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“You think my lungs are inside my boobs?!”

“Boobs. Hmm. This does not translate.”

“My lungs are inside my chest, under my ribs! Where they are supposed to be!”

“I see.”

I did not see. At all.

But I figured if I asked more questions now I’d merely get told to read the book. Which I planned to. I’d read it all blasted night if I had to.

“Alright. Let’s do your legs and we can be done.”

“You know what?” she asked, twisting and reaching for the strip of hide. “I can do that myself.

“Absolutely not,” I replied, holding the strip out of reach. “Who knows what kind of shoddy job you’d do? You’d probably only measure the right leg and not bother to check the left. Forall we know, one of your legs could be a full microspan shorter than the other.”

“Ugh. If it is, don’t bother telling me,” she groaned. “I don’t want to know.”

I completed the rest of the measuring swiftly (one of her legs was indeed shorter than the other) and picked up the shiny, milk-coloured fabric Fallon had indicated would be appropriate for human sleepwear.

“What style do you want?” I asked her, unfurling the fabric.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said quickly.

“Of course it matters,” I replied instantly. “If you’re going to be wearing it, then it matters. It matters to me greatly.”

Her laugh, when it came, sounded brittle.

“I see. So instead of holding me hostage, like I thought a second ago, your real strategy is to just butter me up?”

“You want me to put butter on you?”

I supposed I could, if she asked.

Now, all I could think about was rubbing it into her skin.

And then licking it off.

“No,” she said, her voice breaking into the salty, creamy, astonishingly erotic delights of my imagination, “it just means that you’re using flattery to get what you want.”

“Pardon?”

“Flattery. Did that not translate?”

“It translated. I just have not ever been accused of such a thing before.”

A wrinkle formed between her brows. Perhaps the confusion was warranted. She did not yet know me very well.

Why did I want to rectify that so badly?

“I don’t have time or patience for things like false flattery, Tasha,” I told her. “This world has a way of stripping a man of all his most polished forms of insincerity. It only leaves room for the important things. Truth. Endurance. Survival.”

“Surely the sort of pyjamas I want isn’t anywhere on that list!”

“Incorrect,” I growled. “That issue is currently at the very top of my list. And Tasha?” Her eyes looked very big as they met mine. “It has nothing to do with my men or the program. Truthfully, I was not thinking of them at all. When I say what you want matters, it’s because it matters to me. Now stop arguing with me and tell me what sort of jamdanglies you’d like.”

“A one-piece of some sort would probably be easiest and fastest for you to make. Like a long shirt or something.”