Chapter 4

 

She explored the spaceship—a fucking spaceship!—while she waited for him to emerge from what was apparently a self-directed medical bay. She’d watched the panel for a little bit, long enough to see it scanning his body, comparing the hole in his chest and the smaller holes her teeth had left in his hand against an older litany of wounds. He’d said it had been a long time since he was shot, but the scans showed he’d not led as quiet a life as she’d have imagined for a data recovery specialist.

It also made her realize he must’ve had to check himself into the bed whenever he was hurt. There’d been no one to make sure he got in and apparently no one to care if he made it out.

Dejo Jinn.

If he hadn’t been there outside the saloon, she’d have taken a laser burst to the chest. Of course, if she hadn’t caught him sneaking around the resort—a fucking Intergalactic Dating Agency!?—she’d not have been at the saloon to get shot at.

But then she’d still be completely in the dark about her sister.

She was still mostly in the dark. Rayna had been abducted by an alien, for reasons unknown, and her location was still unknown.

At least now Vaughn had a spaceship, so nothing in the universe would stop her from reuniting the last of her family.

She circled restlessly through the cleverly designed rooms, about the size of a large and well-appointed camper trailer, wracking her brain for every sci-fi movie she’d ever watched. As an enlisted MP in the Guard, she’d never felt her imagination had been very highly valued. Her steadiness and attention to detail, yes; her dedication and willingness to take orders, of course. Her loyalty to her fellow Guardswomen… Well, that had come into conflict with a good old boy system, emphasis on the old that didn’t know what to do with harassment and revenge that could flash around the internet and the world in less time than it took to write Dear John. Turned out, she didn’t know what to do about it either.

No wonder Dejo had snarked about her less advanced brain. But if anything, her imagination had only gotten her into trouble and out of the Guard.

She pushed away the thought as she paused in the cockpit. Yeah, it was a spaceship, all right, but it didn’t look all that different from the armored tactical vehicles she’d trained on. Except when she leaned closer to look at the control, a 3D heads-up display showed her what appeared to be a map of the solar system, the Earth a small blue-green marble cozied up to the Sun. So…small.

Even as she watched, the map zoomed out. In a heartbeat, the system was lost in the larger galaxy, its swirling arms obliterating any chance of finding which sun was the Sun. And in another stutter of her pulse, the galaxy was invisible amid a dozen more galaxies of various shapes and sizes, their light almost blinding even at this vastly reduced size.

Speaking of feeling vastly reduced in size… She averted her gaze from the map and it went back to its original static display.

How the fuck was she supposed to find Rayna in a whole fucking universe?

She paused. Data recovery. That’s what he said he did. Recover the data of the sort that would lead to Rayna. He must be good at it to afford a spaceship, right? Although maybe not good enough to pay for a team, someone to watch his back when a laser beam went through it. Or through the front, whichever.

Her father had taught her and Rayna the importance of teamwork from the very start, but maybe even in a whole universe there wasn’t anyone who wanted to be stuck with the smug, slippery Dejo Jinn.

The thought panged down deep in a place she couldn’t ignore. She knew what it was like to not have anyone watching her back. No, worse. To be betrayed.

Maybe it was better to fly alone.

A soft chime from the bed sent her hurrying back to his side. The panel blinked and she stared at it warily. It chimed again, a little more insistently, clearly requiring some sort of input.

She cleared her throat. “What?”

The bed said something. Shit, Dejo had told her he had a translator in his head. Well, she certainly didn’t, and she’d barely made it through high school Spanish.

“Translate that?” She put her mouth closer to the panel. “Uh. Hello? My name is Vaughn Quaye. Uh, I need a medical translation in, uh, Earth language, um, English? For Dejo Jinn—”

“Dejo Jinn,” the bed pinged.

Vaughn straightened in surprise. “Oh. Yeah. Yes. Please update the status for Dejo Jinn.”

“Dejo Jinn. Planet: Enion. Species: Hivre. Breed: Zonhivre. Sex: Iomale. Age—”

His species had different breeds? How odd— Wait, what had the computer said? “Wait, what?” she repeated.

“Age: Twenty native solar revolutions past the year of descent—”

“No, before that.” Her cheeks heated. “Sex?”

“Dejo Jinn, mature iomale zonhivre, fully immunized against all known communicable xeno-infections—”

“Uh, go back to the iomale.” She stumbled over the word. “What is that?”

