“You can’t just change it!” I stammered.
“I can if I woo you.”
He said it in such a matter-of-fact way. Never mind the various layers of resentment and awkwardness built up between us. Never mind that he probably had no idea how human courting rituals even worked. Never mind that we were two entirely different species.
He was Skallagrim, stone sky god and Bohnebregg prince, a juggernaut of alien determination, and everything about his stance and words and tone told me that he would figure it the fuck out no matter what it took.
“But... you don’t have to. The starburn...”
“I want you to want me without that,” he said with quiet force. “To set your heart on me without heat forcing the way.”
One of his hands grazed down my throat, gently sliding between the parted flaps of my robe until he palmed the place between my breasts. He wasn’t even touching them, but my nipples hardened anyway. Warmed honey pooled at the base of my spine, oozing towards the place between my legs.
“That heart I’ve set my sights on is beating very quickly now, little star,” Skallagrim murmured, bending to drag his snout along my jaw. His great thigh nudged between mine, exploding sensation through my core. “And your cheeks are red again. Are you embarrassed?”
I could hear the smirk in his next words, damn him. “And if you are, is it because you’re embarrassed by my intentions, or by your own reaction to them?”
I was saved from answering (though not from further embarrassment, lucky me) by a loud, insistent growl from my stomach.
Skallagrim had been with me long enough to know exactly what that sound meant. He chuckled against my throat, the sound like melting chocolate dripping onto my skin, and then withdrew. I’d been annoyed at the wall a few minutes ago, but now I was frantically grateful for it, because I was fairly certain it was the only thing holding me upright now that the delicious hardness of Skallagrim’s thigh wasn’t nestled below my pussy.
“First part of wooing a human,” Skallagrim said, as if he were an expert on the subject already, like he had a fucking PhD, “is to feed her.”
Hungry, horny, and unable to argue with him, I nodded. And when he offered me his hand, I took it.
There wasn’t much left to eat in the apartment, so we ventured outside. As soon as Skallagrim opened the glass door, the pleasant sounds of morning life floated in. Jolakaia and Zev’s home wasn’t in the more crowded heart of Callabarra near the temple. Instead, they lived nearer the edge, allowing a little more space around their home for a garden at the back and a few animals called bikri that were knee-high and generally shaped like crabs but with scales instead of shells. Apparently, they produced eggs, and I could see them from up here on the balcony, scuttling along at the sunny edges of the garden behind the house, like spidery alien chickens.
In front of the house was the street. Nothing fancy – not like the shiny embedded river stone in the temple’s courtyard. Here, it was hard, packed dirt, worn into trails in places by the wheels of the vehicles that the Callabarra people used to traverse the city. They were kind of like bicycles, I supposed. They had two wheels, but required no peddling, and the seat was different. Instead of sitting on a small seat and having your legs hang down towards pedals or footrests, the seat was a wider, lower bench, bringing Bohnebregg knees towards chests almost in a sort of squat, with a steering apparatus propped up between the legs instead of high handlebars at the front. Apart from a small metal cylinder attached to the main frame, I could see no other engine or power source, but the vehicles did indeed seem to move all on their own at the pull of a lever.
If I wanted an up-close look at one of the vehicles, I only had to descend the staircase from the balcony, which Skallagrim and I did now. Because below the balcony was Zev’s outdoor workshop, where she both built and repaired them.
“Oh, you’re up!” called Zev, straightening from where she’d been bent over working on a Bohnebregg bike. Her hair was not as short as Jolakaia’s, but was cut in a blunt sweep at her shoulders. She tossed down the tool she’d been using and pushed a pair of protective goggles up onto the top of her head like a headband. Her blue scales were dusty with dirt kicked up from the road, and I wondered how long she’d already been working out here while we’d been sleeping.
“Good morning,” I said in choppy Bohnebregg. It looked like it took her a minute to figure out what I’d tried to say, then she flashed her long fangs in a smile.
“Kaia’s got food for you somewhere in there,” she said, wiping her clawed hands on a leather apron then jerking her snout towards an open window. Then she went to it and called inside. “Queen Kaia! They’re up!”
“Queen Kaia?” I repeated slowly, casting first Zev, then Skallagrim a questioning look.
“Jolakaia,” Zev clarified. “Queen of this house, my heart, and therefore the entire world as I know it.”
Zev’s beloved queen emerged a few seconds later, wearing the robes of a Mother’s Hand instead of those of a monarch. In her hands she carried a tray laden with food. Zev gave a low cheer, then tried to grab something off the tray, but Jolakaia turned with a surprising grace, spinning until the tray was out of reach.
Jolakaia made a distinctly reptilian tsk sound.
“You’ve already had a double portion!” she said. “And you know you have to clean your claws and wipe your scales after you’ve been working with the metal before you eat! I don’t want to have to get the blood-cleansers out because you’ve ingested too much of the dust again!”
Zev gave a lazy grin, hopped right over the bike she’d been working on, bumped her snout lovingly to the side of Jolakaia’s head, and then headed around the side of the house towards the door at the front. Jolakaia watched her go with a look of long-suffering affection, as if she were wondering how she’d gotten so lucky and, simultaneously, how she was going to survive the woman who’d just gone inside the house.
Once satisfied that Zev wasn’t going to give herself metal poisoning, she turned back towards us with the food – beautiful, big, fat pastries.
“They’re stuffed with fish and egg. And those little mollusks that glue themselves to river rock. Did you encounter any of those when you were out there? They’re rare around here these days, but very good.”
I accepted a pastry gratefully and bit into it. The outer dough wasn’t at all the texture I was expecting – it was much firmer, almost cracker-like – but still delicious.
“I did not notice them,” Skallagrim responded. He watched me eat for a moment, his eye lingering on my mouth, then took a pastry for himself. He popped the thing into his snout whole, like it was nothing but a puff of popcorn.
“You and Zev eat the same way, Skalla,” Jolakaia said, giving a resigned sort of smirk.
“I didn’t know your name could be shortened to Skalla,” I said, feeling a frown pucker the spot between my brows.
Skallagrim tossed his snout, his version of a shrug.
“You may call me that, if you wish.” He did his snout-shrug thing again. “You may call me whatever you like.”
I realized I was still frowning. I wasn’t exactly jealous, per se. Jolakaia had been an amazing friend to both of us, not to mention the fact that she was related by blood to Skallagrim and was very happily married to someone else. But still, something about it irked me. It didn’t bother me that she had a nickname for Skallagrim.
It bothered me that I didn’t. There was a less formal, more intimate way of addressing him, and I’d had no idea. A casual friend would have known something like that, let alone the person who was supposed to be his mate.