Page 8 of Defiance (The Intersolar Union #7)

Maybe I'd missed him.

Maybe I’d taken too long in the shower. I’d blow-dried my hair afterwards, but it had taken me a few minutes to figure out how. It had always been an option, but one I thought I’d never use. I crossed my arms, shaking my foot back and forth where I sat on the edge of a large boulder by the river. My stomach rumbled more with nerves than hunger as I sat waiting, watching the time tick by as it glowed along the length of my index finger.

Had I been stood up…?

This wasn’t actually a date, but the possibility that they’d decided someone else would be better suited stung. Not a word. Not a single message. I was missing something.

I scoffed at my own self-doubts, jumping to my feet. Whether I was hangry or righteously fuming, I couldn’t say, but I’d put in effort for this. Trusted that it was real and not some prank, a thought that came unbidden and sent ice through my chest. I’d set up a picnic blanket, a lamp, some dinner with a cloth over it to keep the shivies off. I even wore a frock. It came with our start closets and lots of women wore them around the colony, but it still counted for something.

“The cheek,”

I grumbled. A fuming blush ignited my cheeks like hot coals as I snapped my waders off the tree branch I’d hung them from to dry. I slipped off my sandals and stepped in, the hem of my skirt bunching up around my waist.

Surprisingly, the thing that stung hardest was the lost opportunity to contribute. I wanted to be integral. I wanted to help. I wasn’t keen on repeating the cold, empty life I’d left behind. This time round, I was choosing me own people and path, dissenters be damned.

I latched my suspenders and stopped, taking a deep breath. Closing my eyes, I reminded myself that I contributed a lot. Squinting suspiciously at the colony drainage was about health and safety. So was moonlighting at the clinic. I was even developing a marine biology class for the school pod.

It was enough.

I was enough.

Feeling centered, I shlomped out into the river clay. If my date was going to be a picnic for one, I might as well do my first night survey. Water splashed over my knees as I picked my way through a minefield of slippery rocks and sediment, correcting for the gentle pull of the current on my boots. Big Blue cast the nights in an eerie green glow when the skies were clear, so I found my first cage without issue.

A curl popped from behind my ear as I sank my hands into the water and hefted the cage to the surface. I balanced it on my hip and activated the light clipped to my front so I could search for those little clams, mind my fingers and their sharp edges as I turned over the algae-covered rocks. A couple had opened their shells and closed them tight at the first touch, squirting streams of cloudy water.

“Sorry, sorry,”

I murmured, setting them back down with care. The algae had grown considerably since the day before, climbing up some river grass that skimmed the surface. The resulting circular patterns of decay reminded me of Pom Pom’s disease, labyrinthula, and I creased my brow in concern, forgetting the rendezvous with Novak entirely.

Labyrinthula was a genus of slime molds that parasitized cephalopods, mollusks, and other sea creatures. They suffocated the skin and produced lesions that could be fatal. Just like humans had good and bad bacteria in their gut biome, shilpakaari had good and bad labyrinthula living on their skin. Pom Pom had contracted one of the worst when she was a tot, and now lived with an incurable case of parasitism. Her treatments carved away flare ups with a precision laser and managed symptoms with harsh antifungal medications.

It was probably nothing, but the circular scars on Pom Pom’s arms and back flashed in my mind. I hoisted the cage higher on my hip and made my careful way back towards shore where my bag still held its usual supply of sample cubes and antiseptic. I would take several clippings and examine them under a microscope at the clinic in the morning with Ezra’s blessing.

“Stay there, Ms Halloway,”

commanded a deep, silky voice.

My eyes snapped up to the riverbank with a full-body shudder. A tall black shadow stood on the rocks just past the clay, out of direct light from the toxic water planet haunting the horizon.

“Shite,”

I swore on an inhale as my heart pounded in my ears. Novak hadn’t stood me up after all. I lifted my free hand and blew a stray curl from my eye, giving up any chance that this could be a romantic evening.

“Didn’t see you there.”

“I wasn’t trying to be seen just yet,”

came his reply. Was that a hint of amusement? Flirtation?

I breathed a laugh somewhere between disbelief and hope.

“Let’s start over then. Hi.”

I placed a hand on my chest.

“Charlie. Lend me a hand, would you? This thing’s a killer.”

I hefted the waterlogged cage back onto my hip where it was leaving a bruised patch.

The ferns behind Novak shivered as something ropey and long slid across the ground. I nearly dropped the cage in a panic, assuming it was a snake. Instead, a tail nearly twice his height carved a trench through the clay that separated us.

“Don’t move,”

he said again with more tension in his tone. His tail curled itself into a tight, perfect spiral as it retreated.