“One of three adult-onset genders of the hivre and culturally considered the lesser—”

“Three?” Vaughn squeaked. But he looked so much like an adult male. Human, she supposed she should add. Except for the slight strangeness about his eyes and the missing heart and the spaceship…

Okay, so not human. “But still kinda hot,” she muttered.

A spreading cone of faint blue light emerged from the panel, centering on Vaughn’s navel and then rapidly expanding to encompass her from head to foot.

With another eep, she jumped back, waving her hands as if she could disrupt the beam. “What the—?”

“No fever detected,” the machine intoned.

“I meant Dejo,” Vaughn muttered back. At least the light didn’t leave smoking holes in her.

“Patient’s temperature is optimal. Sexual compatibility at seventy-nine percent and rising—”

“Sexual—rising? What? No.” She backed away another few feet, but the spaceship wasn’t that big.

“Please confirm current course of treatment.” The panel pinged again.

“Not for sex,” she muttered.

“Iomales are used almost exclusively for sex among the hivre,” the computer informed her primly, as if correcting her. “Although present patient Dejo Jinn has not joined with a compatible biological life form since providing his personal medical data and is deemed chronically overdue—”

“Okay, stop right there,” Vaughn interrupted. No way would she want some snooty, pimpy computer sharing her scorecard, and she imagined Dejo would feel the same. But she cautiously edged back toward the bed.

Through the frosted cover, Dejo looked like…well, a sleeping prince. He—could she still call him he when he was an alien, whatever an iomale was?—lay with his eyes closed and his hands folded across the rippling musculature of his belly.

The broad expanse of his chest was bared to the ministrations of a dozen small mechanical arms that were sweeping busily over his pale skin. She studied the mark across his pectorals. When she’d poked the wound to see if it was real, the stylized depiction of wings had been less like a tattoo and more raised, like a brand. She knew some people were into extreme body modification, but her father had advised even against earrings, though he himself had a small compass rose on his forearm, a reminder to stay oriented.

“Has to be something that matters,” he’d told her and Rayna. “And God knows, once you get it under your skin, it ain’t coming out again, so make sure it matters a lot.”

“You can do laser tattoo removal now,” Rayna had said cheekily.

He’d laughed and kissed her head. “But there’ll always be a shadow inside you, if not in your skin than in your memories.”

Their mother’s name had been Rosa…

Vaughn hadn’t found anything yet that deserved a place on her body or in her soul. She’d thought maybe her life with the Guard… Well, she’d thought wrong. And now she was here.

Compatible biological life form, indeed.

She put her hand on the lid. He had to get better. He was her only link to Rayna. “I guess yeah, confirm the course of treatment.” What did she know different? She’d been trained to put holes in people, not take them out.

“Tissue repair underway. Pain management in process.”

Vaughn sank onto a trunk/bench next to the medical pod. The compact area reminded her a little of a mudroom. Come inside after a long day of traipsing across the universe, take off your boots, crawl into the med bed to have your laser burns repaired…

She thumped her head back onto the bulkhead behind her. It was unyielding. But she should be used to bashing her head on hard things by now.

She had closed her eyes only for a moment when a soft hiss from the bed jerked her upright. A misting fog drifted from under the rising lid. Kinda creepy, actually.

Dejo sat up, blinking. The second eyelid she’d told herself she hadn’t seen flashed over his eyes a few times and he ran one hand over his hair, looking a little dazed. Finally, his gaze settled on her. “You… I thought maybe… You stayed.” A slow, sleepy smile dawned, transforming the lines of his face.

She had to admit, she was kinda glad she hadn’t broken his nose. She would do it if she had to, but maybe there wasn’t enough beauty in the world—or the universe—for her to be indiscriminately smashing it.

She cleared her throat of a sudden, inexplicable dryness. “Of course I stayed,” she said. “I said I would.”

“And you always do what you say?”

She frowned. “Why would I say it if I wasn’t going to?”

He shook his head, as if that didn’t warrant a response. His pupils were wide and black, pushing back the brown irises and yellow outer rings so he looked very human. Very male, no matter what word the computer used, and even…sexy.

Okay, that stupid computer had put crazy ideas in her head. Or maybe she was a little punch-drunk after all. But only because it was now the very darkest part of the night, and she hadn’t been sleeping well for the longest time, uncomfortable and worrying. Maybe she should take this chance to regroup herself.

She told herself she was only looking at him to judge his physical condition. “How you feeling?”

“Good.” His voice was husky. “Maybe a little too good. The bed must’ve included pain meds.”

She sucked in a breath. “It asked me for permission. Should I not have given it?”

