by Presley Hall
I know this was an accident too, but at least that time, he just saw my skin.
This time, it feels like he’s seen my naked soul.
I can feel myself shutting down, closing off even as Zhori opens his mouth to offer an apology. I’ve gotten good at that over the years. Good at putting up walls and keeping others out. I’ve learned that it offers protection from getting hurt again, from loving anyone too much or letting them get so close that they could break my heart, making me suffer another loss.
Zhori and I have been getting along well enough—especially considering I’ve never shared such close quarters with a man before—and I’ve been starting to trust him more and more. His desire to help seems truly genuine, despite my initial distrust. But as I look at him now, barely hearing his apology, all of my complicated feelings about singing in front of others wash over me, and I turn on my heel and flee into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind me.
I turn on the tap at the tiny sink, splashing cold water over my burning face as I try to catch my breath. I’m nearly in tears, and I try hard to get a grip on my emotions.
I didn’t cry when I was captured, or when I was nearly rescued and then recaptured again. I didn’t cry when I was auctioned off to a disgusting slug of an alien, and I didn’t cry when I watched my rescuer kill two men in front of me. So why am I fighting back a wave of tears now over someone hearing me sing?
It doesn’t make sense, and I know it’s unreasonable.
Fuck, Brooke. Come on.
I splash more water over my face, gripping the edge of the sink as the droplets drip down my skin, then look up into the mirror.
My skin is pale, except for the angry red splotches on my cheeks, and I take a few deep breaths, trying to calm down. Finally, when I feel like I have my emotions under control again, I dry my face off with my shirt and open the bathroom door.
To my surprise, Zhori is standing on the other side, his hand raised as if to knock. The packages of food he brought back to the room sit abandoned on the table. I look up at him hesitantly, expecting to see anger blazing in his eyes. But instead, I just see concern as he looks down at me.
He’s not mad.
He’s worried. About me.
My heart knocks against my ribs, and I can feel my walls start to crumble down at the expression on his face.
I can’t explain why, but without hesitating, I walk into his arms, resting my cheek against his broad, smooth chest. He stiffens for a second in surprise, then wraps those strong arms around me. He holds me for a long moment, his massive body soothing and warm. Some of my irrational anger begins to slip away, draining out of me as I feel his chest rise and fall with his breath.
“I’m sorry.” He sighs. “I didn’t mean to upset or embarrass you, Brooke. I’ve never shared living quarters with a female before, and certainly not a Terran. I don’t always know what the right thing to do is.” He chuckles a little self-consciously, the sound rumbling in his chest. “I knew that Terrans prefer not to be nude, for example, but I didn’t realize that they preferred to sing in private.”
The last statement catches me so off-guard that I laugh, unable to help myself.
“That’s not a Terran thing,” I murmur, my face still pillowed against his chest. “It’s just a ‘me’ thing. I don’t sing in front of other people. I haven’t for years now.”
“Why?” he asks simply, confusion clear in his tone. “You sing so beautifully.”
My heart twists in my chest, pain blooming there, and for a second I want to shut down again, to push him away and not answer. I could do that—I know that Zhori won’t press me if I tell him to stop prying. But even as the urge rises up in me, I realize that I’m being foolish to hold on to these things so tightly, and to work so hard at keeping Zhori at arm’s length.
Right now, he’s all I have in the universe. There’s no one, on Earth or anywhere else, who cares about me as much as he’s shown that he does. He’s my only friend.
I should probably start treating him like one.
I lean back slowly, looking up at his concerned, handsome face. “Let’s eat,” I say finally. “And I’ll explain.”
Zhori nods, releasing me, and as he steps back, I instantly miss the solid warmth of his body against me, the safety of his arms, even the scent of him.
I know it’s a mistake to miss those things, because our closeness is a product of being pushed together on Nierra. Once we get back to Kalix, he’ll resume his normal life, and it’ll be up to me to decide whether I want to go back to Earth and my menial existence there, or to try to carve out something new on Kalix.
I have no doubt that he means well, and I feel more certain than ever that his friendliness is genuine, but I shouldn’t let myself start to think of it as more than just that—friendliness. I shouldn’t want him to hold me, or crave more than that.
He unpacks the food as I take a seat at the tiny table, laying out the same kind of fried, spiced, greasy meat that we got a few days ago at one of the market stalls. I perk up a little at the sight. I love this meat. It comes with a creamy, tangy sauce, and I realize how hungry I am as I dip it into the sauce and take a bite, closing my eyes briefly with pleasure.
“Nierra is a terrible place,” I tell Zhori, who smirks at me as he takes a bite of his own meal, as if he can read my thoughts. “But this—this is fucking amazing.”
“Just wait until you get to Kalix.” His grin widens. “The food is even better there.”
Although his tone is casual, I can see that he’s waiting for me to explain my earlier freak-out. Curiosity burns bright in his eyes, and I take a deep breath.
