A few minutes later, he saw the bartender out of his peripheral vision, approaching with the green sweet strings plate. The bartender set it down in front of Nova, who let out a happy squeak.
“It is like spaghetti.”
Daxar still ignored her, then asked the bartender for a refill on his beer, just for good measure. He wanted Nova to see that he wasn’t intimidated by her. He wasn’t going to leave before she did. He didn’t care that he was acting like a child. He wanted to win this standoff.
Nova munched happily, acting oblivious to Daxar’s foul mood. She didn’t try to make small talk or draw him out of his shell. She just let him be. And somehow that made Daxar even angrier than if she had been pestering him.
Daxar had never been out of control of his heart before, so he didn’t have anything to compare it to. But he was beginning to think this was what it felt like to fall for someone. He didn’t like feeling out of control, but he had to admit that he did like the way she made his heart beat faster. If only she weren’t so sludging obnoxious. If only she weren’t so human.
But her humanness was part of her draw. She was so delicate. So perfect.
At that moment, the band started playing, and Daxar let out a huge sigh of relief. His own thoughts had been growing too loud inside his head, and he was happy to have something to drown them out.
“Oh! Music!” Nova exclaimed beside him. “I love live music, and it’s becoming rarer these days. They just don’t make bars like they used to. Will there be dancing?”
She was talking to him, and he knew he should just ignore her. But he couldn’t help turning to answer her question. “Of course there will be dancing. But I wouldn’t dare go on the dance floor if I were you. You’ll never be able to keep up.”
He turned slightly to favor her with a sideways glance, only to see that she was smirking. “You want to bet on that?” she asked. Her eyes seemed to dance in the dim light of the bar. She looked so beautiful that he once again forgot to be angry at her.
“I’m not a betting man. But trust me. Zocronians are the best dancers in the Seven Galaxies. We take our dancing very seriously, and we practice a lot.”
She only laughed. “The best dancers in the Galaxies, on this backwater planet? Please.”
Daxar frowned. He wasn’t familiar with the meaning of the word backwater, but he didn’t want to admit that. He had a feeling it wasn’t something good, and he crossed his arms defiantly, the same way Nova so often did. Let her have a taste of her own medicine.
“Backwater or not, there’s no way you will win this fight. We can dance, trust me. Our limbs are naturally strong and flexible, and our brains evolved to be very in tune with music and rhythm. Trust me. You don’t want to challenge a Zocronian on the dance floor.”
“I challenge you.”
Daxar nearly spit out his ale. “What?”
“I challenge you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous. I want to dance, and I want to show you that I can keep up. Don’t tell me you’re afraid? If Zocronians really are so amazing at dancing, then you have nothing to fear.”
“I will wipe that dance floor with your tears when you see how out of your league you are.”
“Prove it.”
Daxar knew better than to say yes. Dancing with her would require touching her. It would require being close to her, and staring into her eyes. He was already burning up with passion for her, despite the fact that she made his blood boil with anger. That passion would burn so much worse if he touched her. And yet, he knew he could not say no. For one thing, a small crowd of Zocronians was gathered around the bar top, listening to the exchange between Nova and him. If he backed down and refused the challenge, he would look like a coward. But more than that, he knew that his heart was too tangled up in this moment to refuse the challenge. He could feel desire overwhelming him. He could feel the urgent need inside himself to touch her, to feel her hands against his hands, and her breath against his skin.
This is crazy. But I’ve never wanted anything so badly.
He stood, cocked an eyebrow at her in the same way she so often did to him, and then held out his hand. “Challenge accepted,” he said with a slight bow.
When she put her hand in his, his whole being went up in flames.
Chapter Eight
Every single Zocronian in Black Hole Brews had crowded around the dance floor to watch Daxar and Nova. The dart board and the gravity ball table had been abandoned. Even the bartenders were interested, standing on barstools so they could see over the crowd and watch the unlikely dance-off. The dance floor had completely cleared when Chief Daxar stepped onto it with a human on his arm. This was something everyone wanted to see. It had been years since Daxar had danced in public, and no one would ever have believed that he would dance with a human. And yet, here he was. The band waited patiently with their instruments poised, ready to take whatever song request Daxar threw at them. He didn’t say anything right away, just stared at the human girl who stared right back at him, unflinching.
For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the soft beeping of e-assistants. Daxar knew that half the Zocronians in here were probably sending frantic e-memos to their friends, telling them to get their asses out to the bar to watch Chief Daxar dance with one of the human outsiders that he had actually let into the city dome. This event would be one for the history books.
But Daxar wasn’t focused on the crowd around him. His senses were all honed in on the woman in front of him. He could sense the heat coming off of her body. He could smell the desire in her pheromones. He wondered if she could smell his desire. How keen was the human sense of smell? He couldn’t remember off the top of his head.
