“No.” He didn’t know what he was watching, actually. He had stopped while scrolling because he had seen a ship in space, but this program’s version of deep-space tours appeared to be more or less all humans, doing everything humans did now, except that they did it in stranger clothes.

“Aha, Scylla Six, I’ve seen this one.” She gave him a knowing sort of smile. “How do you like it so far?”

“I note that it appears all humans are good and all aliens evil.”

“Yep, ‘fraid so. But the cyborgs are evil, too, and they look human.”

Tagen took the food from her—bread and meat flavored with sauce and stacked together to be easily eaten with one hand. It was a more complicated, and tastier, version of line rations that any Fleet recruit would recognize. He ate, raising his glass to her in thanks.

“Cheers,” she said, looking pleased. She walked away without explaining herself.

Tagen watched her go. Her hips had the most fascinating sway…

He sighed and turned his attention to the tee-vee again. On-screen, the aliens, which looked a great deal like slime-coated, grey insects, were slaughtering their way through a roomful of humans for no apparent reason. The male who was clearly the heroic element of the story was battling them off with a sword. And the aliens, who had somehow mastered deep space travel despite the very real handicap of having only one finger on each leg, had not thought to develop a gun at any point. The male’s companion, a female with whom he had been bitterly arguing throughout the program, was fighting bare-handed, by the gods, actually kicking the aliens to death with very little effort. Aliens with exoskeletons, no less.

“Are there other aliens besides you?” Daria asked, returning to the front room with her own food and drink. “Or us, rather. Whoever. Are there other planets with intelligent life, is what I’m saying.”

“Yes,” Tagen said warily. “Two others, that we know of. Two homeworlds, I should say. By now, we have colonized some fifty worlds or moons between us.”

“Wow.” Daria looked skyward, seeking out those worlds through her ceiling.

“There must be others,” Tagen continued, considering the shape of her rounded breasts from the corner of his eyes. “But we are not actively searching any more.”

“Why not?”

“The cost was prohibitive.” The So-Quaal were almost certainly still searching for new life-forms, but Tagen did not elaborate. He could not tell her about the So-Quaal without running the risk that she might recognize them. Tagen had seen images of So-Quaal on the tee-vee already, along with anecdotal evidence that some of the humans had fallen victim to their research and hybridization efforts. Daria did not need to know every truth. He wanted her to be able to sleep once he’d left her.

“So, is Earth the only planet of aliens you don’t…like?”

He looked at her inquiringly.

“Do you talk to the other aliens? Or do you avoid everyone the way you avoid Earth?”

Tagen hesitated. No matter how he answered, it would be easy to take insult. “Earth was…hostile…when it was discovered.”

She smiled faintly. “Not like now, huh?” she said, with just a trace of irony.

He watched the tee-vee. The aliens had managed to give the kicking female an extremely superficial wound in the shoulder, which everyone around her treated as life-threatening. It made Tagen think of his last injury in the field—a five day siege at the docking station for Kevrian cargo raiders, every day on that world equal to three of Jota’s, and every shot fired a threat to the integrity of the hull. Tagen could remember hugging the back of a support pillar as he charged his blaster, watching the shots from either side exchanged in the air before him, and thinking of the total lack of oxygen on the planet’s surface outside. On his first day of that conflict, Tagen had been caught in a crossfire and taken blaster fire to his face, chest, back, and gut. His commander had pulled him from the lines, injected him with pain censors and stimulants and then thrown him bleeding back into the fray.

“You’re smiling,” Daria observed, and looked at the tee-vee dubiously. “It can’t be the movie. What are you thinking?”

“I am thinking about time,” Tagen said.

She nodded, accepting that. “It really flies when you watch tee-vee all day.”

There was no sarcasm in the words. In point of fact, her tone was almost rueful.

“When I first came home,” she said, her hand rising to caress her cheek, “I did nothing but watch tee-vee. Just…just to have a voice in the house, you know? I’d watch for, like, sixteen hours and then not be able to name a single show I’d watched. It was like drowning in sand.”

She seemed about to say more and then she looked at him with mild surprise, as if she’d forgotten he was there. She uttered a nervous laugh, rubbing her face before clasping her hands together. “At least you’re getting something out of your tee-vee time.”

Yes, he was getting further and further behind E’Var. Newly discouraged, Tagen eyed the screen, where the male and female were heavily conversing in a medical bay, all their bickering forgotten.

Daria came and sat beside him, and immediately, all thought of the show’s improbabilities went completely out of his mind. Tagen didn’t look at her. He moved no muscle at all apart from what it took to continue breathing. But he was aware of her. He felt her; the space she occupied seared his entire left side. Her scent dug into all his senses. Female. Very female.

And all at once, Tagen had an epiphany, his very first.

He wanted her. He wanted not just a willing female for a restless bout of sexplay, he wanted her. He wanted Daria Cleavon.

He didn’t know why. She was human. That alone should have been reason enough not to want her. But the more time he spent in her home, the fewer their differences seemed to matter. And no, she was not the sort of female he normally found attractive, but that was all right, too. He was in the unique position of holding power and authority over a female and he found it very arousing.

Tagen’s claws dug in at his knee where he forced his hand to casually rest. The pain was centering, reminding him in no uncertain terms that if he should make an overture, even if he knew how, he would not be welcome.

The tee-vee program chose that precise moment to cut to a scene of the two humans naked, writhing in a swaddle of sheets and sweat-damp limbs.

Tagen continued to stare without changing expression, but he was intensely aware of Daria at his side and of her sudden stillness.

The male’s hands moved up the female’s undulating body, gripping her breasts before consuming her in a kiss. This was how humans mated. This was how Daria would move beneath him. These were the sounds she would make. This—

Tagen suddenly pulled in a breath, his mind closing to the visual and opening on reality.

Musk. Mating musk. Daria, here beside him, neither touching nor looking at him, but thinking of him, perhaps. Wanting him, as he wanted her.

Why, damn her, why would she not advance? Why would she not turn to him, speak to him, tell him what she wanted? He did not dare to move first. Even if every instinct went against taking the first step when a female had not indicated approval, he could not risk antagonizing her. He could not withstand the flood of fear in her eyes, not now, not when he wanted her so completely.

In programs such as this, a female frequently announced her willingness to mate with a touch. Daria was in comfortable reach. Her hand could come to his knee so easily. So easily.

On the screen, the female was crying out aloud at the height of her pleasure and the male groaned and sank down slow atop her. Daria’s mating musk grew stronger, and suddenly, Tagen could not sit quietly and pretend none of this mattered. He turned to her, his stomach tightening apprehensively, and readied himself to put his hand on her.