by Stasia Black
I blink in surprise.
Few Draci females will bother to give their bodies to someone like me, of low standing or caste. I could never bear the humiliation of it so during the long years I worked maintenance crew on the ship while many slept in stasis, I happily took suppressants.
In preparation for this mission, though, I weaned myself off them. Still, I have only touched myself once or twice since, and I was always left feeling more unsatisfied than when I began. Always I visualized Draci females but now I wonder what it would feel like to touch Juliet’s much softer human skin? What would her teats feel like? And the space between her legs? Is it a hard palate like Draci females or is it also soft, like so much of the human body?
My pants cloth begin to tighten uncomfortably as my male organs start to descend. I sit back hard in my chair. No. It would be embarrassing for such to occur here.
By the time I have myself under control again, I realize that both the target female and her friend have abandon the table, leaving only Juliet behind.
Juliet frowns down at a device—her phone, yes, I remember what the small rectangle devices are now, the same device that the earlier females were pointing in my direction. They are used for communication.
Juliet does not realize how close her elbow is to her cup. I see what will happen before it does and am halfway across the shop by the time she actually knocks it off the table. I may look human but my reflexes are still Draci.
Juliet is surprised and grateful. When she looks me in the eye and smiles at me, I know how it felt when the universe began—a rapid expansion of time, space, and matter explodes in my chest and I am hurtled from nothingness into being.
She introduces herself to me.
Clumsily, I give her my name back.
She repeats it and hearing my name on her lips makes the roar start back up inside me. I taste the air again and am hit doubly hard by my second scenting of her.
Mine. MINE. MINE.
But all too soon, she is leaving.
“Bye,” she says with a wave and a slight sadness in her voice. She believes this is the last time we will see one another.
She is so, so wrong.
I wait for several moments after she leaves the coffee shop to follow her. It is easy to stay out of her sight. Draci reflexes are four times faster than that of humans, if not more. She only pauses to look behind her twice, and both times I am easily able to duck out of sight.
The streets and sidewalks are even more crowded than earlier. Why is she walking out here in the open with none to shield her? All females on Draki have at least one champion, most more than one. Even after the babies stopped being born, we still treated our females with the utmost regard. Their safety is always a primary concern.
But Juliet walks among this vicious race without even another female companion. I am glad that at least now I am here to keep her safe.
My single comfort is that she does not walk far. Soon she is stopping in a small shop and emerging only a small while later with a single flower.
I tilt my head in confusion and then look around. I suppose in this world of concrete and steel, they must purchase even their flowers instead of growing them in their gardens?
What now will she do with this lone flower?
I watch curiously as she crosses the street and enters another building. Is this her dwelling? I look around and then spy a ladder up high on the wall of the flower shop. It is easy to leap up and catch it. I climb quickly and pull myself up onto the roof of the shop.
Fortune is on my side after all because moments later, through one of the windows on the second floor of the building across the street, I see Juliet as she pushes through her front door and sets her purse on a table.
I breathe out in relief.
I have not lost her. She is still safe.
I sit down on the roof, only my eyes and the top of my head visible over the ledge as I observe her. I watch her smile as she inhales the flower she bought and place it in a slim vase. I watch as she begins to bustle around the kitchen, pulling things from a large rectangular box—some piece of furniture they went over in training but I cannot remember the name of.
Then I see steam begin to waft from the pot she places on another appliance, a heat source of some kind. My Juliet is adept at survival. I wish I could scent the food she is cooking.
I have not eaten for many hours and I imagine it will be many hours still before I am able to eat again. Because how can I give up my vigil now that I found her? What if she disappears?
The thought makes me shudder.
Juliet is mine. I cannot lose her.
Unlike the ideal DNA candidate female, we know nothing about Juliet. The ship technicians were tracking the other female’s technology. That was how they knew where to direct me earlier.
But Juliet? I can only suspect that this is her domicile. What if I am wrong? What if I leave to find food and then she disappears and I have lost her forever? No, food is not important.
After a short while, the sun begins to drop in the sky and the planet that I initially found so ugly and foul…well I suppose a sunset is hard to ruin.
The colors are different than back on Draki. Oranges, reds, and purples fill the sky instead of turquoise and greens. But still, a sunset is a sunset. We have all been on the ship so long, I had almost forgotten how beautiful they could be…
I’m so lost in contemplation that it takes me a moment to register movement in Juliet’s dwelling. When I do, I snap to attention.
A man has come through her front door. I leap to my feet as he snakes his arms around her waist from behind as she stands at the stove.
A growl thunders from my chest. I will kill this intruder!
But before I can drop to scale back down the building, Juliet turns in the man’s arms and puts her mouth against his mouth.
I am not familiar with the action, it is an act of mating.
The female my soul longs to mate…already has a mate.
I collapse where I stand.
Chapter Three
Juliet
Robbie kisses me hard as soon as he comes in the door, tasting like cigarettes and… Is that a hint of perfume I smell?
