by Dixon, Ruby
“You mean you want me in a shallow grave?”
“No…want you as mine.” He groans, eyes closing again, and his hips jerk. The cloth goes flying, and I scurry to pick it up. “Want you in my bed. Want you as my mate. Want your smile…”
I’m so utterly bewildered by his responses that I automatically hold my hand out for him to tongue bathe again. He nuzzles at my palm, and then strokes hard over it with his tongue, and I squeeze my thighs together. “Then why are you threatening me?”
“Never…”
“What’s with the door? It took me all day to clean that off!”
“Marking…territory…” he says against my palm.
I gasp, because he flicks his tongue against the sensitive skin between my fingers and sends a bolt through my body…just as I realize what’s going on.
He marked his territory. Sprayed like a cat. The kills on my doorstep remind me of my first cat, Mouser, who left me birds and dead mice at the foot of my bed.
Oh my god.
I’m being cat-courted and I never realized.
“You—you paid Bethiah?” I ask, curling my throbbing hand and placing it over my breast. “Why?”
“Didn’t…want anyone else even looking at what’s mine.” He says it so forcefully that it takes my breath away. “Because you are mine, Kim.”
“I don’t belong to you,” I protest.
“Not yet.” His agreement is soft, and then he starts to pant again. “Not yet. But eventually.”
I stare at him for a long moment. Then, I take a deep breath. Calmly dip the towels into the cold water and drape them—one over his junk, and one over his brow, covering his eyes. “I need to lie down.”
I’m not sure if my situation has just gotten better or worse. The bounty hunter betrayed me. My murdery neighbor? I don’t have to kill him, I guess. I just…really don’t know what to do with him now.
12
NASSAKTH
I feel ten times a fool when I wake out of a miserable sleep and find the noli has worn off. Kim is moving around in her kitchen, deliberately not looking over at me. There is a fresh wet cloth on my brow and one on my groin, which feels achingly raw.
All of me does, actually.
And I am ashamed. As the noli pushed its way through me, I confessed everything to her just so I could lick her small human hand. I told her about paying the bounty hunter. Told her about my hunger for her. Instead of falling upon me with gratitude, she looked at me as if I was sick-minded and left the room.
I suppose I have not made a good impression on her. I stretch and get to my feet, my trou full of half-dried seed. The moment I stand, the chair splinters under me and the cuffs snap, freeing my arms.
Right. I was pretending to be captive.
Kim looks over at me with that. Her mouth flattens as she stares down at the remnants of the broken chair. She thinks for a moment. “You could have left the whole time, couldn’t you?”
I rub my wrists, wondering if she will scream and hide now. “I…wished for you to feel safe.”
She just shakes her head. “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of this.”
I think it is rather obvious, but it is clear humans do not think the same as praxiians. “Ask your questions of me. I will try to answer them.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” I try not to scowl. Is she being deliberately vague? She and I really do need to learn how to communicate. “Why did I pay the bounty hunter to bring me instead of a stranger?”
“That’s a good place to start.”
“Because you are far too trusting. You paid her upfront for her services without any kind of guarantee. You do realize that most pay a bounty hunter only when the job is complete?”
“O-of course.” Her cheeks flush red. “Of course I knew that.”
I don’t point out that she paid her far too much, too. We are both treading on brittle ice, her and I, and I don’t want her to grow insulted again. Not when she is finally talking to me and looking at me. “You paid her, and I did not trust who she would bring back to you. So I paid her to take me instead.”
“But…I thought you hated me. I thought you wanted me dead.”
“Why would I want that?” I am genuinely puzzled. “I have tried to court you.”
“Court me?” She huffs a laugh and gestures at her surroundings. “You dropped dead things on my doorstep, you jizzed on my house. Do you not realize that sort of thing is utterly fucking terrifying to a human?”
“Fucking?”
“Keffing,” she shouts. “Fucking is keffing.”
