Pulled by the Tail: Celestial Mates

by Nancey Cummings

  He peppered the tour with the history of the house. It was once the estate of an old Corravian family, the kind with a long pedigree but dwindling bank accounts. The house had been abandoned in the ecological disaster a hundred years ago. Huge portions of the population were killed by the mornclaw infestation and entire towns vanished.

  Eventually, they went into the lower level of the house, which housed the heating and cooling system. She knew nothing about the mechanics of a house, utilities, pipes, and whatnot, but everything looked dated. Judging by the way her shower groaned when she turned on the hot water, it barely worked, too. So, another fortune to get all that up to snuff.

  She eyed the hard-packed dirt floor in the basement. The mornclaws buried their eggs, which could lie in wait for years before they hatched.

  “I’ve never seen the creatures, but the Watchtower thoroughly swept the house and grounds,” he said. “There are no mornclaws here.”

  “What would it take to pour a concrete floor? Just to be on the safe side.” In case the murder bugs tunneled under the house.

  “If you fill out a service request, our crew will get back to you in three to four months,” he said.

  “Are you teasing me?”

  “A little.” His tail swayed behind him, obviously having a good time. “A new floor will have to wait until the spring. I don’t trust all the pipes to survive the winter and I’d rather not dig up a new concrete floor to replace the plumbing.”

  “Fair enough.”

  With the house explored—but Georgia made a note to investigate the third floor and attic—they ventured outside to the grounds. Snow covered the lawn in a smooth blanket and softened the features of the garden.

  “There are three cottages on the property that are not fit for habitation at the moment. Stables, also not fit for beast or person,” Talen said, approaching an L-shaped building with wide, rounded doors and a roof missing large sections.

  “Do you plan to have horses?”

  “Absolutely not. I know nothing of animals, but it seems like a waste to not utilize this building.” The door groaned loudly in protest as he pushed it open.

  She blinked, adjusting to the darkness. The sun streamed in through the hole in the roof, lighting up dust motes as they drifted. The space smelled musty, like moldering hay, but not rank like mold or… Well, a hundred other very gross and disgusting things that can happen to a building when it’s been abandoned. Talen was correct; the old stables could be converted and repurposed.

  “I’ll put it on the list and brainstorm.” She wanted a feel for how the house operated before she made changes. New managers who mucked things up just because they had something to prove and felt the need to leave their mark had never impressed her.

  They walked through the garden. Several beds had been trimmed back for the upcoming cold season. Shrubs bent under the snow and late autumn plants had wilted in the cold. In the distance, the trees lost their leaves.

  “Feels like we skipped autumn and went straight to winter,” she said. Her boots crunched on a snow-covered path. When the snow melted, the garden path would be a muddy mire. She made a note to investigate ordering gravel for the garden. Guests wouldn’t like slogging through the muck, and she didn’t want to deal with mud being tracked into the house.

  “Winter comes fast and lingers,” he said. “Snow this early is typical and we can look forward to more snow for another four months.”

  Was it too soon to develop cabin fever? Georgia felt the snowy walls closing in.

  They walked around to a flagstone veranda tucked between the house and the conservatory. It would be perfect for outdoor entertaining if the stones weren’t buried under a layer of dirt and weeds. A broken balustrade skirted the patio, giving it a graceful outline. Arched doors opened onto the veranda, but the glass was filthy. Georgia rubbed at the glass with her gloved hands and peered through the least grungy bit but couldn’t make out the interior. She needed to figure out what room had access to the neglected veranda.

  Another item added to her list.

  They followed a stone walkway away from the house, past the stables. The ground sloped down, and the walkway became a series of steps. The slick stones grew treacherous, but the new boots never slipped.

  A small stone building sat at the foot of the hill. The round building did not appear to have a roof.

  “Another building to be converted?” Her hands flexed, automatically reaching for a non-existent railing. Mentally, she added that to the list as well.

  “No, this one is acceptable as is,” Talen said. He held out a hand to stabilize her, which she took gratefully.

  Palm-to-palm, the gloves prevented skin-to-skin contact. She focused on her feet as she traversed the last few steps. At the bottom, Talen continued to hold her hand. She glanced up, their eyes catching, and the moment stretched out between them, warm and sweet like toffee.

  “Your face changed color,” he said. “Are you cold?”

  “Umm, a bit.” She snatched her hand back and pressed it to her face, desperately trying to cover a blush.

  “You’ll be warm soon. Come along.”

  The building had no door. Dried leaves scattered through the entrance. Georgia made another mental note about cleaning the building out.

  Humidity hit her first, instantly bringing sweat to her brow. Unzipping her coat, she detected the unmistakable scent of sulfur. She stripped off the gloves and wool hat, stuffing them in the coat’s pockets.

  A round pool took up the center of the room. Sunlight glimmered on the shifting water, sparkling like diamonds. The edges of the room remained shrouded in shadows, but pale flowers clung to the rough-cut stone walls.

  “Our own, private thermal bath, fed by a natural hot spring.” Talen sat at the edge of the pool, then removed his boots.

  “This is gorgeous,” she breathed.

  Talen stood and shucked off his trousers and shirt.

