“What is it, my darling?” Reaper asked in a concerned voice. “Did something happen?”
Although I resisted at first, Reaper forced me to slightly pull away from him so that he could look at my face. I opened and closed my mouth a few times, feeling silly for giving in to irrational panic, but there was no way I could go back to that room.
“I… Can… Can I stay with you tonight? Please?” I stuttered pleadingly. “I… It’s… quiet… Too quiet. I… I don’t want to be alone. The Creckels…”
His face melted in an odd mix of compassion and guilt. He gently brushed my hair from my face and rested his palm on my cheek. I covered his hand with mine and pressed it harder against my face while leaning into his touch.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Reaper in a commiserating tone. “Of course, you can. I’m so sorry. We should have realized this sooner. I promised you’d never be alone again, and I meant it. It was stupid of me to assume you would want some privacy after all this time.”
I shook my head vigorously. “I need contact.”
The Creckels had decided to sleep outside with Stran, just under the cover of the ship. Even more than me, they were yielding to their instinctive hunger to live free and in the wild. But I had never spent a single day of my life alone.
Brees had been born before me but had adopted me as her own the day I entered this world. When I’d been an infant, she’d watched over me, curled at the side of my makeshift crib, later next to my bed and sometimes even on it. In the twenty years since the Kryptids had sealed us inside the base, I’d spent every hour of every day with one or more Creckels by my side, and every single night surrounded by their warm bodies and hard scales pressed against me.
“Anything you want, you shall have,” Reaper replied in an odd voice.
He picked me up in his arms and carried me to the bed before settling me on top. He circled around to hop in from the other side and lie next to me. I almost purred with pleasure when he pulled me into his embrace and drew the blanket over us. I rested my head on his chest, loving the feel of his scales beneath my cheek, hard and yet oddly supple, and the delightful heat of his body against mine. I wrapped a possessive arm around his waist and gently rubbed my face against his chest. Reaper slowly caressed my hair before resting his hand on my back.
“Thank you for being so wonderfully good to me,” I whispered, somewhat annoyed by sleep rearing its head.
“Always, my Janelle. Always,” Reaper said, pressing a soft kiss on top of my head.
I will claim him as my mate.
There was no longer any question he was my home. I sighed with contentment and closed my eyes, drifting into oblivion to the soothing sounds of his two hearts beating beneath my ear.
Morning found me having all but climbed on top of Reaper. The way he was looking at me, he’d clearly been awake for a while.
“Hello, sleepyhead,” he said in a voice even deeper than usual. “Did you sleep well?”
“Amazingly well, thanks to you. Sorry for hogging you,” I said sheepishly, making him chuckle.
“Why? Do I look unhappy to be hogged?” he asked teasingly.
I shook my head, feeling suddenly intimidated.
“That’s right, because I’m not. I love having you near me.”
The now familiar flame he always seemed to stir inside me poked its head up.
“And I love being near you,” I said a little bit more eagerly than intended. I didn’t feel confident yet in my ability to properly court him. However, I wanted to get a better sense of what he thought of me. Whether I was merely a wounded animal he felt protective over or something more. “You make me feel safe and happy. I’m so glad you were the one to find me.”
“My Janelle…” he said in that strange tone he sometimes used that left me wondering. “I couldn’t be happier that I found you.”
I hugged him, seizing the opportunity to bury my face in his neck again and inhale his delectable scent. Something shifted, even in the way he was holding me. It was subtle yet undeniable. My mouth watered, and my nipples suddenly tingled as the subtle notes of cinnamon wafted to me. A dull throbbing in my core slowly intensified as Reaper’s spicy scent increased.
At that instant, I became convinced my suspicion regarding the cause was founded. After the incident in the mess hall yesterday, I had tried to figure out what would provoke such an embarrassed reaction from Reaper. With my limited interaction with people, I didn’t have too many references to go by. But I distinctly remembered similar mortified responses from my father whenever sexual matters were involved. The first time we had walked in on two Creckels copulating, my father had all but hauled me out of the room, covering my eyes as if he’d feared that sight would have mentally scarred me for life. It had only made me more curious.
Every time Reaper had started smelling of cinnamon, it had been while holding me in his arms, usually with us chest to chest, and every single time when his hold had become more possessive. Judging by my reaction to his scent, I could only deduce this was some sort of pheromone. Creckels possessed three different types of pheromones, only one of them used for courtship. Was it farfetched to assume Reaper’s species could have them as well, and that proximity with me was causing him to release in a subconscious—or maybe even conscious—effort to seduce me?
“I love when you smell like cinnamon,” I blurted out, immediately mentally kicking myself for it.
To my relief, Reaper didn’t balk or become embarrassed. His face took on an intensity that made my stomach quiver. His cupped my cheek in a gentle caress, and then his thumb traced my lips in a slow motion that sent a bolt of fire in the pit of my stomach. I hated my messed-up sight and not having the temporary optical aids on. I wished I could clearly see his face and the emotions he currently felt rather than trying to interpret them based on what little I perceived.
“I’m glad you do,” Reaper replied with a voice full of promise. “Let’s get up. The others are already back at work.”
Guilt washed over me that I’d been entertaining naughty thoughts about my beautiful rescuer while not having spared a single thought to my life-long companions or the rest of the team.
I quickly ran to my room and got dressed. This time, no panic attack manifested itself, probably because I was only passing through. After a quick bite—the wretched Jessica having put a holographic tag next to the dishes I was allowed to eat—we went to meet the team outside.
Brees immediately ran up to me, and my heart filled to bursting with love for the female that I had grown to consider as a strange mix of a mother-figure and a sister. She bumped her snout against my hand in greeting, and I scratched that sensitive spot under the scales right behind her ears. The Creckel shivered with pleasure, her broad, flat tail wagging from side to side with a slightly scraping sound caused by the spikes lining its contour.
A strange whine drew my attention. Standing next to Doom a couple of meters in front of us, Stran was looking at me with a needy expression that most people probably wouldn’t recognize.
“Come here, handsome,” I said with warmth.
Brees graciously stepped aside, giving her place to Stran. She bumped the side of his snout with hers in an affectionate gesture of friendship. I was relieved of that turn in their relationship. While Stran would have made a wonderful mate, Brees had already taken Grol as hers. Like my father and my mother, I didn’t think she and Grol were in love with each other, but they had love.