Page 32 of All or Nothing
He flushed, grinning bashfully. “You caught that, huh? Yes, I suppose that is why. But Earth ones are strange. You call me an infant, and tell me my heart is a delicacy.”
I burst out laughing hard enough that I snorted. “Xollen!”I gasped, bent double. “It’s not that literal! I admit the baby one is kind of weird though. Especially because of all the people calling their partners mommy and daddy. But sweetheart is like…your emotional heart is sweet. As in…kind and gentle and good.”
Now he just looked concerned. “You would call your partner the same name you would call your parents? That is…shocking.”
My face flamed hot. “Okay yeah, it’s kind of strange. It’s complicated and I’m probably doing a bad job of explaining it.” At least I knew not to try calling him Daddy if we took things to the next level.
He didn’t have that kind of energy anyway. If anything it’d be hot for him to call me Mommy—
Okay, no, nope, not going there. Not discovering a new kink today.
“So what nicknames do you like to be called?” I asked him, trying to distract myself from my dirty thoughts.
“Hmm.” He grabbed my hands and twined his fingers with mine. “I have never thought about it. No one has called me anything except Xollen. Or Xoll. At least, that’s all anyone has called me out of kindness. When I was young the other children were cruel to me about my facial deformity.”
Oh god, I bet they had been. My poor, sweet Xollen. “I don’t like that you call it that,” I told him, freeing one of my hands so I could cup his face. “Your face isn’t deformed, it’s just different. There are other species of aliens right here on Billieu that don’t have the cleft. You have a different face shape, that’s all. And it’s beautiful.”
He gave me a shy lopsided smile, nuzzling into my hand and kissing my palm. “You’re the beautiful one, sweet Joss. But I will accept that you think I am pleasing to look at.”
I huffed and pursed my lips at him, but at least it was a start. “Alright, then I guess if I call you something you don’t like just tell me. Like, if I call you pookums…”
He laughed. “Is that a real Earth name?”
I giggled. “Not really. I called my dog that growing up. What about sugar? Or sweetie pie?”
“I think I am concerned about how many of these names imply you wish to eat me. Should I be worried?”
I couldn’t help laughing. “I guess that depends. Most guys want their partners to eat them.” I bit my lip, cocking an eyebrow at him suggestively. Just to make sure he really understood what I was implying, I made sure to take a long look at his crotch. When I looked back up into his face he was blushing furiously.
“You would…oh my.”
“Oh yeah.” I went on my tippy-toes and kissed him. It was hard being confident and sexy, I was finding. Half the time I was worried that I came off as a weirdo, or that I looked ridiculous. But Xollen never made me feel like that—it was all me, getting too much in my own head. And maybe it made me a bad person, but in a weird way it helped that even though he was objectively gorgeous by my standards, by his own he wasn’t. It meant he’d lived his whole life thinking he was ugly, just like me, when in fact he wasn’t in the slightest, and it helped me to believe that maybe something like that was happening to me, too.
Sometimes Xollen was a bit of a dumbass, but I couldn’t deny that I was falling for the guy. He was broken in a lot of the same ways that I was, and so he understood what I was going through when I had a moment of insecurity, and I really thought that so long as we kept the channels of communication open that we’d be alright.
“Where will you sleep tonight?” he blurted, pulling me from my thoughts. What an interesting question.
I considered it for a second. “I guess…that depends on where you want me to sleep.”
“With me,” he replied without taking a single second to think about it. “It doesn’t have to be anything besides sleeping, I won’t push you. But after you left last night it…it was so lonely. And my bed is plenty big for both of us.”
See, this was why I couldn’t stay mad at the guy when he got bratty. I felt myself melting, my body swaying forward into his so I could hug him tight. “I think I’d really like that,” I mumbled into his chest. “I’m kind of a wild sleeper though. You might get hit.”
His chest rumbled with his laughter against my cheek. “Is that a threat, my star?”
“No,” I chuckled. “Just a heads-up. I thrash a lot in my sleep. Toss and turn and fling my arms and legs around. When I went to sleepovers as a kid they made me sleep off in a corner by myself because they got tired of getting hit.”
“So violent, even in sleep,” he chided me. “You’ll just be tenderizing me for when you eat my sweet meat pie.”
I laughed, pressing my face into his warmth. “Stop teasing! I’m not going to eat you…like that.” I tilted my head back to look up at him. “I promise if I hit you it’s not on purpose. And if it’s too much then I’ll just sleep in my room. I get it, I can be a lot.”
He combed his fingers through my hair, gently working out the inevitable snarl. “I will wear my battle wounds with pride, my m—my star. Maybe you just need a big strong male in your bed to help you fight your sleep demons, and with me you will finally know peace.”
I laughed again, the mental image of sleepy Xollen helping me fight off invisible monsters utterly hilarious. “Maybe. I guess we’ll see.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sleep Fighting
