“You’re sure laying in a lot of eats for one guy.”

“He’s one big guy,” she argued. “Leave the chicken in the fridge, please.” She’d cook it up today and have a cold chicken salad tomorrow, if she ever found her big salad bowl. She wondered if aliens liked chicken. Then she wondered if she was ever going to randomly run into the perfectly innocuous human food that was horribly toxic to his people, the way it was always happening in the movies. Still, the movies weren’t exactly batting three-for-three where aliens were concerned so far.

Troy opened his cold-storage crate and started unpacking into her freezer. “Lots of cold stuff. How’s this weather, huh? I notice you got no A/C.”

“It broke.” She could feel his eyes crawling over the front of her shirt and all of a sudden, she really wished Tagen would wander in here and do some male looming.

“Pretty hot, though. What say we ditch the stiff and go sit in a cool movie theatre tonight?”

Oh Christ, and there it was. The proposition.

“Just put the non-perishables on the counter,” she said.

“Sure.” He came right next to her, just as though there weren’t fifteen feet of counter spread throughout the kitchen. She inched away, tucking cat food and chicken broth into her cupboards indiscriminately, trying to ignore him as best as she was able. She reached up to push a short stack of tuna fish onto a less-packed shelf and then it happened.

The back of his hand grazed her breast, not quite a full-on cop, but damned close. Daria jerked back as if burned, but couldn’t manage even a yelp of surprise. When a swimmer swallows that first unexpected gulp of water, the airway closes. What kills you isn’t the water, but the panic of drowning. So it was for Daria; panic closed on her all at once, and she had no breath to scream, no power to slap, no nothing. She stood there and stared at him and drowned in the open air.

Troy merely looked back at her with that smirking surprise, still holding the box of cereal he’d been setting before her. “Oops,” he said. “Did I tag ya? Sorry.”

He didn’t look sorry and he didn’t sound sorry, but at least the question gave her the permission her fear-locked brain needed to reply.

“I’ll get the rest of it. You can just leave.” Her teeth started to chatter; she had to clench her jaws tightly to keep from giving in to shivers.

She could see him thinking about it as he continued to stand there, visibly weighing possibilities and potential. Then he smiled, and she knew she was in real trouble. She wanted to order him furiously from the room and stumbled back a step instead.

“You’re not a bad-looking lady, you know.” He came towards her and she kept backing up. “You’re really not. You can barely see ‘em.”

Daria’s hand flew to her face, covering her scarred left cheek. She tried to back up again and hit the wall instead. “I want you to leave,” she said, hating the shrillness that stole into her voice.

“No, you don’t. I know what you really want. Come on, lighten up a little.”

“I’ll call someone!”

He laughed at her. “I’m not even touching you!” And then he made a liar of himself by closing in and putting a hand on her hip. She tried to jump back and succeeded only in banging herself a damned good one on the counter. “But you want me to touch you,” he said smoothly. “I know you do. I can make you feel like a whole woman. Come on.”

She pushed at him, almost blinded by terror and yet determined not to give in to it like a ninny. It wasn’t like he was going to throw her down on the tiles and rape her, for God’s sake. “Let go of me right now!” she hissed. “Right now!”

“One kiss,” he said, and he even made it sound like he was being reasonable. “One kiss, and if you don’t like it, I’ll let you go.”

“Get out!”

He was stronger than her; he was pulling her to him, his hands not in the least shy about grabbing her ass to keep her from wriggling away. “Just one kiss.”

His mouth was stalking hers. No matter how she twisted, he pursued. He let go of her waist to grab her head and hold her still. “Just relax,” he was saying, still almost laughing, as though her terrified struggles were a joke she were playing on him. “Just relax, you’re gonna lo—”

And then he was flying backwards, banging into the wall and thumping to the tiles.

Daria scrambled away, whistling gasps tumbling out of her as she clawed her way to another corner. “Get out!” she screamed, but the choice wasn’t Troy’s anymore.

Tagen picked the delivery boy off the floor and pushed him into the wall at eye level. Troy’s sneakered toes hung fully a foot and a half over Tagen’s socks. Very quietly, Tagen said, “You will leave this house.”

“Yes, sir,” Troy whispered.

Tagen set him down and stood back, clasping his hands behind his back and glowering. Daria could see the claws flexing and curling.

“I was just—I was—I’m very sorry. I thought we were just playing around.” Troy grabbed for his handcart, shook the last box off it, and fled.

Daria continued to huddle where she was, checking and re-checking the lie of her clothes even though there had been no real pawing. Her adrenaline was high, her heart hammering in her ears. The sense of narrow escape, as unreasonable as it was, continued to press and claw at her.

Tagen turned to face her, his gold eyes narrowing, and something in her snapped.

“I don’t need your help!” she shouted and burst into tears.

She was furious with herself for crying, as furious as she was with him for watching her, and most of all, she was furious at the gratitude that swelled through her for him being there. Her white alien knight to the rescue, saving her from the grabby hands of Troy the delivery boy. Jesus Christ.

He watched her cry, his brows drawn together to form that faint line between them. “Then I apologize,” he said, once her private storm had turned to sprinkles. “It was not my meaning to offend you.”

“I know,” she sniffled. “God damn it.” She swiped her eyes dry, kept her palm to her cheek, and started throwing food into the cupboards entirely at random. “He’s a jerk, but he’s completely harmless. He was out of line, but so were you.”

“I am a police,” Tagen said. “And some things are always wrong.”

“It was harmless!”

“Perhaps on your world.” He didn’t bother to pretend he was convinced.

“Oh please! He’s been hitting on me for six months!”

Tagen’s hawk eyes widened and his body went rigid at once. “He has hit you?” he demanded.

“What? No!” Daria picked up a bag of elbow macaroni and then put it down again, suddenly tired. “No. Hit is one of those words that have two meanings. Look, just forget it. Forget it ever happened.”

He said nothing, emphasizing the futility of even trying to unmake memories.

“I was making you some iced tea.” She motioned listlessly toward the pitcher on the counter. “Let me just get this stuff put away and I’ll put some ice in it. You look hot.”

Tagen glanced skyward and then looked directly at her and said, “What would you have had me do, Lindaria Cleavon?”

“Daria!” she interrupted, at a full shout, and slammed both hands down on the countertops with a bang. “God! I have told you and told you!”

He backed up, plainly startled by her vehemence, and then his eyes narrowed. “It was the name you gave me,” he said defensively.

“Right, the name I gave you when you got me high!” she shot back. She yanked open the refrigerator and pulled out the chicken quarters, still frosted from the ride in G.O.D.‘s freezer, and banged that down on the counters, too.

He frowned, but didn’t look very guilty.

Daria busied herself with pulling out a baking dish and preheating the oven and skinning the chicken, all the while feeling his wary eyes on her.

“It’s just Daria now,” she said, more calmly. “Just Daria.”

“Why?”