He swung his legs over the edge and paused, looking down with a grunt. “There was a lot of repair. It’s fine. I just usually don’t…want to be left so…vulnerable.” He slanted a quick, wary glance at her.

The wide-blown pupils made him seem younger somehow, whatever the medical report said about his maturity level or sexual compatibility. Gah, shit, why was that even in her head now? Computers didn’t get to decide who she was attracted to.

Look how that had worked out for Rayna.

She let out a slow, steadying breath. “How well does that patching thing actually work?”

He looked down at his bare chest again and she couldn’t help but follow his gaze. The wings across his pecs flexed as he inhaled. His smooth, pale skin shone faintly with the damp remains of the fog.

Welp, there went her slow, steady breathing.

“The dermabond encourages new tissue growth,” he explained, “but it still takes time, and my blood volume has been replaced with healing additives, although that too is not as desirable as the real thing.”

He might be an alien on her planet, which she’d never believed would be a thing, but he was very much the real thing. She’d felt it. While she was feeling him.

She forced herself to focus. “So you’re saying you still need some downtime before we go after my sister.”

His head hanging low between his hunched shoulders, he studied her. “You really want to find her, don’t you?”

She stared at him in consternation. “To repeat your favorite word…duh.”

“Why?”

She squinted at him. “Why what?”

“Why do you want her back?”

Baffled, she repeated the obvious. “She’s my sister.” When he just continued to stare at her blankly, she kept going. “My mother left when we were young, and my father was active duty military, so Rayna basically raised me. She was there for…everything. Everything I needed. Of course I’m going to find her.”

He shrugged. “But if you already have everything you need from her…”

She boggled at him, aghast. “Do you not have sisters where you come from? I don’t love her because of what she can do for me. Rayna’s my family.”

“Like the mother? Who left you?”

They looked at each other.

Finally Vaughn shook her head. “I think something’s getting lost in translation.”

“I think your justification for this responsibility you’ve claimed is questionable, perhaps delusional.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I know you’re going to need another dose of pain meds if you keep talking.”

He smirked, the twist of his lips more sinister than the sleepy sweetness she’d seen earlier. “And I know as long as you get what you want, the reasons don’t matter.”

She huffed under her breath. “So how are we getting what I want?”

“I have two drones mapping as much of the IDA outpost—the resort, as they call it here—as possible since my attempt at remote infiltration was a failure.”

She snapped her fingers. “That’s why I saw you there, when you placed the drones?”

He nodded. “They aren’t fast, but they are thorough. The outpost has defenses against accidental Earther discovery and deliberate sabotage that we’ll need to avoid.”

As if this mission wasn’t bad enough. “Who would want to sabotage a dating agency?”

“Everyone has enemies.”

She studied him. “Do the hivre”—she tangled her tongue over his species name, but she didn’t think she was too far off—“not have families to protect them?”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you know of hivre?”

“The computer said what you were when it gave me your status update.” She was not thinking of gender or sex. She was not…

His eyes narrowed even more, to dark slits. “In many ways, the hivre are even less advanced than Earthers, with the exception of their faster-than-light technology. Everything they value is based on brutally inherited lines of succession, reinforced by millennia of hierarchical violence and cultural prejudice inflicted on everyone they encounter. So yes, they have kinship feelings.” His expression hardened. “But not in any way that would make me want to go back to them.”

She blinked. That description of his people—she hadn’t missed his use of ‘them’ versus ‘us’—didn’t sound like an ideal upbringing for a data geek. And he was obviously still sore about it; his jaw was tighter than when he’d gotten shot with a laser beam.

Carefully, she touched his hand still clenched in the foam of the pod. “Maybe you don’t know what it’s like to have a sister you’d do anything for, but the families that will be reunited when we find the missing women won’t be able to thank you enough.”

If anything, his jaw clenched harder. “I don’t do it for thanks.”

She pulled back. “Well, you’ll get it anyway.”

“We’ll get nothing if we can’t find a way to break into the compound once the drones return with a schema.” The tension in his jaw flowed down to the rest of his taut muscles as he steeled himself to push to his feet.

And promptly wavered.

She zipped forward to wedge her shoulder under his arm before he fell over. The dark spicy scent of his pale skin, like espresso spiked with cinnamon, teased her. “While we wait for the drones, I think you need to really sleep. I saw your bunk back there. Let’s get you down.”

