by Amanda Milo
“I’ve tried building a relationship in the reverse. It didn’t work,” I tell her softer than I mean to say the words.
To my surprise, Isla’s gaze softens. Rather than attempting to change my mind on the topic of early consummation, she simply shrugs. “We’ll go slow.” She twines her two firstmost fingers until they’re braided, folding down her other fingers so that the crossed ones stand out, and then she puts her hand behind her back.
I eye her suspiciously, smoke puffing between us. “Slow. You? I'm beginning to think you don't know the meaning of the word, female. You're a whirlwind. You're… chaos.”
Something Isla confided to me early on comes back to me now. ‘Most fun I’d ever had to that point, I’d realize much later. I didn’t know it then because when you’re in the middle of the chaos you rarely enjoy it.’
I thought her statement true then. But right in this moment, wrapped right up in it—I still know I enjoy Isla’s brand of playful mayhem. She is quite simply the most fun I’ve ever had.
CHAPTER 32
ISLA
The end of the work day has me dancing up to Bash. He’s been overseeing a group of stonecutters for hours, and it was making him grumpy. Some were Rakhii, some hobs. All of them have stonework-roughened hands that have clearly never seen a bottle of Nivea with shea butter. The guys do great work, but apparently Bash gets stressed out during the quality-check process. He had a pair of calipers squeezed in one fist and a lengthy chart full of Gryfala-given specifications in his other.
Thanks to the shadow cast by the wall, the stonecutters did half their shift in the shade. The rest of the day though, they were under the hot sun, which they handled well—but God help the alien who asked Bash if he could be excused to go to the bathroom.
“You ready to let your captives go?” I ask sweetly.
Bash sends me a dark look. His stonecutters scramble while his attention is off of them, and he glances back to find them gone. He turns a glower on me.
“What? It was time for them to be set free.” I wave at the exodus happening up the quarry steps and at the Narwari ramps. “Everyone else is leaving for the day. And besides.” I smile at him, huge. “We’ve got a date.”
“No joining,” he warns me at the same time he sends me a hot (and bothered) look. He sets his calipers and specs chart on a work table.
I follow him, and he eyes me mistrustfully.
“How about a kiss?” I tease, lifting up on my toes and raising my face up as close to his as I can. “Are my lips pale?” I smile at him.
His eyes narrow—on my mouth. “No.” His throat scales stretch as he swallows. “I don’t trust myself to kiss you now without taking all of you.”
OKAY! “All right,” I say airily and drop back down til the heels of my work boots touch rock floor. “Maybe I’ll get lucky at the end of this date.” Abruptly, I’m being backed right into the wall. My eyes fly up to his in shock.
Bash plants one massive hand beside my head and leans in on one thick forearm in until our noses are almost touching. “Isla?” His exhale becomes my next breath. “Respect. My. Boundaries.”
His warning sets shivers traveling through me. The good kind. I send him a sincere smile. “I will. You said slow and like I told you, I can work with that. With this being an official date though, kisses are on the table.” As is teasing. He’s so stiff and serious; he needs to be shaken up as much as possible.
Bash’s eyes shift to the table near us and for a beautiful second where he inhales sharply and all of his spines raise, I know he’s imagining a kiss happening on it.
But then his long ears flatten and he shakes his head like he’s tossing off the image.
Aww, Bash. It’s okay to enjoy the moment. I’m not going to hurt you.
Somehow, I need to convince him that I’m not here to bang him and bail. That we don’t have to wait anymore—I’m committed. I’m as committed as they come. But he’s not going to believe what I say. This is a male who gave his heart… er, hearts—to a female who friggin’ stomped on them after using him for hot crazy monkeysex.
I clear my throat as he retreats from me, letting me straighten from the wall where he had me happily trapped. “Want help putting away your tools and stuff?”
I can see the refusal spring to the tip of his tongue. But he surprises me by catching it and agreeing instead. “We’ll make better time together, Grab those there.” He indicates tools to my left.
