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“We can’t get there by ship,” I said. “The magnetic nature of the pole is interfering with sensors. It’s probably why that ship went down in the first place.”
Ohkk wasn’t a big planet, so the equator and the poles weren’t too far away from each other. With a good speeder, it was a four-hihor journey. The atmosphere that covered the inhabitable part of the planet didn’t cover the pole. But because of the pole’s tilt, there was a period of time when there was no visible sun there, for the span of about two gemoons. Star Season. You could see the stars up there, and it was starry darkness all the time.
“Right,” he said. “Yeah, I guess I can see that.” He took a thoughtful drink of his ale. “Even so, I can’t do it.”
“But why not?” I said. “It’s what you do.” This guy was a real outdoorsy type. He made his living hunting and selling the meat and pelts of the things he caught and killed. He was supposedly the best of the best and willing to try anything, do anything. I’d heard he’d wrestled one of those vvolns with his bare hands, strangled it to death.
“It’s Star Season, shei,” he said, shaking his head, and now his voice was a little gentler.
“So what?” I said. “Why does that matter?” I’d asked of the other guys, too, and gotten nothing but embarrassed looks, blushes, snickers of laughter like they were twelve-gecycle-olds.
“Oh, you don’t know.” He let out another chuckle. “You didn’t look it up when you heard the term?”
“I did,” I said. “It told me about the tilt of the planet, the atmosphere, but so what? So, it’s dark. You can’t get me there in the dark?”
“That’s all you found out? You didn’t read about the history?”
“What, that your people once journeyed up there once a cycle during this time for rituals, but that you stopped because of the dangers of the predators? But you hunt those predators. You cankillthem.”
He rubbed his chin, chuckling again. His chin was furry, like the rest of him, and I found myself noticing that he was attractive. I had tried not to notice this about these odd antlered, naked natives on this planet, but they did have that whole primitive wild man thing going for them, didn’t they? I crossed my legs.
He sucked in a breath through his nose and his eyes widened. He let out another laugh, this one a sort of snort.
“What?” I said. “Can’tyou kill them?”
“I, uh, I’d be distracted,” he said, and now he was smiling at me, smiling in a way I really didn’t like.
“Distracted by what?”
“We didn’t go up there in ancient times for a ritual. It was our mating season. There are specific plants that grow in that part of the planet and their pollen triggers a change in our bodies,” he said. “We’d all go up there, and it was called a rut. Thin the herd, basically, because you’d either get killed fighting some other guy for a woman to mate, or if you got her, you and she would get taken down by a vvoln while you were, you know, at it.”
It was my turn to blush. I looked away, down at the table.
“Yourscent, shei, I gotta say. I might have to take back everything I say to men who jack off to all that Toth-human porn. You’re something else, aren’t you?”
My gaze jerked up to his.
He shrugged at me. “Oh, right, your species is like the Toth where you pretend youcan’tsmell things, right? Not polite to comment on the fact your pussy’s wet and I can tell?”
“Definitely not polite,” I said through clenched teeth. “And it’s not. Wet, that is. And I don’t need your services anyway, so never mind.” I got up as quickly as I could, but my legs got tangled up in the chair legs and I barely managed to extricate myself without knocking it over, but then I lost my balance.
He was next to me—I hadn’t even seen him move, he was that fast—gripping my elbow and holding me upright. “Careful there, shei.” His voice was deep and almost velvet, and I felt it go all through me, like it went directly to my clit, which twitched.
He let go of me. Holding up both hands in a hands-off gesture. “Sorry.”
I shook my head. “No, no, it’s me. There’s no reason to be…” I tangled a hand in my hair, sighing. “It’s inappropriate, this reaction I’m having. I guess, considering the cultural differences, I don’t have any right to be that outraged, but—”
“Nah, cultural differences?” He snorted. “That’s not the culture around here, not at all. It’s me. That was out of line.” He furrowed his brow, looking perplexed. “That’s not evenlikeme.”
I squared my shoulders. “It’s fine. Let’s get back to talking about going up to the pole?”
“Here you are, pretty little human girl on a strange planet, and here I am, other species perving on you. Not my finest hihor. I’d blame it on the season, but if we don’t go up there, there’s no plant reaction, and we don’t get out of control. As a human, I bet you get it a lot.”
Humans had been brought to this galaxy to be bred by the Toth after their women died, owing to the similarities between our species. Human girls equaled sex in a lot of people’s minds.
I shook my head. “No, not… no.” In all honesty, the last time I’d really considered myself as a sexual being had been gecycles ago. All I did was work. I’d thrown myself into my work with the resistance. It wasn’t as if there weren’t men doing resistance work as well, but I didn’t want distractions, and I wasn’t the type who handled meaningless hookups well. I tended to get attached and distracted even if I tried not to. Best to just avoid the whole thing.
Honestly, it had been a while since I’d even masturbated. I felt like I’d just turned it all off, that side of myself, and then… here… on a planet with naked men with furry thighs and antlers sticking out of their heads and… what the stars was even goingonwith me?
