by Stella Casey
What was unusual was that he had sort of appeared out of nowhere. I scowled. Where the hell had he come from?
I hadn’t noticed any people along the path near the tigers, and there weren’t any other paths that fed into that one. The tiger enclosures were at the north end of the zoo.
He wasn’t paying any attention to me, and I rolled my eyes at myself. I was busy, and hadn’t been paying attention. I was so caught up in my own thoughts today, I just hadn’t noticed him, that was all.
I needed to get my head into the present moment and pay attention. Otherwise, I might get hurt. The director always said a spaced-out vet was an injured vet.
With a deep, calming breath, I hurried on, ignoring the tourist, who continued his relaxed gait but seemed to be going in the same direction as me.
It annoyed me for a moment. But then I refocused on the procedure I was about to do, going through the steps in my mind.
When I looked over my shoulder, the guy was still there.
I frowned, trying to place him. Why did he seem familiar? I was pretty sure I had never met him.
And he was probably trouble anyway. Or at least I assumed he was, because the big gash on his forehead meant that he had likely been in a fight last night.
Or maybe he’d fallen and bonked his head doing something perfectly respectable, and I was being prejudiced.
Whatever.
He just happened to be going to the same place I was.
And who cared about some random tourist, anyway?
I had work to do.
6
Lii’thoou
I could not resist this female.
I just couldn’t.
It was insanity for me to still be thinking about her, yet I couldn’t get her out of my mind. She stood there, in that top that showed off her full breasts, and those short shorts that gave me a view of her long legs, tempting me.
After what had happened last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I kept replaying our encounter in my mind, imagining that it had gone differently. I hadn’t slept a wink. And that is not normal for me as a tiger. Because those cats sleep a lot.
It was morning, and I felt exhausted, but when she had come past the tiger enclosure, I had been unable to stop myself from following her.
As soon as she had disappeared around the corner, I had shifted again to the ape form, snagged a pair of shorts from the hidden stash of clothes I kept in the enclosure, and scaled the fence. When I landed on the ground, I shifted into human form, pulled on the shorts, and followed her.
It had been a risky move, but there hadn’t been anyone around. And anyway, I didn’t care. Nothing would have stopped me. I felt something close to an obsession.
I needed to talk to her.
It seemed that our brief conversation had set something in motion that I couldn’t stop. I hadn’t realized how much I craved interaction until last night.
I pretended to be a tourist and kept back, trying not to seem like I was tailing her. I noticed her look back a few times, and caught her frowning. She was clearly suspicious of me in the form I had taken — same body as last night, different face.
It was easier to use the same face and same body all the time, because I didn’t need to focus so hard on visualizing it during the shifting process. But in this case, I didn’t want her to recognize me, so I had randomly generated a generic face from the countless ones I had observed in my time on Earth.
I followed her, with no idea what I was going to do. I only knew I had to be closer. Had to talk to her again.
I was done pretending to be a tiger. I needed more.
And it started with her.
She glanced back at me again, her pretty eyebrows drawn together, probably wondering what the hell this guy was doing following her. It only got me more wound up. The more I thought about being near her, the more excited I felt.
The woman went through a door marked Keeper Only, and that didn’t faze me a bit. I went right in behind her.
She whipped around in the narrow corridor and lifted her hands. “What are you doing?” she said, steel in her eyes. “I’ve taken self-defense. And there’re Keepers working in those offices down there.”
I doubted that very much, or she would have shouted for them already. “You shouldn’t lie,” I said. “You’re not very good at it.”
She glanced around, desperate, like a cornered animal. But I didn’t want her afraid of me, and I spoke without thinking. “Look, I’m sorry about last night.”
Oh shit. That wasn’t the best thing to say. Now what?
Her face went white. Her gaze locked onto the cut on my forehead. “What… what are you talking about? I’ve never met you.”
I turned away and shifted my face to the one from last night. Then I faced her again. Her eyes got wide and her jaw dropped. She stepped back.
“You’re the dog-man,” she whispered. “That cut on your head…”
I spread my hands, trying to convey how not dangerous I was.
“I’m unarmed. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Stay the fuck back,” she said, putting her hand up, palm facing me.
“I won’t hurt you,” I said again. “Please, just give me a chance to explain.”
She seemed confused. Maybe it was because of my pleading tone. But all of a sudden, I really needed her to listen, to forgive me, to give me a chance. Not to mention I needed her to not call the police and not report me as a stalker, shape shifter, or alien.
“Please?” I said again.
“How did you find me here?” she said.
“I’ve been watching you for a long time,” I said, and then stared at her intensely for a moment, like I had in my tiger form.
Without warning, she laughed. Granted, it sounded slightly unhinged, but at least she wasn’t running away screaming. “Berani,” she said.
“Sort of.”
“Yeah, I bet,” she said, shaking her head. Then she pinned me with her intelligent gaze. “Where’d you get the shorts?”