Always so efficient. “You got it, boss.”
“Talk to me,” he orders, surprising me.
So for the next five minutes, we sweep up the area, the quarry finishes emptying out, and we’re left alone while I tell him about the phenomenon of pet rocks in the mid-seventies.
“I should probably be offended that you think I’d believe such nonsense, but the notion of your people adopting rocks as pets and paying for the privilege somehow does not surprise me.”
I smirk. “Next I’ll tell you about Beanie Babies.”
“Don’t. If your people adopted beans for children, I’ll be done with all of you.”
I bust out laughing.
Bash watches me, something on his face registering as a soft poof along a spot tucked behind my breastbone. It makes my laughter taper off until we’re left staring at each other.
Bash’s eyes snag on the spot when I bring the heel of my hand up to rub it.
I clear my throat. “So,” I start. “What are we doing for our date?”
It takes several blinks for Bash to come to himself and drag his gaze up to meet mine. “I will feed you.”
“Your food is weird, but I’d just about eat recycled tires if it means I get to spend time with you.” I shrug. “Lead the way.”
“How,” Bash asks softly, staring into my eyes. “Do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Admit the most disarming things as if it doesn’t leave your soul open and unprotected.”
“Oh.” I shrug. “I’ve tried keeping that stuff to myself. Know where it got me?”
His ears twitch forward just slightly. “Where?”
I smile sadly. “Nowhere. If I don’t open up and show you what I’m feeling, how will you know who I am and what I want? Besides, I said the tire bit because I thought you’d jump on it. You missed an opportunity to disparage all of humankind and our primitive transportation donuts—again. Are you okay?” I move for the ramp that will take us to his cave, knowing he’ll follow.
He falls into step beside me, not his characteristically quiet self. “I’m not certain what I am.”
“An alien.”
“You’re an alien,” he retorts without heat. “Scaleless pest.”
“Where I’m from, that’s a positive trait.”
“Proving how backwards your people are.”
I start to moonwalk—which makes Bash’s eyes bug out before he swings his horns and sneers at me like he wasn’t just shocked by my moves.
I toss him a grin. “See? You are so fun when you’re in a good mood!” I bump him. “I like you, you know. Even when you’re grouchy, but especially when you’re in a good mood.”
Smoke curls up out of his nostrils.
“Uh oh,” I murmur, eyeing him. “What’s the matter?”
Bash catches me by the elbow and halts us both, immediately making the moment feel heavy. His serious-as-death expression seals it. “I care about you, Isla. I more than like you.”
“Oh.” I swallow. “That’s good.”
He stares at me hard. I used to think he was furious, this look on his face, but I’ve come to realize it’s his resting face. His thoughtful face. It’s a dragon glower, all thick brows and a natural scowl and quills standing up on his forehead like gel-stiffened hair. “I care about you, and it terrifies me. You have a power over me that I’ve given out only once, and it nearly ended me. I’m no seeksorrow to enjoy such a pain twice, so understand me when I say I wouldn’t have chosen to give it to you at all. Not to you, not to anyone. Never a
gain, I told myself. Somehow, you took it. And knowing you could destroy me makes me wary of you. Of what you’re capable of. And nearly all of the time, I’m certain you don’t know the destruction you could wreak. There—have I bared my soul in an Isla-like manner?”
“Yeah,” I croak out, gaze glued to his. “You have.”
Like he can’t keep his fragile nerve endings exposed for me any longer, he shifts his gaze away, and his body follows, unable to stay still under my attention.
But he doesn’t walk away.
I wish I knew what to say to him. I decide to tell him exactly what I’m thinking. A stream-of-consciousness confession that I hope comes across as heartfelt as I’m feeling it. “I’m going to level with you.” I wait for him to turn his head enough that I catch both his eyes and I can feel confident that I have his full attention. “I’m not here to hit it and quit it. I swear I’m in it for the long haul. Do you believe me?”
Bash stares at me almost uncomprehendingly.
