Page 15 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Stars

Mary

“Let’s stay one more day.”

I look over my shoulder at Kade. It’s the first time we’ve worn real clothes since we got here and even though I like the way his flight suit fits, his normal clothing makes me want to strip him down all over again.

“I thought we had plans tomorrow that we couldn’t miss.”

“We’re newly mated,” he says, stooping to wrap his arm around my waist and pressing a kiss to my neck. “We’ll be forgiven for pushing back plans.”

Looking at us in the mirror, I reach up and draw my fingers down his cheek. “Okay, but you have to feed me before we get back in bed.

He chuckles, leaning down to kiss me and for a lingering moment, I question that demand.

If he started undressing me right now, I wouldn’t object.

But his lips leave me a moment later. “I’ll meet you upstairs?”

“Yeah,” if we’re staying, I need to take my jewelry off again.

It takes a minute, and when I come back upstairs, I feel the briefest frustration.

Kade is at that panel again.

“Everything okay?”

“I have you. Everything’s perfect.” He kisses me—just a quick drive-by of a peck—and heads for the kitchen.

He pulls the kitchen open again. Cabinets fold down and the “kettle” starts to fill with water. It’s a strange contraption, one I feel like I’ve seen in a mad scientist’s lair in a very old movie. But it boils water so fast and the cup fills while I catch myself on the chair back and Kade moves around the kitchen like he’s been working in this space for years.

“How often do you come up here?” I ask.

“Any time I have more than two days off, I’m usually up here.”

He’s not anti-social… the notes in his file were very clear that he likes people and parties—which my new job will occasionally require him to attend—he just also relishes solitude and quiet.

“It certainly keeps anyone from making demands on your time.”

He looks at me over his shoulder, but his smile is broken by another chirp.

“What is that?”

“It’s a censor in the other dome.” He sets down what he was doing. “Let me reset that and then we can eat.”

While he goes back to the panel he seems to only ever glare at, I watch the food on what I assume is a stove… “I am going to need a crash course for when you’re gone,” I tell him.

“Our house in Lasiana has more modern cooking appliances.” Kade says, kissing me before he goes back to finishing our breakfast. “They’re specially made to be easier for humans to use.”

“Oh good.” I look down at the counter again… “But you are going to have to teach me how to use this one, eventually.”

“Later.” He nods, kissing me again.

Always kissing me.

“Let me take care of you, Mary. It’s what I promised you before you ever agreed to be mine.” He pulls a box of my favorite tea out from the shelf above my head that’s too high to reach. “I’ll get less time to do it than most men. When I’m able to be here, I don’t want you to worry about a single thing.”

And he will be gone more often than I want, so… “Deal.”

I won’t ever come here without him—how could I—so it doesn’t really matter if I know how to use the kitchen here or not.

He makes my tea the exact way I did the first time—the only time he’s let me—and he sends me to sit down with it while he makes us food.

“Have you decided what you’ll do while I’m gone?” He asks and there’s a flutter of anxiety in the bond.

“Probably meet up with friends and try to make my way through the massive Tbr of books I bought before I came.”

He glances toward my suitcases… the small amount I was allowed to bring does not include a secret library.

“They’re digital downloads,” I tell him.

He nods. “I’m sure you’ll make friends quickly. There are groups dedicated to it.”

“I have a few friends who are already here. Two are in Lasiana. One wound up on the southern continent, but she’s loving it there. And there are a few more still on the waiting list, but hopeful they’ll get matched soon.” I smile into my mug of tea. “At least one of them thinks my job at the Agency is going to help her get matched faster.”

“Will it?”

“I don’t think so. Eventually, I’m supposed to work with women who’ve just arrived…” I glance around the room, imagining the various other places women might find themselves during the initial break-pelvis fuck-fest of the mating bond. “At least, before and after the honeymoon period.”

After ours, while he’s doing his post-landing checks, I’ll be organizing “delivery” of women to their mates and while he’s on his way to and from Earth, I’ll be in an office somewhere in Lasiana, waiting for one of those newly bonded women to have a problem… and hoping I can fix it.

I look up at the planet above us. The part that we’re over now is all deep turquoise ocean and bronze-flake sand swirls. There are a dozen islands in the middle of that water that I know are enormous, but from here… they look so small.

When I look back down, he’s watching me with a soft smile on his lips and I feel the low coil of desire he’s trying to tamp down.

We’ll come back to that.

But of course it’s a feedback loop between us. None of the topics we bounce through while we eat are enough to distract us. Not even the mundanity of describing what an Earth airport is like can stop it.

That seemingly unending desire builds in strength until I push my plate aside and go to him.

“I wonder if we’ll be able to feel this when we’re galaxies apart?” I say as I kiss him.

“Honestly?” His smile is rueful. “I hope not. I’ll be thinking of you the whole time… feeling yo, too might make it impossible to fly.”

“Well… then I hope not, too.” It doesn’t sound right when I say it, but I ignore the wording that tries to poke at my mind.

Kade lets me climb into his lap and his hands slide up both sides of my neck to hold my head in place. “I’m not going to want to leave.”

“It’ll just make when you get back even better.”

Kade

My limbs are heavy.

I thoroughly enjoy exhausting Mary, but now that she’s asleep again, I have to face the problem.

The response from the company that built this dwelling, and with which I have a maintenance contract, was the furthest thing from helpful.

“That can’t happen.”

Well, it can. And it has.

But they sent me a list of other things it might be instead.

I run through it, trying different options and fixes. Even the ones I know won’t work.

The only option I have is to go out and fix it manually. Which I can’t do.

Looking back at Mary, I curse. I’ve trapped her here, and I have to find a way out.