I back away from him and frown.
He pulls flowers from behind his back. “Ta-da.”
He looks very pleased with himself and the wilted carnations he holds out to me. “So you forgive me.” It’s not quite a question.
I take the flowers and turn away. “Let me get these in some water,” I murmur.
“Babe.” He grabs my forearm. “You forgive me, yeah?”
I sigh. “Yeah, Robbie. I forgive you.”
Same story, different day.
“Whatcha cooking?”
“Stir-fry.”
“Aw man. I hate that vegetable shit,” he whines.
I grit my teeth. “There’s still some pork in the fridge I could fry up for you.”
“That’s my baby.” He slaps my ass and then flops on my couch, turning on Sports Center.
I sigh again. How long? How long am I gonna put up with this shit?
I look towards the window and space out as I cook.
I met Robbie three years ago when I’d just dropped out of college and was reckless enough to think going to a biker bar was a great idea. Robbie was good-looking and charming in an unreformed bad boy kind of way. I was flattered by the attention he paid me. We hooked up and I thought that would be it. But he called me the next week and the next until he was crashing at my place whenever he was in town.
Now we basically live together and I don’t see it changing anytime in the future.
I can just see the flower shop across the street from my vantage point here at the stove. That’s me. Always gazing longingly out windows, dreaming of what’s beyond that horizon. Dreaming but never doing anything about it. Never leaving.
Going to the flower shop is the one indulgence I allow myself, stopping in every day for a single flower.
For t
hat one moment, surrounded by beauty, I pretend I’m someone else. Not trapped in this dead-end town. In this dead-end relationship. In this dead-end life.
For that moment, I pretend I have a thousand possibilities, that I can be anyone, in any flower shop anywhere in the world.
“My food done yet?” Robbie yells, not taking his eyes off the screen. “And get me a beer.”
My eyes fall shut. I take a deep breath in and let it out just as slowly.
Then I go and get Robbie his damn beer.
Life is just more of the same, like always, until three days later when I walk in the flower shop after working all day at the coffeeshop.
And I freeze in my tracks. Instead of seeing my friend Latoya behind the counter it’s…him. Like him him.
Shak. The beautiful, musclebound god of a man.
He’s just standing there in a T-shirt that is strained and barely containing his muscles, trimming and arranging flowers.
“I told you I’d see you somewhere,” he says with only the barest glance up my way. “Do you come here often?”
“Every day. What are you doing here?” I blurt out. And then I want to beat myself in the face with my own fist because yeah, way to go with the suave opening.
He looks my way and immediately that devilish tongue of his is out and licking his lips. Jesus, does he know what that does to a girl?
“I— I just mean,” I backpedal, “I’m used to seeing Latoya here. Is she out sick or something?”
“She was in good health, the last time I saw her. I purchased the store from her.”
“You— you did?” I take a few more steps inside the shop.
He nods and sets the bouquet of flowers he’s working on aside. His giant muscular forearms bulge and flex with his every movement.
“What species of flower may I interest you in today?”
I can’t help smiling at the way he talks. So formal and with an accent I can’t place. I’m a sucker for an accent. Who isn’t?
God he’s good looking. Just for a few minutes, is it really so wrong to forget about Robbie and my life and all the other bullshit? It’s so easy to pretend that I’m in a flower shop in Paris and this handsome Parisian giant is nice and interested in talking to me. Idle chitchat never hurt anybody.
“So, you been in the flower game long?”
His brows furrow like he’s not sure what I mean. Lost in translation, I assume, so I try again. “You like flowers?”
He looks around the shop, like he’s really considering his answer. “When I was a very young child, I used to play in fields of wildflowers. But then came the long winters. We had to leave and I never saw the wildflowers again.”
He doesn’t bother trying to mask the flash of pain on his face. I can read it so clearly in his bright amber brown eyes. Like he was reliving it this very moment.
“It is one of my last good memories of home.”
Wow. Okay, so this went deep fast but when was the last time I had a real conversation with anybody?
I nod. I remember hearing about some brutal storms in Siberia a few years back. Maybe that’s where he’s from. “The droughts have been hard here in California, but I know we have it so much better than a lot of people around the world.”
Duh, obviously he knows. On impulse, I reach forward and lay a hand on his across the counter. “I’m so sorry. Where did you grow up?”
He doesn’t answer, though. He’s just staring at our hands. When he looks up at me again, his eyes are more gold than brown and they’re full of wonder.
Oh shit. I’m sending mixed signals. Because this isn’t Paris and I’m not single and free to flirt.
I pull back and clear my throat. “Well it seems like all that might be over now. With the new technology. They’re planting trees in the deserts, didn’t you hear? Maybe you’ll see those wildflowers again one day.”
His stare is still intense even though I’ve taken a step back from the counter.