His grip tightened on her opposite shoulder, sending a pang through her where she’d bruised herself on the dumpster while hauling him into the alley. “Usually I order a stimulant from the med bed to keep me going.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good idea.” She angled him toward the back of the ship.

He shook his head, hard enough to make them both sway. “Nobody to stop me before.”

Yeah, she’d already figured that out. It made her think of all the times Rayna had put her to bed: with half-made-up stories when she was little, with backrubs when she was sick, with stern orders and no allowance when she’d tried to sneak out after midnight. Everything she’d needed. To not have that…

Dejo Jinn might have the whole universe, but that wasn’t enough.

As she moved him in a slow-motion three-legged-race down the short corridor toward the rear of the ship, she steadied him with a hand around his back, her fingers splayed over his ribcage. The healing fog had left his skin clean and silky, and the play of muscle and bone under her palm made her think of their sexual compatibility score again.

Why did the computer say it had been rising? Did anyone ever achieve one hundred percent? She’d always been competitive…

“What’s an iomale?”

His body jerked against her, and only her firm grip kept him from sliding away. “That medical report had a lot to say about me.”

“Just the basic facts,” she hedged. “Maybe it was trying to make me more advanced.”

“Hey,” he rasped. “Forgive.”

“Sorry, sorry.” She maneuvered him carefully through the doorway to the bunkroom. His shoulders were wide enough to bump the jamb even without them being side by side. Inside was nearly as intimate.

Intimate? Why had she used that word in her head? Thank god she didn’t have a translator or a med bed to give her thoughts away.

Most of the room was taken up by a round, rumpled bed, stocked with a ton of what looked like soft, multi-colored pool noodles. Pillows? The rest of the ship was so spare and efficient, she was sort of shocked by the lush abandon of it. But it must be his room since there wasn’t another on the ship.

She set him carefully on the rim of the bed. It was big enough for even him to stretch out in any direction but curved up at the edges like a big bird nest. It fit with the wings across his chest.

“Okay,” she said as she steadied him. “Do you think you can—whoa there.” She grabbed for his shoulder as he tipped backward, but the silkiness of his skin defied her grasp and he splayed out on the tumbled pillows, his arms flopped behind his head and his hips elevated by the edge of the bed.

He stared up, the blacks of his pupils almost swallowing his eyes. “Iomales are the unwanted of the hivre.” His voice dipped into a lower register. “Kept as slaves, killed sometimes.”

Shit, she was sorry she’d asked. And what the hell was in those painkillers? He looked absolutely stoned, probably would have nightmares. “I want you, Dejo,” she assured him. “I need you to find my sister. Why don’t you just sleep now—”

“The hivre hatch without a discernible gender,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

She paused in lifting his legs to spin him onto the bed. “Hatch?” What. The. Hell.

“They are so small and their bones are so fine.” He angled his head to roll his eyes toward her. “Like you. The winds on Enion never stop and are strong enough that they can fly, free, go anywhere.” He let out a long sigh, his arms unfurling restlessly in the pillows. “But then they age to their year of descent, grow too heavy to keep flying.”

She pulled at his boots, then found the release tab. With all the talk of hatching and flying, she half feared she’d find chicken feet in his boots. But they were just feet, maybe a little bigger than she’d expected. She wondered if that old adage about boot size mattered with non-male aliens…

“The hatchlings come down from the skies,” he murmured. “The heaviest half are the vixas”—his voice modulated as he automatically translated—“the harpies. They correspond most closely with what you call women. They are valued across the galaxies as soldiers, fighters, champions.”

Vaughn lifted one eyebrow. “Your women are the champions?” Oh ho. Maybe she was going to like this universe after all.

“About half the rest are drones, who mate with the harpies, lay and brood the young. But the others, the iomales… Bones never finally harden, last flight feathers never fall. Weak, weightless, unwanted.” His hands folded protectively over the branded marking on his pecs. “I am iomale.”

“Weightless?” She heaved his boot-free feet over the side of the bed. “Dejo, I can honestly tell you, since I’ve been hauling you around the last couple hours, you are not weightless.”

“The best we can hope for is to be branded cloud-whores.” His hands over his chest tightened into fists, and he pounded once on the tattooed wings. “Or we’re driven away, left for dead. Unless we can escape.” He slammed his fists again, and the hidden wound in the center of the wings seeped a drop of green blood.

Swallowing hard, Vaughn clambered up into the high-sided bed and clasped his punishing hands. God, no wonder he refused painkillers. Stripping away his defenses was leaving him more raw than she knew what to do with.

