Page 8 of Married to the Alien Mountain Man

“Oh! I’m sorry!” cried the pilot. She took a step towards me, then halted and said, “I have a stunner.”

This seemed an odd combination of statements. To say that she was sorry for hitting me with her hammer, and then immediately inform me that she had yet another weapon at her disposal.

“On you?” I asked. Her clothing was tight, with no large pockets to hide such a thing. It did not hang off a belt, either, like Warden Tenn’s stunner did.

Her eyes darted to her ship, then back to me.

“You may go to your ship and retrieve it.” I spoke soothingly, softly, as if approaching a skittish shuldu. “I would very much like to avoid a stunner blast to the guts if at all possible. The hammer was greeting enough. But I would gladly let you go and fetch your weapon if it would make you feel more at ease.”

I blinked against sudden wetness. I watched her eyes go to my forehead. She winced.

“I really am sorry about that,” she said.

Even as she said it, though, she was walking backwards into her vessel, keeping me in her sights the entire time. When she came back out, she had some sort of small stunner in her hand. Her finger was on the trigger.

“I wasn’t aiming at you,” she said. “I was frustrated about something. And I didn’t know you were there.”

She raised her stunner and pointed it at my head. Which seemed rather unfair, as she’d already injured my head, and I certainly couldn’t think of anything else that part of my body could have done to offend her. But she was just so beautiful, standing there with her weapon aimed right at my face, that I found I could not fault her.

Dangerous thing, that much beauty. I had a feeling that someone who looked like her could get me to agree to just about anything.

This was only proved absolutely true in the next moment, because she kept her weapon up, bade me to come closer…

And I did.

Without hesitation.

“Are you going to shoot me?” I only had the presence of mind to ask it when I was but a step away from her. For all I knew, I’d just happily walked right up into her weapon’s lethal range.

“What?” She frowned. “No. This isn’t my stunner; though I do have that in my back pocket now. This is a knitter.”

The only knitting I knew about was done with needles. It was a hobby I’d picked up in my childhood before I’d even left Zabria. I’d felt a scurry of pure delight when it was mentioned as a human activity in the book Tasha wrote. I’d hoped it might provide a common point of bonding between my human wife and I.

If I ever got one.

“Do you knit?” I asked the pilot. I did not know why I felt a giddy sort of hope as I asked the question.

“Like, sweaters and stuff? No.” She waved the silver thing in her hand. “This is a WoundKnit 8300. Knitter for short. It helps seal up wounds. If you sit down, I can use it on your head.” She raised her free hand to shade her eyes, squinting up at me as the sun shone above.

It made me want to give her my hat.

But my hat was back in the dust where I’d left it, and it likely had my blood on it now. I did not want to give her something dirty.

She was leaning back slightly now, her gaze going up and down my body. “Yeah, you’ll definitely have to sit down. How tall are you?”

“I do not know,” I answered honestly. “I have not been properly measured head-to-boot since I was a child on Zabria.”

“Zabria…” She pulled her gaze from me to take in the mountains and sky around us. “But this isn’t Zabria, is it?”

“No. This is Zabria Prinar One. It-”

I was interrupted by the roar of an incoming engine. The pilot jumped back towards her ship as Warden Tenn’s slicer came storming into view. I had the most absurd desire to grab her slender wrist and pull her back to me. She’d only just invited me closer, and now she was fleeing.

As Warden Tenn stopped and then dismounted, stalking quickly towards us, the human pilot shoved her knitter into one pocket and pulled her weapon from another. She aimed it at the warden.

“Drop it,” Warden Tenn snapped. The warden was a good man, but the menacing edge of authority in his tone made me want to hurl myself in front of the small female.

And when Warden Tenn drew his own stunner in turn, I did.

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