Well, she's got me there. "How would you greet danger, then? With a frown?"
"I wouldn't greet it at all!" She taps my chest with her fingertips. "Smart people avoid danger."
"Then I suppose it's good that I have you, because you're very smart." I rub her bottom with my thumb, thinking about all the guttural noises she made when my tongue was deep inside her. Kef me, but those sounds were incredible. Like she'd lost all control and wanted nothing more than my mouth on her. She—
"Did you mean what you said earlier?" Alice asks in a soft voice, her fingers stroking over my nipple.
I said a lot of things earlier. "About what?"
"About me being your mate. Am I?"
I try not to tense. She didn't like the idea earlier, and I worry that if I tell her how I truly feel, I'm going to scare her away. Alice has to realize on her own that she needs me as much as I need her. If it's all my idea, I worry she'll feel she's being enslaved all over again, just in a different way. "Do you want to be?" I ask, keeping my voice casual. "I mentioned before that I'm happy to go as slow as needed."
Her fingers trace along my nipple, sending prickles of pleasure straight to my cock. Does she want to mate again? Already? What a female.
"I just don't know what being your mate entails," Alice says.
I try to think of what answer would scare her the least. "You and me. Together. The rest is just semantics."
"You make it sound so easy."
For me, it is. Now that I have her, the rest of my problems fade away. Loss of the Sister? We'll get another ship. Being forced to jettison escape pods because Straik betrayed us? We'll get back at him. Eventually. It seems less important now, especially with Alice soft and warm—and very, very naked—in my arms. "It is easy. Why make it hard?"
She lifts her head, resting her chin on my chest plating as she gazes at me. "I just don't get how you're in love with me. We barely know each other."
How much does she think I need to know about her to establish that she's mine? A full dossier of her family history? An hour-by-hour playback of her time since adolescence? "I know who you are as a person."
One of those yellow brows arches. "No, you don't."
"Don't I? We've spent weeks in the pod together. I learned all about you." I squeeze her fine, rounded bottom again. "I know you snore when you sleep on your back. I know you touch yourself in the lavatory when you think I'm not paying attention to how long you've been in there." I ignore her gasp and continue. "I know you have a soft heart when it comes to creatures. I know you love eating. I know you're squeamish at the thought of hurting someone. I know it makes you crazy when I clean all the time, which was partly the reason that I did it."
"I knew it!" Alice thumps me with an irritated finger. "You WERE just fucking with me with all those shoe shining moments."
"Not entirely," I admit with a grin. "But there wasn't much else to do on the pod and it did put the most charming scowl on your face." I wrap my arms around her, holding her tight. "You see? I know all about you. I like spending time with you. I like tasting you. I really liked having you lick my cock. What more do we need?"
She shakes her head at me, but there's a smile on her lips. "And what does a future with you and me look like, Prince Charming?"
I pause, because I need to choose my answer carefully. "What do you want it to look like, Sunshine?"
36
ALICE
Oh no. He is absolutely not deflecting this conversation back to me. "Don't put this on me. I asked you what YOU thought our future would look like together." I know if I answer first, he'll just agree with whatever I say. He just got laid, after all. I know how this works.
He'll tell me what I want to hear, and then it won't be the truth. He needs to go first.
Kaspar thinks for a minute, his fingers brushing over my bare back. "I picture us on a ship, of course. You and me on the Little Sister. I can teach you how to shoot, and humans can get in a lot of places that a mesakkah can't. The crew of the Jabberwock travel with their mates, so I imagine we'd do the same."
"You want me to be a pirate?"
His hand stills. "Is that bad?"
I'm disappointed beyond words. When I picture my future, it's not running around on more spaceships, or shooting bad guys and stealing from them. To me, that's not a future. That's just farting around. I want someplace with a sky. I want a home to call my own. If I can't go back to Earth, then I want to go somewhere that's safe for humans, somewhere that I won't feel constantly hunted. I don't want to feel like one wrong move will end up with me as someone's bed slave again. "What if I don't want to be a pirate?"