Inara gives me a furious look. “Not you too!”
I raise my hands off the handlebars. “Hey, I’m not… Look, if it were up to me, the world wouldn’t be unsafe and a woman could sit wherever she wanted without having to worry if her brother's friends can keep her from getting dragged off by slavers. Sheezus. Is there anywhere out there where it’s… not like that?”
Inara’s mouth twists. “Our homeland.” Her face might be alien, but it’s painted in easy-to-read lines of frustration. “Public executions for wrongs are swift and unforgiving. In a way, you could see the remaining populace as being naturally selected against deviance. There is no fear of being harmed there. As a female, I mean.”
I gape at her. “Why the heck did you leave?”
Her tail slaps down hard, punching a slice in her treadmill’s belt that makes an extra loud swishing noise as the thing is run back under and around again. “Because my family treats me as if—” She huffs a breath and lowers her voice to a more natural speaking level. “My family calls me their jewel.”
“I get from your tone that this is bad, but… that sounds nice.”
She grimaces. “It does seem perfectly pleasant. But they treat females as if we are precious—”
“Not a bad thing…”
“—commodities! There are fewer females born than males, and when everyone acts as if you should be kept wrapped in breakables paper, tucked safely away for eternity, it is a ‘bad thing!’” She tosses her little horns and sends me a frustrated look. “I am done being cosseted.”
I don’t know what shows on my face. But Inara sees it and doesn’t appreciate it.
“You agree with them, don’t you?” she says in a sort of disbelieving awe. Also, it’s a betrayed sort of awe.
I catch her wrist when she tries to leave her treadmill. “I really shouldn’t have an opinion on this.”
“But you do, and you—”
“And I would have a heart attack if one of my sisters was snatched and almost sold into slavery. Safe to say I’d absolutely lose it—but I’m not saying I don’t hear you, Inara. You still deserve to have a life.” I stare into her plum-colored eyes. “Okay?”
She relaxes some, but her tail is still snapping, aggravated. With my other hand, I drag my fingers through my hair. “Let’s do something.”
Interest burns through some of her pique. She looks me up and down. “What are you proposing?”
I jerk my head to our machines. “We’re on treadmills, woman. I challenge you to run. Then we’ll get ready for bed. Sound good?”
Inara looks—granted, I’m no expert, but I’d swear she’s excited about this plan. “All right.”
We run full-out for maybe ten minutes. Just enough that I’ve got a light sheen of sweat, and she doesn’t look like she might bite me for making her ordeal into a big deal. I hand her a towel, and as I swipe at my soaked spots with my own towel, I’m fascinated to watch that she takes hers and buffs herself, shining up her scales.
Aliens. Huh.
We hit my apartment, and I head for the shower. “Be back in seven,” I call to her. When I exit in sweats and a t-shirt (the most clothing I’ve worn to bed since I was a kid), Inara, who declined the shower option, is on my couch.
I think about plopping down beside her, but instead, I take the chair across from her. “Question for you.”
Her eyes have that slightly reflective quality of a cat. And her claws glint like a clouded leopard’s when she gestures at me with her hand and murmurs, “Ask.”
“If your brothers had you locked down, how’d you manage to get here? And why?”
“I snuck away in a ship belonging to my sibling. It is an incredibly fast, beautifully maneuverable vessel. It belongs to my brother Zadeon.”
“How did you know where to go to get here?”
“I followed a legion of other ships.” She nearly rolls her alien eyes. “Untold numbers of my planet’s males are travelling here as we speak. They’ve come to your Earth to abduct mates.”
I’m on my feet. “WHAT?!”
“But not one female Rakhii is among them.” Inara waves her hand, almost looking bored. “Do not concern yourself—”
“Excuse me?”
“You needn’t fret,” she sighs, and really, I’d swear I can hear her rolling her eyes this time. “We have a whole colony of human women, and soon we’ll have more. Your females adore the males of my planet. It’s unlikely they would take a female against her will.”
I thud back to my ass on my chair. “‘Unlikely?’ Really? And so that makes it okay?”
“Truly. And yes. Trust me.”
I drag a hand through my hair. “Shit, woman.” When I glance up, it’s to watch her nose scrunch in reaction to the first word, which is unbelievably cute on such an alien face. “What’s your plan here?” I ask.
She eyes me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you said you snuck here, and your family is uber protective, yet you’ve flown the coop and traveled across the galaxy.”
“More than one,” she corrects, smirking. “By far.”
I wave that away. “Loads of universes between us and them, got it. But seriously, your family—they’ve got to be looking for you, right?”
Inara purses her lips, and her tail starts to twitch like an irritated feline’s. “I left them a note. I told them not to search for me.”
My eyebrows climb right to my hairline. “They’re going to follow that order? Really?”
Her grimace makes me think yeah, no.
“So we can expect your relatives to swarm us at any moment?”
She shoots me an alarmed look. “No, it will take some time.” Her widened eyes relax as she shakes her ears out. “Perhaps a significant amount of time. A number of ships are already here. It won’t be terribly easy for my siblings to find passage to this planet at a moment’s notice.”
“Can they track the ship you hocked? Here, for example, we’ve got technology that…”
She’s giving me an indulgent smile. “We’re at least that advanced.”
The way she says it so kindly tells me what she really means is her people have spanked the pants off of ours in the LoJacking department. “I disabled the trackers,” she explains.
If one of my sisters or nieces ever took the Boss, drove it far, far away, and turned off ways to verify her location and safety...
I drop my face into my hands. “All right. I can’t hear any more of this.” I scrub at my eyes with the heels of my hands, inhaling like I’m trying to suck French fries up my nose as I meet her eyes again. “Okay. You. Hop up. You’re the guest, so you get guest accommodations. Take my bed.”
Smiling, she gets to her feet and struts to my room, hips provocatively swaying. I’m beginning to think that’s just how she walks. Some sort of natural come-hither, and it works across species, apparently, because…
I want to follow.
With painful intensity, I’m aware that she doesn’t close the bedroom door.