He’s big, purple, and electric.
I stare down Aura’s armored back to his muscled ass as he walks across the beach. My pussy tightens in anticipation.I bet his cock is just like him.
He chuckles to himself. “It’s funny to me.”
I wriggle in his arms, hating that he takes joy in my pain. “That hurt, dickwad! If you’re going to be like that forever, then I’m out!”
A lighter zap, like blanket static, taps my thigh, making the muscle twitch. I grunt and endure it.
Aura hums a low, thoughtful note. “No retort that time?”
“Are you just zapping me for fun?”
“Definitely…not. Nope. Also an accident.”
I roll my eyes. But I can’t let myself be mad after he just rescued me from two scaly jerks that clearly didn’t care about my safety, only claiming me.
He carries me across the meadow toward the ABR complex. A purple flower appears in his hand as he holds it behind his back. “Here, forgive me?”
I take the flower between my fingers and savor the sweet gesture. It smells delightfully fresh and clean compared to most things I’ve been around in recent years. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed nature.
My body swings and bobs gently over his robust shoulder. Aura’s hooked an arm behind my knees and steadies me with a hand on my hip. I chew a lip in thought and chuckle to myself. “No.”
“No?” he sings out. Aura slows when we enter the forest and twists as if looking for something. “Okay, what do I have to do to get you to forgive me?”
I think for a moment as I watch the mossy soil and little white moonflowers pass beneath us. “Tell me what that orb was. The one between our hands.”
He draws in a deep breath that lifts me a little. “It’s the Oramma orb. It’s created by bonds of family. Ours is small because you are notyet family, but my Storm wants you to be. That’s why it was an orb and not a mass of chaos.”
“And your Storm is that electric green energy?”
“Yes. We live in ships now that operate on it. But we once lived on a planet called Amphir, where electric storms were constant. So we had to be able to endure frequent lightning strikes. Eventually, mutation prevailed, and we now make our own Storms.”
I study the long, delicate petals of the flower with slender yellow stripes near its pollen and ponder how much my life is changing. I dreamed of an alien for so long that it almost felt like that’s all it would ever be. “I’m sorry humans are so boring.”
“You arenotboring.”
“Okay, not mutated in any cool way.”
“Are you kidding?” Aura’s pace slows again as the ground beneath his boots shifts to large rocks. “Your ability to adapt far outpaces most species in the universe. You convey emotions without words but through actions and changes in skin pigmentation. That is very interesting. Thorians also like humans very much because your body language makes you predictable.”
“That’s not always fun for us,” I admit. Nearly all of the water has drained from my boots, and I’m quickly drying in the light breeze. “It makes it difficult to have private thoughts.”
He chuckles. “I know a thing or two about that, trust me. And what you may not have in regard to physical adaptations, you always find a workaround. A new tactic, tool, or practice. The rest of us sort of fall back on our inherent skills and too often try to wrestle our way out of situations. For example, I know this is not natural.”
Aura runs a finger over a thread in my thigh. “I can feel it, even though I can’t see it under your race suit. Why are you always in this cage? Has someone put you in this?”
“It’s a Faraday suit. It keeps electricity away from my muscles, which have high water content. Slow death without this bodyweb.”
“Why do you have it?”
“Because I build and test engines on starships, specifically warships.”
Aura stops. “They banded you purple, not black for security risk or green for intellect. I don’t understand.”
“Me either,” I admit, staring down at the rocky ground. “Thought I’d be a green. My coworker thought yellow. We were both wrong. Someone said it’s my sense of humor.”
“In our catalog, purple is listed as able to take on a completely new life while optimistic yet experienced in challenging lifestyles.”