“I keep clothes hidden in the enclosure for when I change into human form. Will you let me explain?” I asked again.
She was silent a long time, and then she nodded once.
I gave her a tiny smile. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to say. But she was going to let me explain myself.
And for now, that was enough.
Alyssa
“Come into this exam room,” I said, unable to believe this was happening to me. I locked the door once we were inside. The dog/tiger man followed me in, and I perched on the examining table while he leaned against the wall.
I noticed he was keeping his distance, obviously trying not to scare me. I did not find that particularly reassuring.
He didn’t say anything, only crossed his arms over his chest. Those intelligent blue eyes surveyed me, and his face was so gorgeous that I was almost blinded.
I felt hot, and clenched my legs together, trying to get myself under control. It was entirely inappropriate that I should be having such a reaction to him.
“So?” I prompted.
“I’m not human,” he said. “I suppose we should start with that.”
Somehow, with everything I already knew about him, that still surprised me. I didn’t know what I thought he was going to say, but it wasn’t that.
“You’re not human?”
He shook his head.
“What are you?”
“Your kind would call me an alien. My planet is called K’nythia, and my race the K’nythians. We are all blue-skinned and six-armed, with amber eyes and antennae.
“There is a subset among us that look exactly the same, but we have evolved to be shapeshifters, and we are second-class citizens.” I frowned. “Yeah,” he said. “It sucks. But at least these days, we aren’t persecuted and burned for being different.”
I swallowed, trying to understand, trying to believe what he was telling me. Or maybe I was trying to figure out if he was lying.
> “Okay,” I said, not sure what to say.
“I’m just staying on your world for a while. Lying low. Of course, you know I can shapeshift and I chose a tiger form because…”
He trailed off, and I knew right away why he might choose to live in a zoo. “Because it’s a five-star resort for tigers? People waiting on you hand and foot?”
He grinned. “Busted.”
“Hm. What’s it like for you when you shift? I can’t imagine how you manage it,” I said, intensely curious.
“Well, I can sort of visualize the quantum field, and then it’s easy to shift things around.”
“Really. It’s hard to believe,” I said, my mind having difficulty comprehending the process.
He thought for a moment. “I guess it’s a bit like walking across a room.”
“What?”
“No, really. Think about it. You don’t really know how you walk across a room. It’s ridiculously complex when you actually start to break it down.”
Okay, he did have a point there.
“There are millions of things going on in your body, and in the room, to allow that simple act to happen. All you have to do is will yourself to walk across the room, maybe see yourself doing it. And voila, it happens.
“That’s how shapeshifting is for me.”
“Wow.” I shook my head. “That is so cool.”
We sat in silence for a long moment and then he spoke, his voice low and a bit gruff.
“I’ve been watching you a long time,” he said again, his eyes changing. It had been a while since a man looked at me like that, but I knew desire when I saw it. Even from an alien.
No wonder Berani had always seemed different. No wonder he had always seemed to be watching me. I had assumed it was because he was bored.
But this. I could never have imagined this.
“Do you have any questions?” he said, seeming unsure of himself. I found this uncertainty more reassuring than any of his explanations or assertions. And I realized that he had trusted me with a very, very serious secret.
This thought made me wonder about the nature of his feelings for me. “You’ve been watching me this whole time?”
He nodded, his gaze dropping down my body and then climbing back up, leaving a tingling in its wake that made me feel awesome — and guilty.
I had loved my husband a lot. We had been friends for ages before we fell in love. But he had died. And I was doing my best to get on with my life.
That said, I hadn’t had sex since I got pregnant. The first trimester was brutal, and I was too sick to even consider it. Then Harris had died, and I had been mourning and pregnant.
Yeah, that sucked.
The baby had come, and I had been a widow and a new mother, uh huh, so no sex happening. And up until now, I hadn’t even really thought about it.
I was way too busy for a boyfriend. And I wouldn’t even consider hooking up for just one night.
That meant I hadn’t had sex for nearly two years.
So that left me…
Okay, a little deprived. I’ll admit it.
I must be, if I was suddenly getting turned on by some random alien who could shapeshift. What was wrong with me? Was I betraying Harris?
He would want me to get on with my life, wouldn’t he? Probably. But with an alien? That I wasn’t so sure about.
I suddenly realized that I had been silent for too long, and I said the next question that popped into my head.
“Is that your true form?”
“No,” he said, giving me a look.
“Oh, right,” I said, my face heating as my mind replayed our conversation. “You said your people have …”
“Blue skin, six arms, amber eyes, and antennae.”
“Right.” I hesitated a moment. “Can I see your true form?” I said at last, wondering if I was ready for this.
He hesitated too, and then nodded. And the hesitation made me trust him a little more. This wasn’t easy for him either.
“Berani,” I said. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”
“My name is Lii’thoou,” he said.
“Lii’thoou?” I said, trying out the foreign-sounding name.
