The first thing I thought about when I woke up was how comfortable I was. The second thought was pure alarm at the fact that I was being held in someone's arms. Talys's, as a matter of fact. I knew from that subtly sweet fragrance alone. It was everywhere. The pillow I rested against, the blanket pulled up to my neck, and, most importantly, the person molded against my back.

I tensed, realizing I had no idea how I got here, or what had happened. There was a gaping hole in my memory. I desperately combed through what memories I had, but I couldn't remember anything beyond that glowing green shot glass.

Where had all those hours gone? And why, oh why, was I being held by Talys? In his bed? Surely I didn't . . .? Alarmed, I jolted to a sitting position. Talys made an irritated noise and circled his arms around my waist, trying to pull me back down.

"Just a little longer," he murmured sleepily. "Last night was nice. I don't want you to go yet."

"Oh no—no, no, no. We didn't, did we?" I slapped my hands across my body, finding that I was still fully clothed, and I let out a sigh of relief. "We didn't."

Talys stirred some more, then stared up at me through squinted eyes, expression twisting into a grimace. "Why do you sound terrified?"

"Because that would've been a huge mistake, obviously. So, if I managed to keep your hands off, how did I even end up in here?"

With a sigh, Talys unwound his arms from my waist and sat up, a hand held to his eyes and lips pressed into a flat line. "You should go."

"Wow, that disappointed, are you?"

"Just leave, Vera." Far from the weapon it normally was, my name instead felt like a curse falling from his lips in that moment.

I bit down hard on my inner cheek as I got out of his bed. As I walked through the door, I turned around and met his grimace with one of my own. "You know, Talys, I think it's pretty sad you have to be drunk to be a decent person. But, hey, what do you care? You have women lining up on every planet, right? What's the opinion of one?"

I pressed a hand to the screen outside the door without looking back as it slid shut. I'd only made it halfway down the hallway before I realized I was stomping. I slowed down, taking stock of my mental state. Why was I so angry, exactly? I should be thanking my lucky stars I hadn't slept with Talys, not mad that he kicked me out before he got the chance to play Mr. Seductive for the millionth time.

It was only then I realized my clothing had changed. I'd been wearing my jeans in the lounge, and I wasn't anymore. Instead, I had silky, shiny Korysti-style fabric wrapped around me like a toga. But that didn't mean I'd—No, of course not. I didn't have sex with Talys. I wouldn't have woken up clothed, right? I laughed it off, shook my head, then continued onward into the lounge, hoping I could get into the kitchen for something to ease my wretched-feeling stomach.

When I reached the lounge, I found Artos lounging in one of the armchairs near the window, reading from a tablet. He greeted me with a wide smile. "How are you feeling? Better?"

"Better than what?" I asked with a furrowed brow.

"You became very, very ill not long after the Novusian Reserve." Artos paused and laughed. "Well, first, it made you strip to nothing, running through the halls with both of us chasing you, but—"

"What?!" I shrieked. "You and Talys . . . chased me . . . while I was naked?"

"You don't remember any of that, do you?"

I held a hand to my mouth and shook my head wildly from side to side.

"Oh, well, yes. It was terribly funny. Until you became ill." He frowned. "Then it became terribly unfunny."

"H-how did I end up—" I gestured at my clothed body. "Did I . . . or did you . . .?"

"Goodness, no. I didn't dress you."

I relaxed, smiling and nodding. "Good to know I managed to dress myself, at least."

"You didn't. Talys did."

My smile disappeared.

"I've never seen him act so nice to a stranger. I mean, he wasn't happy about it, but he cleaned you up and got you dressed again. I checked in after a while and he had you fast asleep in bed."

"Cleaned up?"

"You got into the kitchen. I'd rather not say more about that experience." He paused, holding up a finger. "Except you kept on mentioning something about oatmeal and how much worse it would've been if you were naked?"

"And I was, in fact, naked during all of this?"

"I'm afraid so. Talys made me avert my eyes, so your modesty is mostly intact. It did make wrangling you difficult though. Did you know you're a very agile drunk?"

"N-no," I choked out. "That's just . . . great. Good to know."

It was official. I was a horrendous beast who had not only gotten so disgustingly drunk that I binge-ate in the nude while talking about oatmeal paper cuts, but I'd insulted the person who chose to deal with it. I frowned. On second thought, why in the world had Talys dealt with me? I pinned him as the type to make Artos deal with that sort of thing. It must've been the alcohol. It did seem to make him a lot nicer.

