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Hypatia put her fingers on her temples. I was still on the floor. My jaw was on the floor too, because the dingdong was standing up now. When I first entered the airlock, it had been hanging between his legs, but now it was standing tall and proud, pressed up against his chiseled abdominal muscles. The only thing hanging down now were two external ovary-looking things in some kind of sack, dangling just below his big dingdong.
“Can you at least,” Hypatia said, “make it smaller?”
“No can do, Chief,” he said, “my lifemate is in here. Her smell sets me off. Well, the sight of her sets me off too. Everything about her sets me off.” He licked his lips and stared at me with an intense, burning gaze.
My face was red. It took all my resolve to notcrawlto him. To throw myself at his feet and beg him to breed me.
“And when she looks at me like that?” Kaav said, grinning wide, “well…”
A little shiny drop of liquid came out of the hole on his dingdong. It didn’t spray or spew or anything like that, it just kind of sat there. It wasn’t clear either, it was a thick, milky white, and I found myself deathly curious to know how it tasted.
“It won’t offend you,” Hypatia said, “if I activate my screening software?”
“I’ve disabled it,” Kaav said.
“I don’t have to meet with you,” she said.
“Why…” I croaked. “Why disable it? You want her to see you?”
He wasn’t interested in her? Was he?
Something was rising up deep in my gut. A feeling I’d felt before: Jealousy. This wasn’t the jealousy I knew though. It was fierce and raw and uncontrollable, and I hated that I was feeling it, because it made me hate Hypatia, even as I realized it was entirely irrational. I hated that Kaav wanted her to see him naked.
“Because,” Kaav said. “I’m a spy. I need intel. I need to know for certain that these lesbian women cannot be tainted. My scion will need to know if they are truly immune, and if Hypatia resists being tainted from my hard cock, then I can tell Tharkur that the lesbians are truly immune.”
“That,” Hypatia said, flicking a hand toward Kaav’s cock, “is much more likely to make me wretch than anything else. I’m now certain that I’m immune. You may tell your scion that we do have at least one weapon against the male taint.”
“Alright,” Kaav said. “If you finish this conversation and still feel that way, I’ll tell my scion that at least some women cannot be tainted. Then, if we ever talk face-to-face again, I’ll wear clothes.”
“Fine,” Hypatia growled. I was amazed at the fact that she could be in a room with someone as breathtakingly attractive as Kaav without falling to her knees like I had. She was speaking to him and not even looking at his body. She looked right into his eyes, and her face looked like someone facing down an enemy, or at best, a very fierce rival.
I couldn’t see Kaav like she did no matter how hard I tried. Even though I knew his kind were going to be the end of everything we’d protected on Eden for centuries. It must have been different for Hypatia. She said she’d had a girlfriend. Maybe she’d been happy with her life as it was. She’d probably just gotten over the fact that she hadn’t been allowed to “share her joy,” and was just grateful that High Command taught us all to look the other way and let her have her own happiness. She’d been happy with just what she had, and she probably saw the Khetar as a huge shake-up and roll of the dice. Would she still have her own joy after the Breeding Swarm was on the surface of Eden? Would theyreallylet her carry on with what had made her happy?
Kaav embodied all of those doubts to her, and she was facing him down. Her immunity meant she was immune to the unbearable pull of the urge to breed. I felt it so deep within me as I stared at his golden, muscular body. I realized those hanging ovary-like things below his dingdong must have been full of his alien seed. I wanted to touch and stroke those big balls hanging in that sack, and I wanted to squeeze them and milk them of his seed. At least, that’s how I thought you got the seed out. I’d have to be sure to check with Kaav to see if that’s how it was really done or not.
Kaav was staring Hypatia down. His muscles were tensed. Neither had spoken for several long seconds. I didn’t dare jump in now to try to mediate. Kaav and Chef were measuring each other. It didn’t seem right to interrupt that.
The stakes were high for Kaav too. I knew about spies. High Command executed them publicly. We had a few fringe separatist groups on Eden, and as they were all tainted, they operated by necessity in the shadows. They kept their taint secret and worked normal jobs and lived seemingly normal lives.
Kaav wasn’t like that though, not exactly. I got the impression that even though theInseminatorswere outcasts of some kind, their pack and packship were probably on roughly equal footing toWrathor to Tschenkar’s packship,Harbinger. From hearing Thuliak, Airlock, and Kaav’s take on things, it seemed like each packship had about the same number of Khetar on it, and because of the Hive Mind, they would—in theory—all be mostly equally armed. Things like spies could help to give them an edge over rival packs.
The Khetar were so focused on breeding. It must have been some kind of DNA advantage thing for them to fight and spy on each other. It meant that good genetics constantly won out. If the Hive Mind had the packs fighting each other and spying on each other, it was hoping the strongest packs passed their genes on more aggressively than the weaker ones.
Kaav was one Khetar operating completely on his own against Thuliak’s entire pack. He was taking a huge risk—basically taking on Thuliak, and his ten-thousand Khetar aboardWrath—to bring me to theRiband gamble that he’d get Hypatia and the rest of High Command on his side rather than on Thuliak’s. As strong as Kaav was physically, he needed Eden on his side in order to oppose Thuliak, because by kidnapping me, he’d revealed himself to Thuliak. Now Thuliak knew there had been a spy, and he knew exactly where that spy was. He also knew the spy had stolen from him.
Chef could just decide to turn Kaav over to Thuliak. What would he do then?
“You’re logical, right?” Kaav asked Hypatia. “You strike me as a logical woman.”
“Don’t bother trying to flatter me,” she said, voice perfectly level.
“I’m not trying to flatter you. I want to explain some things to you as raw logic. I want you to understand they are not threats.”
“Fine, go ahead.”
I sighed some relief. In their first meeting, Kaav had tried to strut and charm Chef Hypatia, and it had not worked at all. I had been nervous he’d keep trying that approach, but he was switching gears now, and Hypatia seemed much less annoyed with him for it. She was frowning a lot less, and she was no longer narrowing her eyes so much either.
Even though he was switching gears, his dingdong was still hard as a rock, and I couldn’t tear my eyes from it. I wanted to milk those ovary things and get more seed out of him.
