“I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending I don’t have an ulterior motive. Don’t insult mine by pretending you don’t know what it is.”
Fair enough. “Just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page is all.”
He inclines his head, still managing to look regal and yet masculine despite it. “Also know that I will not touch you until you ask.”
Well now, that’s a big assumption. “What makes you think I’m gonna ask?”
He smiles, showing a pair of pearly white, elegant fangs. “I don’t. And call me Varrik.”
“Varrik,” I murmur, tasting the name on my tongue. I like it.
18
MILLY
It has been a really weird three weeks since I first met Varrik. I wonder if it’s possible to love a guy and yet be completely utterly miserable at the same time.
“Miserable” is probably a strong word. I’m more like a square peg in a really round hole. I don’t fit in, and there’s not an hour in a day that passes that doesn’t make me painfully aware of the fact that I’m human, surrounded by a bunch of noble aliens called mesakkah, and to the vast majority of them, I’m one step above a drooling idiot.
It seems that Earth is well known to these aliens, but they call it a “Class D” planet, which means…idiots. They think we’re all idiots and not ready to join the Allied Federation of Worlds, which is kind of insulting. I haven’t seen anyone on Kes—this planet—that makes me think I’m incredibly stupid compared to them. The mesakkah I’ve met are hugely arrogant. Even Varrik, who I really like, is a spoiled rich man. I doubt he could tie his own shoelaces if left to his own devices.
In a way, it’s kind of cute.
Varrik is wonderful, though. I ponder his amazingness—despite his inability to tie a shoelace—over breakfast as I poke my food. The people here love a breakfast noodle that’s a bit like a pancake without syrup, and he makes a face when I add a heaping spoonful of jitai jam to my food.
“What?” I ask, pretending to be belligerent. And just because I know I can crack that stony expression of his, I deliberately add a second spoonful of jam to my noodles.
Varrik shakes his head. “It’s incredible that humans have lasted as long as they have with such poor eating habits,” he teases, pretending to study his datapad.
“Humans are awesome. You’re just jealous that we have such intense metabolisms that we can appreciate sweets, unlike you mesakkah guys.” I take my utensils—which I still haven’t mastered—and spin the flat end of the stick in the noodles, swirling them into a ball before lifting it to my mouth.
He snorts, sounding like the arrogant lord he is. “Is that not my jam?” he asks in a lofty tone. “That particular concoction is made on one of my farms.”
I pick up the elegant jar and study it, and sure enough, it has his house symbol on it. “Neat. You must be proud.”
“Farming brings in a lot of money,” he says coolly. “There are no farms left on Homeworld.”
“Probably for the best. I don’t think Lady Ahiri would be very good at farming.”
“Lady dra’Niiron,” he corrects me. “Proper names are saved for only the closest of companions amongst the nobility, my Milly.”
“Then why do you let me use your proper name?” I ask, fluttering my lashes.
He pretends to study his datapad. “I grew tired of your incessant butchering of my house name.”
I snort-giggle at that, and a laugh rumbles up in his throat.
Gosh, I love his laugh. It’s rare, because the poor man is so jaded and world-weary that I don’t think he finds much to laugh at anymore. Hearing it is like a treat, and it makes me want to babble for hours and say all kinds of inane things just to get him to laugh again.
Varrik is wonderful.
I can’t believe I have a crush on an alien, but I do.
I swirl my jam-coated noodles around in my bowl, thinking. I know that he likes me as a friend. I’m the only person he talks to for hours on end, and he confesses things to me that I doubt others have ever heard from him. He tells me of Lady Ahiri’s plans to try and trap him into a mating, of Lord As’bro’s angling to get a lucrative mining contract that will save his family from financial ruin, and a million other bits of gossip I have no use for but digest anyhow, because I want to be able to share his world with him.
He never touches me, though.
We talk for long hours every night, and sometimes I fall asleep on the bed with him instead of in my cot at the foot of his palatial mattress. Sometimes I dream I’ll wake up to find him kissing me feverishly, but he never touches me. We’re friends and roomies, but I can’t help but remember that he bought me for more.