by Amanda Milo
A blade pops out alongside his wrist at the joint, surprising me enough to make me squeak and almost let him go. But not today, Bash. “Nope,” I say, executing an emergency arm-hugging maneuver in which I manage to shock Bash into not leaping over the table and ripping Jonohkada’s throat out... because I’ve got his limb smashed between my boobs.
“What are you doing?” Bash asks, his spines raised up in every direction, looking less aggressive and more taken aback—which works for me because it means innocent lives are spared. Run, Jonoh!
“We need to talk,” I tell him.
“Should I save her drink?” Jonoh asks the next bunch of women in line, who although they’ve clustered together and are casting wary looks at how reluctant Bash is about being dragged away from the caffeine station, are still not going to leave the coffee before they’ve had their cups of it secured. And no one blames them. Morning joe, or give me death!, as the less well-known version of Patrick Henry’s rally cry goes. “Is it a beverage that tastes good when it’s allowed to go cold? The cream will melt,” Jonoh adds worriedly.
“Screw waiting for her. I’m not letting this beauty go to waste,” Mandi announces, and peripherally I see her swipe my miracle brew and cut out of the line.
I fumble for Bash’s shirt collar when he tries to turn on her for taking my drink. He’s too tall though, and I only manage to get a fistful of his shirt right over his chest. I hold onto him for all I’m worth. “No you don’t—I just gave up the most delicious calorie-laden morning beverage known to man for you, so now you’re coming with me.”
Bash’s gaze meets mine, and just having him look at me without any sort of anger or resentment makes me nearly weightless. “Aren’t you depriving yourself of your nutritional needs?”
I nod solemnly. “For you, I’ll cope.” I add a deprecating shrug. “For as long as I can.”
Bash’s nostrils flare and his features pinch in what might be worry. His eyes snap to Jonohkada. “Make her another vile drink!”
Groans and little angry hisses erupt from the women still waiting in line, more rightful to having a turn than me.
Bash exhales a breath at them that makes the air shimmer with heat, and they shut up, eyes wide.
It’s entirely possible that Bash, who can barely stand the sound of a human’s breathing, simply wants to threaten to attack them for committing the sin of quietly complaining. However, his show of aggression could also be because he’s defending me.
And if this is the case, I’m head over heels for it. Sorry ladies.
I pat him on the back, right where the slits in his shirt allow his spines to fit through. “Hey now, don’t burn them at the fueling station. Human bodies probably smell terrible when they’re on fire; you’ll ruin the coffee.”
“They do smell terrible,” Bash agrees, leaving me wondering when he would have encountered a burned human body.
I decide it’s better not to know. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
“What do you want to prattle about when you should be working?” Bash asks, gaze flicking to Jonoh as he whips up another drink for me, making all the other women wait per Bash’s command.
I would have preferred some privacy, but I can roll with this here if he can. “It’s important for you to know that where I’m from, guys run the other direction if you tell them you want a relationship.”
Something happens with Bash’s crossed arms; I think I’ve surprised him by jumping on this topic. His whole body tenses, and he’s giving me major side-eye all of a sudden. Maybe he thought that we’d simply pretend my offer never happened.
But he doesn’t interrupt me, so I go on. “So the quickest way to see them disappear is to tell them that you want more beyond a good roll in the sack.”
Bash’s eyes narrow.
“And when you told me about your previous relationship, I thought you were telling me that you were never going to go down the relationship road again, and I wanted to respect that. But I promise I’m more like you than you’d believe. If you’d given me a chance to speak instead of flipping out on me, I’d have told you that where I’m from, I always seem to get the guys who want friends with benefits because the woman they REALLY want is with someone else.” I make a face and shrug. “I’m who they settle for—but only temporarily. If the opportunity presents herself, I'm kicked to the curb.” Bash’s scowl is carving even deeper. I continue, “So I learned to settle for sex with no attachment, because the majority of single men prefer to stay single, and not make any commitments.” I lean into his space a little, really driving home my point. “A woman never lays it out that she wants to lock a guy down unless she wants the mission to abort before takeoff. And I thought that you were saying you didn’t want to be locked down, so I was doing as my people do, rolling with what I perceived you were willing to give. If you want to have any sort of relationship with me, you need to not jump to a reaction next time. Ask first. Talk. Don’t freak out. It’s a firm rule, are we clear?” I squint at him. “Nod if you’re still with me. You’re not even breathing. It’s weird.”
