Page 52 of Homebound
Her eyes collided with two black mirrors, deep, assessing, and focused entirely on her. She faltered and dropped her gaze but rallied and held her head up.
He was sitting in the same position he always sat in, legs drawn up and arms around his knees, except his posture had shed its helpless hunch. He was simply at rest, no longer lost in time and space.
Slowly, he lowered his feet to the floor and sat up straighter in a smooth unfurling of his body. Even sitting down he was tall. Starved to near skeletal proportions, his frame probably outweighed her two to one.
With an uneasy feeling, she thought again that at some point he’d ceased to be weak. Had he ever been? Had she missed something?
“Tell me how the Obu got you.”
His request snapped her back to yesterday with the force of a rubber band breaking from being pulled too tight. She felt huge furry arms imprisoning her in an unbreakable hold, smelled the rank breath reaching her nostrils, experienced again the pressure of his enormous protrusion against her lower back…
She shuddered.
“I went into his cell.”
Simon looked at her like it was the dumbest decision she’d ever made. Which it almost had been.
“You know I do it all the time,” she said looking pointedly at his open door. “I was told Obu are normally docile.”
“This Obu is a young adult.”
“Is he? He looks… mature.”
“Don’t you know anything about anyone in the Universe?”
“Only this much.” Gemma brought her thumb and forefinger within an inch of each other.
“The Obu has hit his transition,” Simon informed her like it was supposed to explain everything.
“Good for him.”
“He wants to mate.”
She had kind of figured out that part on her own. “Really? And here I thought he was asking me for the time.”
“He’s fixated on you. Mating is all he has on his mind.”
“Fantastic. Is he going to get over it soon?”
“He’ll calm down after he mates.”
“After?” Gemma stammered. The situation was beginning to sound difficult. “I don’t think our facility can accommodate his special needs. What am I supposed to do now?”
“Don’t go to his cell.”
“A sage advice, Simon.”
He cocked his head, his eyebrows arched high. His neck was thick and corded. How had she never noticed it before? The direct stare of his black eyes was making her thoroughly uncomfortable. Try as she might, she saw him less and less as an invalid.
“It’s so cold in here,” she said and thought about how inane she sounded.
“Rix tolerate cold as well as they tolerate hunger. We much prefer it to the heat.”
“You don’t think it’s cold in here?”
“No. It’s comfortable. The summers are brutal.”
Gemma chuckled. “Go figure. Everything is backwards with you.”
