Page 10 of Her Alien Spy
He smirked. “You assume I can’t keep going?”
She grinned. There was the Andethor she knew. “I don’t know. You’ve talked a good game, but let’s see how it goes.”
He groaned, then took a gulp of his coffee. “Going to be the death of me, Jules.”
“Likely not. Now start talking.”
He shook his head. “Okay. I need you to go to a pleasure planet with me and pretend to be my submissive little pet.”
Her cup was halfway to her mouth, and she set it down. “Come again?”
“There is the perfect joke I could be making right now, but I won’t.”
“Smart male.”
He smirked, then took a breath and continued. “Maybe I should start at the beginning, now that the big weird thing is out in the open.”
“We are not talking about your penis right now.”
He stared, then laughed, his entire body shaking, and it was one of those laughs where, each time it was about to wind down, he started laughing all over again. Julia chuckled, watching him, and eventually he just rested his arms on the table, buried his face in them, and tried to get himself under control.
“You’ve been a little stressed about asking me about this, huh?” she asked.
He held up a hand, his index finger and thumb with a tiny space between them. “Just a little,” he said, his voice muffled by his arms.
“Get yourself together, master spy. Did you know Xarek actually called you that?”
Andethor looked up at her, sitting up straight. “He did?”
“He did.”
Andethor thought about that for a moment, then nodded and took a breath, straightening his shoulders.
“That means a lot. Thanks for telling me.”
“Of course.”
“I need you to understand a couple of things about this. This literally just fell into my lap today and my superior told me I need to be gone tomorrow morning.”
“To the pleasure planet,” she added, and he nodded.
“And you were both the first person I thought of and the last person I wanted to ask to do this.”
“Explain that,” she said, sipping her coffee, and he gave her a look of what almost looked like respect before continuing.
“The first person, because I’m a male with all of my senses intact and I don’t think it’s any secret to you that I’m attracted to you. The thought of bringing you to a pleasure planet is pretty alluring.”
Damn it all, she could feel her face heating when he said that. She nodded, trying to keep her expression blank.
“And the last person I wanted to ask, because… Jules if I’m ever taking you to a pleasure planet, I want it to be as me. Not as Savis Eletath,” he said, and the way he said that name, with pure venom, made her lean in.
“Who is that?”
“One of my aliases… no one knows that other than me and my superior by the way. And now you. Not even Xarek.”
“No one will ever hear it from me. What’s Savis’s story?”
He sighed. “The guy’s an absolute scumbag. Sees women as playthings, throws money around like he’s looking for some kind of reward for person you’d most like to punch in the face. Gambler, drinker, flashy dresser…” he shook his head, and Julia scrunched up her face.