Maybe she was too much like those women on his world: warriors who didn’t see any value in softer things, like extra pillows or silky skin. “Dejo.” When he strained against her hold, she straddled his thighs and had to use all her weight to contain him. “Dejo, listen to me. It’s obvious even to me at this point that the universe is bigger than any one world. However you were raised, that’s not where you are now. You’re on Earth—”

His lips writhed in a sneer even as he twisted his face away. “I was trying to forget.”

“Hey, with the insults,” she reminded him.

He thrashed his head the other way, then slowly turned to face her. The yellow ring around his irises had expanded alarmingly, forcing the human-normal brown into the void of his pupils.

She swallowed hard, finally seeing whatever avian-type genetics had dominated his world.

And it was a bird of prey, a raptor.

“I will do whatever I must to keep flying,” he said in a low, riled voice. “Flying away from anything that would hold me down.”

The hint of menace vibrated through the bones of her thighs. Considering that she was at precisely that moment holding him down, the threat seemed very real.

And…maybe a little arousing.

Shit, was this what the computer meant by rising compatibility? No, a computer couldn’t know that.

“Dejo,” she said, keeping her voice quiet but intense enough to break through whatever drugged thrall was gripping him. “You are not weightless. You are not weak. You are not a…” She swallowed. “Not a whore.”

The yellow ring glittered, hard and violent. “That was the last time I was shot. When I escaped that place.”

No wonder he was on the verge of a flashback. The wound and the drugs and his fear of being defenseless must be close to driving him mad. The hole in his chest hadn’t been where he kept his heart, but his soul.

“We’re going to do this,” she told him. “Together. We’ll find a way into that compound. Then I get my sister and you get out of here. Deal?”

His wild yellow eyes pierced her. “Why should I believe you or this deal?”

“Well, the universal translator must be giving you my words. And I give you my word, which I learned from Rayna and my father you never, ever break.”

“You don’t break?” His eyes narrowed. “You are small and thin and brown as an eggshell.”

She narrowed her eyes back. “But tough enough to hold you.”

His second eyelids flashed, and that was the only warning she got before he twisted, rolling her deeper into the bed so he was crouched on top of her. He’d twisted his hands, which she’d been holding protectively against his chest, so now he gripped her wrists, which he pinned between her breasts. “A hivre brooder sits on top of its egg.”

She didn’t struggle against his grip. Not yet. He wasn’t hurting her, but he wasn’t himself either, or at least not the cool, collected data recovery specialist he’d claimed to be.

“I am not your egg, Dejo,” she said.

He dipped his head, his yellow eyes fixed. “I could crack your shell, set you free to the winds.” That lilt was back in his voice, clearer now, almost a song. And it resonated with something dark and feral in her. “The storm is rising,” he whispered. “Calling. Do you hear it?”

Oh fuck, was this some kinky alien seduction? Did the harpies go to their unwanted “weak” whores longing to return to their feathered, unfettered, free-flying days? And now he was twisting it on her? Ah hell nah.

Slowly, she drew her knees up behind his back, setting her heels firmly. “Dejo, you need to let me go now. Then you can sleep.”

“Sleep with you?” The inquisitive tilt of his head reminded her uncomfortably of a bird eyeing a tasty worm. “Us together?”

And wouldn’t it just figure that sleep with meant the same in his language and hers? What were the chances, in all the galaxies? Although sharing the vulnerability of sleep with another might be a universal sign of trust and belonging. Maybe she could use that on him. “Maybe not…sleep, but together, sure. We’re partners, right? To get what we want.”

“And I want…” He gave his head a sharp shake, and to her astonishment, a crest of feathers rippled up out of his hair.

The feathers were barred brown like his hair, with whiter filaments like his pale skin, plus fine tracings of yellow. His shoulders hunched over her, like a hawk mantling its fallen prey.

Well, she wasn’t going down that easy. Never mind the yearning deep inside her. Just because her life had been in a shambles long enough that she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had the kind of release that left her spent and satisfied…

She wasn’t here for that. That wasn’t what she wanted from him. He wasn’t even a him. He wasn’t even human.

But damn, his heat and the intensity of his stare poured through her like a shot of the best-ever whisky.

She twisted her wrists lightly, testing his hold. Even one handed, he restrained her so easily. “I think the shock and the painkillers are fucking with you. You need to—”

Tightening his grip on her, he lowered his head to the side of her neck. “Oh, I need,” he growled low. “My universal translator informs me you said fuck.” The word rolled off his tongue in that strange accent she’d thought was Scottish but turned out was way more exotic than that. “Is that what you need? To fuck?”

