by Calista Skye
Nipping her lip, her hand slid lower to the nestle between her thighs as her mind imagined him rising from his chair and approaching her instead of exiting.
She imagined him heading toward her, fiery heat crackling from his energy field as he drew closer, anticipation singeing the air. And then she forced her fingers to stop. Firmly.
This wouldn't do.
She sighed.
She didn't have time to fall for some mystery power she'd never even said word one to.
Tucking into her will, she resolved to count sheep if she had to. She was going to get some damn sleep. No more with the ideas Jana had seeded into her head.
She was here for a reason, and it sure as hell wasn't to fan-girl some alien King who probably hadn't given her a second that, as an individual.
3
Sleep eventually came, but the Tentai King crossed her mind for the majority of the day to follow. So much so that she struggled to get through her fevered attempts at translations, cursing more than once with a frustration that threatened to give her a stress headache that might land her in the infirmary.
The last thing she needed right now was a time-snatching migraine. She didn't tend to recuperate from them with reasonable speed.
By the time lunch rolled around, she decided to take it on her own this time. There was a mesmerizing lake where the pink and violet waters swirled into one another like a lava lamp, and the glowing fish in their depths had a habit of doing tricks when they realized they had an audience.
If anything would help her get her head straight with a mind-defragging mini vacation, this was it.
Resolved, she took the back hall out of the base when she left the translation booth, hopping on an available hover bike waiting in the racks as she entered the parking lot. The wind cast a lock of hair across her cheek, and she brushed it away absentmindedly, pressing the engine code until it glowed a healthy, neon blue. When it rumbled with life, she made her way off, over the damp stone roads to the swirling lake, committed to gaining some peace.
This was good, she realized as she rumbled along the flat rocks that covered most of the surface around the base, relieved when she finally felt herself relax as she drew closer to her new, appointed sanctuary.
Maybe, she'd just needed to have some time alone, all along. With the hustle and bustle surrounding the excavations and the social dynamics of the tight-knit team she'd been bound with, she was beginning to forget what it was like to have even an hour to herself to think.
She'd worked her way through school at the Mercury Diner, and her schedule was just as grueling then as it was now. At some point she'd need to take it easy on herself, and she knew that. By the time she got back to her dwelling unit, she could rarely keep her eyes open enough to get through an episode of “Space Case,” and that was her favorite show in the entire galaxy.
Rumbling to a stop by a luminescent flat rock set by the river, she nudged out the stand with her foot and slid off of the bike, tsking when she realized she was still wearing her apron. Her fingers flitting over the ties, she drew it off and draped it over the bike, grabbing up her bagged lunch from the hover bike's side compartment.
Eyes lit up, she looked over the waters, gave a nod, and headed toward it.
The Tentai world was magickal in a way that Earth hadn't been before the greening. It struck her with the feeling that there was so much her team hadn't seen. They'd barely scratched the surface, and as wondrous as their discoveries were, she could feel how much they'd yet to see in her bones.
Especially here.
Her thoughts returned to the King before long, but she didn't fight them as she unwrapped her bowl of Dutty rice and fried curd. Looking over the swirling lake, she couldn't help but marvel at the mass of land that fell into the domain of the King Sesh, the Wise.
She wondered why they called him that. There were stories about the King's power and how he'd come to the position he took; maybe he'd won the title because he was a master strategist.
Would he come by the translation room again? Watch her again? Maybe even introduce himself? And how would she handle it if he did?
Scooping a sporkful of the delicious stir-fry, she considered how foolish she was being. She was probably quite inconsequential to him. Men like him were accustomed to beauties who were preened for the throne on the wings of their mother's hopes that they'd one day get their daughters sat there beside him.
Genie had all the grace of commoner. She hadn't been born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Not even close. And even the luxuries of Earth couldn't compare to those possessed by the Tentai.
Even if he was attracted to her, what could she really hope for, one night? That's not who she was. For that, she could just give Striker what he'd been pining after from the moment he laid eyes on her.
Striker was no King Sesh, but if she ever did want to be as casual with her body as so many of her peers seemed to like being, she could do it with a little more attachment, and a little less awe.
Sometimes, she wondered if success scared her.
“You have the mark of claim on you.”
Blinking and raising her head, Genie met the very alien eyes of a water-dwelling Tentai. There were many of his kind around, but they rarely approached any alien races. Caught in a place of confusion between her broken train of thought and the gleaming green, cat eyes of the water-breather, she found herself at an utter loss for words.
Like all of the Tentai species she'd ever seen, he was stunningly attractive. The bulge of his muscles seeming to ripple in the reflective light cast by the water that swirled around him, circling his waist where he stood.
He looked into her as if he was undressing her with his thoughts, but like the King's eyes had been, it wasn't invasive. If anything, it woke something in her that she usually stuffed away in a drawer: her awareness of her vibrance as a woman. That there was life outside of work. A real possibility of love.
