She got the distinct impression, though, almost as soon as Alaric reminded her of the offer and began to laboriously and carefully explain/demonstrate everything that she was being trained as a domestic goddess.
He was dead serious.
He wasn’t just manufacturing an excuse to get close to her.
It may have been ‘transference’. She only had one yard stick to measure by, after all, and that was her limited experience with Earth men.
They could be vastly different.
But they didn’t seem all that different in the way they looked at things and she tended to judge by her own experience.
Which was why she’d thought the offer to cook was actually an offer to ‘get to know’ her better and possibly seduce her—or at least attempt to.
Who was she kidding?
She’d been wide open to the possibility—waiting for them to attempt a seduction so she could ‘fall’ for it. She hadn’t even had enough sense to play hard to get. He’d smooched her and she’d wilted and sprawled out for the taking.
Which, in retrospect, might not have been the best of ideas.
Damn it!
She was beginning to have a bad feeling that that might have been the wrong move, that she might have lost points for being an easy lay.
They hadn’t even tried to get into her bed since and it had been days.
She’d thought she would have to beat them off of seconds—probably have to peel them off for the duration of her visit afterward—which she’d thought was a man concept and not necessarily an Earth man’s perspective.
Any Earth man who’d gotten a green light that easily would have known he had a plum, that he had the cow and could get milk whenever he pleased. And they would’ve been hitting that thing at every opportunity.
She really hadn’t seen any reason not to do exactly what she wanted to.
Her future wasn’t riding on playing ‘it’ just right. It wasn’t as if her adventure would last forever.
She had to experience what she could when she could if she wanted it.
And she did.
She thought she would have been interested in the experience purely on an experimental level even if she hadn’t been particularly attracted to them because they were intelligent alien beings and … well, different.
And, actually, the experience had taught her one vital difference between this species and humans—they weren’t territorial like their counterparts on Earth.
Well, she supposed they were mildly territorial. They observed a strict rule of pecking order and that was certainly common among humans—male and female.
And there did seem to be a hint of jealousy regarding her attention even if they hadn’t shown any hostility about sharing the pussy.
But there’d certainly not been any hesitation in doing a four way with her—which she would expect among human men. Even the ones that were seriously kinky in their sexual tastes were so territorial-possessive that there would have been rancor toward each other and her afterward and she hadn’t detected that in any of them.
She supposed that didn’t necessarily make it so.
She still had to make observations based on past experiences and knowledge and they were outside both. Maybe she just couldn’t recognize it? Maybe their customs prevented them from expressing their feelings?
She considered that while Alaric carefully explained what he was doing—which was measuring out the ingredients of whatever he was making using the scientific method of his hands ….
But try as she might, she didn’t see anything negative reflected in the expressions of the other two. They were watching Alaric far more intently than she was and she thought their expressions were very open and readable. Any time they noticed her gaze, they smiled at her—with approval, she was sure. Maybe even a little affection? Certainly friendliness.
The smiles seemed completely genuine.
She was used to interpreting expressions and she was good at it because she’d spent so much time studying the almost imperceptible nuances in everything from the patently false—because they wanted you to know or were just that bad at hiding their true feelings—to the very practiced actors that you had to watch closely to read.
As ridiculous as some scientists might consider her view point, to her the guys seemed totally unsophisticated—maybe even a little backwards in emotional development.
And that assessment completely supported the information none of them had wanted to share that they had no home world.
Something terrible had happened and left them without the emotional support of extended family.
She could relate to that … to a degree, anyway.
She’d been pretty young when her mother had died of an OD in an attempt to abort an unwanted pregnancy, but she remembered life before.
Not grand, and she only retained a handful of memories, but her mother had been happy and very much in love with her father. So she had happy memories to offset the horrible ones when her father was displeased and drunk and beat her mother up.
Unfortunately, the last one was all too clear.
Her father had gone into a rage when he discovered her mother had gotten pregnant. First he’d beaten her up for it and then he’d grabbed his stuff up and left.
She didn’t think her mother had intended to kill herself.
She thought her mother was trying to please her father and get him back.
That was what her grandmother thought.
And then her grandmother had taken her in to raise her and the rest of the family had resented it, resented her for every dime her grandmother had spent on her.
She told herself she hadn’t actually lost them—her family. They couldn’t have cared about her to begin with or they would have been loving and supportive when she lost her parents, but she still felt like she’d lost everyone.
Except her grandmother.
But as much as her grandmother seemed to love her it just wasn’t enough to make up for everything she’d lost.
The guys had each other and she thought that explained a lot of the closeness between the three, maybe even explained why they hadn’t allowed any emotions—like possessiveness toward her—to taint that bond?
