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Nope.
So much for that hope. With a disgusted look in his direction, I decide to keep walking.
He races in front of me. “Wait. Stop.”
I stop, glaring at him.
“All I want to do is look at you.” He raises his hands in the air. “Do you not wish the same of me?”
His words make me pause. I have to admit that I haven’t done more than glance at him since we arrived, because I’ve been lost in my own headspace, fretting over my lack of memories. Maybe studying him will show me what this khui of mine finds so appealing. Even now, just standing close to him, it’s revving like an engine, purring up a storm and making my entire body quiver. He rubs his chest and it’s only through the greatest of efforts that I don’t mimic the action automatically. “Fine. Look at me, but that’s all.”
He grins, showing a flash of pointed teeth that curve slightly inward. “Unless you wanted to mount me, that is.”
“I can assure you, nothing is further from my mind.”
He looks abashed at my heated retort. “Just looking, then,” he finally says, and then spreads his arms. “You can look at me as well.”
“Quit posturing and just let melook,” I tell him, impatient. Good lord, he poses more than a wrestler trying to excite the crowd.
“I posture because I am excited,” he says, all grinning. “I knew I was the best and this just proves it, our resonance.”
“Are you going to keep talking or will you be quiet so I can look at you?”
“I will be quiet.” He puts his hands up and then pauses. “Can you not look and talk at the same time?”
Oh, I can, but he’s annoying me with his incessant questions and I’m too busy trying to be angry and frustrated at the world. “Does it matter? I’ve asked you nicely. Or do my feelings not matter at all?”
I know I’m being a little nasty to him. I’m just so damn frustrated and he’s so darn unlikeable. I want to sink down into the snow and weep that this guy and this icy snowball of a planet are somehow my future. Which deity in the heavens did I piss off for this to happen?
“I am Skarr.” He eyes me. “What did you say your name was again?”
“I didn’t say, and you didn’t ask.” I don’t point out that I don’t know my real name. That my mind is a blank. It feels like a dirty shameful secret that I need to keep hidden. Like I’m flawed or unworthy.
He doesn’t look abashed this time, just shrugs at me. “I am asking now.”
“Vivi,” I say resentfully. “Everyone’s calling me Vivi.”
His mouth presses, his jaw flexing as if he’s tasting the word silently. “Vivi. I like it.”
As if he gets an opinion. As if I’d change it if he didn’t. “Can I look now?”
“I am not stopping you.” He raises his arms again, in a wide, expansive gesture, and then remembers that I didn’t like him posing. He lowers them again, hesitating, and then raises them once more as if deciding that he doesn’t care. It makes him flap his arms back and forth like a bird, and I snort with amusement at the sight.
His name is Skarr. It sounds very pro-wrestler-y but where those guys seemed like all glitz and theater and kayfabe (seriously how is it I know so much about pro-wrestling and not my own name? My head sucks), there’s a hint of menace to Skarr. Like he’d bodyslam you and then bite your face off just because.
Maybe it’s the posture. His build. Because he’s smiling, but there’s still an air of menace to him. It’s in the way he holds himself, like even now he can’t relax. Like a coiled serpent, waiting to strike. He stands at least a foot taller than me, making me feel uncomfortably fragile near him, and I get the vague impression that this doesn’t happen. That I’m a tall woman and used to looming over men.
Maybe it’s the scales. He’s covered in green scales all over…at least I assume they’re scales. Everywhere I can see a bit of exposed skin, he’s a pale jade, with a striated scale pattern not unlike a snake. He’s wearing super heavy layers of furs, but his tail is exposed to the cold, and it reminds me of nothing so much as an alligator’s tail. It’s thick and heavy and tapers to a point that brushes against the snow. Even now, it twitches, as if he wants to lash it back and forth in agitation.
Maybe it’s his face. He’s handsome enough, I suppose. His bone structure is prominent, his features regular. His jaw is square, his nose prominent and scaled heavily like his brow, his eyes deeply set. As if to offset all this hardness and the harsh angularity of his face, his hair is downy, almost baby-soft in its fineness. It hangs close to his jaw like some sort of fairy tale prince, all rippling, shining tousled waves. That’s not the problem, though. It’s his gaze. His eyes are blue like everyone else, but his pupils—a slightly darker shade of blue than the rest of his eye—are vertical. They’re a slit of darkness amongst the sea of blue and give off a menacing vibe. I don’t like it.
I don’t likehim, either.
All of this adds up to a “no thank you” from me.
“Well?” he says, and he smiles again, as if he expects me to suddenly shower him with compliments.
“Well what?”
