I lost sight of Jay and Shalee after their second dance, when they moved to the lounge seating area along the wall and drew the privacy curtains. From the way they’d been all over one another on the dance floor, I didn’t expect that I’d see either of them again very soon.

It felt uncannily like the last time I’d been here, when Jay had abandoned me for Alien Barbie Shira, only worse, because Vair wasn’t by my side. And Jay’s departure and subsequent love fest on the dance floor with Shalee had made Vair’s absence feel all the more pronounced.

It had also made hanging out alone with Tauce nearly unbearable.

But at least I was safe, I reminded myself.

Safety was key.

I’d given in and taken to wearing my glasses on top of my head instead of over my eyes in order to scan the crowd and people-watch rather than observe Tauce staring at his own hand. I was beginning to come to terms with the fact that I really couldn’t see well with my eyewear on anymore.

Another thirty minutes and an “alien Shirley Temple” later, my stilettos were killing me. My night was going nowhere fast and I had nothing to lose, so I decided to try and throw out a few of the interview questions Jay had come up with.

“Hey, so um, Vair said… he said that I could interview you. Is that… is that okay?”

Tauce didn’t react. He didn’t even twitch an eyelash. He just stood there, staring me down.

I fidgeted on my feet, tucking my hair behind my ear. “So what are the Krinar’s ultimate plans for us as a society?”

I’d known it was a bad question. Tauce confirmed it.

His eyes widened. Then he slow-blinked. “You do this for a living? And they pay you?”

Ass.

Fine. “What’s with pushing veganism on the planet when you’re all here getting high on human blood? That hardly qualifies as a vegan diet.”

He made a soft grunting noise and pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head.

Fuck.

“How long have you worked here?”

He gave me his back.

Not even that one he’d answer?

“How do you like living in New York City?” I called after him as he walked to the other end of the bar.

“Hi, Tauce.” A striking blond woman strolled up to where he had gone to ignore me and leaned across the bar, spilling ample boobage from her ultra-sexy, barely-there dress. “Will I see you in the basement later?”

I thought she might be a Krinar at first, but then I saw that she was too short. As I studied her closer, I realized she looked vaguely familiar, but I knew I didn’t know her.

As I watched Tauce’s apathetic response to her flirting, it hit me where I’d seen her before: gracing the covers of tabloids in the supermarket checkout line. She was a well-known soap opera star who’d been on the same show for ages. I was pretty sure she’d won numerous Daytime Emmy Awards. I couldn’t think of her name, though, as I’d never seen the popular show she was on.

She gave up trying to entice him and strutted off when Tauce ignored her boobs in favor of drawing on his palm with his finger in that weird way he’d been doing.

I rushed over to him once she was gone. “Oh, my God. Was that—”

“Yes,” Tauce cut me off with an eye roll. “It was. Yes, she’s some kind of… television personality.” He said it like it was the dumbest job a person could have, or be impressed by. “All the humans ask that when she comes in.”

It was reassuring to know I was just like every dumb human Tauce encountered in Vair’s club. “She comes here a lot?”

He shrugged, and I thought that he was done with the conversation. But after a beat, he offered up: “She’s a nymphomaniac; likes a K in every hole when she comes here. I enjoy taking her in the ass.”

Alrighty. It was my turn to slow-blink.

I resisted. Because this was a Tauce breakthrough. Maybe he would talk if the topic was sex?

“Are you a polyamorous society on Krina?”

His yellow-green eyes raked me up and down. “We like to have sex. Sometimes in groups. More often in pairs.”

Interesting. Which did Vair prefer?

“We don’t suffer the prudish social constraints that plague your society.”

“Plague?” I had to giggle. I was nearly giddy with excitement that he was finally engaging with me and answering my questions. “That’s a tad dramatic.”

He gave me his best stone-faced Tauce look in reply.

Okay, then. “Do Krinar ever pair off for life? You know, get married? Or something similar to that? Like humans do?”

He made a face like he’d just smelled something awful. “If they’re unlucky.”

Right. And I’d bet my left kidney the K who ended up saddled with Tauce for life would consider herself the unlucky one in that arrangement.

“So is it more of a societal arrangement then? Not because the Krinar pair wants to?”

“No. They do it because they want to.” He looked down at his palm, becoming distracted with whatever he was seeing there.

I was losing him. I needed to steer the conversation back to sex.

“I overheard the blond actress ask whether she’d be seeing you in the basement later. Is that where you’ve, um… hooked up with her before?”

Tauce looked up from his palm, his brow arched in amusement. “Hooked up? You mean fucked?” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re Vair’s human.”

“And what does that mean?” I failed to keep the affront I felt at his tone from my voice. Zyrnase had referred to me in those same terms when I’d been introduced to Tauce. I hadn’t wanted to read into it or analyze its meaning too closely at the time. “Do you mean I’m Vair’s human guest when you say that?” I asked hopefully.

He smirked. Some guys managed to pull off “cocky-sexy” when they smirked; Tauce just looked like a dick.

“No, little reporter, it means you’re Vair’s property. It means that he owns you.”

I forced a breath as I felt the blood draining from my face.

Don’t panic, don’t panic. It’s not what it sounds like he’s saying.

“You mean while I’m here at his club? Like in an erotic power-exchange kind of deal? Dom and sub stuff? Because I haven’t—I didn’t agree to do anything… like that…” I trailed off, swallowing hard at the nasty look of amusement that spread across Tauce’s features.

