Page 9 of Wanted by the Alien Warden (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #4)

9

TENN

“ I need to make Tasha clothes. Or a suit of some sort. Or a dress. Or… Blast. What do humans wear to sleep?”

I had read extensively about human wedding attire, but had not yet found out anything about sleeping attire.

Maybe there was no sleeping attire.

Maybe they all slept naked. All the time.

Empire help me.

“They wear pyjamas!” Fallon said cheerfully as I pulled him through the kitchen and past Silar.

“That cannot be a real word,” I grumbled, finally releasing him.

“Oh, it is! Although, sometimes I believe they are instead called ‘jammies.’”

“That also cannot be correct,” I snapped, “because that is translating into something akin to a sweetened, puréed fruit spread. Although, Tasha also called me a ‘nacho man’ earlier, and my preliminary research tells me a nacho is a type of savoury, crunchy human snack. Often topped with cheese.”

“Humans do love cheese,” Fallon agreed sagely, as if this was some obvious and universal truth that I, too, should have already been aware of.

Fallon was easily one of the kindest men in this province, if not the entire colony. I had not, however, ever considered him to be one of the wisest.

Perhaps I’d need to adjust my view of him in this area.

Unlike me, Fallon had been married to a human woman for some time now. He’d spoken with her, eaten with her, spent time with her every single day.

Shared his bed with her every single night.

Her and her… jammies.

“Do you have extra fabric that would be suitable?” I asked. “I have some at my station, but I don’t have time to ride all the way there and back tonight.”

If I did that, then by the time I returned here, the sun would have already risen.

And Tasha would have spent the night without said jammies.

Naked.

Blazes. Had the crotch of my pants always been this tight?

“I will pay for it, of course,” I added quickly. “I’ll transfer the credits into your account.” The men worked hard out here, cultivating their herds for the empire in order to earn their credits. Anything they could not grow or otherwise create themselves, they had to order for delivery, and that did not come cheaply.

“Oh, that is not necessary, Warden,” Fallon said, giving me a broad smile and leading me towards a closet at the end of a hall near what I assumed was the bedroom he shared with Darcy. “I am happy to share my fabric with you so that you may make something for Tasha. Like I told her on the call before she arrived, I owe her a great deal. Consider it a gift.”

“Thank you, Fallon,” I said, knowing I’d still put the credits in his account all the same. “Now, what general shape are they? These pyjammies.”

“Pyjamas. Or jammies,” Fallon corrected, opening the closet and rifling through the contents. “Or, sometimes, jammers.”

“Is there a difference between all these varietals?” I asked as Fallon heaped thin, shiny fabric into my arms.

“No. I do not believe so. Though there are different sorts of jammies. Nightgowns. Pants. Tops with long sleeves and short.”

“So many options,” I muttered. “Which one do you think Tasha would like?”

“I do not know,” Fallon said with a roll of his tail. “Why don’t you ask her? You’ll have to go take her measurements anyway.”

“Her what?”

“Her measurements. You’ll need to measure her to-”

“Blast. Fallon. I know.” Before being eliminated from the training ranks of the Zabrian Guard, I, like all the other recruits, had to make my own uniforms. This, of course, involved taking measurements. I just hadn’t thought ahead about actually doing that part with Tasha.

I rearranged the fabric as it threatened to spill out of my hands. Why the blazes was it so cursedly slippery? It was like trying to hold onto a jar of oil. Without the jar.

“What is this stuff?” I grunted, very nearly tearing right through it with my claws as I tried to keep it off the floor.

“It’s called satan! No. Saltine? I forget. Darcy likes it, though. She says it feels nice on her skin.”

“Ah.” I cleared my throat, wondering if it would also feel nice on Tasha’s skin.

Her bare skin.

“Here,” Fallon said, adding another layer of fabric, this one much more substantial and less… glossy… into the pile. “For a daytime outfit or two. Once you’ve got her measurements, I will stay up tonight and help you make them.”

And all at once, I was reminded why I was doing this. Why I was doing my utmost to make sure this might all work out.

Because my men – all my men – were good. They deserved happiness. Fallon, luckily, had already found it.

Oaken, and even foolish Zohro, also deserved that chance.

And if I wanted them to get that chance, I’d have to start by making sure Tasha was properly clothed.

But I would do that myself.

