Page 45 of Hot Summer's Prey

“I’ll put them somewhere safe later. But for now, inside me is safest.”

She lets out a giggle. “Like a chipmunk storing food. So weird, you weren’t kidding about it being the opposite of a cock, I guess. Well, except for the shape.”

She reaches her hands out, tempted to touch, but I grab her wrists and kiss her knuckles before she can go further. “No more, not now.”

She pouts, but then smiles. “Honestly, I’m gonna take the compliment that I’m so sexy I oversexed a professional.”

“A professional,” I laugh.

“I think you could seduce anyone,” she says.

“I could, but right now I don’t even want to seduce you. I just want to hold you. Talk to you. Never leave your side.”

The last part slips out.

Her face falls for a moment. Her breath slows. And then we’re kissing again. Slowly, full of love and tenderness.

“Fuck it, I love you,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m an adult. I can fall head over heels if I want to.”

My heart swells, beats a mile a minute. Love has always felt like a foreign concept for me. Something I’ve heard humans throw around, but something I couldn’t even conceive of. Something even Cirro in all his darkness has spoken of with hope. But for me? Never.

Yet, if it exists for me, this must be how it feels.

“I love you, Pacari. And I know you say no one ever remembers you once they’ve had you, but you’re mine, and you’re never getting away now.”

She kisses my cheek, and it’s only then I realize that I’m crying. Huh. I never even noticed the change to human this time.

The words are stuck in my throat. Maybe it’s fear. If I say the words, she may still forget me, and I’ll be here alone and heartbroken.

20

DOGGED QUESTIONING

PACARI

“Slugger!” Teresa squeals in delight as she sees the little dog.

Kalixto, who was bathing in the sunlight, quickly flops into the ocean to hide himself. He is just eyes and hair above water now, glaring at me for not warning him.

The dog barks happily as it trots over to Teresa.

“Where’d your friend go?” she asks, scanning the waters.

Kalixto hides behind a rock as her eyes slide closer to his hiding place.

“Shy today,” I say with a laugh. “Normally he’s quite the show-off.”

“Kalixto,” I call out, dragging it into a singsong tease.

I have seen humans play with their babies in similar ways. He seems to be acting like one now.

Teresa seems content to scratch between Slugger’s ears, to pamper the dog now that they’ve been reunited. I hope she is as friendly to him when he has been returned to his true body.

Finally, Kalixto pops his head up from behind his hiding place, just barely.

“This human named your slug?” he asks. “And why is your sifon hanging out?”

I feel myself flush with his notice. Though I am wearing clothes, they are wet, and he can see how my sexual appendages have not been retracted. My changan, the arm-like appendage that is part of my sifon, anxiously tries to wrap up the sifon and pull it back into its shell. But all it does is make me shudder.

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