“What are you doing?” Rex is standing over me, probably wondering why I am not working anymore.
“Just looking at the tiny horse.”
“Oh yes, they run in minuscule herds. It is very amusing.”
“I want a tiny horse.”
“What do you need a tiny horse for?”
“As a pet. I would look after it, and…”
“They can look after themselves quite well.”
“On my world, there were animals that couldn’t, so we kept them as pets.”
“Why couldn’t they?”
“Because we’d bred them so they couldn’t. Like, we made them smaller, and we bred their survival instincts out of them, and we changed the environment so they could only scavenge and would probably starve if they tried to survive on their own, and then when some of them tried to go back to the wild we’d call them feral and kill them… It sounds bad when you put it that way, but some really cute cat pictures came out of the whole thing.”
“Your species deliberately subjugated other species on the genetic level so you could always enjoy having power over them?” There is awe, wonder, and maybe even a little in the way of disgust in his tone.
“I mean, we ate some of them?”
Still not better.
“What a world you must have come from,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me.
“What did you do on your world?”
“We worked with the beasts, of course. We would tame them and work with them, but we did not breed them to be more compliant. That would… actually have been quite a good idea.”
“My species is full of good ideas. And also some very bad ones. We can hardly ever tell the difference between them. It usually comes down to a fifty-fifty split on most things, no matter what they are.”
“Interesting.”
“It is interesting,” I agree, though what I am most interested in is the way sweat beads and rolls down the paths in his musculature as he works up a sweat. Gardening has never been this sexy.
I’ve been here one day, and I’ve already started to accept my new life. Which, in itself, is weird. Once I moved apartments and I didn’t feel at home for over a year. I shouldn’t be accepting a new reality surrounded by danger this easily. I should be fighting it, probably, or at least feeling weird and disoriented. I think it’s Rex who is standing in the way of all those feelings. He has become the complete center of my world in less than twenty-four hours.
“You are looking at me in a very intriguing way,” he notes in that rough timbre he uses when we are going to engage intimately. Look how he has already trained to me to recognize his signals.
“I’m just… looking,” I say. I wish I was not shy. I wish I was a seductive woman capable of bringing him to his knees and putting him back between my thighs. But I’m not. So I’m just sitting here, staring like an idiot.
“What is it you want, Kristine?” He crouches down in front of me, his physicality so incredibly intimidating and yet alluring. I want to touch him. I don’t even care that there is earth over the both of us. I want to roll around in the dirt, and give in to the animal impulses which have been driving me since I met him.
“I can’t say.”
I can’t even look at him. I know I shouldn’t be ashamed. There’s no point in being ashamed. I should just tell him what I want. But the words won’t come. They’re stuck in my throat, their little word legs and arms braced against the walls of my vocal cords, refusing to emerge.
“I was just wondering,” I mumble. “If maybe I could see your mating parts…”
“You wish to see me in my entirety?”
“Yes.” I whisper the word, but the wind abducts it, and I am forced to say it again, louder this time. “Yes!”
He reaches out and caresses my cheek gently with one of his blue green fingers. His touch is warm and strong, just as he is. “Are you telling me that you are in season?”
“I don’t know what that means. Unless you’re asking me if I’m…” I can’t actually form the word horny to his regal face.
He rinses his hands off with the water flask, and reaches for me, strong fingers clasping my elbows as he pulls me toward his shirtless body. We end up standing together in the garden, my eyes locked on his uniquely handsome face.
“I intend to mate with you,” he says, his voice strong and certain. “Fate has put you here with me. You, among all females in existence, have found your way to me. But I can sense your inexperience…”
I blush as I realize I don’t have any secrets from him. He sees me and understands me in a way nobody ever has.