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I nodded. “Ree said you were ‘hard up.’ What is ‘hard up’?”
There was only one thing I could think of on anyone—Thorzi or human—that got hard and went up.
As I watched, Lucas’s face went a bright shade of red, the same color as the aleri flowers my father tended in the garden. It was a startling change.
“Oh, I—”
A choked sound escaped him, and I grinned. My teeth pressed into my bottom lip as I leaned toward him. “Was she referencing your penis?”
My gaze dragged down his front, but the bulge between his legs did not seem engorged. Every bit as curious as he’d been about my star marks, I reached for him to see if his hardness was hidden beneath the cloth he wore.
Ree was right there with a small-handled bag to knock my arm away.
“Hands to yourself, big guy.” Her eyes flashed in anger as she planted herself before Lucas in defense. She was tall—no doubt a warrior of humans.
I did not understand why he could touch and I could not. Lucas did not look angry, only... small. I had upset him by asking about his penis. Perhaps I had assumed too quickly that the soft-curved humans were most often without penises, much of their extra flesh contained in tempting breasts some of the Thorzi favored.
I had assumed too quickly that Lucas’s thin body, his sharper points, meant he had one.
With a tip of my head, I looked around Ree to try and catch Lucas’s eyes. “I know of humans. Many do not have a penis. Do you?”
Lucas’s hands rose to cover his face. They muffled his voice when he groaned. “Oh god.”
“It is a fine thing to have a penis, Lucas. I have one of my own.” I clapped a palm on my groin and squeezed. It was a nice penis. Jax had said so often.
Ree was staring at me, her mouth slightly open.
“A fine thing, too, to not have one. There are many Thorzi who greatly enjoy breasts or silky folds. When I was a child, my mother’s breasts made wonderful pillows—”
The blond man that Tyber had looked over, with the bruise still purpling on his forehead, made a pained sound. “Man, I’m gonna need you to use normal words like dick or cock or titties. We’re all repressed here.”
He shrank into the high collar of his traveling garb, pulling it up around his mouth. None of the other humans shrank quite as much, but they each looked varying degrees of uncomfortable, and as Tyber had seen to each of them, I did not think they were ailed by anything physical.
As if to answer my worries, Tyber stepped away from a pink-haired, slight young man. “I am not concerned for the health of the humans, Captain.”
“Good,” I said. Crux would be glad we had not lost any. “Will they still be able to bear children?”
Ree’s sharp voice cut like a plasma whip. “Excuse me?”
She was staring at Tyber, but he looked to me for explanation. Soon, every pair of eyes in the medical bay was pointed my way. “You have come to provide children for my people, for Thorzan. We are grateful you have made this journey to us.”
CHAPTER7
LUCAS
Bear children?
What in the actual—“Bear children?” I demanded. My shrill voice rebounded off the smooth metal walls, making everyone cringe. “For a guy who has a firm grasp on what penises are”—Beau tried to smother a laugh, but choked instead, so I shot him a glare—“you seem to be missing some important stuff about human biology.”
Kaelum looked confusedly between Ree and I, then again. Then he took a step closer to me, as though the proximity would protect him from any possible violence. “I know nothing of biology. I am a warrior, not a scientist.”
The doctor made a low sound like a growl or a vibration, and everyone turned to stare at him. Well, Kaelum just turned and looked at him, he didn’t flinch or look angry, like maybe the sound had been more of a throat-clearing than a threat. “Their reproductive organs are all intact.” He motioned to Beau. “This one had a crack in his skull, but it mended easily enough. Humans are fragile, but they heal just as easily as Thorzi.”
A lab. Had Crux meant some kind of, like, baby-making lab? Was that a thing? Had he been threatening to not vivisect Ree, but rape her?
“Look, buddy,” Ree said to Kaelum, poking him in the chest. He glanced at her finger, but didn’t budge and made no move to stop her, so she went on. “We’re free human beings, and you can’t make usbear childrenfor you. And the joke’s on you, half of us can’t even have kids.”
The doctor guy made that growling sound again, but he didn’t take an aggressive stance, so I figured it was just what I’d thought: a polite clearing of the throat. “I assure you, each of you is in possession of fully functional gametes.” He turned to Kaelum, inclining his head respectfully. “I believe, my prince, that they are referring to the inability of some of their people to actively carry young.”
