“I’m thinking,” she murmurs. “And I think…it depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“On if you’re asking me for permission to back out or if you want me to explain why I don’t think this is a mistake.”
I groan and flop down on the bed, my clothes scattering.
“You don’t?”
“No, I don’t,” she says. “But I’m not human, remember? We have different customs.”
“Like what?”
“Well…” she pauses again, considering her words. I usually like that she does that. Right now, it’s making the tension ratchet up in my stomach like I’m being spun in a blender. “Because of pheromonal mating?—”
“That kinda grosses me out,” I interrupt.
“Too bad,” Thalara shoots back.
I shut up.
“Because ofpheremonal mating,” she says, more deliberate this time, “species like mine or like the Nyeri’i tend to fall fast and fall hard. It’s not just a matter of physical compatibility, though that’s part of it; it’s typically an intuitive sense of complementary personalities.”
I sit up. “How the hell does that work?”
“I really don’t know,” she says. “You’re the scientist here. I’m just a historian who’s reada lotof marriage records.”
“That’s somehow worse,” I groan. “You’re saying there’s documentation.”
“There arepatterns,” she corrects. “Species with pheromonal mating—Merati, Nyeri’i, a few others—tend to recognize certain…compatibilities quickly. It’s not magic. It’s more like…your nervous systems notice you fit together before the rest of you catches up.”
“That’s horrifying.”
“It’s efficient,” she says, completely serious. “And it doesn’t happen with everyone. If it were just biology, we’d all bond with the first person we smelled in puberty.”
I flop back and stare at the ceiling. “So you’re saying I’m, what, biologically compatible with my cranky alien boss.”
“I’m saying,” she replies, “that your translator and his pheromones might be amplifying something that was already there. Not inventing it.”
I hate how much relief that gives me.
“Okay, but Istilldon’t know if I actually like him,” I argue, scrubbing at my eyes. “How do I even tell? I spend half my time wanting to climb him like a tree and the other half wanting to throw something at his head.”
“That’s called attraction,” Thalara says dryly.
“I’m serious, Tay.”
“So am I,” she says. “Answer me a question. Before all of this—before the translator glitched, before the lab floor orgasm you refuse to stop mentioning—how did you feel about him?”
I open my mouth.
Shut it.
Rewind.
Late nights in the lab where he wouldn’t go home until I did. The way he always paused for my questions during meetings, even when we were on a tight schedule. The way he snapped at other people for underestimating me, then turned around and made me back up my own arguments three different ways. The way I kept secretly using his rubrics as a benchmark for my proposals, like he was the final boss I needed to impress.
“I…” I swallow. “I respected him. A lot. I liked working with him. He drove me nuts, but…in a good way? In a…motivating way. He took my work more seriously than anyone else ever has.”