Bash’s arms close around me and squeeze me until my toes barely touch the ground. “Isla,” he rasps—and then he buries his face in my hair.
“Your drink is ready, Isla,” Jonohkada calls in the worst timing ever. For him. Not for me.
Because Bash’s grip around me turns to steel, and although he wants to attack Jonoh all over again, it’s hard for me to regret it when Bash’s strong arms feel so nice.
Snuggling deeper into his embrace until my back is tucked into the crook of his arm, I reach up and tap him on his pebbly textured cheekbone to get his attention.
He tenses and locks his attention on me. Nice. Mission accomplished. “All right, I know you’re antsy to get the day started, so let’s go. That way, you can chew on it.”
“Chew on what?” he asks, before darting a look around. “Who?” he asks in confusion.
I move to push out of his hold—and for the briefest, tiniest moment, I’d almost swear Bash’s arms tighten like he doesn’t want to let me go. But he does. “Whoa, whoa, easy,” I tell him. “Not on anyone specifically—it’s a saying!”
Behind his counter, at a relatively safe distance from us, Jonoh snorts, refolding his wings and starting to make the next woman’s coffee. He’s set my cup to the side, and nobody is as brave (or desperate) as Mandi, because nobody scarfs it. He sends Bash a slightly wary look but explains, “It means to mull over what the person has said.”
I wave in his direction. “What he said.”
Bash’s eyes are narrowed and his nostrils smoke.
I give him you are so crazy eyes while I jog to Jonoh and collect my drink. I’d duck my head in apology to all the other women in line waiting for custom drinks, but I’m sipping my cookie-crumble-covered confection and it’s hard to feel much shame. “Thanks, Jonoh!” I tip my head in gratitude to the women giving me looks borne of coffee-withdrawal. “Ladies. Thanks for your patience.”
Jonoh calls cheerfully, “Enjoy your drink, Isla!” Then, “I am deeply sorry,” he announces to the gals in line, specifically the very next one in line who must have ordered the same drink as me, “I just used the last of the chocolate cookies. I cannot add cookies to any more drinks as crumble toppings.” He looks properly remorseful for news of this gravity.
Just about everybody else in line groans.
“Sorrrrry!” I shout to everyone, and I receive some middle fingers and colorful mumbles and I have to transfer my drink to my short arm so I can catch Bash by his tail and start walking him to a job site before he strangles some custom coffee-deprived women. “Come on, Sunbeam. Let’s go pick up rocks and not chew on people.” I give him a pointed look. “I just want to make sure we’re very clear on that part.”
Bash rolls his head side to side on his shoulders, making his quills and neck spines collide and flatten in interesting ways, but he follows me instead of going Godzilla on anyone. “Drink your nutritious poison and while we pick
rocks, you can talk my ears numb.”
I grin up at him. “Well, when you ask me so nicely...”
~*~
I talk Bash’s ears numb. But hey, he told me I could. And he never tells me to stop. He’s even interested to hear about the mini-set I’m building (thanks to him bringing me the alien-balsa wood), which brings us to the topic of the real-life sets I’ve worked on, and all the fun that those endeavors wrought. “My mentor won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Lighting Design, but when the awards banquet was being held, he was in the middle of designing a set for the Vienna State Opera. I’d just finished up a production at the Royal Shakespeare Company, so I was basically in the right place at the right time to help him out. I got to accept his award for him and give his speech. It was awesome—and I mean that in the full breathtaking-but-daunting definition.” I stop to let a cart roll past me, and one of the Narwari pulling it eyes me, licking its fangs hungrily. I blink after it until Bash nudges me with his tail.