“Thank you, but you just go to bed with your wife, Fallon. I will take care of Tasha.”

“If you say so. Ah! Here! The final bit!” Fallon gave me a long, flexible strip of leather with Zabrian units of measurement etched onto its surface.

“Thank you, Fallon,” I grunted. “I will leave you now. I have some measuring to do.”

In the kitchen, I passed Cherry and Darcy.

“See you later, Warden Tenn!” Cherry said as she joined up with Silar at the door.

“Goodnight, you two.”

“Goodnight, Warden,” Darcy said as she moved towards Fallon and their bedroom. “What time can we expect you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Oh!” She glanced at Fallon, then all the fabric in my hands. “Are you staying the night, too?”

“Of course,” I said immediately. It had not even occurred to me that I might leave Tasha here to sleep without me.

Not that I was going to be sleeping with her, of course.

“Sorry. I don’t have anything prepared for you,” Darcy said. “Do you need-”

“I need nothing. Do not trouble yourself.”

As if to prove it, I left her and followed Cherry and Silar outside to find my own shuldu as they mounted theirs. My grey and white mare, Rabbit, was comfortably ensconced in one of Fallon’s shuldu stalls for the night. I checked to make sure she had ample food and water, which she did, gave her a pat, then retrieved the pack I’d attached to her saddle before leaving my station this morning. Inside, I had travel essentials, including a small sewing kit.

When I returned inside the house, the kitchen was empty, the candles blown out. Darkened quiet rustled, soft as a cloak. Every nerve seemed to come to exquisite life inside me as I considered the door that led into the room Tasha occupied.

The closed door.

I supposed I should not just open it. That would probably be rude. And I perhaps might discover her in some state of undress.

Just because that was a tantalizing thought did not mean I would actually do it. Besides, why would she already be undressed when she had nothing to change into yet?

That was why I was here, clutching my travel pack with its sewing kit and this blasted slippery fabric, was it not?

I leaned forward until my nose bumped the door’s surface.

“Hello, Tasha.”

Silence.

“I am at the door,” I added.

A small sound. It could have been a laugh or a sigh, neither of which were ideal.

“Come in.”

I shifted my load of supplies to one arm and opened the door.

There were candles yet lit in here. Tasha stood, illuminated in the light as I lingered in the darkness.

And yes, I did linger, despite her call to come in. Because in the soft caress of the candle glow like this, while the rest of the house was entirely quiet, if not asleep, she looked so blatantly, painfully pretty that I felt it like a physical blow. A destabilizing wallop to the head.

“You could have just knocked, you know,” she chided when I finally mustered the strength to step into the room.

“Knock?”

“The door.”

“Knock the door? Knock it over? I do not see what that would accomplish,” I said, coming fully into the space and dumping my supplies down on the bed.

“No, knock on the door.” She went to the door and closed it, shutting me in with her. I became suddenly aware of how small the room was. How her scent was so much easier to identify in the enclosed space. Sweet and strange and human beneath the dust and dry air.

Tasha raised her hand, formed a fist, and tapped her knuckles against the surface of the door to demonstrate her meaning.

“Noted.”

“What is all that?”

“Supplies to make you some clothing and…”

“And?”

Empire help me. I’d already forgotten the ridiculous human word for sleeping clothes.

“And… The things you wear for sleep. The jamborees.”

A smile touched her mouth. I wanted to touch it, too.

Which was a reprehensively unprofessional attitude to take towards the human-Zabrian liaison I was supposed to be impressing. I should have been coming up with tactics to properly show her my men and this world. Not spending all my time wondering what her lips might feel like beneath the calloused pads of my fingers.

“Are you talking about pyjamas?”

“Yes. Of course I am. That’s what I said.”

That drew a startled laugh from her as I fetched the measuring strip from the pile.

“That is absolutely not what you said,” she replied.

“You probably misheard me,” I grunted. “I understand that human ears are not nearly as effective as a Zabrian’s.”

“I’ll be sure to put that in the book,” she said, rolling her eyes up towards the ceiling and then back down. It was a gesture I recognized, having seen both Cherry and Darcy do something similar, but I was not yet sure exactly what it meant.

“Well… Good, then,” I said. I held up the strip of hide. “Come closer.”

Tasha appeared taken aback.