He bent his head closer to mine, his penetrating yellow-green eyes staring me down. “Ks don’t need permission from humans,” he informed me in a cold whisper. “We take what we want. We keep what we claim as ours.”

My face burned with indignation. “No one owns me, Tauce.”

He laughed. His laughter came off even worse on the bastard scale than his smirk.

Recognizing the futility of continuing to argue this point with him given my present predicament, I decided to change the subject.

“So what was with that guy earlier on the dance floor?” I shifted my glasses back down over my eyes, not wanting to see any more than I had to of Tauce’s face. “What happened?”

“He was warned not to come back here.”

“Yeah, I kind of caught that from your exchange. But why? What did he do to get banned from the club?”

Not surprisingly, I was met with blurry stone-faced Tauce in response, followed by him ignoring me to fiddle with his palm.

“What is up with the damn palm business, already?” I was beyond over it.

His head jerked up at my tone. “I’m working,” he said, as if stating the obvious.

“You’re working? On your palm?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “I’m not following. How is that working?”

“The same way you humans work on your cellular devices.”

“You have a tiny phone in your hand? Where?” I moved closer, grabbing for his hand as curiosity got the better of me.

He pulled back before I could touch him. “Not a phone. And it’s not for your human eyes to see.”

Ah. Right. The ’ole Emperor’s New Clothes deal—a K device that was invisible to unfit humans. Made total sense within their technologically advanced world of dissolving walls.

It was the perfect segue to broach the topic of K technology and to ask Tauce whether the Krinar ever planned to share any of their advances with us. But instead, I found myself asking, “You got anything stronger to drink in this place?”

I set my glasses back atop my head and rubbed my sore eyes.

What I really wanted to ask was what time my shift ended tonight. Because that’s exactly what this felt like: working a shift at a shitty clock-watching job where you lost hours of your life talking to people you’d never willingly engage with had you not been coworkers.

“Not for you,” Tauce replied.

I nodded, putting my glasses back in place. “Figures.”

“How about a change of scenery instead?” Tauce suggested.

“Yes!” I agreed, a little too enthusiastically. “I mean, yeah, that’d be great. I’d love to tour other parts of the club.”

I pushed my glasses up again so that I could see his face and gauge his sincerity, but he was busy messing with his stupid palm once more. When he was done, he glanced up and gave me a stoic, “Come with me. I need to work the downstairs bar now.”

We walked through a hole Tauce made in the wall behind the bar area, down a surprisingly short, dark hallway, and into a small elevator.

I felt a little anxious about leaving Jay behind in the upstairs bar, but I had a feeling he’d be safe with Shalee. And I wouldn’t be gone long, I rationalized—even though I had no idea how long Tauce was supposed to work this downstairs bar we were headed to.

When the elevator opened at the basement level, I was expecting to find a hallway or at the very least another wall that Tauce would need to dissolve before we reached our final destination. But instead, the doors opened and we were thrust smack-dab into the middle of a busy club scene.

A scene that I was woefully unprepared for.

People—and aliens—were having sex. Everywhere. In cages suspended from the ceiling, in cages on the ground, on the dance floor, against the wall—suspended by chains in some cases.

A woman was being eaten out on a table mere feet from where we were standing!

My mouth went dry as I met Tauce’s smug eyes. He was clearly enjoying my discomfort.

“I’d rather work the bar upstairs,” I managed to say.

He gave me a look that said I wasn’t getting anything I wanted—at least not from him.

“I want to speak with Vair about this.”

He smirked. “You’re in luck. Vair’s the reason you’re down here. Follow me.”

He took off at an easy stride, and I was torn between not wanting to be left alone in this triple-X basement bar scene and not wanting to follow and see how much worse it might get. When I didn’t immediately follow, he turned around and made a hissing sound at me.

An actual. Hissing. Sound.

Oh, my God. This guy. I rolled my eyes and bit my lip to keep from telling him to cusack the hell off.

He was in front of me in a blink, with that perpetually irate, constipated-looking expression that I’d privately dubbed “resting Tauce face” during the hour and forty-three minutes I’d endured with him.

“Do you not understand the word follow, human?”

“Oh, was that what you said? I couldn’t hear you over the music and screaming down here.”

His hiss morphed into a growl. Then he seemed to make an attempt to compose himself.

“Listen, Amy…” He addressed me by my name for the very first time, and managed to make it sound like a foul disease he didn’t want to contract. “Someone’s liable to suck and fuck you and ask questions later if you don’t stick close to me down here.”

He had me at “suck.”

I held my palm up in surrender. “Got it. Lead the way. I’ll follow.”

I stuck close to Tauce as he wove a path through the basement of Sodom and Gomorrah. As horrified as I was by the sights and sounds that surrounded me, I found myself unwittingly turned on by some of them as well.

Any fledgling hope I’d quietly harbored about Vair not being into the really kinky stuff was squashed as we passed by naked people gagged and bound to sex furniture and tied to x-shaped Saint Andrew’s crosses.

Why, oh why hadn’t I kept my mouth shut and stayed upstairs in the safe bar?

My system was on overload, my shaky fingers continuously sliding my glasses up and down between the bridge of my nose and the tip, torn between wanting to see and not wanting to know.

I was so disoriented I barely noticed my steps, much less paid attention to where we were going, and before I knew it, I’d walked through an opening in a wall that Tauce had made. In front of me was the famous blond actress from the bar upstairs—engaged in a scene I could’ve gladly gone my whole life not knowing about.