Maybe.
That would be understandable, that they wouldn’t want to allow it to, but she didn’t think that would prevent them from feeling it if the resentment was there.
They seemed to be in total harmony with one another.
And, actually, to feel like she was now one of them, she thought.
She wasn’t sure of where that idea arose from, but once it had, it felt absolute solid.
She was still wondering if she could trust it—or wanted to—when Serge did something that threw her for a loop.
They’d completed the meal—whatever it was—and set it on the table.
Then they did this, sort of, appreciation ritual.
Alaric pulled her into a quick, light embrace and kissed the top of her head.
Luki embraced her from behind and kissed her neck.
And then Serge grinned at her and patted her abdomen.
She’d begun to feel all warm and fuzzy from the attention of the other two, wondering if food was going to lead up to sex.
And then the pat.
It wasn’t hard to interpret.
She’d seen enough people pat the bellies of pregnant women to know exactly what that was.
Except she wasn’t pregnant.
But he thought she was.
Or might be.
If she hadn’t been just too stunned to really react and, instead, gone into zombie mode, she might have done or said something drastic right then.
But she was shocked.
They were done eating and had taken off before she realized they were gone and she could relax and think over what had happened and how she felt about it in peace.
* * * *
Amber was pissed off and
the more she thought about it the more pissed off she was.
She didn’t know anything, of course. She suspected and she thought the suspicions were based upon experience and observations and was probably right, but she couldn’t confirm it without confronting them about it.
And it occurred to her that accusing them on such a small amount of evidence just wasn’t right, however strongly she felt about it, when she knew she could be totally wrong.
They’d been good to her, courteous and considerate when she was pretty sure that all they’d wanted was the capsule and they’d rescued her because they were decent, good hearted creatures and it went against their code of behavior to harm or allow to be harmed any creature that had done nothing to them.
On top of that, she just wasn’t a confrontational kind of person, and she didn’t think she could make herself confront them if her life depended on it.
Which it didn’t.
It festered, though, refusing to be dismissed.
It was an eruption of excess emotions that finally precipitated the confrontation, because she’d needed an impetus to get past the natural reluctance.
It wasn’t conscious, however.
She’d gone to prepare the one big meal they ate—which she assumed was supper in the southern vernacular or dinner for northern Americans—without prompting because she was a nervous wreck and needed the distraction.
It turned out she was a lot more distracted, though, than she realized. She’d already picked up the sweetening ingredient and given the mix a good ‘salting’ when she realized it wasn’t, in fact, salt. Consternation filled her. She’d just screwed up the entire thing and waste just wasn’t acceptable in space.
She didn’t know what their take on it was—they seemed to have more than adequate supplies—but NASA had pounded that in to everyone heading away from Earth enough that it was second nature.
Everything that got sent to space was not only irreplaceable, it was staggeringly expensive.
She simply stared at the mixture in consternation for a long, long time, trying to figure out if she could recover her screw up.
The answer, unfortunately, was no.
She didn’t think if she’d been a master chef she could have figured out what to do and she certainly wasn’t a kitchen wizard.
It was screwed.
She’d made a savory dish sweet.
The urge to burst into tears came out of nowhere and was nearly overpowering.
It shocked her.
She’d never been prone to tears that she could recall and the little ‘feminine’ urge she’d had had been pretty much knocked out of her because she’d chosen to compete in a man’s world and they were just waiting for any show of weakness.
Must be that time of the month, she thought absently, certain with a little thought that it must be although she’d completely lost track of the time and wasn’t sure of anything beyond ‘around’ that time.
That thought, not unnaturally, led to another that made her flash hot enough to pop a sweat and then cold enough to freeze it on her skin.
If she was right and it was time for her period then it was also time for fertility—or that preceded the period—which hadn’t happened.
She dismissed it.
Serge had planted that damned fear!
She was sure it wouldn’t have occurred to her otherwise.
Because they were aliens and they couldn’t possibly get her pregnant even though the lummox’s seemed to think they could.
She was upset and weepy because everything had gone all wrong when it had seemed so wonderful just prior to that!
She’d just thought she would enjoy a great adventure, the likes of which no human for generations would get the chance at—and then she would go home.
And now she was afraid that they’d lulled her suspicions with promises they’d never meant to keep. They’d played her to give themselves time to try to convince her to stay with them.
Not that that thought left her unmoved.
They were really sweet. And smart and handsome and clearly pretty well off if they could afford to sail around space all the time.
If they just hadn’t been aliens she would’ve jumped at the chance of any one of them.
