Page 14 of The Emerald Boa’s Lover (Operation Colonise #3)

The note.

Still

Charlie

“No one else’s?” I walked into the ground floor of his home and stepped out of my shoes first. “Meaning, that I’m allowed to smell of you, but no one else?”

“When in our nest.” Dalahan slithered in and huffed with a hiss, his hands resting on his hips and the end of his tail thumped at the ground. Is that like when a human stomps their foot? Are we arguing right now?

“Why?” I challenge him directly. I’m preparing for a fight as I’m not into this possessive bullshit some guys like. I’m no delicate flower and I’m no one’s property. Nor would I treat my boyfriend like either. Not that Dalahan is my boyfriend, but the point is the same.

“Because it’s our nest.” Did he just raise his voice at me?

I grin angrily and hold my fists down by my sides. “I don’t want to smell other Ucfeni on you when in our nest. Y-you know how I feel about you. I get that during the day scents will cling to you, but when we are home you shouldn’t—”

“I shouldn’t what?” I cut him off, but he doesn’t stop. The kettle is about to boil over. I’m getting ready to blow my top.

“—want to upset me…right?” Whatever I was expecting him to say? That wasn’t it. Still, I was tired, cranky, and angry, so I didn’t put the breaks on just yet.

“It’s not my problem if you get upset because I smell of other Ucfeni.

I don’t belong to you, and you don’t get to order me to bathe like a good pet whenever you want me to.

I’m a person, not a pet or a fuck-toy. I don’t belong to you.

I’m never going to belong to you. So you can shove this possessive crap where the sun doesn’t shine.

” I stormed over to the pulley system and angrily got onto the seat.

I was halfway up, fuming internally at the fucking cheek of the guy, when I heard the soft whimper.

I paused my ascent and looked down at him.

God, he looked pitiful.

His evergreen tail was coiled tightly around him and even his arms hugged his shoulders. His head was bowed forward and from my vantage point, I could tell he was chewing his scaly lips to try and hide he was crying. Not my problem.

I looked up and pulled on the cord to lift myself up another few inches…then paused and looked back down at him. He hadn’t moved. Well, it needed saying. He can’t act like he’s my jealous boyfriend. When is he going to get the message that I’m not interested?

I pulled myself the rest of the way to the hygiene level to use the toilet.

I fully intended to march right over the pulley system and go directly up to lay on my bed and wriggle about in protest to spite him, when I heard the door downstairs bang.

I questioned what I heard at first and lowered down the pulley system to the bottom floor.

A quick glance around made it clear to me Dalahan had fled.

My eyes landed by chance on a note on the fridge. Oh here we go.

This wasn’t the first time I’d dealt with drama.

In my head, I was already thinking of at least four examples of woe-is-me notes from some of my needier boyfriends.

Phrases like ‘since I’m no longer wanted here’ or ‘I’m going somewhere where I’ll be appreciated’ popped into my head.

There was always the old favourite of ‘screw you asshole, I’m too good for you anyway’.

Either way, I expected to read emotional blackmail or abuse, so I hardened myself in preparation for it.

I’m sorry.

Don’t forget your dinner. I made you that noodle thing you like. All you have to do is reheat it. Please don’t forget and fall asleep on your books again. You have plenty of food in for tomorrow.

D.

That was it. “That…bastard.” I gripped my other hand, furious that…

the only thing he wrote down was an upfront apology and a reminder to eat?

What kind of game is he playing? I took the note with me as I headed back up to the middle tier.

I sat on the edge of the bath and pulled the cord to fill it.

Because I wanted a bath. Not because of this bloody note, which I read twice more as I waited for my special corner bath to fill up.

I read it again once I sat comfortably in the hot water.

I braced my elbows on the edge with the note in my right hand.

I tried to see the hidden message. The fire and the fight I was used to.

But…there was none. In my mind I recalled the way Dalahan held himself and tried to hide he was crying.

He showed no sign of realising I’d seen him.

I let my hand and the note hang down over the side of the bath and stared up at the ceiling.

The back of my blonde hair darkened with the water and became slick to my neck.

“I don’t want to smell other Ucfeni on you when in our nest. Y-you know how I feel about you. I get that during the day scents will cling to you, but when we are home you shouldn’t—”

“I shouldn’t what?”

“—want to upset me…right?”

I replayed the argument a few times, and then something popped out at me.

“I don’t want to smell other Ucfeni on you when in our nest. Y-you know how I feel about you.”

Again I saw him holding himself and whimpering in silence.

“Y-you know how I feel about you.”

“Fuck.” I pinched the brow of my nose and realised that I’ve been an asshole.

“I get that during the day scents will cling to you, but when we are home you shouldn’t—”

“I shouldn’t what?”

“—want to upset me…right?”

“Fuck fuck fuuuuuuuck. Balls. I’m an asshole.

” I wiped my hand down my face and groaned.

He wasn’t telling me not to be around other Ucfeni.

Or to stop them touching me. He was just asking me to take a bath because it upsets him to smell them on me.

Because I know how he ‘feels’ about me, and I shouldn’t want to upset him.

As in, do something intentionally that I know will upset him to spite his feelings.

“Shit.” My reaction must have said otherwise.

Like I didn’t give a shit how he feels about me, or that I’m in his home.

I told him to fuck off. Wow. I wasn’t prince charming today, was I?

I released my face and read the note again. All I could think about was Dalahan crying and my stomach knotted.

“Y-you know how I feel about you.”

Yeah. I know how Dalahan feels about me.

At least I thought I did. He’s not exactly been subtle about wanting us to have sex…

but this? I looked at the note again. He’s always doing little things like this.

Leaving me notes in my lunch, usually with little smiley faces on a cartoon snake.

Probably meant to be an Ucfeni, but he can’t draw for shit.

Not unless it’s a building. I laugh as I recall the time he tried to draw a little human and say it was me. It looked more like a blonde monkey.

He wakes me for breakfast and when I’m half asleep he carries me to the middle tier as I’m too sleepy to safely use the pulleys. Dalahan even puts my clothes out on the bed for me so I can get ready for work quickly.

He makes a point of making my meals because I forget them otherwise.

He regularly carries me to bed when I pass out reading downstairs.

Dalahan fusses over me when it’s my day off.

Apparently, he has an office, somewhere, but he always makes sure to finish in time to collect me from the clinic, and he works from home on my days off-shit!

I sit up in the bath, reading the note again for the hundredth time, and my eyes wide with shock and anger.

“You have plenty of food in for tomorrow? That yellow-bellied bastard.” I throw the note away from the bath and hurry to scrub my body clean with soap and a sponge.

“He knows I’m off work tomorrow and he has no intention of coming back before then.

He’s run off after all. Oh no you don’t.

” I have no intention of feeling like an asshole all night and all day tomorrow because he’s too chicken-shit to have this out with me.

“No way.” Sure, boundaries are still an issue for Dal…

but he didn’t deserve the way I spoke to him.

I lost my temper and I hurt his feelings.

I’m not that guy. I need to apologise, and I’m not waiting two days to do that.

I’m sure as hell not the kind of guy to stop his boyfriend from wanting to come home.

Not that he’s my boyfriend. Because he isn’t. I’m just going to get dried, dressed, and go out into the night in an alien city to go looking for him, so I can drag him home by the tail, apologise, and hug it out so we can reconcile and— “Shit he is my boyfriend. Fuck.”