Page 35 of The Alien Who Saved Christmas
Sadie cleared her throat and pulled her fingers off his arm. “Sorry, I…” A new thought occurred to her. “Um, are you okay with touching?” They hadn’t really discussed consent, and that was vital.
Nothing. He was still gazing down at the spot where she’d been rubbing his green skin.
“Xane?”
He jolted, like he suddenly realized she was speaking to him. “What?”
“Are you okay with me touching you?”
He laughed. Literally. The gigantic alien gave a startled bark of laughter, like she’d just said something hilarious. Even if she didn’t exactly get the joke, she was happy to have amused him.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat, trying to regain control of his emotions. “Touching is acceptable to me.”
“Good.” Sadie was pleased with their communication. It wassoimportant in a maybe-marriage. “Anyway, back to business: Lord C’don is our best chance off this rock and he’s not going to help us, if we don’t rescue his son.”
Xane snorted. “Oh, he’ll help us. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Orwe can just rescue his son.”
“Impossible. Once a slave enters the blue salt mines, they do not leave.”
“Says who?”
“Well, no one from the blue salt mines says it, that’s for certain… Becausenone of them ever leave.”
Sadie rolled her eyes at his negativity. “You’re more fun when you’re laughing, you know that? Let’s flip the script here.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“It means: I want to turn things around. Shift the focus.” She pantomimed a sweeping camera motion with her palms. “Like with a movie…? I took a cinema studies class, last spring.”
He regarded her blankly.
“You guys don’t have movies in space?” Sadie guessed and then waved it aside. “Doesn’t matter.” She refused to get sidetracked. “Forget what’s supposed to be impossible, alright? Instead, we’ll think of how we can achieve our goals and just work backwards from there. Make sense?”
“Very little you say makes sense. You believe that if you talk enough, I will be persuaded to help you embark on some suicidal scheme, but I am not about to fall for…”
Sadie cut him off. “We have thesamescheme.”
“Do we?” Xane’s gaze skimmed over her body, and he gave a skeptical snort. “No. I suspect you and I havefardifferent desires, woman.”
She disregarded that comment. “Well, we both want to get off this planet. Now, is there a better way out of here than on this spaceship?”
“No.”
“And we need two pilots to fly it, right?”
“Yes.”
“And we have one, who will cooperate, if we rescue his son. Then, we’d have two pilotsanda spaceshipanda way out of here.” She paused meaningfully. “You see how my idea gets us to our goal?”
All four arms crossed over his chest. “Except your idea is impossible and doomed to fail. I have mentioned this.”
Sadie tried a different tactic. “If my planwasn’timpossible and doomed to fail… how would you pull it off?”
His eyebrows compressed, as if the question confused him. “But itisimpossible and doomed.”
“Sure. Right. Totally get that.” Her eyes gleamed, not giving up. Sadie kept moving forward. Always. “…But what if itwasn’t?Just think about it logically. You’re a soldier, aren’t you?”
