventure movie. The star of the movie was a single mother who worked as a waitress in a diner where her boss kept hinting he desired to have relations with her. One of her regular customers was a spy who passed her a secret code before he keeled over dead from the poisoned soup, which happened to be on special that day. The soup, not the poison. She didn’t know she had the code until the bad guys kidnapped her kit and threatened to harm him unless she handed it over. The authorities also wanted the code, and they were chasing her to get it before she could give it to the bad guys.
I’d been on Earth long enough to witness a couple of car crashes and know that vehicles did not burst into flames or fly through the air after they hit something. They crunched up. For that reason, I suspected the movie wasn’t realistic, although, if we ever went to a diner, I would pass on the soup.
It went to show how often the things you accepted on faith couldn’t be trusted. The spy had had no qualms about eating the soup, I’d assumed Falla and I would mate, and Moxie had trusted she’d be safe walking home from the bar.
I took a bite of a piece of chewy rope called a red vine. Perhaps if I’d seen the man in the movie die before we’d ordered our snacks, I might have been a little more careful about what I ate, but it was too late to worry about it. Besides the fluffy corn and red vines, I’d had some Milk Duds, Junior Mints, and a foot-long hot dog, which was neither a foot long nor made of dog. Moxie ate only a candy bar, which I’d opened for her since she could only use one hand.
There was one thing I was sure of: Moxie was mine. Certainty whispered in my ear, settled in my bones, caused my horns and loins to tingle. I’d come to Earth in search of a female, any female, to call my own, but guided by the hand of Fate, I had found my one true mate. Every second of her company confirmed it.
But what would it take to convince her? I sensed she hadn’t yet recognized we were meant to be together. Could I get her to love me more than she loved the conveniences and entertainments of Earth? Would she give up games and movies for ice and snow and me?
The light from the screen flickered over her rapt face. Her emotions reeled with the action. She felt deeply. I coveted that passion for myself.
She turned her head, and her gaze collided with mine. “You’re not enjoying the movie?” she whispered.
“It’s the best movie I’ve ever seen,” I said.
“How many movies have you seen?”
On the screen, the fleeing waitress had driven her beat-up white vehicle down a narrow alley and swerved into an open garage. The door came down by itself, and the dark car zoomed past. The pounding music slowed to a gentle beat. I expelled a relieved breath. The waitress was safe—at least for a short time.
“Counting this one?”
“Yeah.”
“One,” I replied.
Moxie smiled, her eyes alight with amusement. Her shoulder brushed mine, and her enticing scent teased my nostrils. She smelled like blossoms, and something I’d come to recognize as vanilla, and a little bit like the candy she’d eaten. Before I lost my nerve, I meshed my mouth to hers.
She hesitated only a fraction before she melted against me. She cupped my cheek with her bandaged hand, and she touched my lips with her tongue. I opened my mouth and pulled her against my chest. Breaths mingled as our lips moved together. She tasted as she smelled, like sweet, warm female, and I couldn’t get enough of her. We explored each other, our tongues meeting and caressing.
When we separated, we remained close, our lips a kiss away from touching. I stared into her smiling eyes. Desire heated my loins, and my horns throbbed, but the greatest feeling of all was contentment. My female and I were connecting on an emotional level. I realized how tepid my relationship with Falla had been.
“How’s the movie now?” Moxie murmured.
“The best one ever,” I said.
It seemed natural to stretch my arm over the back of her seat. She rested her head on my shoulder. She finished watching the movie, and I watched her.
* * * *
“I thought you’d enjoy that,” she said as we walked through the theater parking lot.
“I did enjoy it. For as long as I’m on Earth, I want to experience as much of your culture as I can,” I said.
What was the saying humans had…a great place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there? That described Earth. The planet reminded me of the movie—flash, commotion, and loud noises. I longed for peace, for uncomplicated companionship of kin and kith, for the satisfaction of engaging in pursuits that mattered—for the love of a mate. I had to convince Moxie to return with me.
We reached her car. She pointed a remote, and the doors unlocked with a click. “How do you feel about dinner?” she asked. “Or are you too full after all the movie snacks?”
“I’m good for dinner,” I said. “As long as it isn’t soup.”
She laughed. “I’m a bit wary of soup, myself. I’m going to take another shot at presenting something you might enjoy. You like grilled, roasted meat, right? You’ve mentioned kel and phea…”
“You have kel and phea?”
“Uh, no, but I think I might be able to come up with something similar—barbecue.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “You know what I’d like?”
“What?”
I leaned my backside against the car, scooted down so we were closer in height, and pulled her between my legs. “This.” I kissed her. Meshi
ng mouths was so much easier when we weren’t twisting in the movie seats. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close, but not so tight to cause her pain. When she’d picked me up at the barracks, I’d noticed the bruises she’d acquired during the attack.
I stroked her hair. She was sweet, soft, and warm, and I wished I could bundle her up in a furry kel hide and whisk her away to Dakon where she’d be safe. Where we could be together. She wound her arms around my neck, her breath hitching as we kissed. My manhood pressed against her abdomen, her breasts against my chest. My horns throbbed and ached.
I rested my forehead against hers and stared into her eyes. I saw desire but also conflict reflected there. “A few kisses and you make it hard to think,” she said.
“What do you need to think about?”
“Life. The future.”
Did her future include me? Was she starting to care? Earthlings applied all sorts of rules, restrictions, and impediments to matters of the heart. They put mating on a scale and weighed it against everything else: jobs, geography, age, sex, education, race, social status, religion, physical attributes. Due to a catastrophe, Dakon suffered from a severe shortage of females. Earth created an artificial shortage of mates by its arbitrary proscriptions.
For Dakonians, meeting a mate didn’t complicate things, it simplified them. Moxie was my female. The truth infused every cell of my body. With her, I felt more alive, more aware of my existence than I ever had. If Falla and I had mated, it would have been a big mistake. I thanked the Fates she’d chosen someone else, and I hoped she was content with him. Happiness I could have with Moxie—if the stubborn Earthling would give me a chance. I had to get her to see past the restrictions she created. Unfortunately, the time available was tighter than I’d first thought.
She blinked and shook her head. “We don’t need to talk about the future now. Let’s have dinner.” She scooted away, going around to the driver’s side of her car.
