Yet there was more to her scent than its allure or the hunger it roused within him—there was information in it. Or rather there was information in what was absent from it.
Both times he’d scented her, Zevris had picked up on a hint of the beast—Dexter. Dogs and cats, the most popular human pets, were species driven by scent in many ways, and they left traces of their own smells on everything. Tabitha had not escaped when it came to Dexter, though it was faint enough to easily ignore.
But there had been no trace of another male’s scent on Tabitha. Even when Zevris had been so close to her that he had heard her heart beating, he hadn’t smelled anything that suggested she’d been near another male—not yesterday and not this morning.
He knew it was a leap in logic, but that lack of male scent could very well have meant Tabitha was without a mate, that she was unclaimed…that she was single.
I will mark her.
Zevris lifted a hand and combed his fingers through his hair, extending his claws just enough for their tips to graze his scalp.
What am I doing?
He caught a fistful of his hair and squeezed. His experiences in covert operations had taught him how powerful emotions like hope could be—and how dangerous. It was wholly exploitable, used as a weapon as easily as it could be used as a source of inspiration, and he knew better than to base plans around it. He needed intelligence, information, insight. Evidence. He couldn’t risk his mission—his entire species—based on the small chance that Tabitha was single, that she was interested in him, that she was…that she could be, his mate.
He needed to be certain that she was unclaimed by another, that she was seeking a mate and not a fling like so many of the Earth females he’d met.
Zevris swore he’d seen that gleam in her eyes again this morning, that reflection of his yearning, that flame of desire. He also swore he’d smelled a hint of her arousal—just enough to set his blood ablaze but not enough to make him lose control.
What would his name—his true name—sound like from her lips, spoken in her soft, lyrical voice?
Clenching his jaw, he turned toward the mailbox. Even if this was not a combat mission, it was a military mission, and he would conduct it with the same precision and attention to detail he’d maintained through all his deployments.
Because that approach has been so successful thus far, right?
He was about to walk back to his dwelling when something caught his eye—the mailbox door was ajar. As he reached forward to close it, he paused, glancing down the street in the direction Tabitha had gone. Were there any humans truly so interested in mailboxes as to warrant the vigorous inspection she’d given his?
Zevris turned his head again, this time looking toward Tabitha’s house. One of her windows—the kitchen window—was visible from where he stood, albeit at an angle. He could make out what looked like a curved sink faucet at the forefront, with the top of a chair and her table visible beyond it.
Last night, he’d seen only darkness in that window. The reflections on the glass had been just strong enough to disrupt his vision. But he swore he’d felt eyes upon him. Her eyes…
Had she seen him? If so, how much had she seen?
Zevris gritted his teeth and coiled his tail tighter around his leg. It was almost like he wanted to be discovered lately. What was the human phrase? Blowing his load, or something along those lines?
No…not load, cover. He wasn’t fully certain, but he suspected that first phrase had a very, very different meaning. Regardless, he could not allow his true nature to be exposed. His people were relying upon him.
Althicar Zevris Akkaran had conducted countless dangerous missions during which the slightest mistake would’ve meant his death, and he’d never suffered a single moment of doubt or hesitation. Why should he suddenly doubt now?
He dropped his gaze to the mailbox again and tilted his head when he caught a glimpse of white through the gap. It had been empty when he’d reattached it to the post last night, and the mail carrier usually didn’t come around until early afternoon.
Zevris opened the mailbox and removed the envelope lying within. It had no postage, no postmark, no addresses. There was only a name printed in large, flowing letters. Logan.
Turning the envelope around, he opened it and removed the contents—a check with a bright pink sticky note attached to it.
So, SO sorry about yesterday.
Please use this for boots and mailbox.
It was written in the same big, bubbly letters as the name on the front of the envelope, signed by Tabitha and marked with two dots and a curved line. A smiley face. The little face was slightly crooked, and the dots were larger than usual, granting it an unexpected charm.
Logan removed the sticky note. The two-hundred-dollar check beneath it was made out to Logan E. The note line simply said, Sorry!
His understanding of the way humans assigned value to their belongings, time, and money was still vague, complicated in large part by the fluidity of their economy and the way those values constantly shifted and changed, often based on seemingly arbitrary factors. But he had dealt with humans on a more personal level often enough to know that for most of them, two hundred dollars was not an insignificant sum.
Zevris chuckled and shook his head. Perhaps he should have been clearer in communicating that he’d expected no compensation from her, but he had a feeling that she would’ve done something out of guilt regardless.
Not purely guilt. She has integrity. That’s what drove her to this.
His dispute with the movers hadn’t been about money—it had been about them accepting responsibility for what they had done. A genuine apology would likely have been enough to appease Zevris, but that had apparently been too much to ask of Frank and his coworker. But Tabitha, who hadn’t even caused the accident, had taken personal responsibility for it.
