Page 33 of Alien's Luck
“I refuse to accept that apology,” he said.
“Hey, I’m trying?—”
“Because,” he continued, speaking over her, “you apologized for the wrong transgression.”
“The kiss was a mistake. You clearly didn’t enjoy it.”
“Incorrect.”
“Oh, now you’re being impossible. Is this funny to you? I overstepped. I’m embarrassed. I’m sorry,” she said, struggling to keep the sarcasm from her voice and failing. “Can we move on?”
He watched her intently. It was… unnerving. She wanted to go and hide under the blankets again.
“Why did you kiss me?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I was happy and excited. It just sort of happened.”
He nodded, as if satisfied with that answer. “I remained still because I feared you felt an obligation to please me.”
Carla snorted. As if. “I’m not organized enough for an ulterior motive.”
“You lie with such ease. It’s impressive.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and said, “The situation between us is complex.”
“A little bit.”
“When you kiss me again—and I very much hope you will—it will be because that is what you desire. Not from obligation. Not a transaction. Your desire is all I want.”
Yeah, so that knocked the wind out of her.
“Sounds good,” she managed to croak. Wording was hard, what with making them coherent and not just a jumble of gurgling noises. “I’ll see what I can do.”
ARI
All he could think about was the kiss.
He wanted more. He wanted to hold her against him. He wanted her to climb over him and threaten him again. He wanted more of her scowls, her biting sarcasm, her laughter, her nonsensical ramblings, the little noises of pleasure she made when eating a meal, and even the rumbling snores in her sleep.
All of it. More.
CHAPTER 9
CARLA
“So what are you going to do with all your fat loots?” Carla asked.
They were in the games lounge, seated at a small table. Massive screens covered the walls, playing various races from elsewhere. Carla recognized something that resembled a dog race, if dogs were tall, slender rats. They looked cute, actually. There was a horse-type race with riders, a race with raptors large enough to carry a person, and a race with tigers. Just regular tigers. At the end of the race, the losing tigers mauled the winner, so maybe it wasn’t really a race but a chase to the death, and the wrongness of that disturbed her. There was even a race with a fleet of single-person starships traversing an asteroid field. The crowd cheered at the collisions.
Carla had no concerns about being overheard. The crowd made enough noise to mask their conversation, and with so much going on, no one paid attention to the gargoyle and his human pet.
Ari shuffled a deck of playing cards. It wasn’t a standard deck like back home with fifty-two cards in a deck and suits. This deck was composed of seventy artifacts, each with a special ability. Abilities stacked to make the player’s hand more powerful ormitigated the effectiveness of the opponent’s hand. Unless the game assigned numerical values to the artifacts, then it was a bunch of math. Carla never bothered to learn. She preferred dice.
He spread the cards face down across the table. “Pick a card,” he said, ignoring her question.
“You’re not going to impress me with your tricks,” she said, dutifully picking a card.
“Excellent choice. Do not show it to me. Add it to the deck and shuffle.” He brought the tip of his wing forward to cover his face.
Carla struggled to shuffle with any sort of grace as the cards were larger than the standard deck back home and a smidge too big to handle comfortably. Satisfied that the cards had been randomized, she slid the deck across the table.