Well, and if she hadn’t already made the decision to make her career her life goal.
They were already confusing her, she thought angrily.
Struggling to shake her unsettling thoughts and emotions, she finished the dish she’d been working on and stuck it into the cooking unit and set it as Alaric had taught her.
Was it her problem those idiots thought they were training a domestic slave?
If they’d asked she would have let them know in no uncertain terms that not only did she not aspire to be any damned man’s domestic slave, she wasn’t any good at it!
She didn’t want to be good at it, damn it!
Adequate was sufficient!
She made good money and she was single—no one to worry about feeding but herself!
She could afford to eat out and not cook.
Not that she was home very often anyway.
It said a lot for her self-absorption that she’d totally forgotten she sweetened the food instead of salting it until she took her first bite.
* * * *
The first thing that Alaric did when they had time alone to ‘discuss’ their problems in private was to kick Serge’s ass.
To give him credit, Serge didn’t make it easy for Alaric.
First, he tried to outrun him and when Alaric caught him anyway, he did his best to make him regret the decision to kick his ass.
With indifferent success.
Mostly because Alaric was too pissed off to really feel the retaliatory punches Serge threw at him.
Luki, who not only agreed with Alaric’s decision to kick Serge’s ass for his stupidity, but was generally the first in line to kick Serge’s ass, began to feel a little sorry for Serge and finally stepped in to pull Alaric off of him.
For a few moments, it seemed as if Alaric would work out the last of his rage on Luki, but he seemed to shake off his anger after a moment and crossed the bridge to sprawl in his seat.
Serge gave it a couple of hours before he decided to voice the question that had been plaguing him. “You do not think she knows she is breeding?”
Alaric sent him a narrow eyed glare. “I think there is no doubt …. Now.”
Serge blinked at him, encouraged to think it was probably not wise to pursue but, as usual, completely unable to keep his tongue still even when he knew it was probably going to result in another fight to try to preserve his hide. “I mean before ….”
Alaric’s lips tightened. “I know you have difficulty seeing past the end of your nose, Serge, because you are generally off in another world. But … you did not see her expression? You could not read the emotions behind it? Did you, by any stretch of the imagination, see her expression as one of surprised joy?”
Serge stared at him in dismay, trying without success to pull up some memory of her expression. Failing that, he struggled, briefly, to recall any emotional vibes he’d detected. “She was not happy?” he guessed.
“I will throttle you myself if you do not shut up,” Luki growled.
Serge stewed for a while, but he was a happy sort of person and it was hard to hold on to anger and shortly he turned his mind to the suggestion that Alaric and Luki had made that Amber had been unaware that she had mated with them.
He did not see how that was possible.
He did grasp that Alaric and Luki apparently saw their courtship in the light of an enemy coup—they would take her by subtle conquest.
In the history of their people he dimly recalled some reference to captive mates, but Furian women were quite fierce when they felt ‘wronged’ and he didn’t recall anything that suggested that it had ever really been successful.
Of course, Amber wasn’t a Furian woman.
>
They could not lose sight of that!
Or the consequences of it—which was that none of them had any inkling of how she might feel about the situation.
In all honesty—which he knew both Alaric and Luki would have furiously denied—they had not really gotten the chance to know the Furian women all that well—except their mother. They were to have taken part in their first ritual upon their return since completion of their first coup was the traditional transition to manhood.
But the Basinini bastards had blown up their world before that had happened.
So—in essence, they knew little about Furian women and nothing about Earth women.
Which made him wonder how it was that Alaric thought he knew the best way to go about courting Amber.
Certainly, the actual mating part was instinctual.
He had been very pleased that he had known exactly how to play his part in the breeding and had completed it successfully.
And that could only be put down to instincts.
And some knowledge picked up from experienced males here and there when they would talk about their experiences.
The bottom line, though, was that he was certain he had been successful—they had—because his senses told him that they had been.
If he could sense it, why would she not be able to?
He was sure their women could.
He thought.
Upon reflection, though, he realized that was yet another fact that he did not have because he had not had the chance to collect it.
It still seemed reasonable that the women would know if their men knew since it was their body that cradled the next generation.
But Amber was not Furian and maybe Alaric was right and she had not figured it out.
He still didn’t see why it would make her unhappy or at least upset to know they had chosen her and mated with her.
They were Furian warriors! They were the best of the best in the whole universe!
They had counted coup so many times even he could not recall how many.
She should be as honored to have them as they were to have her!
It was regrettable that they had been forced by circumstances to skip some very important parts of the mating ritual, but it was accomplished now! Now was the time to celebrate life and their future together!
Alien Touch Page 11
