“Terrans do love their DIY,” he picked up with a little smile. “Something you Dalkarians will never understand. That and your coffee is utter shite.”
She gasped, hand over her heart dramatically as she played along. “You call our coffee bad? How dare you, sir!”
Their chuckles filled the air around them, rebounding off the stacked crates on either side of them as they reached the last, uncounted section of the hangar. She squeezed his hand in silent thanks for covering for her.
But while she might have been grateful for that, she wasn’t about to let him off the hook. It wasn’t that easy. It wasn’t the fact that he’d lied to her, but that the lie was so slick and practiced that she suspected it was one he told a lot.
“Jay?”
He slid her a sideways glance and she saw the look there. The tiny warning. He didn’t want her to ask. She was right. Something else was going on there.
“Why did you lie?”
He sighed and stopped, pulling her into his arms as he leaned back against a crate. This was part of their cover, them being a mated pair, but even so she couldn’t help the tiny shiver of... something that rolled through her. She knew it was just an act, so she shouldn’t feel anything. Should she? But, to her embarrassment, she couldn’t help it.
Heat flushed her cheeks. She was a terrible spy. They had one job... act like a couple until their B’Kaar watchdog got bored and moved on. Then they could head for the command console at the back of the hangar. All she had to do was hack into the system and hide their activity from the B’Kaar.
“Jay?” she prompted when he didn’t answer her.
He ran a hand through his hair, sending the short spikes into disarray. His blue-green eyes with their strange rounded pupils were haunted.
“I never did any DIY,” he admitted. “Like ever. Or threw a ball with my dad, or any of the usual things. My father... let’s just say he wasn’t around a lot.”
“Oh.” Now she felt awful for pushing. “Gracie said she was from a single-parent family as well. Apparently her father left just after she was born...”
That was something she couldn’t understand. How could a male walk away from his mate and offspring that way? But she supposed that was her Latharian nature coming out. Or rather, the fact that the only culture she’d been exposed to was that of an Imperial Latharian family. No male would ever dream of leaving a fertile female and his own offspring. Human customs and mores were very, very different.
Jay’s snort was bitter and derisive. “Yeah, that’s just the problem. My father didn’t leave, but he might as well have. He was never there. Same with my mother.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
Lifting a big hand, he stroked her hair back from her face with a gentle touch.
“I’m adopted, love.” At her confused expression, he smiled and carried on. “It means my birth parents didn’t want me and gave me up.”
A heavy wave of something washed over her, squeezing her chest in a vise-like grip and her eyes tingled weirdly. “How could they not? How old were you?”
He smoothed a thumb over her cheek and she felt the wetness there on her skin.
“Don’t cry. Not for me,” he murmured, his deep voice a gritty rasp. “Not for that. It was a long time ago and it doesn’t bother me. I came to terms with it and the fact they didn’t want me years ago.”
She nodded, too caught up in listening to him, in needing to hold him, to marvel at the fact this body could create tears. She’d always wondered what it would be like.
Now she knew… she’d happily have not found out. Even tears, as beautiful and delicate as they seemed in all the holoplays and vids she’d analyzed from the captured human databases, weren’t worth this awful, crushing weight and ache in the center of her chest.
“But you had other parents?” she pushed gently, leaning against him. It was partly for comfort and partly because she liked being in his arms. Being close to him. Her smaller frame fit perfectly against his larger one, like she was made to be there. “Clan members who took you in?”
He gave a small laugh. “Adoption doesn’t work that way. My parents aren’t biologically related to me. They wanted me. Chose me. Apparently. Don’t know why because they barely saw me growing up. I was eight before I realized most kids saw their parents on Christmas day rather than spent it with the housekeeper.”
Her heart ached at the note in his voice. Hard-edged and unemotional, it held a hint of decades-old hurt buried deep down.
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
His voice dropped an octave, whispering over her skin like an auditory caress. She managed to suppress the shiver. Where they still playacting? If they were, she really shouldn’t notice the way his eyes had darkened, nor the small, wicked smile that curved his lips. But it wasn’t just that. The nature of the way he held her had changed as well. Instead of sheltering her against his larger body, his hand spread over the back of her hips, pulling her up against him. And something was pressing into her stomach…
Her eyes widened, the realization of what it was hitting her at the same moment he bent his head to whisper his lips over hers. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Then he kissed her.
The instant his lips touched hers, her brain short-circuited but didn’t reboot. Instead, she was in some kind of sensory-overload limbo—a state she was only capable of limited responses in, and none of them verbal.
Her senses locked onto small things. The way his lips, softer than she’d thought and somehow hard at the same time, moved against her mouth. For a moment she wasn’t sure what to do. None of her subroutines had any information on the correct response to such a move, or, if they had, the short-circuit had stopped her being able to access them.
His shirt was rough under her fingertips, the heat of his skin beneath penetrating the thin fabric as though it were reaching out to her. Her hands clutched at the material, and she crumpled it in her fist as he swept his tongue against her lip.
Her thoughts stuttered again and then instinct took over. Parting her lips, she surrendered and allowed him access. He growled and pulled her closer, his free hand driving into her hair as he invaded her mouth.
And… it was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. A soft moan welled up from the center of her chest as he stroked her tongue with his, teasing and tempting her. Heat hit her, sliding through every vein in her body to start a fire low in her belly, right where he pressed against her. The feel of the thick, hard length made her ache, between her legs, and she was forced to press them together.
“Oh…” she whispered when he broke away. His breathing as compromised as hers and he looked down at her with darkness still in his eyes.
It had felt good. Very good. She frowned, looking up at him. “Why did you stop? Did I do it wrong?”
He chuckled, his hand on the side of her neck as he swept his thumb over her lower lip. “You didn’t do anything wrong, sweetheart. I stopped because if I didn’t, I’d make you mine right here against this crate and your first time? That should be special… in a bed. With candles and all that.”
She looked at him, confused. “None of my research into human mating customs mentioned candles were required for procreation.”