He wouldn’t be here long enough for the confines to chafe through his fur. This was just a brief, bemusing detour. When hesquirmed again, the small message cube in his hip pocket (the cause of the moroseness that had landed him here) dug into a muscle that hadn’t healed quite right; another reminder that he hadn’t escaped unscathed.
No matter how far a ship might take him, the reminders of what he’d left behind would always find him.
“So, just to review.” Felicity brandished her datpad, as if they could all see it even though the amount of data on the screen made it too miniscule for even a dozen eyes to decipher at any distance. “Once our guests are aboard, we will all assemble in the Starlit Salon for a few inspiring words about this maiden voyage from Captain Nehivar—”
“Nay.” The rejection burst from him before he could temper it for the little, fragile, bare-skinned creature.
She blinked at him. Her Earther eyes were a bit smaller than a larf’s, without the grotesque bulge. But they were somehow more unsettling to encounter on a ship under his command. Maybe it was the color—a shiny blue ringed in white that he associated with ruinous electrical arcs. Or maybe it was just because those eyes were attached to a little, fragile, bare-skinned, smiling, laughing, sweet-smelling female.
When she tilted her head, the tight, upward twist of her hair—as yellow as her native star—wobbled despite a confining loop of ribbon. Even with the distance between them, her scent reached him, teasing him. “No?”
Yea, she was sweet-smelling—impossibly, mouthwateringly so. His incisors ached with the devotion hunger. But this was not the time nor the space. Worse than impossible, slag it.
He gritted those teeth. “Nay. I have no inspiring words for the passengers.”
“Or for anyone else.” The mutter from the chief engineer emerged through the empty engineering console. As usual, the reclusive Ravkajo had refused to leave the impulsion chamber.Suvan Adrakh hadn’t even bothered to come to the screen. Only his pet goblhob appeared in the hologram, its toothy, undershot jaw even more distorted by the too-close projection. It chittered into the viewer, angling one orange eye even closer until the hologram was just a blur of the bioluminescent lure bobbing at the end of its anterior antenna.
Ellix narrowed his remaining eye at the ugly creature. It didn’t have the cognition to mock him…probably?
Felicity smiled though her feelings button flickered. “You are the ship’s captain. You really should—”
“Captain the ship,” Ellix finished. “While Delphine pilots, Griiek maintains the decks, Styr cooks, Ikaryo serves intoxicating beverages, and you”—he stared hard into her unnerving Earther eyes—“make the passengers fall in love.”
Echoing the Elnd chef, Ellix bit off the Earther wordlovebetween his aching teeth. Yea, their translators would’ve understood his native language. But he refused to say it. The message cube—inscribed with the same glyph—weighed in his pocket like a chunk of neutron star.
Felicity clutched her datpad to her chest, covering the feelings button pinned there. “But it’s right here on my tour schedule: a message from the captain.”
He waited a beat, aware the whole crew was watching, listening, and otherwise absorbing his message. “Tell them no one can lead them to love.”
After another fraught pause, Delphine raised her hand. “Eh, I could if we had the coordinates.” The rest of the crew responded to the Tritonesse pilot’s quip with species-specific expressions of tension relieved.
Not Felicity, though. With her feelings button still concealed, the shine in her Earther eyes dimmed in a way that needed no translation. “All right. If that’s what you want.” Her datpadchimed, a warning countdown to launch. But it had an odd ominous overtone.
What he wanted? Sure as a black hole sucked, hewantedto taste her, to see if her flavor was as intoxicating as her scent. Hewantedto bite her, to see if she was as fragile as she looked. Hewanted…
He wanted.
But he was captain of this ship, if only for a three-sunset tour.
And the course he’d set long ago had left him on a trajectory with no chance for anything else.
When she straightened, even with her spine stiff from rejection, the top of her sunny hair twist wouldn’t reach his feelings button if it had been pinned to his chest. Which it wasn’t, because he would not be sharing his wants with anyone.
Definitely not with a sunny, sweet-smelling closed-worlder female shining with delusions of fun.
+ + +
Maybe it was the golden fur that covered him, almost as velvety as his deep voice, maybe it was the scars not quite hidden by that fur or the piratical black eyepatch, or maybe it was the even more golden eye that still remained. Whatever it was, something about Captain Ellix Nehivar made Felicity shiver. With curiosity? With anxiety? She wasn’t sure about that either.
Which was soooo frustrating.
There’d been a time when she’d struggled with figuring out what was going on inside her own self. She’d been like the universe’s weakest black hole that sucked everything into a swirling chaos and spewed out confusion. But that wasbeforeshe’d discovered clipboards and schedules and checkable dropdown menus of to-do lists. Before implanted translators and feelings buttons. Before finding the perfect job connectingbeings across lightyears to their ideal match, bringing harmony to a messy universe two hearts at a time.
She jotted a note to herself in her datpad as she hustled toward the main hatch. “Harmony across the universe, two hearts at a time.” But maybe that wouldn’t work since some alien species had more than one heart. And some didn’t have any heart since the universe had various options when it came to circulatory systems. And what if they preferred a polyamorous configuration? Also, not every species would ascribe romantic connotations to a meat pump circulating bodily fluid.
The possible optimal combinations of bioelechemistry, corporeal configurations, genders and sexualities, and personal preferences that made up an IDA cruise passenger manifest was somewhat outside her mathematical expertise. And maaaybe she didn’t really need to work on another brochure because this was just a temp posting on a test run and who knew what would happen after tonight?
But! She certainly wasn’t going to let one towering, glowering Kufzasin spaceship captain ruin this journey into three beautiful sunsets of incandescent love.
