Page 31 of My Big Scaly Alien Naga
He studied me, long and hard.“Y-you’re sure?”
“Yes.”
I moved first.Quietly, deliberately, I crossed the space between us and sat down beside him.Close, but not quite touching.I draped the blanket around our shoulders like a tent, leaving a gap between our bodies, though I could feel the cold radiate from his scales.He was even more hypothermic than I’d feared.
He didn’t move.Didn’t reach for me.Just sat perfectly still, his tail coiled neatly around him, hands folded in his lap like he was meditating on a knife’s edge.
Neither of us spoke.
The silence between us wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly.Just tight.Charged.Like the air before a storm.
But he didn’t touch me.Didn’t push.
And I didn’t lean in.
We sat there, shoulder to not-quite-shoulder, two beings wrapped in the same blanket, pretending it was just about the cold.Which it was, right?
I kept my arms tucked in, hands in my lap, determined not to touch him.
And yet…
I could feel him beside me, every still inch of him.The coolness of his skin radiated even through the shared cover.I could smell him too – not in a bad way.Not even in an alien way.Just… Venom.Clean, metallic, with a faint tang of something earthy and sharp like crushed herbs.It curled into my nose with every breath and settled low in my belly like a satisfying heaviness.I liked his smell.
Which made no sense.He wasn’t human.He wasn’t even humanoid.
But that didn’t stop the way my skin prickled with awareness.
I didn’t know him.
He was dangerous.
He was trying not to be.
And I… was losing the battle to keep my guard up.
I pressed my lips together, glancing sideways at him.
He was pale – not in colour exactly, but in energy.His eyes were half-closed, his shoulders slightly hunched.A tremor passed through his muscles, barely visible but constant.
“Venom?”I asked quietly.
He didn’t respond.
My stomach twisted.“Venom!”I reached out and touched his arm.He flinched, but the movement was jerky and uncontrolled.
“S-still… f-fine,” he muttered, his teeth chattering audibly.
Liar.
His slitted eyes had drifted half-closed, and a visible shiver rippled through his upper body.He wasn’t just cold.He was on the verge of shutting down.
A bolt of concern shot through me.I didn’t understand everything about his biology, but this was bad.He was trying so hard to hold himself together, to fight his instincts, to give me space.But if he kept going like this, he might not make it through the night.
I didn’t think.I just acted.I slipped an arm around his waist and shuffled closer until our sides touched fully beneath the blanket.My bare skin met the chill of his scales, and I bit back a gasp.He was freezing.Absolutely freezing.A living, breathing being shouldn’t feel this cold.Goosebumps ran over my skin.
“I’m not doing this for you,” I muttered, more to myself than to him.“You’re just no good to me half-frozen.”
He didn’t resist.Didn’t speak.He just let out a slow exhale and leaned slightly into me, like the last thread of tension had snapped.
