It reminded her of an octopus she had once seen in a documentary. The muscles and chromatophores in its skin had enabled it to change both its color and surface texture within seconds to mimic its surroundings.
When she had touched Dagon’s hand, his skin had still been soft and smooth, but then so was the bedding it resembled. If he were lying on something spiky or rough, would his skin assume that texture?
She glanced around the room, tempted to find something poky or bristly to slip beneath his hand just to see.
Dagon sighed again in his sleep. The arm she had used as a pillow moved, the fingers of his hand splaying on the sheet. It slid down several inches, then back up.
His brow furrowed slightly.
Again he moved his hand across the sheet.
She smiled. Did he search for her?
His puckered brow became a disgruntled frown when he didn’t find her.
Too cute.
Within seconds, the white and gray that painted his skin morphed into the bronzish tan he usually bore. His eyelids fluttered, then opened. Blinking, he stared up at the ceiling for a moment, then turned his head to frown at the empty space beside him. But as soon as he saw her kneeling down by his hip, the sun chased his stormy expression away and he sent her a sleepy smile.
“There you are.”
Her heart turned over at the affection that laced his deep voice. “And there you are,” she said with a grin.
His eyes narrowed, amusement and suspicion warring in them as he reached for her. “What are you doing?”
Eliana let him draw her down until she lay atop him. “Trying to think of something poky or pointy to put under you.”
He blinked, his expression going comically blank. “What?”
“I was going to say bristly, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single hairbrush since I came aboard your ship. You guys all seem to prefer combs.”
“You wanted to shove a hairbrush under me?”
“Yes.”
A long moment passed. “Is this an… Earthling copulation thing?”
“You mean a sex thing?”
“Yes. Is this an Earthling sex thing?”
She laughed. “No. I wanted to see if your skin texture can change to match your environment or if it’s just the color. When I woke up, you looked like the bedding.”
“Ah.” A look of chagrin crossed his face. “Apologies. I haven’t slept with a woman in so long that it didn’t occur to me to warn you.”
She tilted her head to one side. “By slept with, do you mean you haven’t fallen asleep beside a woman or that you haven’t had sex in a long time?”
He winced. “Both. I’ve spent most of the past several years in space. When we dock with space stations or visit allied worlds, we usually aren’t there long enough to foster relationships with the women we encounter and are forbidden from sleeping beside any non-Segonian women we might seek out for temporary pleasure.”
“Why?”
“Those who aren’t from our homeworld but know of our ability to camouflage ourselves so efficiently believe it’s a result of classified military technology.”
She combed her fingers through his soft hair, which was once more as black as hers. “Is it?”
He shook his head. “It’s purely biological. We’re born with the ability.”
She thought of Taelon and Lisa’s daughter Abby. “Wow. I bet that makes parenting a lot harder. I’ve seen what infants and toddlers can do. How much more mayhem must they create when they can be virtually invisible while doing it?”
He grinned. “The camouflage doesn’t manifest itself in children until they reach…” He seemed to search for the right word. “Puberty? Is that the correct Earth term? The time at which boys begin to physically mature into men and girls into women?”
“Yes.” She toyed with the hair on his chest. “Does just the color change? Or can you change the texture of your skin, too?”
The soft skin beneath her hand shifted, grooves forming straight lines, the color altering until his chest looked as though it had turned into tree bark. The hair changed color and texture, too, until it resembled a light moss that coated it.
Eyes wide, she sat up and ran her hands over him. “That’s amazing. It even feels like tree bark, only warmer.”
“In terms of texture, we can only change that on our chest, our back, our upper arms, and our thighs. Our face, too, to some extent.” One rough shoulder lifted in a shrug. “Unfortunately, changing the texture takes a lot of concentration, and we often lack the time for that in battle. So we usually rely on simpler color changes to conceal us from enemies.”
She nodded. “I have telekinetic abilities, but they require so much focus that I rarely have the opportunity to use them in battle.” A thought occurred to her. “Wait. When I bit Adaos and he lost consciousness, why didn’t he go all camoflaugey like you?”
His lips twitched. “It tends to not work if we lose consciousness due to injury.”
Just like Nick. Her former hunting partner could shape-shift into just about any animal he studied. But once he lost consciousness, he automatically returned to his natural form.
“What about your uniforms?” she asked. “Maarev, Liden, and Efren were fully dressed when I sparred with them, and they completely disappeared—visually speaking.”
“That’s a fairly recent technological advancement, one we didn’t achieve until a couple of centuries ago. Until then, our soldiers had to strip off their clothes if they wanted to confound their adversaries with natural camouflage.”
“Yikes.”
He grinned. “I wouldn’t want to fight naked either.”
“Gotta protect your family jewels, right?” When he stared at her blankly, she wiggled atop the lap she straddled.
His sucked in a breath, hardening even more beneath her, and clamped his hands on her hips. Then he laughed. “Family jewels. An apt term.”
She grinned.
“Seven or eight generations ago, our scientists discovered a way to infuse the fabric of our uniforms and our armor with nanochromatophores that react to the chemical change that takes place in our skin when we camouflage ourselves.”
“So it changes whenever you change?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. I know I probably say this like ten times a day, but that is so cool.”
The wood texture on his chest returned to smooth skin.
She let her hands rove his warm muscles, toyed with the hair on his chest. “I feel kinda weird that I didn’t ask you this before, but is Dagon your first name or your last name?” It sounded like a first name, but she thought soldiers in the military back home used their last names.
“By last name do you mean my family name?”
“Yes.”
“Dagon is my first name. My family name is Strostaav.”
She repeated it a time or two in her head. “So in the Segonian military, soldiers and their commanders address each other by their first names?” She hadn’t heard anyone call him anything other than Dagon or Commander Dagon since she’d met him.
“Yes.”
“Weird.”
He smiled. “It wasn’t always so. But several centuries ago, a beloved Segonian king was captured and slain by an enemy while en route to an Aldebarian Alliance conference. An investigation into the incident revealed that the surprise attack was not a surprise at all. Our enemy had learned the identity of the commander of the ship that would carry our king, used the commander’s full name to locate members of his family, then kidnapped and tortured his wife and youngest children until the commander gave them the information they needed to orchestrate their assassination.”