“I was raised by my grandmother,” I tell him finally. “My parents died when I was very young, in a car accident. It’s a kind of transport that goes very fast,” I add when I notice his slightly confused expression. “I went to live with my grandmother after that. We lived in a very small town without a lot of opportunities, but she always made the best of it. She was a schoolteacher, and she taught the school chorus on the side. At home, she taught me how to sing. It was always—always just kind of our thing.”
I pause, licking my lips. Zhori watches me with those intense blue eyes of his, not interrupting or urging me to speak faster. Just waiting. Listening.
“We’d watch these old musicals, and she loved singing those songs together, but she encouraged me to sing whatever I wanted. Musicals, gospel songs, pop, rock music. She never told me any one kind of music was better than any other. She just—” I break off, swallowing back the emotion that’s rising up in my throat. “She thought I should sing anything that brought me joy. Anything that I thought was beautiful.”
“She sounds like a very lovely person,” Zhori murmurs, and I nod, blinking back tears. I look down at my food, taking a bite to hide my emotions and give myself a moment to get them under control again.
“She was,” I whisper, then clear my throat, looking up at him. “I had this big dream that I’d make a go of it and try singing professionally. On Earth, that’s a really rare thing to be able to do,” I explain. “At least on any major level. You can get gigs singing in bars sometimes, or in big cities there are still a few lounge singers and jobs like that. But to really make money at it—that’s hard. You have to be noticed by the right people.”
“I find it hard to believe that anyone who heard you sing wouldn’t notice you,” Zhori says, sincerity shining in his eyes.
I give him a small, grateful smile. It’s hard for me to believe that I’m talking about this after so long, or that he really thinks my singing is so good. It’s been years since anyone other than my grandmother heard me sing.
“She encouraged me to pursue my dream of making a career out of it. She always believed I could do it. We went on a trip to Nashville together once. It’s a city on Earth that’s huge for music. I have—had—so many photos from that trip. So many good memories. It was the last trip we took together.”
“How long ago did she die?” Zhori
asks softly, and an ache spreads through my chest.
“Five years,” I tell him. “I was supposed to sing at her funeral and I—I just choked. I couldn’t do it. It was like singing over her casket would make it really real that she was dead, that she wasn’t coming back and I was all alone. My grandmother was all I had left in the world… and she was just gone.”
I bite my lower lip, gazing at the floor for a long moment before I find the courage to look up at Zhori again with so much emotion naked in my face.
“After that, I couldn’t sing in front of people anymore. I stopped. It was hard to even sing at home, surrounded by all my memories of her—but definitely not in public. I gave up the dream of doing it professionally, and I was just… lost. I did odd jobs and waitressed a lot to get by, but I had no idea what else I was going to do in life. I felt completely adrift. And then—” I shrug. “Well, you know what happened then.”
We’ve finished eating, and I don’t know what to do with my hands. I knot them together in my lap, feeling self-conscious after telling Zhori so much, laying myself bare to him in an entirely new way.
But the way he’s looking at me tells me that he doesn’t think I’m crazy or strange or overreacting. Instead, he takes a deep breath and slowly, as if trying not to startle me, lays a hand on my leg.
“I know what it’s like to be alone,” he says finally, his voice a little strained. “My parents died when I was very young. I was taken and raised in a communal building with other children who didn’t have parents, and apprenticed to the Alpha Force as soon as I was old enough to do basic, menial tasks for them and begin the rudiments of training. The training to become a warrior begins at twelve, but an early apprenticeship is allowed to begin at eight for males with no family. So that’s what I did.”
He takes a deep breath, and I find myself watching him just as intently as he gazed at me, hungry for more insight into this powerful alien warrior.
In some ways, I feel like I know him incredibly well already. Intense circumstances have a way of showing who a person truly is, and I’ve seen firsthand that Zhori is loyal, brave, and protective. But this insight into his history, into his life back on Kalix, feels revealing in a whole new way.
I never expected this massive, bold alien to have a story so similar to my own.
“The Alpha Force is the only family I remember,” Zhori continues. “I have a vague concept of my mother; I remember her voice in dreams sometimes, but not her face. Everything is a blur to me before I was taken to live with the other children, and even that feels fuzzy sometimes. My real memories start with the Alpha Force.”
His eyes meet mine as he gives me a half smile, his hand still resting on my leg.
“So you see, I know what it’s like to lose your family,” he says. “And I know how hard it can be to let yourself feel anything at all anymore, when you’ve known that kind of loss.”
He’s very close to me, the warmth of his palm sinking into my skin even through the heavy fabric of my trousers, and I feel my pulse speed up in my throat.
I can feel something gathering in the air between us like the electric charge of a heavy summer storm. He still hasn’t looked away from me, and I wonder wildly if he’s going to kiss me.
He could do it so easily. It would just require closing that small space between us, reaching up with his other hand, and drawing my lips to his.
But he doesn’t. He only looks at me as if he’s seeing me in an entirely new light, and I realize that I feel the same way. I haven’t just shown Zhori another side of myself—by opening up to him, I prompted him to reveal a new layer of himself as well.
And I feel closer to him than ever before.