I groaned inwardly. As much as I wanted to hide away, never to be seen again, I owed him an apology. Maybe only half of one. Either way, I didn't like the idea of seeming ungrateful when he helped me out. Whether it was driven by alcohol or not.

I turned around and immediately started for the exit once more.

"Leaving already?"

"Unfortunately."

This one was going to be a real blow to the ol' pride.

Talys was still in bed when I entered his room. I was, frankly, surprised he hadn't turned on the locks after I left. He was still sitting up, arms folded over his knees, forehead pressed against his forearm. I cleared my throat as I stepped inside, the door sliding shut behind me.

"What now?" he asked.

I puffed out my cheeks and rocked back and forth on my heels. "So, um, I take it you had too much to drink, too?"

He lifted his head. I quickly looked up and away, a blush stealing over my cheeks. I puffed them out and rocked back and forth on my heels. All I could think about was that he'd seen me nude. The worst kind of nude, at that. Just apologize and get out, Vera.

"What do you want?" he growled before I got the chance. I pursed my lips. Someone wasn't managing their hangover well.

"I just came to say sorry," I murmured up at the ceiling. "I couldn't remember anything that happened last night."

"You could at least look at me when you apologize."

I held out my hands in a placating gesture. "Yes, I could and I probably should, but I'm a little mortified right now. Just know that I'm very sorry for everything. I get why you're so angry though."

"You don't get it."

I tore my eyes away from the ceiling and gave him a confused look. "I don't?"

"You don't."

"Care to enlighten me?" I asked slowly.

"You want me. That much is obvious, and has been since you first looked at me. Yet when you woke, you were horrified by the thought you might've had sex with me. Why?"

I made a face, taken aback by the borderline analytical tone of his voice. Was me not sleeping with him really worthy of that much thought? "It's just . . . not my sort of thing."

"What isn't?"

"Casual sex. Especially with men who sleep around." Seeing his hardened look, I fumbled for an explanation. Some apology this was. "Look, it's not like I'm trying to shame your choices, that's your thing or whatever, but that's not a good place for me. It's not . . . healthy."

I clenched my eyes shut. I knew I hadn't made much sense, but I wasn't exactly in love with the idea of baring my soul to someone I'd known for all of a day. Plus, he didn't really need to know what I'd been through. It wasn't like he'd care anyway. I wasn't even sure why he cared in the first place. Hurt ego, maybe?

"I see."

I opened one eye. "You do?"

"Not really, no, but it would seem as if neither of us really understands each other." He ran his eyes over my face like he was trying to puzzle out what was going on inside my head. "I thought I had you all figured out from the moment I saw you."

"Surprise," I offered with a half-shrug.

"Surprise, indeed." Talys slid out of bed, stretching his mostly-nude form, muscles rippling beneath his pale purple skin. "I truly don't know how to handle you. It's vexing."

"Handle me?" I laughed, unsure of what he was getting at.

"Ever since I laid eyes on you, I knew I would do anything to touch you, taste you, to be inside you and feel you writhing beneath me—"

"I think I get it," I choked out as a sudden, overwhelming heat boiled to life under my skin.

Talys arched a brow. "Was that too much?"

"Maybe a little."

"Well," I said once I found my words again, "it's a good thing I drank that Novusian Reserve, right? That ended in a one stop shop for all your anti-attraction needs."

"You would think so."

"What?" I asked, despite having understood him perfectly well.

"You frustrate me." He stood in front of me, quiet for a moment, tongue touching the corner of his mouth, a hand shoved into his dark purple hair. "I don't understand why nothing works on you, and yet I want to keep trying."

"Have you ever thought of just, I dunno, not trying to work me?" I blurted out. I didn't know why I felt the need to help him. The guy only wanted to have his way with me, then give me a swift kick off his ship when we were back on Korystus.

"What do you mean?" he asked, and I honestly believed he didn't know.

"You're handsome, you're sexy. I get it. But I don't care."

"On the contrary, I think you do. I see the way you look at me, there's no mistaking—"

"You're still not getting it. Yes, I think you're attractive. You said yourself that you know how you make women feel." I shrugged. "And, y'know, congratulations on that or whatever. But that doesn't mean I'm going to sleep with you."

"You're right. I don't get it. At all."

"Yeah, I had a feeling." I gave him something between a smile and a frown. I wasn't sure why those words saddened me as much as they did. Maybe because I'd been with guys like him before. Hot shots in the ship's hierarchy. They could have any woman they wanted on the ship, and so often they chose me.