She'd been appreciated by men before, but not like this. This... was different. The Tentai had a way of reaching into you if the water-breather and the King himself could make her like that with just one look.
“A mark?”
“A claim.”
“I... don't understand.”
“You will,” he told her with a grin, sinking deeper into the water and coasting back, his eyes never leaving her as he trailed away.
He didn't even try to conceal his desire, but there was something holding him back from appreciating her openly, and the undefined vibe of whatever was keeping him tethered formed a knot in her gut. So much for a peaceful lunch by the swirling lake.
Mirth flashed his eyes, intensifying the otherworldly green of them.
“I see it,” he said after a stretching while, nearly making Genie choke around the spoon of rice she'd just slid off of her spork.
“See what?”
“What makes you so special.”
“And... what gives you the idea I'm special?”
The water-breather's grin deepened.
“Can't you feel it in the air? The King's heart is ticking faster these days. Faster than it ever has. We can all hear it, and it all began the moment he laid eyes on you.”
4
Genie hadn't lingered in the park too much longer after those fateful words. The Tentai were peculiar, but the water-breather had shaken her to speechlessness, utterly stilling all of her questions.
Throughout her return to the translation room, she'd replayed his words over and over again, struggling to redirect her focus to the task at hand. Feeling like she'd managed a miracle when some of the words in the first tome finally came together for her.
It was a chip in the stone, but a significant one. One that would give her enough purchase to make a decent amount of headway into the translation in the coming days.
Still, the process of getting there had been more strenuous than she'd liked. Her head... she couldn't stand the way it swimmed. Couldn't stand feeling pulled and tugged in a direction that see
med about as plausible as the president of Neptune landing in a drop ship and asking for her hand in marriage.
Maybe, she was in denial, and others saw something she just couldn't, but the practical side of her told her to stick to her game plan and plod on making a way for herself.
The walk to her dwelling unit was a hurried one when she finally ended her shift, her hover boots clinking the metal tiles of the ramps leading her to the promise of sanctuary if she could stay awake long enough to enjoy it. She made a beeline for her vanity the moment the doors slid open, and she secured the lock.
And she sat there for the better part of an hour, attempting to see what several others had claimed to. Genie pulled her midnight hair tumbling out of her bun, and leaned into the reflecter, really inspecting herself. It wasn't that she didn't know she was attractive. It was how hard she'd fought to realize that.
Before she'd joined the space program, she'd received very different attention planet-side. Really, it had been no attention at all, and she'd stood on the sidelines while all of the thinner, more typical girls won the attention of the eligible men in the dating pool.
It didn't matter whether or not they'd had brains in their heads. They fit the expectation, and it had been their golden ticket onto the red carpet, while girls like Genie were told how pretty their faces were, while the subject of their bodies was either ignored entirely or was passively jabbed at with red herrings like “you know diabetes can be avoided with the right diet...,” or, “you'll have more energy when you get back into shape.”
Seemingly well-meaning ways that people used to judge thoroughly voluptuous girls. Genie had sucked it up, dealt with her mother's constant, unsolicited “advice,” and when she'd finally broken out of the box, that old-world contempt for natural curves and, gods forbid, the healthy desire to enjoy the food you eat, she'd never looked back.
But somehow, as she faced the prospect of having such a high-positioned admirer, it was all coming back in waves, submerging her in an internal battle she'd long thought she'd won.
As she stared into the reflection of her wide eyes and naturally flushed lips, she realized, she hadn't been victorious over how undesirable so many people had made her feel planetside. She realized that she'd been suppressing those feelings that made her bust her ass to rise to the top of her field, at the extreme expense of personal peace. She'd endured unimaginable levels of stress to prove that she mattered, hell, that she even had a right to exist.
Catching the tear that descended her cheek, she sniffled and pulled herself up, as she always did, telling herself to keep going, to leave all those brutal, old memories where they belonged: in the past.
She told herself to move forward. Move forward, and never look back.
Stick to the plan.
~
“A letter arrived for you.”
“From Sector 6?”
“From the King. Himself. The entire team got one. He's throwing an... event?”
Shit.
Genie hesitated to take it, her eyes averting Jana's own twinkling gaze. This King thing was a relentless distraction, and she really wasn't interested in allowing herself to get caught up in it. She had no desire at all to fall into the confusion that surely awaited her, only to find herself completely off track.
It had already stolen more of her attention than she could afford to give it.
Drawing a breath, she accepted the letter from her team mate's hand and forced herself to keep her head.
“Thanks. Not sure I'll have the energy, but-”
Jana's hand held the door.
“You're joking right?”
Genie sighed.
“You have to come. He's obviously throwing this because of you, and I'm not about to lose my luxury privileges.”
“Your invite makes you just as welcome as it appears to make me.”
Jana quipped, her words getting caught in her throat in her pause.
“Is... Is something wrong with your mind, Genie? The frigging King of the East has all but officially made you his guest of honor. Why wouldn't you be open to that?”