“It’s safer for you.”

I blinked at his shadow, then bit my lip. “Sorry,”

I laughed.

“I can’t decide if the cloak-and-dagger routine actually makes me nervous or if it feels like when Americans come to Ireland to roleplay druids and knights. Could you at least stop brooding in a shadow, for feck’s sake?”

The man I assumed was Novak slid out into the green night and my laughter caught in my throat.

If I were still on Earth, I might think he was Anubis with upright ears as long and slender as his muzzle. His back was wide and his hips were narrow, emphasizing how lithe and long his body was. Rather than fur, shoulders clad in iridescent scales caught the teal glow of night, so although his shape was that of Egypt’s god, the details were draconic. Regal. Godly. Deadly beautiful.

As I looked up and down his figure, he stood frozen. Waiting, staring. I cleared my throat and mustered up the sort of smile one used during small talk.

“That’s better. Nice to meet you, Novak. Assuming you’re Novak. You haven’t said.”

“Yes. Pleasure—”

His word choked off with a shiver and he shook his head.

“Good to meet you, Charlie.”

“Grand,”

I said in a chipper voice, trying to fill the tense breaks between words with something benign.

“You hungry? I’ve brought a picnic for us.”

“Starving, but we should speak first,”

he growled, tail curling around his ankle in a slow spiral.

“Aye, that’s what dinner’s for,”

I said with a questioning lilt, raising my brow.

“And this is fecking heavy. You mind? I just need to set it down out of the water.”

To his credit, Novak looked conflicted as he crossed his arms and ignored my question.

“Is your bionic system closed?”

“Jharim messed with it a few hours ago,”

I said, unclear if I should mention the parumauxi swarm or not. I decided no.

“So yes, I assume so.”

“Then I want to hear it from your lips,”

Novak said.

“What you think you agreed to.”

My arm was starting to shake, so I hoisted the cage onto my other hip with a grimace.

“A trip to Piaoguo with you as my bodyguard. I’ll be a nice little worm on a hook and you’ll rescue me if any fish bite.”

“How?”

My abdomen tightened as I bit the inside of my cheek.

“My scent. You need it to track me.”

Novak breathed out a sigh of relief. His tail unraveled, gliding silently above the ground, scales adjusting in a wave like you might see at a football stadium, each one sounding like a sharpening stone.

“You really did consent.”

“Yes, I did. And I know that the more intimate we are about it, the better you can track me. So,”

I took a deep breath, “about dinner…?”

His ear twitched, muzzle turning towards the picnic on the boulder where my dim yellow lamp illuminated our food as if he was just noticing it for the first time. With his profile exposed to the clear night, I saw a grin stretch his lips, exposing bright white fangs.

“A date, right?”

he mused. If he called it cute, I’d deck him.

“Sure, why not?”

“Craic, now get your fancy boots dirty and take this damned cage,”

I said, waddling the rest of the way out of the river.

Novak met me in the clay and lifted it from my arms like it was a shoebox, staring down at me as his forearms took the brunt of the weight. Long thin claws curled up from the underside as he held it between us and breathed in deep. The great cavern of his lungs filled with a rumble and gooseflesh erupted over my arms.

“Thank you,”

I said, trying to appear nonchalant as I brushed my palms off on my waders.

“You can put it by my bag, over there.”

He stood still as I moved away without waiting for him to respond, staring at the water slowly filling up my boot prints. I unlatched my waders by the tree where I’d left my sandals and made quick work of brushing down my frock, taming my fly-away curls behind my ears.

“Have you done this sort of mission before?”

I asked, proud of my casual tone.

Novak’s ear twitched. He unstuck himself from the clay and set the cage by my bag.

“Yes and no.”

“Which parts are yes and which are no?”

I asked, sitting down on the picnic blanket.

Novak’s shadow approached the side of the boulder as I pointed back towards the haphazard stack of stones I’d climbed gracelessly. He braced his long, strong fingers against the boulder’s curve and used his core to swing his legs up in a crouch without a sound, entering the ring of warm light.

We stared at each other. His features were beautiful and confusing, like a butterfly with eyes in the patterns of their wings. His were the same color as his scales with vertical red pupils that narrowed as they adjusted to the light. Similar red slashes ringed his stare and were peppered with neon orange speckles. I wondered what the adaptation was good for… Misdirection during a fight? Distracting and mesmerizing an opponent? Maybe his homeworld had flora that were similar and he used them for camouflage. Maybe he was poisonous to eat.

And his nose wasn’t shaped like a jackal at all, but narrower and slitted, as if he could press his nostrils closed above water while the rest of him was hidden beneath the surface. His scales were smooth save his jaw bone, where they grew thick like crocodile hide around petite spikes or horns, the longest of which was about one knuckle in length.