Perhaps the matter of her dog urinating on Zevris’s boot could be looked at differently. The beast was her responsibility, and it did not seem to respect her commands. But Zevris couldn’t see it that way. Dexter had a mind of his own. Even falorans, for all their advanced technology and millennia of spacefaring history, were sometimes subject to their instincts.
He could not consider the Dexter incident to be Tabitha’s fault—and she’d already taken responsibility and apologized, regardless.
He walked back toward his dwelling, his attention divided between his destination and the handwritten note. He still couldn’t understand the human insistence on using paper for communication when their digital means of connecting were so much faster and less wasteful, but there was something about Tabitha’s gesture, about the thought she’d put into it, that was…endearing. Writing something out by hand, in ink, just seemed more intimate than tapping some virtual keys on a touchscreen.
As he reached his front door, he paused and succumbed to the sudden impulse to lift the note to his nose. He inhaled deeply and groaned as his cock stirred anew.
The paper smelled of vanilla and lavender. It smelled like Tabitha.
“Karak’duun, I’m in trouble,” he muttered as he tucked the check into the envelope and stepped into his dwelling.
Five
Zevris pulled his vehicle into a parking place in front of the Hardware Emporium and turned off the engine. Though the lack of consistency could become worrisome if he dwelled upon it too long, he was glad that, unlike driveway, the term parking lot made sense.
Of course, if he allowed his mind to wander regarding the different meanings of the word park, he was bound to end up with a headache. He was convinced that the ancient humans who’d developed the English language must either have been very cruel or fancied themselves amusing. It had likely been both.
He climbed out of the truck, closed the door, and walked toward the building. The Hardware Emporium was considered a home improvement retailer, specializing in the materials and tools necessary for construction, maintenance, and renovation. Zevris had come here often to supply his woodw
orking and purchase parts for minor repairs in his home. Normally, he’d have deferred to experts for such repairs, but he preferred having as few humans enter his dwelling as possible. Though he’d tried to furnish the house in a way that would resemble an average human residence, there was no telling what small details could rouse suspicion.
All he knew was that it didn’t have to be anything as blatant as a plasma pistol accidentally left on the coffee table or a holographic display projecting on the kitchen counter.
As he stepped into the store, his nose was struck by the mingling scents of the plants on display to the side—earthy, floral, and alive. For all the frustrations Earth had caused him, Zevris was glad that he’d been sent to a verdant region. It had been a long while since he’d been able to enjoy greenery like he’d found here in western Oregon.
He continued deeper into the store, walking along aisles that had become familiar to him. Though he had a list in mind of exactly what he needed to purchase and knew where each of those items was located, he found himself wandering. More than once, his fingers twitched, and he had to battle the urge to take the folded envelope out of his back pocket, to inhale Tabitha’s scent from it, to grin at the crooked little smiley face she’d drawn.
The warrior in Zevris told him she was his to claim, told him to take her. To stride up to her, pull that luscious body against his while staring fire into her lovely green eyes, and slam his mouth over hers in a kiss. To tell her she that was his mate—that she was his.
Yet even though he did not fully understand human courtship rituals, he knew that was certainly not their way. Tabitha was not a female to be forced into submission, but a female to be wooed.
If only the instructional videos humans called pornography weren’t so sorely lacking in terms of courtship. Every one he’d watched skipped almost immediately to mating and had no information on building a relationship.
His successes in the field of wooing were minimal thus far. If songs were ever written about his ability to court human females, they’d undoubtedly be the sort sung in jest by soldiers who were far too deep into their cups.
Zevris strode along the paint aisle, his eyes darting from side to side to take in the myriad of colors. Which was Tabitha’s favorite? He was hesitant to assume anything, knowing how unpredictable and contradictory humans could be, but he somehow doubted that she had a single color she liked more than the rest. She seemed the sort to enjoy an array of colors, all as bright and vivid as her.
Though when he thought about it further, perhaps she did prefer one color. Her fingernails had been the same pink as the note. Was that merely coincidence, or was it a sign?
Why do I continue with these thoughts as though she hasn’t already fled from me twice?
And yet she’d also shown signs of interest in him. She’d looked at him with heat in her eyes, with desire, and he’d scented her arousal when she was near. Even when she’d run, some primal aspect of Zevris had taken it as a challenge, as an invitation, to give chase. His instincts seemed to recognize some unspoken message—she wanted him to claim her. All of it was enough to drive him mad. It was a wonder he’d not taken her there on the street.
Releasing a huff through his nostrils, Zevris altered his course to head directly to the lumber section of the store, increasing his pace.
This Earth assignment was not the first time he’d had to assume a different identity and conform to the standards of an alien race, but it was the first time he felt like he was…losing himself during the process.
I am but weary. This final mission was simply one too many to undertake.
But he knew before that thought was even complete that things were not so simple—nothing ever was. He couldn’t deny what had flashed through his mind when the ultricar had offered this assignment.
