"Are you…trying to make me crazy?" There's a breathless, husky note in his voice that makes my body prick in response.
"Nope." I chuckle, moving my fingertips to his side. I remember what he said about tails, and so I reach out and deliberately grab the base of his, giving it a squeeze, even as I slide my hand into his pocket and snatch his data pad.
Kaspar's head tilts back and he groans as I give his tail another squeeze, and I almost feel bad. Almost.
Instead, I run my thumb over his data pad to activate the screen. It flares to life, chirping. Fuck.
He jerks around and snatches it back from me, but not before I see what looks like a screen full of alien gobbledygook language and something like a body scan. The look Kaspar gives me is utterly betrayed as he holds his data pad high over his head, where I possibly couldn't reach.
"I was looking at that." I hold a hand up, indicating he should give it back to me.
"You don't need to see anything on it."
"I want to know why it's making you so fucking cranky." I wave my fingers in a “gimme” motion.
"It's not."
"Bitch, please." I tilt my head back, gazing up at him as he looms over me. "I've been around you twenty-four-seven for the last month or so. You think I don't know when you're wigging out on me? What is it? Were those things poison? Were you running a scan on them? Are we going to break out into rashes now?"
I wipe my hands on my scraps of clothing. That's all I need is a full-body rash thanks to the blister-fruit. Ugh.
"No, no rashes." He sounds almost sulky now. "It's nothing to do with you."
"Is it you, then? Are you dying?" I joke, but now I'm worried. I cross my arms over my chest when he's quiet. "You're NOT dying, are you?"
"Not anymore."
My jaw drops. I stare up at him, waiting. He doesn't seem inclined to say more, and that just irks me all over again. "Annnnd?"
Kaspar puts his data pad back in his pocket. "Are you going to grab my tail again if I don't tell you?"
I can't decide if he's wounded or offended. I guess if he grabbed my tit to distract me, I'd be a little pissy, too. "I'm sorry I did that, but you're keeping secrets and it's worrying me. We're stuck in this together, and our lives depend on one another. It was childish of me to grab your tail, and I'll let you grab me back if you tell me what's on the data pad."
He stares down at me for so long, silent, that I realize he really DOES NOT want to share what's on it. That just worries me even more. "Please, Kaspar?" I ask softly. "I thought we were friends."
"I thought so, too, but then you groped me when you didn't get your way. And I'm supposed to grope you back to make it up to you?" He gazes down at me, all lofty blue alien, and I've never felt shorter. Or smaller. "That's supposed to somehow make it better?"
"I wasn't thinking," I admit. "I should know better, considering how much I hate it when I'm groped by strangers. It was terrible of me, and I'm genuinely sorry. I just panicked and used you and didn't think about how you might feel about it."
He considers this for a moment, then nods. "I guess we're both a little keffed in the head right now. And normally I'd enjoy the groping, but not if it's because of a trick. If you grope me, do it because you want to, not because you need to distract me."
And he holds the data pad out to me to take.
29
KASPAR
I stare, nervous, as she takes the data pad from me. It contains all my secrets, all the shameful things other corsairs would use against me if they knew about them. It tells the universe that I have a fatal flaw.
It'll tell Alice that I'm weak.
I don't want her to look at me as a weakling. I want her to keep giving me those sharp looks of hers that make me wonder if she's going to flay me with her tongue or kiss me. I don't want her to see me as anything other than her hero. But I'm also no good at hiding things, and it's bound to come out at some point.
So I watch as she stares at the screen of the data pad, waiting for her judgment.
She gazes at it for a long moment, and then back up at me. "What am I looking at?"
She doesn't know? I almost laugh, except I'm too nervous to laugh. Stupidly nervous, which is insane. "It runs a diagnostic every thirty seconds or so on my health."