“Is it keffing or is it terrifying?” Her language is very confusing.
She puts her palms over her eyes, as if trying to compose herself, and takes a deep breath. “No one is keffing anything.”
I shift in my seed-filled pants uncomfortably. I have to admit she is right. My cock feels like a big bruise after the night I’ve had. “You…did not know I was courting you?”
“No!”
“Ah.” I try to see it from her perspective. A stranger…using her door for sexual purposes. And leaving corpses on the step. “Oh.” Huh. Perhaps it does seem alarming from a human perspective. “I did not realize I was frightening you.”
She lets out a wobbly little laugh. “Terrified me, actually.” She leans against the counter, and her lip quivers, and she looks as if she might cry. “I was so scared someone was trying to kill me that I hired Bethiah to kidnap me a nice husband. And I got you instead.” She gestures in my direction. “And now I’m screwed.”
“Screwed…?”
“Fucked. Keffed. Whatever.”
I hesitate for a moment before I ask, “You are not referring to copulation when you say that, are you?”
“No.” Laughter bubbles from her lips and then she collapses in place on the floor, the tears I was so worried about streaming from her eyes. “And now I have no savings, no husband, and I poisoned my neighbor. I’m doomed.”
I watch, awkwardly, as she buries her face in her hands and sobs. This is not what I wanted. I wanted Kim to fling her puny human arms around me in delight. I wanted her to scratch my chin and stroke my tail and tell me how excited she was to have such a big, strong mate to protect her. Just as I have quietly protected her in the past from things she does not even know about.
But she feels as if everything is ruined, and her sobs tear at me. I need to fix this.
Somehow.
I clear my throat. “We…we can still move forward. With the mating.”
She shakes her head, weeping. “Bethiah was supposed to find me someone that was nice and wouldn’t want sex. Someone that would wait.”
On this planet? Kim is very innocent, indeed. I watch her, my heart hurting, and then I make a very stupid offer. “I will mate to you with no sex.”
Kim lifts her head, her eyes shining with tears. “You…will?”
I nod slowly, even though every strand of my fur is screaming that I make no such deal. I cannot bear the sight of her misery. “We can just be friends.” And if I choke a little on the last word, it does not show. “Friends,” I repeat again, louder.
Convincing myself.
“You’re sure?” When I nod, the suspicious look returns to her face. “How can I trust you?”
I spread my hands. “You have to trust someone at some point.”
Her gaze falls to the floor, to the remnants of the broken chair and the snapped cuffs. She thinks for a moment, and then nods. “If you don’t mind a platonic marriage, then let’s do it. Today?”
“Today.” If this is the only way I can have her, this will have to do. Perhaps in time she will grow to care for me.
“Now?” She picks herself up off the floor.
“Not now.” My tail twitches. “I need to change my trou.”
13
KIM
The morning passes in a whirlwind of activity. We clean up and dress, and I watch the praxiian as he moves through my house. I’m still
wary of him, but he’s right. I have to trust someone at some point. Cleaning up the splintered chair and shattered cuffs shows me how easily he could have overpowered me if he wanted to. Instead, he sat and let me “torture” him all night.
If that doesn’t show good intentions, I don’t know what does.
The praxiian changes into a pair of spare pants I have set aside for my “kidnapped” spouse. It’s obvious I wasn’t expecting someone his size—they’re too small and hug his crotch indecently, but he doesn’t complain. Once we’re both ready, we get into my air-sled and head to port.
I let him drive the sled, and he gets in and immediately hums under his breath, flipping switches. “When was the last time you had this serviced?”
“I have to have it serviced? No one told me.” Heck, I don’t even know what half the buttons do. I just know enough to get to my farm and back. But sure enough, the thing jerks into high gear and speeds toward town faster than I ever thought the thing could go, and I feel…cheated. Just a little. Even by the well-meaning aliens who gave us equipment to run our farms and help us out, we’ve still been treated like second-class citizens. How hard would it have been to give me lessons on how to use an air-sled? Instead, I’m having to learn from a praxiian.