  Georgia turned around quickly, finding the flowers and the wall to be suddenly fascinating. She heard a splash and a chuckle.

  “Come and warm up. I won’t bite,” he called.

  “No. I’m good.” She kept her eyes focused on the wall.

  “Soak your feet. I can tell they’re hurting you from your walk.”

  “New boots, that’s all. I’m breaking them in.” And blistering her heels.

  Soaking her feet did sound tempting. She sat at the edge of the pool and kept her eyes downward. More splashing. She refused to look. The brief glimpse she saw of the tightly corded muscles and the flex of his thigh—

  Not going to look.

  “Are you shy?”

  “I’m not shy,” she said.

  “Then you should come in the water. It’s the best way to warm up.”

  “No thanks.” Not without a swimsuit and not with an audience. She’d rather avoid displaying all her jiggly bits. “I don’t want to walk back all wet,” she added, which was a perfectly plausible reason and not a cop-out.

  “Next time.” He heaved himself over the ledge and flopped onto his back. Naked. Wet. Next to her.

  She scooted over a foot or two. He chuckled. That fucker enjoyed teasing her.

  “It’s not funny. This could be sexual harassment,” she said.

  He rolled toward her, his dick resting heavily on his thigh. “Why? I haven’t asked you to do anything.”

  Oh, but the things she wanted to do to him, her boss and husband by technicality.

  She looked up at the circular gap in the roof. Vines hung down, reaching toward the warmth of the water. “Other than skinny dipping.”

  “My apologies. The Navy beat any scrap of modesty out of me.” He sat upright and draped his shirt over his crotch. A ship’s anchor with a star decorated his right bicep. “Acceptable?”

  “Very. Thank you.” She kicked her feet, trying hard not to think about his tattoo or that flimsy piece of cloth over his dick. It was a nice dick, with a generous girth but not so much that it’d make her cl
amp her thighs together and wince. A ring of soft, flexible spines was under the head, but she knew to expect that from the reading materials the agency supplied her. She’d never seen an alien dick before. Honestly, she’d never seen anyone’s dick but Kevin’s, at least in the flesh. She’d seen plenty in porn and had watched human-Tal videos—for research—during her long trip and Talen’s looked better than anything on film.

  Stop thinking about his dick. Stop.

  She coughed, clearing her throat. “Is the pool open to guests?”

  “Not yet. Some of the steps are loose and uneven. It’s not safe,” he said.

  “The steps could use a railing, too. We don’t need any slips or falls.”

  “I planned to do that in the spring. Charl and I spent a solid week just clearing leaves and debris from the water.”

  She shivered at the thought. “I’m surprised you even bothered. It had to be disgusting.”

  “Hmm,” he said, stretching out onto his back and tucking his arm behind his head. “I found some old photos of the pool, so I knew its potential. Winter is long and cold here, and the temptation of a thermal bath was too good to pass up.”

  Georgia didn’t think she’d trudge out to the pool in a foot of snow, but on a day like today? Yes. It was perfect.

  The silence stretched out between them in a perfect, golden moment, at ease with the lapping of the water.

  “So, all of this from a card game?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  “For those,” he pointed to the flowers clinging to the stone walls. “Moon violets. They are very rare and only found in a few locations. They only bloom in the dark.”

  “They’re lovely.” They seemed to thrive in the warm, humid air.

  “Quil nearly pissed himself when we finally found this place.” Talen’s laugh was low and rumbling. “He’s a plant enthusiast. Has been since we were kits.”

  Georgia thought back to the lush conservatory and the potted plants in every room of the house. “He must be happy here.”

  “Like a wuap in mint.”

  Georgia didn’t understand that phrase but let it slide. Context told her enough. “I think when you finish the repairs, the house will be quite the draw for guests.”

  “It has to be,” he said, still staring upward. “No one travels to Corra for a holiday, but I think we can get enough trade from nearby towns. Drac’s population has doubled in the last five years. We’re close enough for a quick getaway but isolated enough to feel like a destination. This house was built for entertaining.”

  She saw that, in the way the rooms flowed into one another and partitions could be removed to make the spacious rooms even larger.

  “The house has debt, which we’re responsible for when we took ownership,” he confessed.

  “What kind of debt? This place was abandoned.”

  “For almost a hundred years,” he said with a nod. “Unpaid taxes, mostly. I don’t want you to think we’re paupers. We have a sizeable inheritance. Had. I’ve sold assets but that money went directly into the house. The accounts aren’t in the red and we have enough for the major repairs, but we need to turn a profit by spring. Tomorrow we’ll look at the accounts and you’ll see for yourself.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “A manager needs to understand the financial situation. I don’t trust Quil not to cheat the vendors, so I’ve been doing the books myself but there’s no time. Busted pipes seem more important than sorting through invoices and billing.”

  “I’m going to disagree with you there.” She’d use her office ninja skills to whip things into shape. “And thank you for being frank. Do you have the budget to pay my salary?”

  “I’m counting on you being an investment. You’re going to help me pull this house together.”

  “You have a lot of faith in a woman you don’t really know,” she said.

  “I have faith in my mate,” he replied.

