Page 115 of Planet Zero
“Worry not, Addie-woman. I won’t touch you again.”
She started. “My body is freely offered, Zoark. If you want it.”
“Is it?”
“Of course. I made you a promise.”
The ends of his long hair hit Addie in the face with another strong gust of the wind. His smell filled her nose, the faint animal musk, the healthy powerful smell of a male.
He didn’t move, didn’t initiate the touching like he often had. “Do you truly expect me to keep coming to you, knowing that deep down you find me repulsive?”
“But I don’t!”
“When I put my hands on your body, do you wish for this moment to end? Does your soul die a little every time I come inside you?”
“It isn’t like that!” Addie cried out. “I… Idowant you! You must know it.”
“I’ve felt your lust, Addie-woman,” he acknowledged drily. “You’re just likeher, wanting the pleasure but sickened by your own desires.”
“But you’re wrong!”
“I can feel your regrets every time I lay my hands on you,” he said quietly.
There were regrets, alright, but not the kind he presumed. Grabbing fistfuls of fabric on his chest, Addie shook him - or tried to. He shook about as well as that gray boulder over there.
“You don’t understand,” she began now that she had his focus. “Maybe you can’t, maybe we’re too different. I know you don’t feel… deep emotional attachment for me, because of who I am, because I remind you of Samantha, or because you just can’t feel it the way we humans do - I don’t know. It isn’t importantwhy, just that you don’t.” Words were running together, pouring off her tongue in a disorderly spray, and she didn’t know how to arrange them better. “I came to you because I thought I could deal with your detachment. I hoped that maybe we’d grow closer and find a groove. I don’t know what I thought. Maybe it's self-delusion, and I simply wanted you and looked for a way to be with you. Was it wrong of me? Am I just like Samantha, tricking you into intimacy you don’t want but can’t resist?”
“You didn’t trick me.” His eyes remained flat, his expression that of finality.
“I wanted you to be strong.” She wiped her tears. Tears? Yes, tears. Her heartbreak, her anguish were pouring out for him to see. She had built a reality out of dreams, and now her fictional reality turned into a tangible, live consequence of her choices that was growing in her belly. She had no option but to cope. “That’s what you wanted, too. That part, at least, had worked out. Your people need you.”
He put up a hand. “Say no more.”
They both fell silent. The wind blew. The grasses rustled. Ihr and Ehr chirped from above, content to go about their Yuux business near Addie. Ihr lowered on Zoark’s shoulder, and for once, he didn’t shrug it off.
She regarded him at length. The green of his irises was lighter than a For average, almost emerald. And the red, no longer dull, had an orangey cast.
Oh, those eyes…
“I will treasure our times together always,” he said quietly, “but it’s time we both move on.”
Addie blinked and thought about her baby. It was time for them to move on?It was time?
But maybe he was right, and it was so.
“What about you, won’t you suffer the consequences without mating?”
Zoark rotated his head, dislodging the Yuux. “I did it before. I’ll cope.”
Addie didn’t know the details, but she was dead sure the “cope” nearly killed him. She wondered if going through it a second time would be any easier.
They walked back side by side and almost made it to the last outcropping of layered rock in front of the settlement when Addie’s hackles rose in a warning.
“Well, well,” said a familiar voice from behind.
She turned around sharply and beheld Queen Qalae watching them, legs slightly spread, arms crossed.
Zoark turned his head toward her considerably more slowly, clearly having been aware of the queen’s presence before she spoke.
