“I know what a kiss is,” she interrupted. Now the icy chill gave way to a scalding deluge in her face. She hadn’t blushed this hard ever—over the merementionof a kiss. “But the handbook isn’t quite right that it’s expected on a first date.” She looked away.
As soon as he’d said the word kiss, her gaze had locked on his mouth. Those tusks…
Of course she’d seen pictures of his species. Her first impression had been of a scarab beetle, with the extra limbs, antennae, and the shell-like carapace, plus the skin that seemed to change from bronze to blue depending on the slant of light. Past that, though, she’d noted without letting her brain spiral away with her that orcs were more or less humanoid shaped—and the IDA rep had assured the brides-to-maybe-be that they were biologically compatible with orcs in all the ways that mattered.
She tried not to frown as she remembered those words now. “All the ways that mattered” might’ve been doing a lot of heavy lifting in that explanation.
Did kissing matter? When she’d told herself she could definitely date an alien in order to flee Earth, she’d sincerely believed she would have no problem with all that entailed. Maybe she hadn’t really considered whatallmeant.
But she’d been wife once to a man who’d had it all, and look where that had gotten her. Maybealldidn’t matter any more than kisses did.
She realized she’d been quiet much too long when Teq pivoted on his heel. “Come,” he said. Oh god, if the IDA handbook had explained whatcomemeant in an intimate relationship… “Let me take you to the galley,” he continued, assuaging that particular worry. “You must be very hungry and probably tired, and even if you’re not, you’ll want to know your way around the ship.”
“Yes, please. That would be wonderful.” She tried not to wince at how simultaneously pathetic and stiff she sounded. If these orcs decided she wasn’t compatible or interested, they might send her back to Earth and then—
No, that part of her life was over, just as she’d told Teq. She could never go back. She wouldn’t, not when it could mean losing Oliver.
“Wait,” she called. “Teq…”
As soon as she’d said please, his long legs had already carried him partway down the corridor, but he turned, the bottom edge of his kilt flaring out with his sudden response. From his little twitch of surprise at the distance between them, she guessed he was realizing that his kind and hers weren’t instantly compatible in some basic ways either.
But they met again in the middle of the gap, and she dragged her attention up from some thick and, um, surprisingly handsome thighs to look at him.
He wasn’tactuallyhorrible to look at anywhere, she decided. The elements that she’d thought of as bug-like were really just…different. When she’d first showed Ollie the holographic image of her maybe future husband’s species, he declared orcs “so cool.”
“Like a knight in shining armor,” he announced. “If scarab beetles were knights.”
She had stopped believing in knights in shining armor outside of Ollie’s storybooks.
Of course, she hadn’t believed in aliens either.
She forced herself not to blush again as she gazed up at Teq. “I don’t usually kiss on the first date,” she told him. Not that she’d had many first dates. “But today is a day of firsts. And since we’re all trying to get to know each other…” Wow, and she’d thought this was awkward before. “Well, if you still want to…”
He looked down at her, those feathery antennae quivering in a way she couldn’t quite interpret. She knew from the IDA handbook that the sensory organs were very sensitive, used for a sort of echolocation. When he tilted his head, the antennae stayed still. “Are you saying you want to kiss me?”
She hadn’t meant to take it quitethatfar. But considering she’d come much farther in leaving Earth… “Yes,” she whispered. “If you want to kiss me back.”
He squared off to her as if this really were some sort of transgalactic negotiation. “I want,” he said decisively. “But I do not want to frighten you. You’ll tell me what you like?”
How sad that she’d had to come such a long distance for any male to ask her that. She’d meant for the sarcastic thought to shore up her quivering nerves, but instead, some part of her softened a little. As Teq had said, the orcs had signed up for the IDA just as the women had. They were all in this together.
Somehow they both took another half step, although his might’ve been a little farther just because of his long legs. “You’ll have to lean down a little,” she murmured. “Since I forgot my stepladder on Earth.”
A strange, low sound emerged from him, more like a vibration, and she realized he was amused. “Shall I kneel to you?”
Oh. Hmm. That image reverberated in her in a strange way too…
Slowly, she raised her hands, spreading her fingers to either side of the sash across his chest, just above the hard, bare planes of blue-bronze skin, not quite making contact. Of course, she’d already noticed that he was mostly naked; the orcs wore only a sort of kilt wrap around their lower body, which seemed more like a place for pockets rather than any particular attempt at modesty, and that combo sash/utility belt. It was clear the IDA was accurate about orcs being humanoid enough. And having “two sets of bilaterally symmetrical upper limbs” meant double the bulging pecs, so…
She glanced up at him through her lashes. “May I touch?”
“Is this part of the kiss?”
“If we want it to be.” She swallowed hard. “Um. In the spirit of extraterrestrial exchange and intergalactic curiosity?”
“Please.” There was that thrum in his voice again, but not amusement this time, she sensed. Something deeper.
She let her fingertips descend gently. It wasn’t really a shell, she decided, although the skin was tougher than hers. It felt like leather maybe, just slightly yielding, not cold but warm. Such a protective hide made sense for the species that evolved in rocky caverns. If she might’ve accidentally said something unflattering back on Earth about bugs, Ollie had pointed out that their own relatives were basically less hairy monkeys, so fair point.