“Yes to the guarding and recon. No to the scent burn,”

he said. His mouth adjusted even if he kept it shut and part of his muzzle moved with it as if he were built with the highly flexible skull of a viper rather than a canine.

“Scent burn. That must be the tracking part.”

A forked tongue left his lips and tasted the air between us, leaving my cheeks bristling. At any moment, I felt as if my freckles might fry right off my face.

“I track all of my targets with my colear?,”

he said, tapping the top of his muzzle.

“Scent burn is far more intense than that.”

“Right.”

I cleared my throat, pushing curls behind my ear out of nervous habit.

“I also brought some salted beers that are now warm, and ebadhi pockets, which are now cold…”

“Perfect.”

When he smiled it was charming, unraveling some of the knots in my stomach.

“Warm beer and cold fish pastries are my favorite.”

He took one of each from my hands, popping the cap off the top of the beer bottle. I breathed a sigh of relief when his eyes moved off me to sniff at the shilpakaari drink. I clinked my bottle against his, which earned me a twitch of his ear.

“Sláinte,”

I said, taking a healthy swig.

“Kabei,”

he responded, doing the same.

“Is that Advenan for cheers?”

I asked, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

Novak leaned his forearms on his knees, tail curling around his seat.

“We don’t have our own language anymore. I grew up speaking Hja Erle. Hjarna standard.”

“Kabei,”

I said to myself.

“Guess that’s a good one for me to know then.”

He grunted in agreement, looking down at the pastry in his hand. When he brought it up to his mouth and breathed it in, he closed his eyes, savoring the scent. Now that he was in the light, I could see how the top of his muzzle flexed, exposing slits hidden beneath the scales that might have been membranes to some sort of specialized scent organ. The slits reminded me of nares on a fish, which looked like nostril holes but were only for smelling and not for breathing.

Novak definitely wasn’t a fish, but as far as I could tell, his biology was wild. Like a collage. Was he a reptile or a mammal? Something else?

“I need you to stop looking at me like that, Charlie.”

He growled my name like a sin, eyes still closed. When they opened, they dilated like stilettos, fixing on me.

“Acting normal right now is extremely taxing.”

I blinked away, taking a swig of my beer. “Sorry,”

I said as I swallowed it down in a rough gulp.

“I guess this is altogether awkward no matter what we do.”

Novak’s jaw ticked, the scales of his neck rubbing together. “Awkward…”

I nodded to the pocket still in his hand.

“Why were you smelling it? To enhance the taste or because I handed it to you?”

“Both.”

So Novak did have houndish qualities. I’d packed a few things as if I was target practice for a scent hound, but didn’t want to bring it up in case it would be insulting. Now, I set down my beer and leaned back, reaching my fingertips for the strap of my bag.

“I brought some things from my flat,”

I admitted.

“Nothing special, but things I touch often. Just in case you wanted to keep it.”

He grabbed my wrist and I gasped. He loosened his grip with a grimace, slowly pulling me back.

“I’m a predator, Charlie,”

he said in a rash tone, gaze deathly still.

“Your chemia will call me to the Hunt and I’ll be able to find you. Anywhere. Anytime.”

He leaned closer to me, his shadow engulfing the food between us.

“Most people are afraid of that. For good reason. That bag you're offering is like catnip.”

I licked my lips, stare falling to the uneaten pastry in a basket between us. I picked it up and rubbed my palms on it, smooshing the flaky crust until it was unappetizingly shiny from my nervous palms. With a hard swallow, I held it out for Novak to take.

“May you find me anywhere, anytime,”

I said as if it were a blessing.

He creased his brow, sliding a tentative knuckle from my elbow to my wrist. When I didn’t pull away, Novak wrapped his fingers around my pulse and the crux of my thumb, bending my hand open. His tongue slithered from his scaled lips and pulled the pastry into his mouth. I glimpsed a mixture of canines and molars with muscular gums that bulged along the roof. Pillowy, like a viper.

The pastry disappeared and Novak swallowed with a groan, rubbing the top of his nose against my warm palm. His tongue flicked out against the veins on the underside of my forearm and I shivered. The way he rubbed against my skin was pure eroticism. Completely inhuman and bare. I squeezed my thighs together, short of breath.

Right. There was no way I wasn’t shagging him. Whatever reservations I’d had flew out the proverbial window as my touch-starved brain screamed at me to tackle him. Even if I hadn’t had time to learn much about him at all, I’d been primed to soak up this moment all day and I wasn’t letting the opportunity to crash together pass me by.

“Would you rather skip dinner?”

