“I’m sorry, Silar. I was so mortified that you’d caught me looking out the window at you. And then you just stared at me and didn’t shake my hand when I offered it. Which isn’t even your fault. I’m sure Zabrians don’t even shake hands, so it was silly of me to even expect that! But I was… I was terrified you’d change your mind and send me back.”

“Send you back…” He repeated the words oddly, slowly, like it was some foreign language that made no sense to him, even though his translator seemed to be working just fine.

“Maybe your hearing isn’t quite as good as you think it is,” I teased with a small smile that I was certain didn’t reach my eyes. “Because I’m pretty sure what I actually said was, ‘If he doesn’t want me, I’ll marry someone else.’”

“If I didn’t want…” The words trailed off, and I found myself pathetically grateful for it. Because if I’d had to listen to Silar say, “I didn’t want you,” even as a hypothetical sort of repetition of what I’d just relayed, I didn’t think my heart would be able to take it.

When the hell had I become so sensitive to rejection? I was sickly aware of the fact that this had very little to do with the fact that Silar’s rejection of me would be a death sentence and everything to do with the fact that I simply didn’t seem to want Silar to reject me.

Which he kind of already had, to be honest, what with the way he kept booking it out of the room every time I touched the man.

“Did you mean what you said before?” I asked abruptly.

I want to put my tongue inside you… God, it was so vivid in my mind. Like he’d only just spoken the words aloud.

He didn’t ask what I referred to. He simply flicked his tail in his weird Zabrian version of a shrug and said, “I don’t say much. But what I do, I mean.”

Oh. Oh.

And suddenly, my mind was on fire, chasing down every word he’d ever spoken in my presence, Admittedly, there weren’t that many. But some of them had been nice enough.

He’d told me he consented to this marriage. He told me that I didn’t need experience riding shuldu, because he had me.

He told me he wanted to put his tongue inside me.

And maybe he didn’t just mean my mouth…

Oh my God.

“OK! Great! Glad that’s cleared up!” I chirped idiotically, slamming my body down onto the mattress and turning on my side to face the wall. I pretended to sleep, scrunching my eyes shut, every bit of my body finely attuned to Silar’s position as he stood still in the room. The fine hairs on the back of my neck rose in response to what I was certain had to be his gaze dragging over me.

I waited, almost trembling, for him to join me in the bed. He didn’t. Not right away, at least.

Nope, first he took off his pants.

I remained utterly still, barely breathing, listening to the unmistakeable rustle and slide of clothing over skin.

And then came the pressure of a body on the bed.

Silar sat, then stretched out stiffly on his back. On top of the blanket and as far from me as possible.

Which was… fine. Totally fine. He could sleep however he liked. He didn’t need to come under the blankie with me and keep me company. I was a grown-ass woman, not a little kid who needed coddling.

“Aren’t you cold?” I whispered hopefully.

Don’t need coddling, my ass.

“Aren’t you sleeping?” Silar countered in a low voice. He shifted slightly, and though I wasn’t looking at him, I was pretty sure he had his hands behind his head now, the rest of his golden-skinned body splayed and…

Naked.

It wasn’t even that dark in the room with the glow of the kitchen’s oven filtering through the bedroom doorway. I could so easily roll over, get a better look at him.

I showed him my boobs today. It only seemed fair.

“I asked you a question first,” I tutted.

“No. I am not cold.”

Why had I even bothered asking? The man was like a furnace. There was more heat pulsing off of him than there was coming from the kitchen’s fire.

“Are you too hot, then?” I asked. Maybe that was why he wasn’t coming under the blanket with me. He didn’t even sleep with the fire burning unless it was winter.

“Don’t concern yourself,” he growled at me.

I chuckled, drawing the blanket around myself and burrowing down. Despite the awkwardness between us, it really was so nice to have someone to chat to before bed. It felt… cozy. Comforting. Safe. Tension began to ease out of my frame, my eyelids growing heavier with every blink.

“I can’t just not concern myself. I’m your wife, remember? Wives are great at getting all up in your business. Just all concern, all the time.” I yawned. “Isn’t it like that on Zabria?”

He didn’t answer. That was probably a stupid question. He’d clearly been here since childhood and said he never went back to visit, so maybe he hadn’t been exposed to many Zabrian couples. His own parents seemed to be a no-go zone in terms of conversation, so they’d probably died too young for him to remember what they’d been like together. It was possible he didn’t know if his mom tsked over him or his father getting too hot, or letting their ears get burned.

“I’m glad your ears are better,” I murmured drowsily.

The bed creaked as he shifted again. I felt Silar’s next words, a hot skim against my cheek, like he was leaning over me with his face very close to mine.

“Go to sleep, Cherry.”

It was hard to tell with my eyes closed, but it seemed like everything got momentarily brighter, as if a blindingly white spotlight had been fixed upon my face. Or maybe two spotlights.

“Goodnight, Silar,” I whispered.

“Goodnight...” I barely heard him through the haze of descending sleep. And I really must have dropped off quick, because it seemed like I started dreaming immediately.

What other explanation could there have been for the quietly tender, almost aching way Silar ended off his sentence? He didn’t say “Goodnight, Cherry.” He didn’t say, “Goodnight, human.”

He said, “Goodnight,” – a hushed pause – “wife.”

Nope. Definitely not real.

Oh, well.

A girl could dream. Even if that was all it would ever be.

19CHERRY

The next morning began a days-long stretch of very hard work, and it wasn’t hard because Silar was busting my ass. Far from it. If anything, he seemed reticent about giving me any of the tougher jobs, which only made me want to prove myself even more.

Which in turn meant I probably went a teensy bit overboard. I was pretty sure that Silar was now a stupefied combination of confused by my enthusiasm for mucking stalls, pulling weeds, and milking alien cows, and quietly impressed by his wife’s absolute balls-to-the-walls energy. Which was a relief, because we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere in the romantic feelings department.

At least… he didn’t.

I, unfortunately, was growing more and more attracted to my husband with every passing day. And not just because of his sculpted body, or constant state of shirtlessness; his calloused hands, or the curling strength of that prehensile tail I kept imagining in far too many intimate places.

No, it was more than that. It was in the way that whenever I mentioned something that was missing, like the table for the kitchen or more recently a better set of door hinges for the outhouse, it suddenly seemed to just appear. It was in the way he treated his animals with his particularly disarming brand of gruff, restrained tenderness; the way that he barely ran his claws through his own hair to comb it but spent hours each day cleaning and caring for his shuldu. It was in the way he seemed surprised, maybe even guilty, when I did normal spouse things for him like make him food, darn a bit of torn clothing, or offer to rub his shoulders. He always refused that last one.