  “I’m not your mate.”

  “If you consider it from a certain vantage, you are.” That teasing tone returned.

  “If that certain vantage is a misogynistic notion that women are property, then you can go fuck yourself.”

  He laughed, the burst of amusement echoing off the stone walls. “I do like you.”

  * * *

  Talen

  * * *

  Curious kits should not complain when they find themselves in endless trouble. That is the price of curiosity.

  -Persistence and the Secret of the Shadowed Hill

  * * *

  Georgia took the chaos of running the house and shaped it into order. He showed her the household accounts, vendors and invoices, upcoming bookings. The disorganized pile of unpaid invoices frustrated and shamed him. He had no idea they had not paid their bills. When they ran cargo—which felt like a lifetime ago, not merely a year—shippers were also trying to screw them out of paying the bill. He knew exactly how frustrating it felt not to be paid for his labor and he hated that he inadvertently did just that.

  Fiona was meant to help with the business end to free up his time for the very necessary renovations, but the female couldn’t be bothered, it appeared. Talen knew that if he asked her to explain herself, she’d either claim she was bored or burst into tears. He never knew what to expect with his brother’s mate.

  Happily, Georgia seemed undaunted by the mess. She asked relevant questions, often wanting very explicit details, but she never asked the same question twice. She made notes, organized the invoices by most-urgent to least.

  Georgia gazed out the window, a mug of coffee in hand, as the morning light pooled around her. A light layer of snow fell overnight, dusting the ground, and the sunlight seemed brighter as it reflected off the immaculate surface. What struck him was how obviously she belonged there, at ease in the quiet of the morning, before the hectic rush of the day. Ideally, she’d be sipping tea in his bedroom, wearing nothing, perhaps a blanket wrapped just so to expose her back and the fabric would gather just above the luscious curve of her ass—

  Talen adjusted himself. She affected him. He hardly knew her, but his body craved her, which was a new experience for him, having always needed an emotional connection before he felt physical attraction. He couldn’t explain the greedy way his eyes drank in her form, loving every curve and the thickness of her hips and thighs. She was built for a male like him. More than that, the way she lifted her stubborn chin and looked him in the eyes, unafraid. He stood a head taller than her, outweighed her with muscle mass, had claws and fangs that could shred her thin human skin, but she never held her sharp tongue and told him what she thought of him, which wasn’t much.

  He knew hardly anything about Georgia Phillips, but he wanted to know everything.

  “Good morning. May the day bring you good fortune,” he said. She muttered a reply. “That was barely comprehensible. Is that your first cup of coffee?”

  “Oh, fuck off,” she grumbled.

  “As I suspected. I will refrain from conversation until you are sufficiently caffeinated.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him, which he found endearing beyond explanation, and drained the mug. He paid handsomely for the coffee, which she assured him was vital to her health, and it pleased the feral part of his brain that wanted to feed and provide for his mate.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Fiona’s having a meltdown about not getting an invitation to some party. Or maybe she did but has nothing to wear. I wasn’t really listening. All I know is you don’t want to be in the kitchen right now.”

  He agreed. They could eat in town if hungry. “Dress warmly today. We’re going to the market.”

  The bookseller only made it to Drac’s open-air market once every two months. He could download digital books to read, and did, but he enjoyed the tactile feel of a paper book.

  The bookseller’s stall overflowed with tables and boxes of treasure. His heart sped up at the sight.

  “Are we looking for anythin
g in particular?” Georgia crouched down to examine a box filled with mystery novels. She thumbed through the copies, not pausing to read the blurb.

  His tail twitched with irritation. “Do you not like books?”

  “I like reading. I just never felt the need to clutter up my space with books. Seems inefficient when I can have thousands of books on a single device.” Her words hurt him. Caused actual, physical pain.

  “So, you’re not perfect after all,” he said with a dramatic sigh.

  The look she tossed him stole his breath, her keen green eyes glimmering in the sunlight. “You thought I was perfect?”

  “I’m looking to build a collection for the library,” he said, sidestepping the question. “A casual mix of genres, I think, for the guests to enjoy.” Not to mention the history volumes he asked the bookseller to track down, and a few more specialized titles.

  She browsed the tables but never picked up a book. The behavior puzzled him and then he realized. “You don’t read Corravian?”

  A pink flush spread across her face.

  Apparently not.

  He looked at the tables, noticing for the first time that most of the books were written in Corravian, followed by Tal and Fremmian. He could speak and read in all three languages, but he had traveled extensively as a youth, an age that made language acquisition easier.

  “The translation chip doesn’t work on written stuff,” she said. “Only audio. I have a Tal and Corravian grammar primer but it’s so dull. I thought I’d pick up the reading comprehension by immersion.”

  “I did not mean to shame you.”

  “Not everyone picks up languages quickly. I’m working on it. That’s all.”

  “Grammar readers are incredibly tedious. Let me find you something better.” He scanned the tables, searching for the perfect book.

  She picked up a book, seemingly at random. “It’s amazing how you can tell the genre, even if you don’t understand the language. Blue-gray cover. Haunting landscape. No people. This is a mystery or a thriller.”