I heard myself say in a breathy warble.

Novak’s eyes flew open and he bared his fangs, wrinkles forming along his nose.

“How much can I touch you?”

he ground out.

“As much as you want,”

I panted, tossing the food and beers into a heap inside their cooler bag. I rolled to my knees as Novak’s hand wrapped around the back of my neck and dragged me towards him. His fingers were long enough to completely wrap around my throat.

“Where?”

he snapped desperately.

“Anywhere,”

I managed.

“Everywhere.”

Novak pressed the bridge of his muzzle against my collarbone with a rough snarl, that spongy organ he’d called a colear? swelling as his lungs pumped like a marathon runner.

The intensity took me by surprise. The way his tail curled around my ankles and calves. How his tongue wrapped around my chin, tickling the spot behind my opposite ear. I held onto his open jacket to keep myself from falling backwards while he gripped me like he’d never let go. Like I was catnip.

But my knees hurt and I felt exposed. I peered up at the sky between his ears at the light pollution from the home towers, wondering who else was out patrolling the banks.

“Wouldn’t a bed be more comfortable? We can go back to mine,”

I offered.

Novak froze from the lungs out. They pumped desperately, trying to take a breath, but he wouldn’t let them. He drew back with wide eyes and shuddered back to life.

“To—”

“Yes,”

I cut him off impatiently.

“Absolutely not,”

he hissed, that shink of scales cascading down his spine. “I can’t.”

“Imani’s already had a word with me about it. I’ve no problem as long as the bite doesn’t hurt too bad.”

I glanced at his mouth with a spike of pleasurable fear.

“Nearly certain you have solenoglyphous fangs, so I’m actually easier about it now than I was befo—”

“Srac!”

he swore, sliding off the boulder to pace the ground. His tail refused to give up my ankles, dragging me towards the edge with a yelp. Those scales of his rose like hackles, exposing a bright orange interior like the markings on his face.

“She had no right to speak to you about something neither of you can understand.”

I blinked, caught off guard by his mood swing. Hot one minute, frigid the next.

“I trust Imani. I trust Vindilus. And they trust you. Isn’t this what we both agreed to?”

“You’ll become pregnant,”

he snapped, a raging animal pacing a cage. His tail was like a leash, still knotted around my legs even if Novak looked like he wanted to flee.

I reared back.

“Uh, no. I won’t.”

“Advenans are chimaeri. Our seed is potent with any species. It’s a certainty,”

he said, coming to an abrupt halt to pull on his ears and curl over himself with a desperate snarl.

“Fuck! I can’t burn here. I need to go.”

He tried to walk away, but his tail cinched tighter.

With a growl he turned back around and started prying it away from my skin with his bare hands.

“Novak,”

I said calmly, letting him wrestle with his tail over my ankles. I pushed through my shattered pride and took a deep breath.

“If we could, would you want to?”

He paused, swallowing hard, breathing in shallow spurts with his scales tamped down tight.

“Novak—”

“Yes,”

he rasped angrily.

I lifted up my skirt, exposing plain black panties to show him the three scars on my abdomen that had marked me as a failed woman in the eyes of my family and ex-husband.

“I had a hysterectomy six years ago. Doesn’t matter how potent your swimmers are. No uterus, no babies.”

His eyes went wide, the red slits blown open so I could see specks of black like strawberry seeds. He pressed a shaking claw to the marks, splaying his fingers across my belly. His colear? swelled slightly as he breathed me in.

“You have no womb,”

he murmured in a daze.

“Right. So.”

I licked my lips.

“Unless you have a lover somewhere or an STI, there’s no reason two adults can’t just… do this.”

“No reason?”

Novak chuckled darkly.

“There are plenty of reasons.”

His tail slipped out of his other hand as he stared at the crux of my legs, winding around my ankles once more. It tugged on me until I was holding myself up from falling over the edge of the boulder, frock tumbling back into place over my panties. He slid his claws along my thighs until they disappeared beneath my skirt and pricked my hips.

“Say it to me one more time, Charlie,”

he growled, rubbing his cheek against my frock.

“I don’t want permission, I want you to fucking demand it.”

My arms gave out and he held my weight, trapping me with his groin pressed against my knees, my ankles between his thighs. I balanced my palms on his shoulders, overwhelmed with ragged breath.

“Have sex with me, Novak,”

I said with wide eyes and a tremor in my voice.

“Find me anywhere.”

Novak groaned at my last words, forehead pressed against my sternum.

“All in, right, Charlie?”

He glanced up at me and I nodded with a crease in my brow.

“Yes,”

I breathed.

Novak snarled at himself, then ripped me from the boulder in rough claws and slung me over his shoulder.