“Are you… What’s that for?” She crept subtly backwards towards the closed door, taking tiny, shuffling steps, like I would not notice. As if, in the space that stretched between us, I was not aware of every single move she made, every breath she took.

“Are you going to go all warden on me and tie me up or something?” The colour drained from her cheeks. “Is that your plan to keep the bride program going? Are you planning to keep me here against my will until I agree?”

“What? No!” I shook the hide at her. “I need to measure you! For the clothing! And the jammeronis!”

“Jammies?”

“Once again, that is precisely what I said.”

She bit her lips between her teeth and peered at the strip dangling in the air. I caught both ends between my claws, tightening it and turning it so that she could see the numbers and lines on one side.

“They are units of measurement,” I told her.

Finally, she breathed out and stepped closer.

But not nearly close enough.

“What am I supposed to do from that distance?” I asked her. “Lasso you?”

The colour was back in her cheeks now.

I liked that.

I also liked the idea I’d just given myself. I swept my tail off its hook, tossed it between us, then looped it round her waist.

“Excuse me!” She cried, startled as I dragged to closer.

“You are excused,” I muttered. I pinched my tail where the tip met the part closer to my body. I kept my finger and thumb there as I released her waist, then I measured the tip of my tail to the place my fingers touched.

“Look,” I said, “one measurement is already complete.”

“Alright, well, you could have just done that with the measuring tape like a normal person.”

“I do not have any adhesive tapes with me.”

I also was not entirely sure that I qualified as a “normal person” by either human or Zabrian standards. No male in this colony likely did. But I decided that I did not need to point that out to her right now.

“You’re not going to use your tail for the rest of it, are you?” she asked, her eyes darting from the strip of hide to my tail.

“I wasn’t planning on it. Why? Do you want me to?”

The question flamed through me. The idea that she might want the curl of my tail around her. A part of my body wrapping around hers…

“No, thank you!”

“That’s fine,” I said quickly. Too quickly. Like maybe it wasn’t really fine but it would be humiliatingly pathetic to admit it. “It’s more efficient this way, anyway.” I hoisted the strip of hide, brought one end to her shoulder, then laid it along her arm to her wrist, making mental note of the length.

“Aren’t you going to write these numbers down.”

“No. I’ll remember them.”

“All of them? Do Zabrians have really good memories?”

“I do not know if our memories are any better than a human’s,” I admitted, moving to her other side so I could repeat the process on her right arm. “But I have no trouble remembering the things that are important.”

That seemed to satisfy her for the moment.

Until I put the strip of hide against her right arm.

“Do you really need to measure both my arms? You just did the other one,” she pointed out. “Unless you’ve already forgotten the measurement,” she added archly, “because you didn’t write it down .”

“Nonsense,” I scoffed. “Your left arm is eighteen Zabrian microspans. I am merely measuring the right one to ensure that they match.”

“Of course they match!”

“Well, I’ll know that once I measure it, won’t I?”

She sighed and relaxed her arm, which she’d started to pull away from me.

“It is a good thing I measured,” I told her when I was finished. “Because that arm is a quarter microspan longer than the other.”

“No it isn’t!” she gasped, snatching her right arm away and cradling it protectively against her full chest. “You just measured it wrong.”

“I assure you, I did not.”

“Well… Then I’m sure it’s perfectly normal. I’m sure lots of humans have one arm longer than the other…”

“Is it?” I asked, moving behind her so I could continue measuring. “I did not come across that bit of information in the book you wrote yet.”

“Yes, well. Look for it in the second edition.”

“I will.”

I looped the measuring tape around her front.

“I am going to measure your…” I had a feeling she would not like it if I said “hindquarters” again. “Hips.”

“Fine.”

I tightened the strip of hide, trying not to stare at the delectable curves of her from back here. Once I had the measurement, I drew the strip up to her chest.

“Oh!” she cried as the strip went taut around that soft, fleshy part of her.

“Sorry,” I breathed. By the empire, she smelled so nice. “Too tight?”

“No,” she squeaked. But the quality of her reply did not convince me.

“Are your lungs… in there?” I asked, quickly noting the measurement and letting the strip of hide fall. “In your… in those parts?”

She made a choking, coughing sound that only seemed to confirm that I’d just compressed her lungs somehow.

“You think my lungs are inside my boobs?!”