His billowy white button-up shirt felt like it was starting to stick to his skin. He had never been one to wear the bright, neon fashions that the masses in Zocrone seemed to prefer. Somehow the colorful garb, while gorgeous, didn’t seem sophisticated enough for a Chief. So he always wore his typical outfit of a white shirt and black pants. Tonight the shirt and pants were on the dressier side, since he was out for a night on the town. But the heat in the room and in his heart was making the clothes feel too warm and constricting. He unbuttoned several buttons of the shirt, leaving his chiseled blue chest bare. Several whistles of appreciation rang out across the watching audience, but he ignored them. The only person whose reaction mattered to him right now was Nova’s. She watched him carefully as he unbuttoned his shirt, and then, she licked her lips.
Daxar felt a swell of hot blood rushing to his member between his legs. He took a deep breath to try to calm himself. He was still the best dancer in Zocrone, but dancing with an erection would be difficult, especially for someone as large as him.
Don’t think about her. Think about the dance. Think about Zocrone’s honor. You have to prove here tonight that Zocronians are the best.
Daxar had believed all of his life that Zocronians were the best race in the Seven Galaxies. They might be a small race, numbers-wise, occupying only one city dome on one out-of-the-way planet. But they were a strong people. One Zocronian could take on dozens of Vositurns, hundreds of Xeynusians, or thousands of humans. Unless that human was the one standing in front of him. She was turning him to mush inside. He steeled his nerves and smirked at her.
“So, what will it be? The universal two-step?”
She smirked right back. “As you wish.”
Daxar nodded to the band, and they began playing a familiar, peppy tune. The universal two-step was one of the best known dances in the Seven Galaxies. It was called universal for a reason: every individual, on almost every planet, knew the dance. No one was even quite sure where it had originally started, but the fun, upbeat dance was wildly popular in many cultures.
The dance was also wildly adaptable. The basic steps were simple, but you could make it as easy or as difficult as you wanted to, depending on which extra twirls or flourishes you decided to put in. And Daxar
was planning to put a lot of flourish in tonight.
He stepped forward and took Nova’s hand. “Shall I count, or shall you?”
“You go ahead. You’re the Chief, after all.” Her voice was sugary sweet, which only made Daxar more confident that he was going to smoke her on the dance floor. She had no idea what she was in for.
“Alright. One, two, three, four!”
And then they were off. Their feet flew back and forth in the familiar, basic rhythm of the two step, and Daxar kept things simple for a few moments. The dance floor here was a bit different than many standard dance floors. It was made of a squishy, rubbery material that was popular in Galaxy Four, but was almost unheard of in other Galaxies. The slight bounce in the floor made doing flips, twists, and other tricks easier, but it could be strange to dance on if you weren’t familiar with it. Daxar figured it was only fair to let Nova get used to it before throwing out some big moves.
But Nova never skipped a beat. Either she was an extremely quick learner, or she had danced on a rubberized floor before.
Alright then. The easy portion of tonight’s show is over. Let’s see what you’ve got.
Daxar sped up his pace, and started adding in twirls. The first time he twirled Nova out and back in to him, she looked a bit startled, and he grinned triumphantly. He was going to leave her in the dust, and she would see in front of all of these people that she didn’t stand a chance against him.
But she recovered from the shock of the twirl quickly, and the next time he twirled her, she spun faster, sending the fabric of her dress spinning around her legs in a neon green blur. He dipped her backward, and she arched her back expertly, sending her head back almost all the way to the floor. Her hair’s dark waves grazed the dance floor before he pulled her back up, and there was a definite look of triumph in her eyes.
She knows. She knows that I thought I could trick her with those moves, and she’s gloating at me now.
Fine. So she was a bit better of a dancer than he’d thought. But still, Daxar was only getting warmed up. The music changed again, and Daxar and Nova stepped apart for the traditional solo dance-off portion of the universal two-step. As the male, Daxar would go first, then bow to Nova and let her have a turn. This was the time to really pull out all the stops. Daxar planned to leave Nova so stunned that it would take her a minute to recover her senses and start dancing herself when her turn came. He took a deep breath, and went for it.
The world around him seemed to disappear. Even Nova was no longer there for a few brief moments. Daxar used to dance regularly, but over the years he’d become so stressed with the pressures of running a planet that he’d danced less and less, finally giving it up completely. It had never been a conscious decision to stop dancing. He’d just gone for days, then weeks, then months, and then years without dancing. At some point, it just became general knowledge that the Chief no longer danced. He didn’t have time for such frivolities.
But the Zocronian version of the two-step dance off could not exactly be called a frivolity. The dance moves Daxar had been taught were designed to show off the incredible strength of the male Zocronian. He let out a loud roar as he began to move across the dance floor in what he knew the humans would describe as a war dance. His movements were smooth, but sharp. He lunged forward and backward, raised his hands high, then low. He beat his chest, and leapt through the air like a hunter leaping after its prey. He ducked and rolled, roaring again as he bounced back up and jumped higher than before.
As he began to pay attention to the crowd around him once again, Daxar realized that they were cheering loudly. The sound of this entire room, cheering for its Chief, filled him with an adrenaline unlike anything he’d felt in a long time. He danced harder, roared louder, and moved with greater sharpness, like a warrior who knew that his strength was unmatched in all Seven Galaxies. At some point, the remaining buttons on his shirt tore off, leaving his chest and abs completely bared, covered only occasionally by the torn, fluttering fabric of his shirt. His tail swished behind him, its thickness giving him balance to execute even the trickiest of maneuvers. To add extra drama to his performance, he let the spikes on his tail and his fingers slide out. The light glinted off of the spikes’ shiny surfaces, and he heard appreciative murmurs from the crowd as he continued his display of power and skill.