“Move, human,” he orders, lugging an Egyptian pyramid-sized stone on his shoulder beside me.
Hefting my boulder, I do as the boss urged and keep pace with him to the stationary cart we’re working to fill. “As cool as it was to accept his award—and it was cool—I’d have loved to have been with my mentor instead,” I say wistfully.
Bash deposits his giant rock with even less care than usual. He doesn’t plonk it down. He hurls it. The wood-slat cart doesn’t just creak; the boards in the middle of the cart where the stone hits actually splinter and the rock lodges itself in with an impressive crack!
“Why would you have loved to be with him?” Bash bites out between his sparkling white fangs.
I bump my rock onto the back of the wagon, and it rolls in the now messed-up cart and knocks against Bash’s lodged stone. “Because he was building sets in Germany. Germany puts on like five times the amount of productions that the States do. And everything is so beautiful there. Maybe it’s just a case of the grass is always greener on the other side, you know?”
Bash doesn’t know; he gives me a look like I’m incomprehensible.
“Though I do love working in playhouses just a little more than ballet theatres. Have I told you about the sets for The Audience, where the—”
“Where the actress left her work site to bellow at a group of musicians who were rudely interrupting her place of current employment,” Bash confirms. He crosses back to where we’re rock harvesting and starts beating on the crater wall to bring down more stones. He takes a moment though to perform an almost admiring tip of his horns. “I approved mightily of her,” he announces.
“Helen Mirren, and you would, you really would.” I stand back from the spray of rock chunks showering down as Bash’s hits connect with the stone wall. “She’s serious about work. But she had every right to go after that group, and it was really funny. So I guess I told you that one. How about Frankenstein?” Bash’s tail sweeps a smattering of scattered rocks in my general direction, moving them out of the danger range so that I can start gathering without getting beaned in the head by the pickaxe raining shards down. “I helped design the set and got to do some wiring for the massive filament light bulb installation. Oh, and you’d probably like the story itself. The monster is deadly, but he’s really just misunderstood.” And mistreated when all he wanted was acceptance and love. I sigh. “It’s very you.”
“You’re insulting me again, aren’t you.”
“Teasing! And only a little. Not insulting…”
The day goes on like this, with the highlight being when Bash calls for break time and sits with me to eat his lunch. He even offers part of it to me, but when I see that whatever he’s eating is dripping an unpalatable olive-green foam, I decline. I spend too long staring at his food; it looks like someone took Ramen noodles, formed them into a semi-circular patty of wriggling ribbon-worms, and baked them. Then they folded it over, stuffed alien food in the pocket, and turned it into a pita of terror. Bash notices me watching, his eyes flash with humor, and he bites into his hair-raising meal with relish. This causes the surface of the Ramen shell to pulse, and little red blisters form on it, breaking out like his food suddenly has hives, and that’s when I lose all courage and dive from my seat.
“What the tevek are you doing?” Bash asks, wiping his mouth politely on—I kid you not—a cloth napkin he brought in his lunch sack. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
“I’ve lost my appetite,” I tell him as I pack up my little lunch tray. “Jonoh!” I call.
Bash growls.
“Yes?” Jonohkada asks, appearing instantly like the wonderful lackey he is.
“Here,” I tell him, pressing my tray into his chest. “Eat it or give it away; I don’t care.”
“Isla, no,” Bash argues, not sounding amused anymore at my squeamishness and beginning instead to sound concerned. “You’re working too hard to start fasting.”
Jonoh is neatly rearranging what I have on my tray. “Technically, humans can manage a surprising amount of exertion while fasting as long as they’re provided with the proper amount of electrolytes.” His face becomes animated as he splits his attention between the two of us, warming up to his subject with clear excitement. “There are some fascinating studies we obtained from Earth, where—”
“Sit down,” Bash commands.
Jonohkada sits, clutching my tray in his lap.
Bash transfers his laser focus from me to Jonoh, his icy silence causing discomfort with the power of third-degree frostbite.