“Boobs. Hmm. This does not translate.”

“My lungs are inside my chest, under my ribs! Where they are supposed to be!”

“I see.”

I did not see. At all.

But I figured if I asked more questions now I’d merely get told to read the book. Which I planned to. I’d read it all blasted night if I had to.

“Alright. Let’s do your legs and we can be done.”

“You know what?” she asked, twisting and reaching for the strip of hide. “I can do that myself.

“Absolutely not,” I replied, holding the strip out of reach. “Who knows what kind of shoddy job you’d do? You’d probably only measure the right leg and not bother to check the left. For all we know, one of your legs could be a full microspan shorter than the other.”

“Ugh. If it is, don’t bother telling me,” she groaned. “I don’t want to know.”

I completed the rest of the measuring swiftly (one of her legs was indeed shorter than the other) and picked up the shiny, milk-coloured fabric Fallon had indicated would be appropriate for human sleepwear.

“What style do you want?” I asked her, unfurling the fabric.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said quickly.

“Of course it matters,” I replied instantly. “If you’re going to be wearing it, then it matters. It matters to me greatly.”

Her laugh, when it came, sounded brittle.

“I see. So instead of holding me hostage, like I thought a second ago, your real strategy is to just butter me up?”

“You want me to put butter on you?”

I supposed I could, if she asked.

Now, all I could think about was rubbing it into her skin.

And then licking it off.

“No,” she said, her voice breaking into the salty, creamy, astonishingly erotic delights of my imagination, “it just means that you’re using flattery to get what you want.”

“Pardon?”

“Flattery. Did that not translate?”

“It translated. I just have not ever been accused of such a thing before.”

A wrinkle formed between her brows. Perhaps the confusion was warranted. She did not yet know me very well.

Why did I want to rectify that so badly?

“I don’t have time or patience for things like false flattery, Tasha,” I told her. “This world has a way of stripping a man of all his most polished forms of insincerity. It only leaves room for the important things. Truth. Endurance. Survival.”

“Surely the sort of pyjamas I want isn’t anywhere on that list!”

“Incorrect,” I growled. “That issue is currently at the very top of my list. And Tasha?” Her eyes looked very big as they met mine. “It has nothing to do with my men or the program. Truthfully, I was not thinking of them at all. When I say what you want matters, it’s because it matters to me. Now stop arguing with me and tell me what sort of jamdanglies you’d like.”

“A one-piece of some sort would probably be easiest and fastest for you to make. Like a long shirt or something.”

“I didn’t ask what would be fastest,” I reminded her sternly. “I asked what you wanted.”

“Well… If you insist.”

“I do.”

“Then… A two-piece set would be ideal, please. Pants and a top with long sleeves, if you don’t mind. It’s quite cool here at night, even in the summer.”

She said it almost shyly, avoiding my eyes and seating herself on the bed. She suddenly made herself very busy fiddling with the twist of hair at the back of her head, removing metal pins and setting them on the small bedside table. It was as if she could not sit quietly and face me – or herself – with the fact that she’d just asked me for something.

It made me wish she’d ask more of me.

It made me want to give her things. Things beyond a simple two piece set of jamberinos.

Did she have anyone else in her life to ask things of?

To give her things?

What a stupid notion. Of course she did. She literally wrote the book on human marriage. And she was so beautiful she had to be…

“Are you married?”

Tasha froze with both her hands poised behind her head. I was seized by the image of her seated there, her hands raised and arranged so artfully that way, her human face in profile, lit by the candle on the table. Elegant. Pristine. So lovely in the way that things were never lovely here.

It made me hurt a little bit inside.

“No,” she said.

The joy I felt at her reply was alarmingly savage.

She removed the final pin from her hair, and the length of it came tumbling down. It was much longer than I’d realized, the ends swishing around her waist.

I liked seeing her like this. Probably liked it too much.

This intimate unravelling.

She began to collect and then comb her shiny, pale hair between her hands. For a long moment, I made no progress on my sewing project. I was too busy staring at her, mesmerized by the movements of those clawless fingers through the shimmering, fragrant strands.

I wanted to do that for her. Let the strands of her hair run over my hands like water. Comb out the tangles. Wash out the dust.

But I had other things to do for her right now.

I turned my attention to the fabric and got to work.