Page 128 of Starborn Husbands

“Holy shit. But if you know and nobody else knows, you had to be there.”

“My husband taught me how to butcher an animal,” he reminds me.

“Ah, so you can talk around it, but nothing direct. C’mon, you couldn’t find some way to tell me?”

“It’s meant to be torturous.”

Stars command energy as power, which is a specific kind of force, but it’s not the same as a spell. Whatever torture has been done to Zhang is a spell, or a curse, something occult maybe. That kind of magic is conscious. Alive and able to change as it learns.

He grips my face in his bear-paw hands. “My husband taught me how to butcher an anim—” He’s cut off abruptly, his jaw straining to form the words. “Fuck.”

“Did the spell figure you out? Why do you keep saying that?”

“Now you’re being obtuse on purpose,” he says, frustrated. He scoffs, standing, and pulling me with him.

I set my mind to thinking about animal butchering while he gathers our clothes. Why is that so important? It’s innocuous, which is probably why he could say it before, but suddenly the spell doesn’t think it’s so innocuous because …

Oh shit.

Zhang’s technique is shoddy from lack of practice, but it’s just like the way Father taught me to butcher an animal after a hunt.

“No. No, no, no! I was not your earth husband, Zhang. I wasn’t.”

But his silent smile says I was.

The bastard turns away from me, leaving me with that new little piece of information while he collects his jacket. My heart beats out of my damn chest. I try to search my mind for the memories of him, but it’s like falling on my face. It’s crushing, reaching for something that I know should be there, but isn’t.

That little light returns, like it knows, tripping and trilling under my skin. Is that the part of me that’s Zhang now? Does it remember Zhang? It seems to, and it pines for him. I’m overwhelmed with the urge to push my star into him.

“Come back here, you unbearable jackass.” I tug his hair, and I must look a sight with his cum dribbling down my legs.

He swivels, my fingers still caught in his hair. I place my other palm flat over his thick pectoral. His heart beats a strong rhythm against it, vibrating down my arm. No matter how much I push, my star won’t leave me, but the chaotic little light that’s always begging for Zhang calms the fuck down. That’s new.

“You’re not running away,” he says, choosing his words carefully. Guess he’s gotten good at talking around the energy that’s blocking him.

“Why would I?”

I don’t think you can love anyone, Treyu.Oh, yeah. That. Words that might haunt me forever.

According to what I was told in Heaven, I wanted the memories gone. What the fuck’s that all about?

I pound his chest; he doesn’t move.

“Why? Why would I want to forget you if we were in love?” My chest hollows with heart-shattering loss, remembering something I don’t. That’s just fucking cruel. Heartbreak without the cognitive memory of it.

I know he can’t answer that. He can’t answer any of the one million questions I have. I want to know how he proposed because he better fucking have. I want to know if I gave him just as much trouble as I do now. Where did we live? Did our house have a porch? Fuck, who was the first of our eighteen children? Good Gods, how could I want to forget them too?

I’m not easily broken. Whatever it was had to have been bad.

He wraps his jacket around me, making sure to cover my new Merrick handprint first.

“You’ve gone on a head rant,” he declares. How does he know about those? Did I do that as a human too? He tilts my chin to meet his gaze. “Look at me, babe. Think about this instead, you have no competition.”

That’s right! I was worked up before about his perfect Earth husband, but that was me! He always knows what to say.

“I’m number one.”

He takes my hand. “You always were, Treyu. Come along, husband. We have the bunk on the far side of the ship.”