Lily vaulted over the back of the sofa. “Catch me, then,” she called, and bolted.
The growl he made as he gave chase soaked her instantly. She decided she would not let herself be caught too quickly.
* * *
More shocking still was when Khar emerged from the shower, toweling himself dry after an unexpectedly cold rinse.
“Your first husband disapproves of me,” he announced gravely. “He set my wash to frigid mid-rinse. I will accept this. He arrivedbefore me, and I did not save your life. But there cannot be more husbands.”
“Khar,” Lily said carefully, “what are you talking about?”
“Helios changed the temperature during my wash.”
“That is impossible,” she cut in. “Helios is an intelligent system, not a being with feelings.”
Khar crossed his arms stubbornly. “Pull the last few micro-cycles of bathroom logs.”
She sighed. “Helios, bathroom data from the previous five minutes.”
“Negative,” the ship replied. “Logs destroyed due to an unexpected error.”
Lily frowned. Khar gave her a smug look of vindication and wisely did not say I told you so.
“All right,” she admitted. “That is strange. But what do you mean, my husband? Helios is a machine.”
Khar clutched his chest in exaggerated offense. “If the AI rights advocates heard you, they would already be knocking.”
She snorted. “He is still not my husband. And you’re definitely not my husband.”
Khar, now dry but still wrapped in a towel, dropped onto the sofa beside her. “You love Helios as if he were. But that is fine. If you deny it, I will simply claim First Husband.”
Helios’s ambient lights flickered. Lily decided it must have been her imagination.
What she did not miss was Khar, thinking she could not see, flashing the ship the universal eat me gesture. She could not decide whether to laugh or groan, so she rolled her eyes and steered the conversation somewhere safer.
“Is there any accepted law about this?” she asked.
“No. Each species decides for itself. I was extrapolating from what you told me about human mating customs.”
Lily covered her face. “Khar, I do not know. I have not thought this through.”
She peeked at him through her fingers. He gently pulled her hands away and pressed his face into them.
“I am very fond of you, Lily. Tell me what I must do to be acknowledged. I will do anything.”
A handful of words, and he nearly brought her to tears.
She remembered the first time she had seen him, the low tug in her belly. She had refused to dwell on it then. It had felt shameful and impossible. A towering alien who looked like a demon from some ancient myth could not possibly care what a small human wanted to do to him. She even remembered forcing herself to ask the strange gym receptionist who he was, only to be stonewalled with “data protection.”
Then they had ended up working together.
At first he had been quiet, reserved. But around him, for the first time since leaving Earth, she had felt something like camaraderie. As if he had anchored her soul in the middle of its endless storm.
Khar was confident, certain. Those qualities had begun to grow in her too, step by step, as he dismantled the insecurities that had haunted her. Some had been there long before. Others had been born the moment she was taken from Earth. Khar made no distinction. He dismantled them all.
If it had only been about sex, he would have had her wrapped around his finger anyway. But without realizing it, he had waged a one-man war on the contradictions the world had drilled into her since birth. Be sexy, but do not be a slut. And what makes you a slut? Practically anything. But being undesirable is worse. Just do not be a slut.
Round and round.
