Page 21 of The Alien's Little Sister

And only your things. She’s freaking naked under my stuff.

I almost growl. What I do instead is gasp, choke, turn away from her like she’s the sun and my retinas exploded, and I try to think of my great grandma, because that usually kills any hope of a hard-on.

Not this hard-on. It’s great-grandma proof. Alien-grade, I guess. Dammit.

“Matt?” Inara asks.

The peeper pocket on my sweats is getting some action, and I have to readjust the Kraken. “Night, Inara,” I tell her.

She sighs.

She sounds… a little deflated.

Maybe I should—

No.

No, Matt.

But—

I saidNO,Matt!

“‘No, Matt’ what?” Inara asks from behind me, making me freeze.

“Nothing,” I say gruffly. “I’m having a private conversation.”

“With yourself?” Inara asks, sounding baffled.

“Aliens like me do that,” I tell her. “Good night.”

After a moment, she returns the words. “Good night, Matt.”

CHAPTER 11

My mug reads‘Yet despite the look on my face, you're still talking.’I sip from it before clunking it down next to a spatula.

The other mug says,‘I'm not bossy. I just know what you should be doing.’

That’s holding Inara’s tea, and she’s currently got her claws curled around the handle. Theyou’re still talkingmug was given to me by my sister Elaine. The bossy mug was a gift from Stacy, given to me two weeks after she started. I’d never tell her, but I to this day, I still smile whenever I see it.

This morning, I’d be smiling anyway because it turns out I like having an alien roommate. I’m even making her breakfast.

I wanted Inara to have the experience of a home-cooked human meal first thing today, and while I would have loved to take her out, knowing she’d get such a kick out of hitting a restaurant, Inara is conspicuous, and I’m not sure how to get around that.

“Going to have to think on it,” I mutter to myself as I scrape scrambled eggs around the back pan and flip a banana flapjack. I glance back at her and nod to her plate. “Incoming. These will be the carrot pancakes I was telling you about.” I nab them up and pile them high on her plate.

I’ve shown her every kind of pancake I had the ingredients on hand to make. I also tried to make a couple of kinds of egg options, but I’ve never used the burner in the back of the stove until today, and I found out it gets way too hot—it burned our eggs. But Inara vowed to me that she likes burned food, and furthermore, she claimed that everything smelled wonderful and she was looking forward to tasting it.

Such a nice girl.

I’ve also fed her about a pound of turkey and beef bacon, and I’ve socked away about the same myself. I drop down across from her at a table I’ve used maybe twice since I moved in. Look at me, Mr. Homemaker with an alien.

I scrape half of the scorched scrambled eggs onto her plate, and plop the rest on mine, which I liberally coat with enough ketchup to give me diabetes (or so my mother always warned me while I was growing up), which is the way I’ll go to the grave eating my eggs, a possibility that gets closer and closer every time I swim my food in ketchup, probably.

I take a bite, and watch her do the same. (She skipped the ketchup lake, although she did take tomatoes, greens, and cheese.)

“So,” I ask her. “What do you think?”

---