Page 9 of The Delver (The Vrix #2)

Lacey wrinkled her nose with a huff as she worked the long, thin leaves, weaving them into a tight, layered pattern. “And here we are on basket duty. Why do you get to do the exciting stuff?”

“Because Telok likes me.” Cole tossed the fish in his mouth and chewed as he grinned at her.

“Ouch,” Callie said with a wince.

Lacey glared at Cole. “Asshole.”

No one knew why Telok and Lacey were so at odds with one another.

The black and green vrix had been protective of Lacey as they’d trekked through the jungle in their mad dash to escape Zurvashi, but once they’d reached the safety of Kaldarak and put down roots, Telok had withdrawn from her.

While he was amicable with the others, he was impatient and surly with Lacey.

It was as though he’d built a wall around himself and had given everyone but Lacey a key to the gate.

And Lacey was taking it pretty hard. She tried to hide her hurt with cross words or by laughing it off, but Callie saw through her bluff. Telok’s behavior cut her pretty deep.

As Lacey stewed and worked, Callie gathered a small handful of eldernuts and slipped one past her lips. The taste reminded her of a walnut. It was strange how so much of this world was alien and different, yet such similarities were everywhere.

Cole glanced around. “Where’s Diego?”

Will’s lips stretched into a wide, shy smile as he rubbed the back of his head. “He’s sleeping. We, uh, got in a pretty good morning workout.”

“Just say it!” Cole said with a laugh. “You guys fucked.”

Pressing her lips together, Callie smacked the bare part of his thigh.

Cole flinched and covered the spot she’d hit. “Ow!”

“Leave him alone,” she said.

“I’m just joking. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“You don’t have to be so crass.”

“Yeah,” Lacey chimed in. “Maybe they made love. You know, all romantic like.”

“I’m right here,” Will said.

Cole chuckled. “So which was it then, Will? Rough and sweaty, or slow and sensual with all the pretty words and shit like that?”

“How about,” Diego said as he stepped out of his nearby den, letting the curtain fall behind him, “it’s none of your damn business.”

He made his way toward them, his dark brown eyes on Will. When he sat down next to him, he cupped a hand behind Will’s head and pulled him into a deep kiss. Will’s eyes widened before drifting shut as he kissed his partner back.

“Ow ow!” Lacey hooted as Callie grinned.

Diego broke the kiss, wrapped an arm around Will’s shoulders, keeping the man close, and plucked up a riverberry. He grinned at Cole as he held the riverberry to Will’s lips. “It was both.”

“Damn. I’m jealous,” Callie said.

Lacey propped her elbow on her knee and rested her chin on her hand. “Right?”

“Hey!” Cole flung his arms out wide. “I’m right here.”

“We know,” said both Callie and Lacey at once.

Cole huffed and proceeded to eat.

Diego looked at Will, who smiled and pecked a kiss on Diego’s lips before wrapping an arm around his back.

Seeing this intimacy, this closeness, this…

love, made Callie all the more aware of what she was missing.

Of course she had the companionship of her friends, but that wasn’t the same.

Ahmya and Ivy were doted upon by their vrix mates, and Will and Diego lived happy, carefree lives here without judgement. They were thriving, flourishing.

What Callie wouldn’t have given to have someone to look at her with the same adoration that shone in Diego’s eyes when he looked at Will. To have someone to sweep her off her feet and kiss her hard enough to steal her breath, to have someone to hold her close through the night.

To make love to her.

I’m just so fucking lonely.

Maybe I should proposition Cole…

No strings. Just a fuck—just scratching an itch. She could have an orgasm or two to hold her over for a while and see if that rid her of this irksome loneliness. She was sure he’d be down for it.

But the thought of having sex with Cole didn’t arouse or excite her. It left her feeling cold.

He was her friend, and she valued him as a friend, even loved him as a friend. But she didn’t want him in a sexual way.

A memory played in her mind—Urkot standing in the hot springs beneath falling water, with his long black hair, streaked with threads of blue and white, unbound, and rivulets streaming down his back.

As she’d watched him last night, she’d stared at his broad shoulders, transfixed by the play of muscle in his thick arms as he’d run his clawed fingers through his hair.

And when he’d turned to face her, his glowing blue eyes had been brilliant in the chamber’s dim light.

He’d been a monster fucker’s wet dream.

She’d yearned to comb her fingers across the shorn hair on the sides of his head, following it up to the long, silky strands on top, yearned to run her hands over the hard planes of his chest, yearned to…

Yearned to know what his cock looked like, to see it. To…feel it inside her.