The hot waft of his breath sent a shiver down her spine. She was soooo fucked…

Not here for that, remember?

She bowed her head away from him. Removing the trigger, she told herself, not giving him better access. “Really, you need to sleep this off.”

“Yes, sleep,” he rumbled. With his free hand, he brushed back her hair and traced his fingertips down the side of her face to her jaw line. With his thumb pressed to the racing pulse in her carotid, he urged her to face him. His eyes were solid caution yellow and deepest black: hawk eyes, fierce and wild. “Sleep with you.”

Shit, this was getting out of hand. Or getting into his hands, which was the actual problem.

She couldn’t take advantage of him when he was only acting like this because of the chemical imbalance, both internally caused and externally imposed. But…he was just so close, his body hard and insistent and interested when most of the guys she met were either too intimidated by her less feminine attributes or perversely challenged by it.

“Dejo, I’m not one of the hivre harpies,” she said, as if he needed the reminder.

“Good.” His feral growl quivered through her again. The way he crouched with his knees clamped around her hips was very not good.

But oh so good.

With a regretful sigh, she dug her heels into the bed and bucked.

She had half a heartbeat to enjoy the pressure of her pubic bone against his crotch before she flipped him over her head. As big and heavy as he was, all his weight was rolled forward on his bare toes. Also, he was bleary and distracted, or it might not have worked. As it was, the soft cushion beneath her sank low, bleeding off some of her power, but she had enough to dump him.

He hit the mattress in a puff of pretty pillows and a startled grunt. She twisted her wrists out of his slackened grasp and caught him in a pinning hold with a controlling arm around his shoulder and throat, her other arm applying downward pressure in a vise.

“Junior varsity state champion, two years running,” she murmured. “Stop struggling before one of us gets hurt. We’re partners.”

His yellow eye rolled to glare at her, and his breath hissed out. “Is this an Earther mating ritual?”

“In some counties,” she admitted. “But I am not interested in any intergalactic dating.”

His shoulders flexed under her, testing her as she’d done him. “I said mating, not dating.”

Some of the silkiness had worn off his skin, making her even more achingly aware of the taut steel of his musculature underneath. Not to mention that dark spicy scent of his. She had pinned his hips between her thighs, using her strongest muscles to control the center of his body, and she quivered with the pervy urge to grind on him. Why oh why had she taken off his coat?

“You were just shot and I’m still in shock from the whole alien thing,” she told him. “We’re neither of us thinking clearly right now. What’s say we pretend this didn’t happen, get some sleep, and break into the resort bright and early?”

He stilled, but the tension didn’t go out of his body. “That makes sense.”

Cautiously, she released the pressure on his neck. “I’m glad you agr—”

He rolled her.

In a flash, he was on top again, his hips pinning hers to the mattress. The feathers in his hair curled almost straight up, the white and yellow flashing like a warning.

She narrowed her eyes. “I thought you agreed to pretend this didn’t happen. But here it is, happening again.”

“I thought you didn’t lie.” He glared at her. “Pretending is lying.”

She bit her lip. “But you said it made sense.”

“I lie all the time.” He shook his head, and the feathers smoothed then bristled again. His gaze fastened on her mouth. “This isn’t blood loss or shock. There is something…” His second eyelids flickered for a moment, hiding the fierce yellow of his irises. “Iomales are not allowed to…date, or partner. We are lesser, beneath the others.”

Despite his threatening position over her, her throat tightened at the rasp of pain in his words. “That is wrong of them,” she said. “No one should be made to feel beneath anyone else.”

He looked down at her, the corner of his mouth twisting. “Is that how it is on Earth?”

She took a breath, then let it out in a slow sigh. “No. Not always,” she admitted. “But that’s the ideal. That’s what I’d fight for.”

His hand sleeked over her hip. “You aren’t fighting me now.”

She snorted out a laugh. “Because I thought we were agreeing.”

“I’ve never had a partner.” The pain in his words morphed to thoughtfulness, making her think she could eventually talk him out of this strange addled state. “I’ve also never…” His gaze fixed on hers. “There is an Earther custom I’ve seen on your broadcast transmissions—”

She arched her eyebrows. “You watch television?”

“—and I saw it too at the Sunset Saloon, this custom that I’ve not found elsewhere.”

“Really?”

He nodded, feathers swaying. “I require data.”

“On?”

“The kiss. Tongue, please.”