We get to the courthouse in port in record time, and the big cat alien puts a hand on my shoulder, pulling me against him as he speaks to an official. “I wish to mate this human,” he says in the barking szzt tongue. “Please to make it documented.”
“You want to mate her? Just mate her then. Don’t come to me.” The szzt waves a hand.
“It will be a mating to secure her property. She will be co-owner of mine and I will be co-owner of hers,” the praxiian continues. “Please to make it documented. It is called a ‘marriage’ amongst human peoples.”
I try to hide my surprise. I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that he had a farm, too…and now I’m getting half of it? Have I even seen his farm? I frown to myself.
The szzt official just eyes my praxiian husband-to-be. “Must we do this? My schedule is very busy. You know as well as I do that humoring humans is a waste of time.”
“How much?” the praxiian asks calmly.
“Very, very busy,” the szzt says again.
The cat alien pulls a wallet from inside the front of his tunic and pulls out a few credit chips. Oh. We have to bribe the officials to do even this? Dismayed, I reach for my own credit pouch. “I can pay—”
The cat’s big hand covers mine. “It is handled.”
The szzt snorts. “That’s right. Put her in her place.”
I could swear I hear the big cat alien give a menacing growl low in his throat. His fur seems to puff up at the back of his neck, and he points at the szzt’s desk. “Just record this and be done.”
“Fine.” The official pulls out a datapad and begins to type. “Name?”
“Nassakth.”
The official jerks his head up, eyes shining. “From Askorthi Prime?”
The cat alien grunts.
“I think I saw some of your fights. Heard you were dead.”
“Not dead.” He pulls out the wallet and hands the official a few more chips. “You’ll note that it’s a different Nassakth, though.”
“Noted. And the female?”
I like how they talk as if I’m not here. The big cat alien—Nassakth, apparently—answers for me and they keep talking, filling out the paperwork. I watch in silence, learning all that I can. It seems my neighbor has a lot of credits, evidenced by the wallet he keeps opening up, and he’s somewhat famous. A fighter of some kind? It makes sense, given his sheer size. If that’s the case, though, what’s he doing on this planet? It’s at the far reaches of the galaxy, frequented only by those that want to hide from something or have been rejected from everywhere else. What’s a famous fighter doing here?
And why does he want to marry me? It’s a mystery.
“Here. Both of you give this a digital print and I’ll file the appropriate forms.” The official holds out his datapad and we take turns pushing our palms against it. After that’s done, he looks at me. “Are there any sorts of human actions taken to end a mating ceremony?”
You may now kiss the bride rings out in my head.
“Nope!” I bark out. “Nothing at all! Maybe a handshake but that’s it. Nothing else.”
“Then we will shake hands on it, Kim,” the big cat alien says. He holds his hand out to me, palm up.
After a moment’s hesitation, I place mine in his. It feels slightly springy on the palm and fingertips, kind of like the pads of a cat’s feet, but it’s shaped like mine. Five fingers, too. There’s dark, retractable claws hiding under his finger fur, but I notice it’s less thick here than on his shoulders and upper chest. Interesting.
Not that I care about a praxiian’s hands.
He lets me rest my palm flat on his, and then jiggles it. “A shake to seal things.”
I try not to snicker. That…was not a handshake. But it’s still kinda cute. “Totally.”
“Congratulations,” the szzt says. “You are now officially mated…for some reason.” He shrugs. “The forms will be filed later tonight. Now, get out of here.”
Nassakth puts his big hand back on my shoulder and gestures that we should leave the courthouse. As we head to the door, I see a tall, lean blue figure leaning against the doorway. It’s a familiar woman in a thick, dark cloak, and she pushes the hood back as we approach. A smile curves Bethiah’s face.
“Are congratulations in order?” the bounty hunter asks, smirking.
