Page 33 of All or Nothing
XOLLEN
I THOUGHTwhen my Joss had told me she was a “wild” sleeper that she was exaggerating for comedic effect like she does for many things.
My bruised nose said otherwise. Sleeping with her in my bed would be an adjustment, but one that I was excited to make. I had never shared that kind of intimacy with another person, having no siblings and almost no courtships in my life, and despite being elbowed and kneed and smacked in the face, there was something so soothing about having another warm body in the bed beside me.
For one, I was fairly certain that having Joss with me helped with my sleep paralysis and nightmares. Both were things that had resisted medical treatment, plaguing me from my grade school days, but there was no sleep paralysis that night, and when I awoke from a nightmare, panting and hearts thundering in my chest, I pulled Joss in close to me, wrapping my bigger body around her, and having her scent in my nose, her adorable sleep noises drowning out the echoes of my bad dream, helped lull me back to sleep, and I wasn’t bothered by any other bad dreams. If it wasn’t for her hand smacking me square in the face when she flopped onto her stomach it would have been the best sleep of my adult life.
But I wasn’t mad. Perhaps I should have been, but it hadn’t been on purpose, and I would have forgiven anything of her when we woke up later that morning, her body so warm and plush against mine. I felt so…cared for, so safe, with her leg thrown over mine, her arm draped across my chest, her face pressed into my upper arm. I was fairly certain that the dampness soaking into my skin there was her saliva, which should have horrified me, but instead I only found it…cute. She slept like she did so much else: with her full focus, a bit recklessly, but ultimately with a lot of charm and character.
I pulled her closer to me once I was awake, coaxing her head onto my chest and wrapping my arm around her shoulders so I could stroke the soft skin of her arm. She snorted and twitched but stayed asleep, giving me a long stretch of time to simply hold her and lie there peacefully.
It was still unbelievable to me, that she should want me as much as I wanted her. No one ever had before, except for Derris—but it was different with friends, anyway. It scared me as much as it thrilled me. It felt so likely, so inevitable, that she would get tired of me and want to separate. What did I really bring to this relationship? She found me attractive, said she thought me sweet, but as much as I wanted to believe her I also wanted to grab her by the shoulders and demand she tell mehow, that she tell mewhy.It couldn’t be that easy, to find someone who saw me and just…likedwhat they saw. After a lifetime of the opposite, why should it suddenly work out now? Was Joss really that different from every other person I’d ever met? She wasn’t the first alien I’d tried courting—there’d been a disastrous attempt to woo a felican female in an economics class in university—so it couldn’t just be that she wasn’t billieuan that explained it.
But maybe I was thinking too much about it. Perhaps I should merely accept this as the gift from the Goddess that it was. Maybe all I really had to do was open myself up to it, accept her affection as fact, and do everything in my power to keep her, to keep her happy.
It should have been an easy decision to make. I shouldn’t have had to think about it all, because the feel of her in my arms was such perfection. But that perfection was exactly the point: I’d never been allowed to feel that before, in my twenty-six solars, and a part of me that I just couldn’t seem to silence insisted that now would be no different. Suddenly, I was uneasy, my skin crawling as I lay there with Joss in my arms.
What if she struck me on purpose in her sleep? What guarantee was there that she was truly unconscious and unaware of what she was doing? Or maybe she was just pretending to like me and her real feelings were coming out when she wasn’t awake to control them.
It was an ugly thought, and I hated it as soon as it slithered through my mind though I dismissed it almost immediately.
But I couldn’t quite forget it. Checking to see that she was still definitely asleep, I pulled up the text comm app on my wrtistcom and composed a frantic text to Derris.
How do you know a female’s feelings are genuine?I asked him, shame prickling at me. But Derris was so happy with Gesea, and I trusted that he would answer my question honestly.
I was surprised by the gentle vibration of a response at my wrist just a few moments later; it was early, and I hadn’t expected him to be up yet.I take it things are going well with Joss, then?
I grinned.Yes. We are courting and have applied for our permits. She sleeps with me even now.My heart clenched with affection, taking another greedy breath of her intoxicating scent before I continued my message.But I can’t help but worry that I am imagining things that are not there. What if she only thinks she likes me? Or what if she only pretends because she wants me to help her and protect her? I do not know what to do, Derr.
Derris’s response was once again quick.Xoll, you’re overthinking. I know you have a hard time with this stuff, and you know I love you like a brother, but if you keep on thinking like this you’re going to lose your cool and do something foolish. It was obvious when I saw you two together during our comm that she is just as fond of you as you are of her. She sleeps beside you, shows you affection, yes? These are not the actions of a female who speaks false feelings. Please, find some way to calm yourself down, Xollen.
