Page 79 of Stripped By the Alien

"Perhaps not you. Well, except now. But everyone else does. They worry about what their superior will say and whether he will kill them for a small mistake. And the superiors worry about their higher superiors. And the Queen worries about everything."

I prepare an argument and discover that I don’t have one. And I’m not sure she’s wrong. I’d forgotten the atmosphere in the Nest, especially this close to a Harvest. The excitement does have a sour flavor to it. And why has the Queen created an Inquisitor?

For a while neither of us says anything.

The silence inside the chamber bears no resemblance to the silence in the Royal Chamber. Nobody listens from hidden corners. No servants pretend not to stare. No court officials wait for opportunities to attack a careless statement. The Beast surrounds us with warmth and familiar sounds, and for the first time all day I feel removed from the Queen's presence.

Nora leans against the side of the resting platform and studies me. The playful expression fades gradually. Beneath it I see the same thing I have been feeling myself since we left the Nest: Relief.

The Queen could have taken her away. She could have imprisoned her. She could have ordered my execution on the spot. She could have demoted me. She could have done any number of things, but she didn’t. Neither did the courtiers make much out of Nora’s presence, which I thought they would all pounce on and turn into a major topic.

Indeed there were much fewer courtiers present for our audience than expected. And I suspect the reason for that has a lot to do with the Inquisitor. Why an Inquisitor?

Well, at least we are here now, together. For however long that stays true.

My thoughts must show on my face because Nora's expression softens. "What?"

I had not intended to stare at her. "We're still here."

Nora pushes herself away from the bed and walks toward me. She closes the distance one step at a time until she stands close enough that I can feel the warmth of her body.

For the first time since entering the Queen's chamber, neither of us has anywhere else to be.

And neither of us seems eager to waste that opportunity.

Nora reaches up and takes hold of one of my antennae. The boldness of it startles me. Nobody touches a Harrower's antennae uninvited. Nobody would dare. She wraps her small fingers around it and guides the tip down to the edge of the tape covering her chest.

"Take it off," she says.

I could refuse. I could point out that the tape is the only protection she has against every sharp edge and rough surface aboard the Beast. I could remind her that a shieldless female should value any covering she can find.

But refusing is the last thing I want. I let the antenna vibrate. The frequency finds the adhesive's resonance instantly, and the tape surrenders all at once. Coils of green material spiral down her body and gather at her feet like a shed skin.

And there she stands. Bare and unguarded in every way my kind considers fatal.

I have seen her like this before. Each time the effect deepens rather than diminishing. Her skin catches the Beast's amber light and holds it in ways that carapace never could — living, moving, flushed with blood so close beneath the surface that I can almost see her pulse. The curves and hollows of her make no structural sense to me. There is no armor, no hard edge anywhere. Every part of her yields.

And every part of her is stronger than it looks. I know that now. The contradiction no longer puzzles me. It simply fills me with something I have no Brood word for. It's a feeling that sits beneath admiration and above desire, in a place I didn't know existed before her.

She watches me looking at her and doesn't cover herself. That trust affects me more than the nakedness.

I cross the distance between us in one stride. My hand settles at the curve of her waist. Warm skin over the softness beneath, yielding under my fingers in a way that makes my breath catch every time. I bend until my face is level with the dark hair at her temple, and I breathe her in. Spice and heat, and something sweet beneath both that I have never found in any other creature.

"You are the strangest thing I have ever encountered," I tell her.

She laughs softly against my chest. "Romantic."

"I mean it as the highest praise." My mouth finds the spot where her jaw meets her throat. The skin there is impossibly thin. I can feel her heartbeat against my lips, fast and light, a rhythm so different from my own that it seems to belong to another universe entirely.

Perhaps it does. And perhaps that is exactly why I can't stop.

My hands travel her slowly, learning what I have already learned and finding it new again. The dip at the small of her back. The impossible softness beneath her breasts. The way her breath changes when my fingers trace the line of her hip inward. I want to understand how something this fragile can make me feel as though I am the one without armor.

When her palm presses flat against my bare abdomen, the contact sends a jolt through me that has nothing to do with lightning.

I lift her. She comes easily, legs wrapping around me, arms circling my neck. Her weight is nothing. Her warmth is everything. I carry her to the resting platform and lower us both, settling her beneath me, bracing my weight on arms that could crush the hull of a frigate and yet tremble now, faintly, at the sight of her looking up at me.

"Krix'vorr." The way she says my name, soft and with that mispronunciation she has never corrected, reaches something inside me that no victory, no battle, no Queen's praise has ever touched.