Her hands flying to her forehead, Genie looked away.
“I have a lot on my plate, right now.”
“We all have a lot on our plates, Genie.”
“I can't afford to-”
“Stop. Just, stop it, girl. Listen to yourself. You're avoiding this, and it has nothing to do with work. If anything, this enhances our diplomatic relations with the King and will probably win more support for what we're doing.”
Genie's hand closed tighter around the letter and rested on her hip.
“I don't have a thing to wear.”
“Then you're lucky we're the same size. I got this, Genie. I'll meet you here tomorrow night with bells for you to put on.”
Genie tsked.
“Don't you dare tell me no, Buttercup. I won't have it.”
5
Through the mercy of some higher power, Genie made it through the next two days of work with an acceptable amount of progress. Resolving herself to be brave, and face the looming challenge ahead, she'd managed to get a foothold on her thoughts enough to focus on her duties.
But when the night of the King's aerial tour arrived, her mind was plunged back into a fierce ocean of swimming thoughts, and it wasn't until Genie arrived that she began to feel a little better.
Emerging from the shower, she'd answered the door in her favorite fluffy robe, probably looking like a deer caught in headlights.
Lifting a mysterious metal trunk, Jana beamed with triumph, obviously eager to whip Genie out of her morose mood and bring her to life with every girl's favorite game: dress-up.
Finding herself sitting before her vanity again, Genie was pleasantly surprised to find the mean, old memories that had haunted her banished from the space in the glow of Jana's light.
A curl of steam rising up from the Old Moon tea Jana had brought from her dwelling unit, she actually found a resolve that wasn't firmly rooted in duty. As annoyingly insistent as Jana was, she was also a hell of a nurturer. A comfort she could get used to, one she couldn't ever remember enjoying before she'd come to the base.
She'd kept herself sectioned off in school, and planetside, when her mother brought her to the salon, but it was never without the shadow of criticism chipping away at her sense of self from the sidelines. And it was always wrapped in cooing tones used to make the judgments seem like friendly words of advice from someone who cared.
Jana's attention wasn't like that at all.
Her doting made Genie feel like her feelings mattered right now, that Jana wanted her to enjoy the experience ahead. It made everything to come seem less giant and unmanageable. With Jana's help, she was beginning to believe she could fend off the worries on her mind and embrace the night without rounding her shoulders and lowering her head to the nitpicking phantoms of old.
That she could be elegant, and meet the King, officially, as a lady with her full dignity intact.
“Close your eyes.”
A thrill of excitement tickled Genie's gut as Jana applied metallic, glittering powders to the lids of her eyes, an inky lengthening coat to her lashes, and a bronzey flush to her cheeks.
She felt like giggling when Jana swept her hair up in curls, tugging the ends to exaggerate their length and frame her face.
Fully settled into the preening, she really looked at herself when Jana pinned her hair strategically in place. Felt like a straight up vixen when her teammate, no, friend, applied the deep burgundy lacquer to her lips.
And when Jana presented her with the secret weapon in her armory, the one she'd kept veiled in a silver box all evening, Genie knew she was going to be just fine tonight.
Just fine.
Slipping into the slinky moon-silver dress, she smoothed her hands over her curves, as if seeing herself for the first time in the reflecter.
“You're a knock-out, you know that?”
Genie smiled, not saying anything as Jana's wo
rds called a warm burst to her chest.
She was tonight, wasn't she? When was the last time anyone who wasn't trying to get into her pants had said such a thing? And more importantly, when had she ever agreed?
“Not too much ta-ta?”
Jana rolled her eyes playfully.
“Live a little, Genie. Let them feast on your cleavage. They all want to.”
Nipping her lip, Genie gave her a nod of agreement.
Alright.
She would.
Live a little.
6
As the dual suns began to set, both of them diminuitive in comparison to Earth's, the team was collected by an envoy who led them to a hover-craft that floated above the parking ramps of the base like an ornate, metal chalice from a giant's china cabinet.
Its tech was unparalleled as much of Tentai technology had proven itself to be, and Genie felt like an absolute Queen slow-walking the vessel's ramp as Jana had told her she absolutely must in a dress with that level of class.
At first, she felt a bit silly doing it, but it began to feel almost natural to her the more she did it, and she couldn't help but admit how extremely good it felt to walk with her head held high. How excellent it was to be admired as openly as she was for her beauty as much as for her brains.
Before now, she'd settled for being useful and reasonably sexy in the eyes of some men. But now... she felt like the absolute belle of the ball, and as foreign a feeling as it was, she took to it like a duck to water.
This was something she could easily grow accustomed to.
“Beverage?”
Genie turned to meet the stunning eyes of the first Tentai server to greet her, a frail young woman with hair that probably trailed to her knees when it wasn't bound up in a flossy blue bun. Her skin was strangely luminous, looking like the moon was hiding in it and peeking out when she turned her beautifully sculpted face toward the light.
