Chapter12
Nothing else in the bathroom interested me anymore as I watched Inkiri take off his clothes.He wasn’t trying to be sexy, and I wasn’t leering, but this was my chance to really look at him without too much awkwardness.
What stood out most to me at first glance were the well-developed neck and shoulder muscles, but with those horns, they had to be.Another thing I had missed even though I’d been naked in bed with him was a line of darker blue skin running down his spine, all the way to his very, very shapely ass.
I squinted.That line looked more like scales than skin, but he turned to take his strange shoes off before I could be certain.Since I had seen his cock already, the next strange thing about him was those feet.
They weren’t like a cat’s exactly, but it was the most apt comparison.Like the rest of him, they were hairless and smooth, and I could see the skin folds for his retractable claws.
When he was done with the shoes, he went about undoing his double braids.I finally saw that his ears were pointy.That was sort of adorable.Or maybe that was the wrong word for pointy ears?I liked them, in any case.
Without a word, he stepped in front of me and pulled my tee up and over my head.I let him.Like I had at him, he looked at me.Then he touched my hair.
I felt him carefully run his fingers over the strands.“What would you call this color?”
“Oh.Dark auburn, I guess?Or brownish.Red-brown.Really, just go with brown.”
He tilted his head back and forth, then smiled.“I like your sense of humor, sweet thing.But I know well enough that your hair is beautiful, whatever you call it.”He leaned in close until the tips of our noses were almost touching.“You are the first human with green eyes I’ve ever met.”
He said that in such a low voice that it made me feel exposed.Or desired.I wasn’t sure there was a difference with him.
I cleared my throat and looked down.“My grandma’s Irish.Or was.She died before all this happened.It’s why I wanted to go to Ireland to begin with.”
Inkiri nodded.“I’m sorry for your loss, sweet thing.”
I shrugged.“Thanks.On the bright side, my mom and dad are still around.I guess their divorce saved them after all, although I’m not sure they were ever really lovers to begin with.Oh, and my mom’s sister.She only loves a well-made screwdriver.”
“Your aunt is a craftsperson?Where is your family now?”
That was just… I couldn’t.I started laughing.Loud.I laughed until tears filled my eyes and I was holding my belly.It wasn’t an innocent, normal kind of laughter either.I hadn’t laughed in over two years, and the laughter burst out of me like a cork out of a bottle of bubbly after it had been given a really good shake.
It went on for a while.Inkiri looked on, sort of helpless, and started clicking at me.Eventually, I sank to the floor and let the laughter ebb, my head light.
“Gosh, you’re fucking hilarious,” I said when I could speak.
“Are you well?”Inkiri squatted next to me and stroked my back, his gentle fingers feeling along the peaks and valleys of my spine.
“She just… A screwdriver is a cocktail.With alcohol.My aunt likes drinking.Sorry, that just cracked me up.They’re all back in the States.We email and video chat sometimes.”
Which, really, described the relationship I’d had with my parents not just for the last two years, but long before that.Between being a lawyer and being a manager respectively, they had very quickly lost interest in parenting, especially when my greatest achievement by third grade was my glorious tree role.My pet theory was that having a kid had just been on their list of things to do after marriage, and that was that.They’d quickly handed me off to the next best au pair and gone back to living their own lives.
“You don’t miss them,” Inkiri said, not a question.
I shrugged.
He inclined his head.“I haven’t seen my fathers in… Hmm.Our years are different.But I was little.We exchange cordial letters regularly.”
I blinked up at him.“You exchangecordial letters?Why haven’t you seen them for that long?And why only fathers?You all were so obsessed with uteri, so how come?”
Inkiri pulled me back into a standing position and peeled my pants off.And the cat socks.The bout of laughter had been enough to push my embarrassment away, but I cupped my junk even if there was nothing sexual about Inkiri’s touch or the way he was acting.
He saw.“You want to touch yourself?I could do that for you.”
So much for nothing sexual.I blushed.“I’m not—jeez.”I dropped my hand.“There.I’m not touching myself, okay?Just want to get clean.”
He tilted his head this way and that.“Okay.As to your questions, Raikenga are called from their families when they are quite young and visit only after the first… I’m not sure how to explain.Maybe after the first stage of education is best.Parents might be a better word instead of fathers, but my learning tells me parents are often seen as a man and woman pair here.In our language, we have a single word, not ‘mother’ or ‘father’ as you do.And we have only one pronoun for hangua and hangu-naga.We learn to use ‘he’ when speaking with humans since it seems to be how you mostly see us.”
I tried to make sense of that information as I walked over to the shower.Inkiri seemed satisfied and started a bath.