When he had given the dance his all, he slowed, turned to face Nova with fire in his eyes, and bowed. The heat in her own eyes sent shock waves of pleasure through his body, but he kept his expression neutral. He wanted to see what she had to offer on the dance floor.
Strangely, she did not feel like an outsider in that moment. That was the strange thing about the universal two-step. It had a way of reminding you that even though the differences between all of the galactic races could be great, there was something that united them. What was that something? The will to live? To love? Daxar wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he had not felt this alive in a long, long time. And somehow, he knew it was due to Nova.
Nova bowed back to him, and then stepped to the middle of the dance floor, where she herself took a deep breath and then began her dance. Where Daxar’s dance had been all sharp edges and power, hers was grace and fluidity. She twirled in one place for several seconds at a time, then leapt out of that twirl into a back flip without seeming dizzy at all. She moved her feet rapidly through a set of dance steps that was completely foreign to him, but was the most intricate, beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She leapt through the air not like a hunter after prey, but like a doe bounding across a meadow. She was the perfect counterpart to him. The softness to his strength. Her dress twirled around her in a blur of color, and Daxar thought he had never seen any dress look any more beautiful on any person of any galactic race. She might be exotic here in Zocrone, but that only made her more intoxicating.
When she finished her portion of the dance, the crowd cheered for her just as loudly as it had for him. Perhaps even a little bit louder. Daxar stepped closer and offered his hand to her to continue the last portion of the dance together. Nova smiled at him, a genuine smile that said she was having fun. Daxar could not see a hint of sarcasm or challenge in that smile. He smiled back, leaving the snark out of his smile as well.
The two of them spun across the dance floor together, his shirt flapping at his sides and her skirt swirling around her legs. He dipped her, lifted her, twirled her out and pulled her back. When the last note of the music faded, the room was silent for a few moments. Everyone had fallen speechless at the incredible show they had just witnessed. Daxar had always been the best dancer, but it had been so long since they’d seen him dance. And tonight he had met his match. And together, they had slayed that dance floor.
Then, the stunned silence gave way to applause. The clapping filled the air, mixing with roars, cheers, and whoops. Daxar looked up for a moment and saw that the other three humans had joined the crowd at some point. They stood, clapping and cheering along with everyone else. Nova did not seem to have noticed them. She still stood in Daxar’s arms, her chin turned up so that she was looking up at him. Her perfect, porcelain face was covered with a thin sheen of sweat that made her glow, and Daxar realized that he had never held anyone so beautiful in his arms. She was stronger than he had ever given a human credit for being, and as his lungs rose and fell both from the exertion of the dance, and also from the exhilaration of having Nova in his arms, he had to fight the urge to lean in and kiss her.
Tonight, we are different, but the same. Daxar leaned in until his face was mere inches from hers. It would have been so easy to go the extra few inches and put his lips on hers. He had never wanted anything so badly in his life, and if the hunger in her eyes was any indication, she wanted it just as badly as him. The noise and crowd faded away again, and all he could see was Nova, her face perfect under the bright light shining down on the dance floor. Her body fit his arms perfectly, and he almost pulled her in closer with his arms.
But reality came crashing back in on him just
in time. He was standing in front of a packed bar full of Zocronians, all of whom he had a duty to protect. And part of that protection was the hard line he had drawn against outsiders. Nova, no matter how perfect she might be, was an outsider. And Daxar was a Chief, duty-bound to put the Zocronians above his own needs and desires.
He took a deep breath and stepped back, releasing her from his arms. He bowed slightly to her, trying to ignore the disappointment in her eyes. His own disappointment at not being able to kiss her ran deeper than any pain he’d ever felt before.
“Thank you for the dance, Nova Wolke,” he said. And then he turned and pushed his way through the crowd, doing his best to stare straight ahead toward the door without making eye contact with anyone. He didn’t know why Nova affected him so badly. She was beautiful, but she was an outsider and a smuggler. What was it about her that had so completely captured his heart? Whatever it was, he had to get over it. He could not have her. He could not let his people see him showing any kind of preference toward an outsider.
Just as he reached the door, he saw a familiar face he hadn’t seen in a long time. His father’s old best friend, Merkin, was standing by the entrance with a knowing look on his face. Daxar scowled at him. He’d tried to be polite to Merkin, because Merkin had been such good friends with his father. But Merkin had been a very outspoken critic of Daxar’s no outsiders policy, and sometimes it was all Daxar could do not to yell at the old man to shut up and mind his own business. Why had Merkin suddenly appeared at Black Hole Brews? It had been years since his father’s friend had been out for a drink. Had he just come to gloat over the fact that Daxar had actually let a crew of outsiders into the Zocrone city dome?
The Alphas of the Seven Galaxies Page 8