“Maybe the past must be let go to make way for a more beautiful future,” he says. “We cannot cling too long to what was or we will miss out on what can be.”
Mariah’s perfect face flashes through my head. Her limp hand.
And I shake my head, both to dispel the memory and Shak’s words. “It’s a nice thought. But it’s the past that makes us who we are now.” And we can’t escape it any more than we can the present. “I’ll take a purple tulip.” They were Mariah’s favorite, after all.
I pull my credit card out of my purse and pass it over to Shak.
His fingers linger a moment longer than necessary as he takes the card. I let go and snatch my hand back.
It takes him a moment, but he finally swipes the chip and hands the card back to me, along with the single tulip.
“You will come back tomorrow?” he asks, eyes searching mine.
I shrug even though I know I will. I come here every day.
“I hope you do. I promise I will not make you sad tomorrow.”
“I’m not—” I immediately start to deny but then stop myself. I don’t know who this strange, beautiful man is but somehow he’s seen me more clearly than even my closest friends have been able to lately.
I hold the tulip close to my chest. “Tomorrow then.”
Chapter Four
Shak
Juliet is unlike anyone else I have ever met. From my perch on the shop’s roof, I watch her through her window as she moves about her dwelling, first cleaning the kitchen and then tidying the rest of the space.
She moves with an unconscious grace.
And talking with her today downstairs— I have been recalling the conversation over and over in the hours since. Every word, every gesture.
I should not have been so honest with her, speaking of my home like that. But then I was rewarded with her touch. These human skins were created for touch, I think, because a thousand new nerve endings I have never felt before suddenly lit up the second she did. It must be terrible for battle, these fragile skins.
But for other things? It is little wonder this race is so obsessed with copulation when a mere touch can bring so much pleasure.
Acquiring the flower shop was a good idea, even if I had to bow and scrape before First to acquire the currency necessary. He is not happy that I refuse to wear a communication device at all times, but since I am down here and he is orbiting in the ship up there, there is little he can do about it.
I check in twice daily to report my progress and all he can do is accept it if he does not want to lose face before his superiors.
It would be a dangerous game to play were not the stakes so high. But I will either succeed on this mission or fail. The details of how will not matter in the end.
Details like whether or not I impregnate the female that was chosen for me or one that I choose for myself.
My eyes go back to Juliet.
It will take time with her. It is not something that can be rushed. First will not like that.
But this is not something that can be done in a lab. If history has taught us anything, it is this. The scientists could never logically explain why our race became infertile.
So the only logical conclusion is that we must take science out of it. As much as we can beyond the alterations necessary to make us compatible mating partners with the humans, anyway.
We must relearn the ancient dance of courtship, I see that now.
I must prove to Juliet that I am superior to the male who currently eats her food and sleeps on her couch.
Yes, it will take time. But a Draci lifespan is almost a thousand years. We are nothing if not patient.
So I wait and watch, and tomorrow when Juliet returns to the flower shop, I will continue my campaign to show I am the better mate.
Even as I think it, Juliet’s door opens and he enters. My scrawny competition.
He stumbles a little. Is he injured? The blood in my veins fires hot at the thought. He is weak. Easy prey.
Juliet turns and they exchange w
ords. He moves towards her, staggering in an uneven pattern.
My lip curls in disgust. I have seen this before among the weakest of the Draki, who binge on rousi wine. This man is intoxicated.
He tries to put his arms around Juliet but from the way she pulls back, she seems as disgusted by his drunkenness as I.
He approaches her again, and again she backs away.
Good. The more this man makes a fool of himself, the sooner—
He approaches yet again and this time— I leap to my feet when I see his intention in his eyes but I am too late.
He backhands Juliet with such force, she is knocked to the floor.
The blood rage is upon me before she even hits the ground.
This man will die and he will die soon.
Everything inside me wants to leap down from the roof this instance, scale her building, break the glass of her window and go immediately to her side. To tear the man limb from limb and give her the satisfaction of seeing the kill.
But more than any other directive, the first was drilled into us day and night. Secrecy. Above all else, our presence must remain a secret from the humans.
Holding the battle roar inside is difficult and I only barely manage it.
I stare so hard I don’t know how the man does not feel my hatred burning into his skin. If he touches her again, first directive or not, I doubt I’ll be able to hold myself back.
But the man just yells more and Juliet remains on the floor. Is she badly damaged? I cannot see her from here.
I clutch at the brick ledge and it crumbles to dust. I let go and fist my hands or else I will destroy this entire roof without intending to.
The man makes his first good decision and walks away from Juliet. He drops to the couch and does not move.
After a time, Juliet rises, thank the ancients.
She looks down at the man and then slowly, carefully, walks across the dwelling space to grab her satchel and another larger pack that she slings over her back. The way she is walking on her toes, it is as if the man is sleeping and she does not want to wake him. Many who drink rousi wine also become sleepy, so this makes sense.