Part of me wants him to kiss me. I want to feel what I did in that alleyway again, but this time without the danger lurking around the corner, without the fear and anxiety of hiding from the guards. I want him to kiss me here in this room, where it’s silent and still and no one will bother us, where we can do as little or as much as we want. Where I could relax into his touch and learn what it’s like to be kissed by a man like this, a man like no other I’ve ever known.
Something hovers between us for another long moment, thickening the air. Then Zhori squeezes my leg suddenly, his face breaking into the charming smile that I’m coming to know well. The tension between us breaks like a thread snapping.
“We should get some rest,” he says. “It’s been a long evening.”
I don’t argue. I am tired, and I know our time hiding out in this room will be over soon. We’ll make another move to get off Nierra before long, and it’ll help if we’re well-rested.
After I change into my slip, we both crawl into bed as usual, with Zhori spooning me as I pull the blankets up over us.
But tonight, as he holds me, I’m aware of him in an entirely new way.
12
Zhori
I hold Brooke tightly in my arms as she falls asleep, feeling her relax slowly as she drifts off into slumber.
It’s more difficult for me to find sleep. Desire is raging through me as I hold her against my body, the weight of her in my arms making me almost ravenous with need.
She’s so beautiful, and I feel like I know her now in a way that I didn’t before.
Hearing her sing…
Gods, her voice was the most beautiful, entrancing thing I’ve ever heard. And now that I know what it means to her, it only makes the sound of her sweet song all the more alluring.
I didn’t mean to witness something so personal or make her feel as if she has no privacy, but I can’t quite regret that I did. I learned more about her as a result, and shared a little of myself with her too.
It feels as if something has shifted between us. It seems that she’s truly accepted that I’m on her side, that I would never hurt her, that I’m only here to help her and keep her safe. She opened herself up to me, and it makes me feel all the more protective toward her. I don’t want her to be hurt again, in any way.
Which is exactly why you shouldn’t allow this to become more than it is, I tell myself firmly. You’re just pretending to be mates, and if you indulge in that fantasy any more than you already have, there’s a good chance you’ll both get hurt eventually.
That doesn’t stop my traitorous mind from conjuring images of what it might be like to give in to the attraction that simmers between Brooke and me.
I want to roll her onto her back, look down at her beautiful face as I slide into her, see pleasure flicker over her features as I thrust into her again and again. I want to find out if she sounds as beautiful when she moans as when she sings, hear her voice rising with the sounds of pleasure until we both—
My cock throbs, and I bite back a groan. I’m harder than I’ve ever been in my life, and for a moment, I consider getting up and doing something about it. I could slip out of bed and into the bathing room, where a few quick strokes of my cock would bring me temporary relief.
But even as I contemplate it, Brooke shifts in her sleep, cuddling closer to me. I close my eyes, wincing ruefully as I tighten my arm around her. I can’t leave her alone and cold in bed while I indulge my base urges.
It doesn’t matter anyway, I think grimly. If how you’ve been lately is any indication, you’ll be hard again seconds after you come, as soon as she’s in your arms again.
Because no matter how often I remind myself that Brooke is my mission, that I’m duty-bound to keep her safe and not get drawn in by our ruse of being mates, it doesn’t change one simple fact.
I want her.
“We should try to make a move tonight,” I tell Brooke in the morning as we eat the tasteless hot cereal that by now has become something I dread. “We can’t stay holed up here forever. We’ve got to get off the planet eventually, and hopefully by now Savyiek will have tapered off the hunt. Perhaps he even thinks we’ve escaped already. We’ll try to track down a smuggler tonight and see if we can make some progress toward securing passage out of here.”
“All r
ight.” Brooke agrees easily, her blue eyes shining as she meets my gaze.
She’s come to trust me more and more as the days have passed, and after our conversation last night, something has shifted between us. We feel more like a team than ever, and I’m glad of it.
We head out once night begins to fall, wrapped tightly in our bulky clothes both as protection against the cold and as a means of trying to stay disguised as best as we can. I keep Brooke close to me, my arm wrapped around her protectively the way it was the last time we ventured out together.
I don’t know if it’s my own increasing desire or what we shared of our pasts over dinner last night, but it feels more comfortable this time to hold her close to me, less like an act that I’m putting on to fend others off. She leans easily into my side as well, moving into my embrace as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, her body pliant and soft against mine. It makes me realize all over again how much I like the way she responds to my touch, the way that she fits against me.
Our destination is a slightly sketchy saloon in the entertainment district that I heard mentioned while I was buying food from a street vendor.
It has a dirty stone exterior, with an arched door that hangs open so that anyone can walk in. The lights inside are dim, music trickling out onto the street, and as we enter, I see a stage to the left of the bar. Two tall, beautiful alien women dance together on the small platform, barely clothed.
A band of musicians plays from behind the stage, and the bar is crowded even for this time of night, the noise a low and constant din.
My shoulders tense as I look around, more alert and on-edge than ever. I need to keep Brooke safe, and it makes me nervous to have her out here with me. But for all I know, we could find a smuggler who’s taking off tonight. I can’t risk having to waste time going back for her and missing our window.
