Page 54 of Mazorium Buys a Human

She leaned forward and put a hand on my cheek. “I can’t ask you to give up a job for us.”

Her touch sent a jolt of pleasure through me. “You could ask me to do anything, and I would.”

She must’ve heard the truth in my tone because her eyes widened slightly. “Even ruin your professional reputation?”

The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t care. Why bother working so hard to be principled when Talins like Gorum used bribes to get what they wanted?

“My reputation isn’t more important than your happiness,” I said. “If you want, we can pack everything up and leave tomorrow.”

“I don’t want that,” she said, rubbing her fingers over my scent gland. “I like it here. It’s peaceful and the perfect place for Nadia to learn to crawl and walk. I feel safe here. I’m sure it’ll get boring eventually and we’ll both want to interact with others, but right now this feels like the break I needed. I started working alongside my parents at fourteen. From that point on, I was always working. For now, I want to be lazy.”

“Do you really mean that?” I asked.

“I do,” she whispered. “I want to stay here with you.”

Relief made me feel strangely boneless. I let my head drop down until my forehead was resting on Mika’s lap. She shifted her hand to rub the back of my head.

“You won’t regret this,” I swore to her. I didn’t believe in the empire or ancestors any longer, but I believed in Mika and Nadia. They were my everything, and I would make sure they never felt the need to leave.

My scent glands ached as images of touching and being touched filled my mind.

The next thing I needed to do was research how human males courted their females. I wanted Mika to learn to see me as a potential partner to pair bond with. I would do all the things human males did to show interested in a permanent, intimate pairing with a female.

Chapter 17

Mika

“Where are we going?” I asked for the third time. After our talk, I’d thought we would do more things together since Maz wasn’t avoiding me any longer. To my disappointment, he’d worked extra hard for the last few days.

At first I’d thought it was because he had some kind of report due to the group that invested in the planet, but then today he’d packed up a small flier and said we were going on an adventure.

Nadia was snuggled up in her carrier next to me. Behind me were several carrier bots loaded down with cases.

“I told you, it’s a surprise,” Maz said with an amused rumble.

“But what kind of surprise?” I pressed. The flier wasn’t very big and didn’t have any windows. The shape reminded me a little of the emergency tubes on some stations that you could use to slide down into an evacuation craft.

I would’ve been nervous if I was with anyone but Maz. He was so careful and meticulous with all his tech and gear I knew he’d never overload a craft or take it anywhere it couldn’t go.

“I was unaware there are different types of surprises," he responded, adjusting the pitch of the flier.

“There are all kinds of surprises,” I said. “Good surprises, bad surprises, and surprise-surprises.”

“The first two make sense, but the last one is redundant," he responded. I felt the angle change and thought we were slowing. We were probably about to land. I couldn’t wait and almost bounced in my seat.

“It’s not redundant,” I argued. “Even though we call things surprises, they’re usually within the realm of expectation. A surprise-surprise is when something happens outside all expectations. Getting pregnant with Nadia was a good surprise. Being sold was a bad surprise. Neither was outside the realm of possibility.”

“What would you consider a surprise-surprise?” he asked.

“You,” I answered simply.

He jerked a little at my answer. “How am I entirely outside the realm of possibility? Any Talin would’ve bought you and Nadia and cared for you.”

“Sure, that might be true,” I said. “But I doubt any other Talin would’ve realized I was an equal.”

“Then I pity them,” he murmured.

Damn, I was rapidly falling for this man. We slept snuggled together in my nest each night, his scent in my nose and his comforting warmth at my back.