“You meant Isla,” Jonoh says simply, blinking.
Bash continues to stare at him.
“I’ll go now,” Jonoh declares in his easy way. He stands from the spot that Bash meant for me to have and gives me a strained smile. “I’ll disperse your lunch.”
Bash mutters curses that are new to my translator, and mostly come across as clicks and rumbling sounds of intense, extreme displeasure.
“Thanks,” I say to Jonoh. To Bash, I give a wave. “I’m going back to work.”
Bash inhales, sucking all the smoke that he’d been producing in these last couple of unhappy moments right back into his lungs. I’m guessing Rakhii can’t contract emphysema, otherwise they would all be going gills up, and Bash seems healthy as a horse. An angry nightmare of a horse, but a healthy one nonetheless. “Wait.” He releases a stream of fire on his food, turning it into half of a brick of charcoal, and he bolts it down with a speed that is a testament of his practice at eating badly burned things.
“Ick,” I mumble.
Bash sends me a dark look and scrapes his napkin across his mouth.
Whatever he just ate? The smell of it does not improve with death by fire, by the way.
Even Jonoh’s nose has wrinkled.
Bash knocks back a thermos of water and cuts him a glare that should set his wings on fire. “Get her the electrolytes you mentioned.”
Jonoh looks troubled. “I believe we’ve run out of—”
Bash glares at him.
Jonoh dips his chin. His wing talons cup each other, looking anxious over his shoulders. “I will appropriate more and bring them here.”
“That’s the correct answer,” Bash says.
CHAPTER 31
BASH
(Crying Counter: Laudable)
Jonohkada hands Isla’s food tray to a nearby luncheon grouping of women, snaps his wings open, and flies off to wherever electrolytes can be found.
I turn to Isla to find her head cocked, her eyes somewhat squinted as she studies me. “I know you just ate, but maybe you’re still hangry.” She sends me a faux-prim dip of her head. “You’re definitely still bossy.”
I growl at her noncommittally, making her smile.
“When we finish with the day,” I warn, “I’m going to take you to my den, and make sure you consume a hearty meal.”
“I don’t want what you were having, but thanks.”
“Then you’ll have something else of my hand. Now shut down and work with
me.”
“Shut up.”
I skid to a halt, browplates raised.
She sends me a fast laugh and smile. “I was correcting you, not telling you to shut it.”
I shake my horns at her and walk her to the station I intend to work at, the tool station this time, and she stays with me. My desire to have her near was implied when I didn’t shout at her to get away from me, but I’m more aware than ever of the importance of clear communication after she reprimanded me for being too quick to condemn her yesterday. “I’m going to spend the evening with you after our shifts here end.”
Isla drops a wrench on my tail.
I hiss.
“I am so sorry,” she squeaks. Her hand flies to cover her mouth. “I just wasn’t expecting you to say that! You want to spend the night with me?”
I eye her. “Part of the evening.”
She deflates, her hand dropping back down. “Oh. Right. No cuddling in bed all night, I get it.”
I frown at her. “No cuddling in bed at all. We will not be joining. I have boundaries.”
Now it’s Isla’s turn to frown. “Then what the heck will we be doing?”
I open my mouth to speak but then close it. What do I want to happen tonight? Would I love to lay with Isla? Without question. But once she enjoys me, she could walk away. I want her so thoroughly attached to me that, even after we consummate our attraction, she feels as bound to me as I do to her.
A yearning glance around to the other human-and-Rakhii couples, all happily joined, proves humans are capable of making such binding commitments. And Isla shared that she’d like to explore the possibility of having a relationship with me.
I meet Isla’s stare. “I want you to thoroughly desire me.”
“Done,” she says almost before I can finish speaking.
“In a permanent sense,” I clarify.
“I’m all for commitment. And wow, I don’t know what to make of this proposed date night.” She smiles to herself and picks up the wrench that’s beside my smarting tail. “We’ve taken everything slow and backwards, getting to know each other before the sex. It’s so wonderfully unconventional.”