I huffed, relief and embarrassment warring in my chest. He was right, of course. Verilla hadn’t been able to hide her disgust of me, not completely. She’d tried valiantly for the sake of my wealth and connections, but in little quiet moments, she’d shown her true self: flinching from my embrace, refusing to sleep in the same bed as me, not wanting to move in even after several months of courting, not introducing me to her friends or family. Looking back the signs were so obvious, but at the time I’d only thought of making her comfortable.
Thank you for putting my mind at ease, Derr,I sent back to him.You’re right, I’m overthinking and need to put my mind to something else. Perhaps I’ll get up and draw.I hadn’t done much drawing since getting back from my trip to Quellor, being too busy with the move and preoccupied with my blooming feelings for Joss, but now that the idea was planted in my mind my fingers were itching for my drawing tablet.
I like the sound of this, my friend.He responded.Show me what you come up with!After another moment a second message came through.Gesea wants to know when you two are free this week, so we can have that dinner and finally meet this hoonin mate-to-be of yours. My hearts swooped and throbbed at those words: mate-to-be. That was the implication of an official permitted courtship, but it was thrilling nonetheless to see it spelled out like that.
Human,I corrected him,They are from a primitive planet in restricted space called Earth. I’d insisted Joss teach me the proper way to say and spell these words, and I wanted to make sure others knew it too.We should be free all week. Today we will be finishing unpacking and getting the new place set up. It is not too bad, for a public dorm,I added. Maybe it only seemed that way because of Joss, but it really was not as bad as I had thought it would be. It was small and didn’t have nearly the number of windows as my last apartment, but it was still a nice space, with good light and solid construction. Joss had declared it superior to her apartment back on Earth, which she had said was much smaller, much dingier, in an unsafe neighborhood, and had still cost over 1000 “dollars” a month for her to rent.
It warms my heart to know you are settling in well. I was expecting several frantic comms by now, asking to live in our guest room or begging me to save you from the squalor. Joss is very good for you.I could practically hear the teasing smile in his text comm. I rolled my eyes and grinned.How about we plan for dinner tomorrow night?
I will make sure this works with Joss when she wakes, but I don’t think there will be any issue.I silenced my wristcom, beginning to carefully extract myself from Joss’s grasping hands. She’d practically climbed onto me by this point, she’d wrapped herself so tightly around me as I’d been texting Derris. As much as I loved the feel of her against me, my bladder was beginning to ache from the need to relieve myself, and I thought drawing for a little while before Joss woke up would be nice.
It took some careful maneuvering, but I was able to slide out of bed without waking my beautiful human. I took care of my business, washing up in the hygiene room and quickly changing into clean clothes. I grabbed some tea and curled up on the little dorm couch in the living room, which fit neatly against the large windows there. I placed my tea on the window ledge, since the coffee table was buried under boxes still, and powered up the drawing app I preferred on my tablet.
I didn’t even have to think about what I wanted to draw, the lines flowing from my pen without thought, constructing the beloved contours of Joss’s face. I had studied her so often, so thoroughly, that I could bring her to life from memory alone. Before I knew it I was lost in the process, my mind drifting among sweet memories of my mate, her face held firm in my mind as I sketched her over and over. I drew her smiling, I drew her sleeping, I drew her with her teasing grin and her expressive eyebrows lifted in surprise. I drew her in the ratty clothes she was wearing when I rescued her and the others, in the clothes she had borrowed from me and worn during the trip here, the simple garments taking on new sensual life when draped over her lush curves.
When something brushed against my ear I swatted at it absently, utterly focused on my tablet and irritated at the intrusion. My hand connected with warm flesh, and I froze, my head whipping around to see Joss giggling and rubbing at her cheek.
“Alright, no sneaking up on you when you’re in the zone. Consider the lesson learned.” She leaned in and pressed a smacking kiss to my cheek. “What are you up to, babe?”
I blushed, my instinct to hide what I’d done. Verilla hadn’t liked it the two or three times I’d tried drawing her, saying it was creepy and obsessive. But Joss was not Verilla, and I didn’t think her reaction would be disgust. I pulled her into my lap, running the back of one of my fingers over the slightly reddened patch of skin I’d smacked. Luckily it hadn’t been hard at all, but I still felt awful about it.
“I’m sorry I struck you, my star.” I nuzzled her jaw with my nose. “I thought an insect was crawling on me.”
She leaned into me, resting her head on my shoulder. “It’s okay, I know it was an accident. What happened to your nose, though? It looks like you hurt it.” I prodded at the tender spot, remembering that I had seen a mild bruise there when I’d been cleaning up.
“You happened,” I teased, wrapping my arms around her and holding her tight. It was such bliss, to be able to pull the female I craved in close and give in freely to my urge to cuddle her, to caress her and tell her the tender things that crawled into my throat and begged to be spoken. “It’s fine though, it will heal quickly.”