He confirms it’s entirely uncomprehendingly when he orders, “Repeat that. Please.”
I’m sort of more surprised that he added please than I am that he wants me to say it again so I’m slow in my clarification. “It means I more than like you too and I’m not going to jump you then change my mind.”
With each and every word out of my mouth, his eyes have gone narrower and narrower. “This translator,” he starts, “desperately needs calibration.”
“It does?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he stresses, “what any of those words meant. Not with the way you’ve strung them together.”
I wave the phrase-confusion away. “You can count on me to be your other half. I try to be a good person. I would try hard to be good to you, and I believe you’ll be the same for me.” I stare up into his turmoil-dark eyes. “Right?”
“You want a relationship?” he grates.
I try not to widen my eyes. “Yeah.”
“You want to be my other half?”
I give him a small, reassuring smile. “That’s what I said.”
“Isla,” he bites out. “I need you to be certain.”
I feel my expression soften as I search his stern features. “I wouldn’t be here telling you this if I wasn’t. I’m not going to jerk you around.”
He frowns during the second half of my declaration, and I can guess why.
“Bash, I’m not going to… I’m not here to tease you or lead you to believe something that isn’t true.” I breach the distance between us to take his hand—and I swallow a sigh of relief when he lets me. “I would never do that to you.”
“Why?” he asks, his voice rough—but not mean. “You could have your pick of males. Why me?”
He’s so unaware of his worth to me that it makes my heart break a little for him. “Because you’re prickly to cover up your soft spots. Because you wait in line to get me a drink you find absolutely disgusting just because you know I like it. Because you made me spit-ointment when you knew I’d be hurting. Because I’ve been used and tossed aside too, and I’m tired of being taken advantage of. I don’t like to share either, and I want to be with someone who… someone who could—”
I almost don’t say the word. It’s a dangerous word, where I’m from.
But this is Bash. And he appreciates my openness.
“Love me,” I finish, forcing the word out, hearing it crack. “And because you see me for me, and you’ve never made me feel like ‘that one-armed girl.’” I smile at him, blinking away shininess that spreads to my lashes. “Also because I’ve never had anyone who likes to hear me talk like you do.”
“You tell terrible stories of a terrible place.”
“I genuinely get a kick out of how horrified Earth-trivia makes you.”
“If all you wanted was a kick, you should have told me and spared yourself the trouble of talking.”
I laugh, the tension breaking.
At least on my end. Not on Bash’s, and the moment my eyes find his, the weight in the air is back, making my lungs seize. “Isla,” he asks, his face serious. His horns look huge as ever and his spines are sitting straight up along his back.
“Hmm?”
“You are beyond certain you want to be paired to me?” he stresses.
My eyes bounce between both of his. “I’m sure.”
He doesn’t break our stare. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t make a sound. He takes a very deep inhale, then his arm reaches around me and—
“Ah!” my front collides with his body as he hauls me to his side.
“We must make haste,” Bash commands, and starts walking.
I have to double-time it to keep up. He makes sure I have no choice. “Are we going to a bed?” I sort-of-but-not-really tease. I tilt my head to try to get a read on his features: ears back, serious face on, shoulders wide and set with purpose. There’s a pinch to his brows that gives the impression he’s deep in plans. I’m relieved to note that when he glances down to see me watching him, I do see heat in his eyes.
But… it’s not like wild I-have-to-have-you-now heat.
So… why the rush? “Not a bed?”
Bash gives his horns an absent shake in the negative. He follows this with a wordy, “Not yet.”
But there will be a bed in the future? I face forward and quicken my pace even more so that he doesn’t have to stifle his long-legged stride quite as much as he has to when I’m not power walking to keep up with him. “So where?”
Bash points. “That wagon.”
***
It’s a longer wagon ride than we’ve ever taken before. Past all sorts of interesting sights; fields and mountains and people. Alien people. Rakhii people. All of them male. All of them hefting tools or baskets or loads borne between pairs of broad shoulders on staves. We pass more and more of them the further we travel away from the quarry. I wave a lot, enjoying all the horn-tips and friendly (or shocked) smiles I get in return. Bash stops for no one and is weirdly quiet, even when I try to tantalize him with tidbits from Earth that should drive him up a wall to learn.