14
NASSAKTH
To my great surprise, my small, delicate human mate lunges for the bounty hunter. “You!” I grab her before she can get herself into trouble, and Kim flails and punches at the air, snarling at the mesakkah woman. “You…cheater!”
“Someone’s not happy with their purchase, I see,” Bethiah comments. “Which is odd, considering she’s marrying it.” The bounty hunter looks over at me. “You must be persuasive.”
“I want my money back,” Kim shouts, squirming in my grasp. “You cheated me!”
“No refunds,” Bethiah says, and winks at me.
“You sold me the neighbor I was trying to get protection from!”
“So you’re marrying him?” She squints, then shakes her head. “Humans. So irrational.”
Kim makes another noise of outrage.
I stroke Kim’s head, trying to calm her with some petting. “My Kim thought I was threatening her. She was not happy to see me, but we have worked out an agreement.”
“Your Kim?” Bethiah echoes. “Another happy customer, I see.” She ignores Kim’s snarl of rage and looks over at me. “I’m here for the other half of my money.”
“No one’s paying you!” Kim bellows, louder than I knew a human could be. She twists in my grasp again, and I set her down before she can hurt herself. When I try to pet her soft head again, she bats my hand away. “And you, what are you doing?”
“Calming you,” I answer. “And I will pay Bethiah. It is only fair. She did the job she was asked to do.”
The bounty hunter smirks. “I knew I liked you, cat. And she’ll come around. I’m guessing she hasn’t gotten a chance to get her hands on the grand masterpiece of yours?”
My tail flicks with embarrassment.
“What grand masterpiece?” Kim asks, brows furrowing. She looks up at me.
“I said it was grand, not a masterpiece.” Then, I clear my throat. “And it is not important.”
“Seemed pretty important to me, but whatever.” Bethiah just grins and puts her hand out. I fish a few more credits out of my wallet and pass them on, and the bounty hunter gives me a nod. “Pleasure doing business with you, cat. If you need anything in the future, you know who to call.”
“Not you!” Kim sputters. “I tried calling you all night long—”
Bethiah puts one long finger over Kim’s mouth. “Shhhh. Shhhh. Let me give you a little tip, friend
.” She leans over and whispers something into Kim’s ear, and even though I prick my ears, I cannot make it out. The bounty hunter strokes Kim’s cheek and then saunters away, heading out of the courthouse. “Be seeing you two around…maybe.”
I look over at Kim, whose face is bright red. “What did she say to you?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Let’s just get out of here.”
We head back out to Kim’s air-sled, a model several generations old and badly in need of maintenance. I fire it up, frowning to myself at the rattle the engine makes. I knew Kim’s farm was small and unpleasant, but I had no idea that all of her equipment was outdated and on the verge of being destroyed. How do they expect these helpless humans to cope if they aren’t given the proper tools? Do they even know what the proper tools look like? I say nothing, because I don’t want Kim to think I’m criticizing her. She’s doing the best she can. I steer the sled to the outskirts of town and glance over at my new mate. Her hands are twisted in her lap, her knuckles white, and she gazes out the window as if lost in thought…or desperate to be away from me.
That makes me sad. I wonder if she will ever let me prove that I can be a good mate to her, or if she is just determined to hate me. “Shall we go to my homestead?”
“I’d rather just go home to my house,” Kim admits, glancing over at me. “I’m sure we can set you up a bed in the living area.”
“Your noli is due to be harvested soon,” I point out. “It might not be wise for me to be around it for long periods of time. It might…affect me.”
“Oh.” She looks over at me with a skeptical expression. “Why did you want to marry me if you can’t even be around my farm?”
Because I do not want you for your farm, I want to tell her. Because ever since I saw you in the streets talking to another human while in port, I wanted you. Because you smiled so brightly at her that it made all the dark places in my heart disappear. Because I want you to smile at me like that. But I cannot say those things to her.
So I just shrug.