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Rath insists upon me.
I feel hot and cold all over. It is the weirdest sensation like I want to be sick, but I’m also so happy, and I feel faint, and I feel light and… do I look alright? I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the many polished mirrored surfaces. I don’t know why I do that. I know what I look like. I look like what I always look like. Competent. Human. Small.
I go to my office as quickly as I can without actually running. My office here at Gettem is bigger than my apartment, which is fortunate because there wouldn’t be enough room for Rath to wait inside my apartment. He’d make the walls bulge at the seams. Maybe not literally, but that’s how it feels. He’s just So. Damn. Large.
My office is on the thirtieth floor. The elevator sweeps me up there in a matter of seconds. I proceed out the door, down the myriad of halls. Gettem is a warren, but there’s no way for me to get lost, even when the layout changes. My augs ensure that the path is marked with a bright green stripe flashing ever toward my destination.
There’s a trail of blood leading to my office. It is disappearing quickly, like snow melting on an unseasonably warm day. There’s some ancient part of my brain that is concerned by blood, but I don’t listen to the ancient parts of my brain. They aren’t really applicable in Megaris. If you want to survive here, you rely on technology.
I see him.
He’s in my office.
Rath.
Every time I am in his presence, every internal part of me clenches tight. He is terrifying. His claws flex, dripping blood onto the carpet where it is immediately yet slowly and methodically cleaned by an unseen swarm of nanobots that consume every bit of organic material dropped into their realm.
The floor is a cannibal waiting to devour you whole. It will take time, but it will happen. You want the floor to swallow you? This is the floor that will take you dead or alive, honey.
Who am I talking to? I don’t know. The constant narration inside my head sometimes makes me feel like I’m going mad. Other times it feels like it might be the only thing keeping me sane.
Rath is taking up most of the space in my office and all of the space in my head. In my eagerness to lock eyes on him, I can almost ignore that my desk is covered in the remnants of someone. I don’t know who because the identifying features are missing.
He is standing there. Right where I work. All eight and a half feet of him. He has his long black hair tied back behind his head in a dramatic ponytail which swishes over his muscular shoulder when he turns to me. He has his hunting harness on, a garment which is not so much designed to cover his body as it is to interface with the many augmentations wired into his flesh. Rath was badly injured once. I don’t know what happened to him, but I do know it left him stronger than he was before, thanks to the augmentations the korabi wired into every inch of his body. The harness shows so much of it off. Everything, really. He’s not wearing pants. He’s wearing black straps which wrap from his shoulders, around his midsection, and then there’s sort of a thick modesty strap that covers his ass and mating region before returning to a strap design down his thighs, terminating in long, thick, skin-tight boots.
All korabi aliens are powerfully muscled. Rath is an impressive specimen, even for his species. A purple and blue pattern traces just beneath his skin, following lines of circuitry implanted therein. They light up when they are activated, and they are activated by both mental and physical activity. The overall effect is of a massive monster man who glows when he sees me. I’d swoon, but it’s not professional.
There is a lot to be fixated on about Rath, but it is his face that is the truly sexy part of him. His eyes are frequently remarked upon, one gold, one black. They are set beneath powerful, sharp brows which rise to tapered sharp points. His hair juts out in a pointed fringe which shades part of his face. He has hard planes of mandibular muscle and a jaw made for crushing bones. His teeth are sharp. Kissing him would be out of the question unless you wanted to lose your tongue. There’s a part of me that wants to kiss him anyway. Who cares what happens to me. I’d die happy if I could spend just one night with him.
But that’s fantasy. In reality, I’ll complain to anybody and everybody if I so much as get a paper cut. I’m a wimp. And I’m not in Rath’s league. Hell, I’m not even in his world. He barely looks at me as I enter.