What the hell, Callie? Where’d that thought come from? What happened to not wanting to fuck a spider?

Face growing warmer by the second, Callie furrowed her brow and bent over her basket, letting her long curls fall forward on either side of her face.

Maybe I had a change of heart after seeing how loved Ivy and Ahmya are by their mates?

Why shouldn’t she consider Urkot? They’d slowly grown closer over the last several months. He was kind and thoughtful, and he made her laugh. And as far as physical appeal, well…

Callie didn’t know when her perception had changed so drastically. How could she have gone from seeing human men as sexy to looking at a spiderlike alien and thinking the same? Spiders had always been repellent, terrifying things despite their small sizes, and she’d always been grossed out by bugs.

And yet she was seriously considering an intimate relationship with a vrix.

People on Earth would have thought she was depraved. Hell, she’d questioned Ivy’s sanity in the beginning. Sex with a spider ? Gross!

But then Callie had come to know the vrix.

While they looked different, they were the same as humans on the inside.

They were people, with thoughts and emotions, with hopes and dreams, with friends and family.

And as illogical as it should have been, humans could procreate with them. Akalahn was proof of that.

She wasn’t religious, but wasn’t that some kind of divine sign that humans and vrix were meant to be together?

It’s science, Callie. It was humans playing God and using us as test subjects.

But that didn’t mean anyone at the Homeworld Initiative had ever anticipated contact with an intelligent alien species, or that they’d meant for the serums they’d injected into the colonists to allow the human body to adapt to procreation with nonhuman beings.

Ivy had conceived a viable hybrid vrix child, carried it to term, and given birth to something so strange and so, so beautiful…

It was an outcome no one could’ve predicted.

It was an outcome that shouldn’t have been possible.

Humans and vrix were two different species. They should not have been compatible.

Yet they were.

With every passing day, it was harder for Callie to deny her growing attraction to Urkot.

She couldn’t stop her eyes from straying toward him and raking over his body, couldn’t help the way her own body reacted in his presence, couldn’t prevent the warmth that bloomed in her core when she noticed him watching her with keen interest. Every time he touched her, her skin tingled like it was charged with electricity.

And she wanted to experience more of that sensation. She wanted to feel it all over. She wanted…

More of him.

“You must go,” came a deep, raspy voice, breaking Callie from her reverie.

She blinked down at her work. With her head up in the clouds as she fantasized about a certain sapphire-eyed vrix, the leaves had come loose, completely undoing the tight weave she’d started. This didn’t resemble a basket in the slightest; it was just a frond with bent leaves now.

Ugh.

She lifted her head to see Telok standing on the platform, in front of the bridge, with all four arms crossed over his chest and his bright green eyes narrowed at Cole.

“He’s eating,” Lacey said, glancing at Telok before waving him off and returning her focus to her basket. “So shoo. Begone with you.”

Telok’s mandibles twitched, and his posture stiffened. His gaze flicked to Lacey. The hard, mask-like faces of the vrix couldn’t really change expressions, but Callie swore something passed over his for an instant, somehow heated and dark, frustrated, crestfallen, and hungry.

But it came and went so quickly that she couldn’t be sure if she’d only imagined it.

“Yeah,” Cole replied, tossing a chunk of goldcrest mushroom into his mouth. “What she said.”

With a growl, Telok strode toward Cole, who was about to eat another piece of goldcrest. Cole’s hand paused in the air as the two stared at each other.

Slowly, the vrix bent down and extended an arm. With an unceremonious, comically soft thwap , he slapped the mushroom out of Cole’s hand. “No eat. Hunt.”

Cole scowled and pointed at his chest. “Me human.” He pointed at the platter of food next. “Need food.”

“Me vrix.” Telok thumped his own chest with a fist. “Already eat. Have work to do. Go hunt now.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“Do not be late.”

“Dick,” Cole muttered before shoving a handful of riverberries in his mouth. He stuffed another fistful of nuts into the pocket of his shorts as he rose.

“Takes one to know one,” Lacey said without looking up from her work.

Both Diego and Will chuckled.

Telok turned his narrowed gaze on Lacey. “I am not limp, dangling, wrinkly skin.”

“Hey!” Cole exclaimed.

Callie laughed. “Well, your English vocabulary is definitely expanding.”

“Callie, could you please pass me some moonblossom fruit?” the redhead asked, holding out an upturned palm.