And by chose, I mean they chose to sneak down to the depths of the ship to have their way with me, promising me all sorts of wonderful things, then avoided me entirely when we crossed paths on the upper decks, not wanting to admit they'd been banging the janitor girl.

It was a great way to get the urge for casual sex out of my system. I would never let someone use me for their personal satisfaction again. And it bothered me far more than I wanted to admit that Talys was just like them. Or was he? He'd taken care of me at my worst, hadn't he? That pointed toward a much different type of man—err, Korysti—than I would've assumed he was.

Even still, I knew that I should leave. Yet, I gravitated toward the shelves lining his walls. There was much more than the books I'd seen before, but those were particularly of great interest to me. I could've sworn I'd recognized one of them, and it was calling to me again.

I gravitated toward the familiar fuchsia spine, confirming instantly that it was exactly what I thought it was. I pulled it from the shelf and whirled around, the graphic novel pressed to my chest. "How did you ever get your hands on a copy of Sera and the Space Pirates? Better yet, why would you pick it up in the first place?"

Sera was my teenage idol. Scratch that, she was every teenage girl's idol. We all wanted to sail through space on ships of our own, meeting dashing, handsome aliens and, y'know, kissing them. I'd been so pissed off when I realized I'd never get to find out what happens to her—because of fleeing Earth, it getting taken over by a violent alien species, and so on.

Funnily enough, my life ended up kind of like Sera's, only it was way less glamorous. I'd sailed through space, but I'd spent that time cleaning toilets instead of navigating treacherous planets with said handsome aliens. Although . . . I narrowed my eyes at Talys in thought. I'd met my own sexy aliens. Only that had turned out less glamorous, too.

"I like to collect things. A salvage trader sold it to me as a work of human art. It cost me a hefty sum."

I laughed and started flipping through the glossy pages, inhaling their familiar scent. Despite all the tablets, holos, and whatever else tech companies tried shoving in front of our faces, old-school paper and ink never went out of style.

I had only started to read the first few lines when something about what Talys said hit me. I looked up and found him staring off to the side, jaw tense.

"You didn't get this off our ship. We didn't have any copies on board—I would've known. And . . . salvage? That means it came from a wreck or something, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

My heartbeat was starting to pick up speed. "A human ship that wrecked?"

"Correct." He still wasn't looking at me.

"More of us ended up around here?"

"Many of your ships ended up nearby. Relatively speaking. Not all were as lucky as you."

"What do you mean?"

"Some ended up in warring territories . . ." He turned his head back to me, giving me a look that asked me not to make him say it. But I had to.

"And what?" I pushed, my heart beating so fast it ached.

"They didn't make it."

"And then their ships were salvaged." I dropped the copy of Sera I was holding like it was on fire. I stared down at the bright cover with its appealing, cartoonish drawings, and imagined the human who had once owned it. What'd happened to them? I didn't even want to think about it.

Maybe I was too idealistic, but some part of me had figured every other ship that fled Earth that day had managed to make it somewhere great. Somewhere just like Earth, where they had all settled down to live in peace. Maybe . . . I'd hoped to find it someday.

"Do all Korysti know about this? Why haven't you told us?"

"Most don't care to know," Talys replied, blunt in his honesty. "I brought it to one or two politicians, but gave up when I was brushed aside. When Senator Rylos began his campaign, I brought the information to him. Maybe that's why Elyos was trying to get you out. There are already a few humans scattered on Nexion 6."

"And you just weren't going to tell me?"

Talys walked in front of me, picked up the copy of my once-favorite graphic novel, and reached over my shoulder to place it back on the shelf.

"Why would I? That would be like taunting you."

"Or you could just let me go."

"It's not that simple."

"So you're just too much of a coward, unlike your cousin."

"I like my life as it is," he replied plainly.

I swallowed thickly and gave him a flat smile. "Yeah? That must be nice. Having your own life. I wouldn't know. My fate is always in some other asshole's hands. Congratulations on being one of them."

As I was turning to leave, Talys placed a hand around my wrist. "Vera."

"Whatever you're going to say, save it for someone who cares."

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"See that?" I said with a hollow laugh. "That's you mistaking me for someone who cares."

I jerked my hand from his grasp and thundered out of his room as quickly as I could manage. For whatever it's worth? I laughed again, the sound bitter as it bounced off the walls of the hallway. Your apology is worth nothing, Talys. Nothing.