Page 32 of Accidentally Abducted

The finality in his voice makes my bioluminescence dim noticeably. "Yes."

"Then let's not waste what time we have left," he says, moving closer until our bodies are pressed together in the water. "If fourteen hours is all we get, I want to remember every minute."

I should focus on my report. I should maintain professional boundaries. I should prepare for our inevitable separation.

Instead, I draw him closer, letting the water support our bodies as our lips meet. His hands slide along my back, and the empathic bond intensifies between us, amplifying every sensation until I struggle to distinguish his feelings from my own.

In this moment, with fourteen hours remaining until the transport cycle reactivates, I allow myself to hope. To imagine a future where duty does not require me to let him go. Where this unprecedented connection we've formed continues beyond our allotted time.

It contradicts my training. It defies professional protocols. It challenges everything I've been taught about my responsibilities.

But as Jake moves against me in the luminescent water, as our bond resonates with shared emotion, rationality seems far less important than what I feel for this human who was never meant to be mine.

Chapter Eleven

Jake

We spend hours in the cleansing pools, talking and not talking, touching and simply being. The countdown in my head keeps ticking, twelve hours, eleven hours, but I try to push it away, to live in each moment as if it might not be one of our last.

By the time we finally emerge, our skin wrinkled and the water slightly dimmer from absorbing some of Zeph's bioluminescence, we're both pretending that time isn't running out. It's a polite fiction, but it's the only thing keeping me from completely falling apart.

"You must be hungry," Zeph says as we dry off, his eyes lingering on me in a way that suggests he's memorizing me. "I could prepare something for our evening meal. What would you prefer?"

The question is simple enough, but I can see what he's really offering, one last normal moment, one last shared experience before everything ends. And suddenly I want more than just a meal. I want to know him, all of him, even the parts I can't keep.

"Actually," I say, "I'd like to try something from your world."

Zeph stops, a towel half-raised to his hair, his expression one of genuine surprise. "You wish to experience Nereidan cuisine?"

"Yeah, I mean, why not? Might be my only chance to try alien food that isn't synthesized to appeal to human tastes." I shrug, aiming for casual and probably missing by a mile. "Unless it's going to poison me or something."

"It will not poison you." Zeph seems oddly touched by the request, a faint glow brightening beneath his skin. "Though I should warn you that most species find our food... unusual."

"Hey, I've eaten gas station sushi at 3 AM. My stomach is basically indestructible." I finish drying off and wrap the towel around my waist. "Besides, I want to know what you eat when you're not pretending to enjoy pancakes for my benefit."

That gets me a small smile. "I was not pretending. Your pancakes were quite acceptable."

"'Quite acceptable.' Wow. With praise like that, I should open a restaurant." I bump my shoulder against his arm, enjoying the now-familiar warmth of his skin. "Come on, show me what passes for comfort food in the big blue beyond."

The kitchen area, or what passes for one on the ship, transforms under Zeph's hands. He moves with a confidence I haven't seen before, manipulating the synthesizer controls with quick, precise movements, occasionally mumbling what sounds like corrections to the machine's settings.

"I thought you said Nereidans don't cook," I observe, leaning against the counter to watch him work.

"We do not cook recreationally," Zeph clarifies. "But all juveniles are taught basic nutritional preparation as part of our educational processes."

"So this is... what, the equivalent of alien home ec class?"

"Home... ec?" Zeph looks confused for a moment.

"Home economics. It's a class where they teach kids how to cook and sew and balance a checkbook, which, let's be honest, is way more useful than calculus for most people."

"Ah. Yes, this would be similar, though with a stronger emphasis on optimal nutritional balance."

"Of course it was," I mutter. "Heaven forbid alien children just learn to make cookies."

Zeph continues working as we talk, and soon the synthesizer produces several containers of what look like various plants, some leafy, some root-like, all in colors that range fromdeep purple to pale blue-green. He arranges them on the counter and begins processing them with tools I don't recognize.

"Those are... vegetables?" I ask, fascinated despite myself.

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