“That’s right.”
“I’m Alyssa,” I said.
“Alyssa,” he said, smiling at me. “I’ve been wondering how to pronounce it.”
Then his smile dropped away.
“Ready?” he said, a serious look on his face.
Was I?
I gave him a smile that was a little forced.
“Guess so.”
Without warning, he stuck his thumbs into the stretchy waistband of his shorts, and they dropped to his feet. Then he closed his eyes and…
I don’t know how to explain it.
I watched while he shifted, but it was as if my puny human eyes — and mind — couldn’t handle it. To me, he just seemed to turn to mist and then the other form was there. I didn’t really see what happened.
“Alyssa,” he said, and his voice was rough and deep. He took a couple steps towards me, so we were standing about a foot apart. Too close, really. “This is the real me.”
Jesus H. Christ.
He was about six and a half feet tall, with royal-blue skin and — yep — six arms, three on each side, all well muscled. The eyes in his blue face were amber … and worried. There were antennae on his head that I had the irrational urge to stroke, they looked so soft.
“You have so many hands,” I said. Then I wrinkled my nose when I realized how that sounded. “I mean arms … I mean … I didn’t mean that … I’m sorry, I…”
One of his arms went around my back as if he couldn’t keep from touching me. “It’s okay,” he said.
He must have put the middle hand on my back, because suddenly the lower hand was on my ass. And it squeezed.
I was startled, but not upset. Still, it didn’t seem right to encourage him. There was no way we could be together.
I slapped at one of the hands, not sure if it was the one that had touched me or not. “Now I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have touched you without your permission.”
“Berani…” I started.
He stepped back, putting some space between us, looked around, and spotted his shorts on the floor. I took a couple deep breaths to try and calm myself as he put them back on.
“Lii’thoou,” he reminded me. “My name is Lii’thoou.”
“Lii’thoou. Why did you take the shorts off?”
He seemed pleased with this question. “My clothes tend to get torn when I shapeshift, and I didn’t want to be left completely naked. Your race gets a little antsy about nudity.”
“True,” I said, then gathered my thoughts. “Look, I wanted to apologize about last night.”
“Never mind,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “A female who wants to protect her offspring is strong.”
“How did you know I was protecting my daughter?” I said, suspicious again. “I never told you.”
He laughed, and it seemed strange with his blue face. “You have pictures of her everywhere. What else would you be guarding with such ferocity upstairs?”
I supposed that was a reasonable assumption.
“And then there’s your…” He glanced down at my chest.
I was confused. “My what?”
“Your … you know … breasts.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “What about my breasts?”
He gave me a look. “Well, they’re obviously doing what nature intended them to.”
Ohhhh. Yeah.
“But, really.” I tried again to apologize. “I’m so sorry for hitting you with my car. And then the frying pan.”
“Not a problem,” he said, not angry at all. “You’re fierce. I like that. It means you have good genes. Strong genes. You’d be good for breeding.”
Then he back-pedaled, as if he realized he’d said something he shouldn’t. “I mean, you must be a good mother. And I would imagine your
child is healthy and strong.”
“Um,” I said, eyeing the antennae on his head. “Is that even possible? Breeding, I mean?”
I stared at the antennae, needing to know what they felt like under my fingers. Before I could decide whether it was a good idea or not, I went on tiptoe and ran my fingers over his silky soft antennae.
He groaned, and pulled me tightly against him with all three right arms. I could feel everything, particularly the bulge between his legs.
I wondered who this woman was, and what she had done with the real me. I was usually the sort of person who liked things in nice neat boxes. This guy did not fit in any boxes I had ever heard of.
What the hell was I doing, flirting with a blue alien who sported six arms?
“Well, I don’t know, Alyssa.” His eyes dropped to my breasts. They were particularly full and plump right now, because I hadn’t had time to use my breast pump to drain the pressure that built up while I was away from Zoe.
“Do you want to find out whether it’s possible? Breeding, I mean?”
That seemed like a spectacularly bad idea.
But yes. I did want to find out.
7
Alyssa
“May I examine you?” I said, the zoologist in me needing to measure and classify this new species I had never seen before. Nobody ought to bother us, since it was our morning coffee break time, and they would all be in the staff room in another building.
His blue face smirked, and he crossed the middle set of arms across his broad, blue chest.
“Uh, I mean, in a totally scientific way.”
He frowned at that. “You can’t tell anyone about me,” he said. “Remember, I’m hiding out?”
“I won’t tell anyone,” I said, honestly. “I promise. It would just be to satisfy my scientific curiosity.”
He eyed me for a moment. “Okay,” he said, sitting down on the examination table we used for doing procedures on the animals. “You can examine me. In the interest of science.”
His words, and the look in those amber eyes, made me blush, and I was thankful for my darker coloring because that meant that he couldn’t see it. Somehow, I imagined that the blush would please him.
