Page 44 of Defiance
“And for the record, you were the best shag I’ve ever had. Your venom didn’t make me forget meself. I said yesbeforeyou bit me. Anyone that suggests it’s never consensual is a jealous, gaslighting arsehole that knows advenans do it better.”
The tension in Novak’s face eased, one corner of his long mouth lifting up. He swallowed hard, and I felt certain he was gathering his courage. His claw brushed my hair, not tucking it behind my ear like I did out of habit, but curling it into a spiral that made my thighs tremble.
“Imagine what I could do with a little more practice…”
Heat blasted through my veins, but his eyes drifted to my hairline with a crease in his brow. He pushed my ear forward gently, breathing me in.
“What’s this from?” he asked, stepping back from the intensity of it all. “You’re bleeding.”
I pressed my fingertip against my skin and it came back tacky and red. Not much, just a spot.
“Can’t say.”
“But you didn’t feel it?”
I shook my head.
Novak held my chin and pushed back my hair. I craned my face away for him so he could press hiscolearato my skin. His muzzle scales tickled my throat as he flexed the hidden organ.
“Nothing smells out of place,” he rumbled thoughtfully, his voice vibrating through his muzzle and into my flesh. “The parumauxi have already closed it. No bruises.”
“Maybe I scratched meself.”
“Maybe…” He breathed me in again deeper, then licked the drip with a slow drag of his tongue. Its slender prongs stuck to my collarbone and chin as he tasted my blood with the thicker base. My stomach tightened, adrenaline spiking through my heart. “If not, then our goal might be creeping closer.”
The restroom lock pulsed blue, drawing both our eyes. Novak picked up the puck from the sink, turned it off and slipped it back in his thigh pouch. Sath’s voice was instantly louder.
“—arlie! Are you alright? Answer, please, yes?”
“Sorry!” I gasped, slapping my cheeks and rubbing my hand over my mouth in a sudden frenzy. I leaned on the sink and waved for Novak to get the door. “I was feeling sick!”
Sath walked in with a slight panic, his fists balled at his sides. He glared sharply at Novak, but said nothing, running immediately to my side. I washed my mouth out with water from the tap as if I’d just thrown up and gave him a sheepish smile.
“My stomach’s been at me since we ate lunch,” I admitted. “Novak has a privacy puck, so he turned it on then held my hairback while I threw up. Humans make terrible vomiting noises. Don’t we, Novak?”
The lads shared a look of gross and helpless distress that would have been amusing if the stakes weren’t Novak’s trustworthiness. I had no doubt after our conversation that Sath dreaded the worst.
“I must apologise, yes?” he said, blinking fast. “I had no ideagheelemight make you sick. It is universal, but perhaps the garnish…”
“Nevermind,” I said with a slap to his chest that made him jump. “One little toss and I feel fit as a fiddle. Now, about that tour? I want to seeeverything.”
So it might have come off a little flippant, but what would Sath know? Maybe humans sprang back up after food poisoning instead of wallowing in their flats for a week and losing five kilos. I was the alien here, and they had to take me at my word.
“If you’re sure?” he asked hesitantly. I pushed him out the door.
“I’ve never felt more sure,” I insisted. “As long as Novak is around in case he needs to hold my hair back again. I’ll not traumatize you too.”
My bodyguard hissed with amusement, following us out into the lobby.
19
The Medial Palace was ostentatious in a mathematical way. Novak admired the perfectly square tiles intersected with circles and the arches over polished floors that cast a shadow in one direction and an orange glassy glow in the other, creating a lattice of light textures. It was a wonderment, each room edged with a white porcelain gutter filled with colorful seagrass and trickling water. Curtains of the stuff hung from banisters, droplets falling to the gardens in the terraces below like a curtain.
What Novak admired most was the predictable layout with mesmerizing features. Every room was a perfect square, and every hallway was straight. The crescent balconies had three sizes but the same railings. If you learned the layout of one courtyard, you knew the layout of the next.
But the doors were designed to be missed and mistaken, never looking grander than the rest. The halls between courtyards were cut at a diagonal from the wall so that from a distance, no entrance could be seen at all. Exhausted soldiers and pursued trespassers would miss the genius simplicity and get caught in the unassuming maze. Even if a covert elite saw a blueprint before planning an operation, it couldn’t prepare them for this.
The perfect place to make someone disappear.