Since the Narwari seem to move at a similar speed as a horse, I imagine we probably only cover a couple of miles total. But there are a whole lot of colorful shops in those couple of miles. Glassblowing studios, food markets, gemstone and fine jeweler shops. For every business with doors open on the ground, there seems to be a mirror of the shop built in the sky.
For ground-dwelling and flying customers both, I realize.
The road isn’t paved or dirt; it’s rock. It’s the same sort of stone the quarry rock is, and it’s cut flat here, wide enough for three wagons to ride abreast of each other and a whole lot of Rakhii foot-traffic to walk. On either side of the road is a belt of low, leafy vegetation, just the small stuff that is determined to grow where nothing else can. In some places beyond them, I can see trees, what looks like a swath of forest. There’s a line of Rakhii leaving the woods like busy ants, many of them bearing caber-like timbers.
When our wagon crests hills in the road, I can see a mountain range in the distance, a huge one. I’ve given up trying to chatter about anything because I’m too busy staring like a wide-eyed tourist to concentrate and Bash hasn’t ordered me to keep talking.
Bash drives us to a carefully tended lane with a beautifully arranged garden. All other traffic disappears, and if I was the nervous type I’d be wondering where Bash was taking me. A thousand glances over at him and he looks like a man on a mission. Count me intrigued, because we don’t seem to be headed for a horizontal surface but we also don’t seem to be headed for food, which was what he originally mentioned, and now I’m getting hungry.
And as he clucks to the Narwari pulling our wagon, it seems his mission was to take us to a stone cottage straight out of a fairy tale. At first, I think it has a moss roof until I realize the structure is built out of the side of a mountain—the green ‘roof’ is a mountain slope. Vines snake down either side of a charmingly shaped door. It isn’t ro
und. It isn’t rectangular. It’s irregular but beautifully carved, fitting to the craggy cutout of rock that serves as the entrance to this hole in the mountainside.
It’s an adorable rock hobbit house—but built for tall people (or aliens, I guess).
“Where are we?” I ask.
“This cave belongs to my sire and dam.”
I almost fall off the wagon I whip around to face him so fast.
Looking grumpily alarmed, Bash warns, “Careful, Isla. I don’t want you falling and hurting yourself.”
I shake his arm like a crazy person. “Seriously?!”
Bash frowns down at me in his customary Bash-scowl. It makes the scales on his face all tight, and I wonder if Rakhii get wrinkles. All this time, I’ve been pegging him at forties or fifties, but for all I know, he’s just a glowering twenty-one. “Isla. You should know by now I’m always serious.”
“You brought me to meet your parents!” Wow, I’ve been sweating like crazy at work and I didn’t get the chance to so much as brush my hair, let alone shower first. This’ll be an introduction to remember. “How old are you?”
Some of Bash’s scowl disappears as surprise raises his pinched brows. And nope, he still looks at least a scaly day over forty. “The inside of your mind must be a terrifying place.”
I flap my hand. “Never mind! You seriously brought me here so you can introduce me to your parents?” I hiss-whisper in excitement.
He eyes me for a beat. “We are here to retrieve my blanket. We’ll speak a few words we’re bound to say for ceremony’s sake—and yes, I have brought you here to meet my sire and dam,” he finally answers, almost dismissively... Except that he’s all tense, like he’s waiting for me to object or some craziness.
His ears pin and he jerks back when I screech, “FREAKING YES!” I shimmy in place to celebrate. “Finally! You’ve abducted me!”
The alien beside me gives me a look like I’m the strange one out of the two of us. With a shake of his horns, he hops off the wagon. He comes around to my side to haul me down. When my feet hit the ground, I’m all but vibrating. I shout in thrilled happiness, “You abducted me: you LIKE me! You really like me!”
