Another lie by omission.

Another sign that I did not deserve her.

“Oh,” she breathed, and I could feel it, not just hear it, a tantalizing brush against my shoulder that sent my blood racing and cock pounding. “That’s… I never would have guessed that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you… You seem so… It’s not just that you’re quiet but…”

Her voice trailed away, and I waited in anxious agony for her to go on. For her to tell me just what it was that she found wrong with me so that I could go about trying to fix it.

“What?” I rasped when she did not continue.

“It’s not that you seem emotionless,” she said in a rush. “I mean, you are definitely quiet. But I just… I never would have known you were experiencing strong emotions without the eye thing. You seem… very controlled.”

Controlled? Good Zabrian men were controlled. Men who did not get convicted of murder before they were even old enough to graduate from the childhood portion of Zabrian Academy. The white of my eyes proved just how much control I lacked.

My cock proved it as well.

But even so, even knowing she was entirely and utterly wrong about what she’d just said, it sent an undeniable surge of strange satisfaction through me. Cherry thought I had control.

She thought I had one of the best qualities of the best Zabrian males.

She did not know Zabria. She did not know me.

She did not know how wrong she was.

She would find out, of course. When I told her what I’d done. Why I was here in the first place.

But not tonight.

Tonight, I would let her go on thinking that the male she’d married was good enough to lie beside her.

It seemed my lying beside her was helping. Her breathing evened out, her body relaxing against my arm.

Until she inhaled quickly and tensed.

“What sort of emotions?” she asked with a suddenness that had me opening my eyes despite myself. “I hope… I hope I haven’t done anything to bother you too much.”

“What?” I croaked.

I’d never been articulate. At least, not as an adult. Though I’d talked incessantly as a child. Asked a thousand and one questions of my mother every day.

Until the trial. Until I learned that speaking, telling your story, using as many words as you could to defend yourself…

Was utterly useless.

And then I’d been sent here, isolated from society with only the other convicts and wardens to speak to as I grew from child to man.

It had been so easy to let my voice die.

But now it seemed that Cherry wanted that voice. The problem was that I was even less able to form words around her than I was the warden and the others. Which led me to answering her question with foolish, single-word questions of my own. I’d lost count of the times I’d responded to something she’d said with “What?” or “Why?”

“I hope I’m not too much… Too outside of what you expected,” she said, sounding nervous. “Your eyes were white when you first saw me. And then the kiss… Sorry about that, too, by the way.”

I stopped myself – barely – from asking “Why?” once again. Like a dunce.

“Surprise is an emotion, too,” I informed her, focusing on getting the words out of my tight throat and ignoring the raging pulse in my chest and in my cock.

“So I didn’t upset you, then?” She asked it somewhat tremulously.

“No.”

I could not think of a single thing she could do that would actually upset me.

Except…

Except leave me when the thirty days were up.

She breathed out in a long, sweet rush over my skin.

“Oh. Good. I was worried I’d offended you or something.”

She should have been more worried about the offensiveness of her husband’s thoughts in that moment. Thoughts about kissing her again outside of a ceremony, thoughts of what her tongue might taste like against my own.

“Whoa. I think your eyes just got whiter.” She hesitated, then let out a low chuckle. “I thought that understanding the white eyes thing would help, but now you’re even more mysterious. What emotion are you feeling right now, Silar?” She laughed again, but it didn’t sound very happy. “I hope it’s not annoyance at how much I’m talking.”

“It isn’t.”

She waited, no doubt wanting me to say more. To try to educate her on the riot inside my own head.

I had no way to untangle it, let alone explain it. There was arousal, surely. That was the most obvious. But it was more than that. There was shock at how strangely good it felt to provide for her, to be the only one to keep her warm. And then there was something else. Something tender and aching, something like a bruise. A sweet sort of pain that made my whole body hurt with the desire to turn towards her and take her entirely into my arms.

Maybe I could do it, under the pretense of making her even warmer. Cover her body with mine like a blanket until she wrapped her own arms around me in turn and…

And she felt the offensive straining of my cock and immediately fled from me.

I should have read more of that stupid book, I said, clenching my fangs together. I hadn’t yet encountered anything in the text about human marital expectations or formalities. Was it proper to hold your wife in bed? Perhaps I could manage it without her feeling the heinous poke of my erection.

Perhaps… Perhaps-

“Can I hold you?” The question tore out of me, sounding strangled, before I even realized I was asking it. I berated myself for lobbing it out there in such a blunt, careless way, but at the same time felt a rush of breathless anticipation at her answer. Likely she would balk and say no. Maybe even ask me to leave the bed entirely.

But maybe…

Maybe she would say yes.

My heart stampeded in my ears, like the hoofbeats of an entire herd. Every nerve bristled beneath my skin. The tip of my cock grew damp beneath my clothing, my sack bunching beneath the hard rod of the organ.

Cherry made no answer.

I’d lived in silence for cycles. Never before had I thought that silence might be the death of me.

But I thought so now.

I allowed myself a small, slit-eyed glance her way, not wanting to blind her with my eyes in the dark.

But it seemed there was no chance of that. Cherry’s eyes were closed, the odd, short little hairs of her eyelids resting prettily against the hollows above her cheeks. Her body was slack and still, her breaths shallow puffs.

She was asleep.

I watched her face, illuminated with the silver-white glow of my eyes. I did not dare to blink. That new, tender pain got suddenly sharper. Like a beautiful blade, sliding from my throat to chest. Cutting me open and claiming everything.

I should go.

I had not yet washed or scrubbed my fangs or even taken off my pants. Though removing my pants now was probably a bad idea if I planned to return to the bed to keep Cherry warm. Having a barrier between us, however flimsy, seemed like a good idea. Plus, if I lost control and climaxed (which I felt shamefully close to doing already) then at least I’d only foul up my own trousers and not the bedding I shared with her. I carefully moved the arm not currently claimed by Cherry and fisted my cock with a muffled groan.

Cherry sighed in her sleep, snuggling harder against me. She slung a slender leg across my thigh, her knee coming perilously close to my fisted cock. Heat seeped from the place at the apex of her thighs, and I squeezed my cock even harder, panicking at the fact that I really might ejaculate now. I focused on my laboured breathing, trying desperately not to think of the secret, human place between Cherry’s legs that was now nestled so perfectly against my hip.

Why in the great stretches of the Empire did she need me to warm her, I wondered, when that part of her was so dizzyingly hot?

Tomorrow, I told myself in feverish alarm, I would prepare more lumber for the oven’s stores. There was no way I would be able to suffer through Cherry using me as some sort of heated pillow night after night. My cock would fall off.