This was Zevris’s chance to find a lifemate. To finally settle in one place, to have a family. He’d never considered any of it before; it would’ve been foolish to do so, given his people’s situation. Faloran females were so rare now that the Azmus Protectorate, the falorans’ governing body, usually acted as matchmaker. They choose males to match to females based on ancestral medical history and genetic compatibility, hoping to produce offspring that would overcome the plague’s crippling legacy.
Of course, Protectorate matchmaking never guaranteed there’d be enough of a connection between the couple for a mating bond to be formed, and the chances of any one male being chosen were next to zero.
Courtship rituals, spontaneous couplings, and families were a relic of the past, something that had died out with Zevris’s grandfather’s generation. Zevris hadn’t known what he would do with himself after being released from service, only that he had tired of fighting…but this mission had given him potential direction.
It had given him something to hope for. More than ever, finding a mate and having children was deeply meaningful and important to the faloran people. But this mission marked the first time it had become a real possibility for Zevris.
Tempering that spark of hope was difficult, though he’d known from the beginning that falorans and humans being able to procreate was purely theoretical. The two species were close enough on a genetic level—and faloran genes were extremely adaptable regardless—but there’d yet to be a confirmed case of a mating bond being formed between a faloran and a member of any other species.
The difficulty of this assignment had only exasperated Zevris’s weariness. He’d never expected it to be over in days, but he’d underestimated how hard it would be to find the right female on a planet with billions of them to choose from.
Zevris had weathered countless battles, had spent long, cold nights hiding in muddy holes to evade capture, had seen death aplenty—and had delivered it with his own hands. But dating on Earth had presented a sort of mental and emotional strain for which he never could have prepared.
He growled low in his chest and shook off those thoughts. He was in this store for a simple and specific reason, and it was best that he completed that task and returned to his dwelling without delay.
Still, he took his time in selecting the wood he required. He ran his fingertips along each prospective piece, feeling out the grain, seeking the little imperfections that might have spoiled his work—and those that might have complemented it. He’d taken up woodworking as part of his cover, never having expected it to be so challenging. He’d also never expected it to be so fulfilling.
Before long, he found himself selecting several more pieces beyond what he’d planned not because he needed them, but because they felt right, stacking them all on a flatbed cart. He wasn’t sure what they were right for…but for some reason, they brought Tabitha to mind.
He’d have to make something for her eventually.
But what?
Though he’d shown unexpected aptitude for woodworking, his relatively limited experience had thus far kept his repertoire somewhat sparse. He doubted she would think a birdhouse was an endearing courtship gift. No matter how elegant and level a shelf he could shape and hang, he did not see how it would say, I am your male, become my mate.
Zevris’s mind raced as he pushed the flatbed to the front of the store.
What did Tabitha like? What would she find thoughtful, and what would she most appreciate? He knew so little about her. Well, apart from her self-proclaimed obsession with making soap and candles, both of which he was equally uninformed about.
Research and preparation, just like any other mission.
His neural transceiver was crammed with information about Earth; there was bound to be something in its data about soap and candle making. And if not…there was a vast amount of knowledge to be accessed on the internet, so long as one was able to sort through the false or misleading entries.
Considering the staggering number of invasive advertisements and viruses that pervaded the internet, Zevris was grateful that his superiors had decided not to link his neural transceiver directly to human information networks.
&nb
sp; He took a place at the end of one of the check lane lines and leaned his forearms on the flatbed’s handle. The soft chatter of cashiers and customers become a meaningless drone to Zevris, run through by the erratic beeps of items being scanned into the computers to tally prices and track sales.
For his first several months on Earth, Zevris had paid close attention to every conversation between humans of which he’d been within earshot, hoping to extract any information he could from them, paying special mind to the cadences with which they spoke and the words they used.
He’d fallen out of that habit as he’d slowly realized the truth about the majority of those overheard exchanges—that they were ultimately meaningless. Most humans treated interactions with one another as formalities, as exchanges of pleasantries that were demanded by societal pressure. But that wasn’t always the case. People who were close friends, family, and mates seemed to have far more meaningful interactions.
Zevris’s encounters with Tabitha certainly hadn’t felt meaningless.
The line moved up, and Zevris stepped forward, sure to leave ample space between the front end of his flatbed and the ankles of the human in front of him. For creatures that so often complained about their personal space, many humans seemed to invade one another’s constantly.
He let his eyes wander, and they soon fell upon a display rack in front of him. Atop its uppermost shelf was a collection of little plants in little pots, perhaps half a dozen in all. Each plant was covered in thin white spines that jutted outward from the thick stems.
Cactuses.
Zevris remembered them from the studies he’d undertaken before arriving on Earth; they had been marked as a plant he was unlikely to encounter in person, but which was part of humankind’s wider awareness and culture. He’d taken note because they were reminiscent of vegetation he’d seen on his home planet long, long ago. They weren’t an exact match, but the similarities were enough to trigger a burst of nostalgia for a place he hadn’t visited for more than half his life.
Taken By The Alien Next Door Page 5
