Sitting down, he settled her on his lap. “Is this acceptable? If not, you can have the chair and I’ll sit on the floor.”
“This is good,” she said, eyeing the food. It wasn’t familiar but smelled amazing!
“This is jorjuk,” he explained. “Normally it’s more like a stew, but this version will be easier for you to eat.”
“It smells great,” she said.
There was a small alcove with various types of cutlery that would be hidden when the table was folded up. Thankfully there was a spoon so she could eat it without getting food everywhere. She wasn’t feeling perfect yet and didn’t trust herself to eat with her fingers.
It turned out she shouldn’t have trusted herself with the spoon either. Her hands shook enough to dump the spoonful onto her lap.
She’d love to say this was the first time she felt this unsteady, but that would be a lie. Damn, she hated being like this.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, looking for something to clean up with.
Zeph was quick, though, and cleaned her up with a cloth from the miniature cleansing station in the alcove. Tossing the cloth aside, he took the spoon from her.
“Good idea,” she said, trying hard not to sound spiteful. “You should eat first. That way I waste my portion and not yours.”
“I thought I’d feed you,” he explained, dipping the spoon into the jorjuk. “You’ve been through a lot. It’s not surprising you’re a little unsteady.”
Her body flushed at his words.
He was going to feed her. Why did this feel so intimate?
Bringing the spoon to her mouth, he purred as she opened and accepted the food.
“Good girl,” he murmured; his deep voice and words lighting up all kinds of naughty thoughts in her head.
Shit, this was going to be trouble.
Chapter 5
Zephrum
After spending several rotations interacting with Han, Zephrum had to acknowledge she was as smart as him. Perhaps even smarter in some respects.
All the pamphlets published by the Committee of Pet Welfare and entries into the Talin UniBase woefully underestimated human intellect. They’d been marked as a low-intelligence species by the Talin Empire, but she’d demonstrated her wit repeatedly, including right now as she effortlessly beat him at the strategy game grav for the third time.
“I taught you this game,” he grumbled, as he stared at the grid on the information square they were using to play. “How am I the one losing?”
Han chuckled. “Grav isn’t that different from domie. I’m really good at domie.”
He let out a long breath and finally moved one of his triangle pieces to a different place on the grid by dragging his finger onthe square. The moment he lifted his finger, Han made a happy sound and moved her piece. The square flashed, declaring her the winner.
He sounded a negative rumble. “How did you do that?”
“You play a defensive and conservative game,” she said, tapping the square to reset the grid. “That makes you easy to predict.”
“I do not,” he retorted, sitting up.
After eating their first meal together a few rotations ago, Han had nearly fallen asleep in his lap. He’d tried to put her back to bed in the bunk, but she’d objected. Probably because the bunk wasn’t a nest.
He’d pulled out every bit of bedding and even found a second bunk mat tucked away in a storage compartment. With all that and the pillows from the bed, he’d set up a nest for her next to the bunk.
She’d called it adorable and invited him to snuggle with her while she slept. He’d assumed she’d needed comforting and thought it would only be that one time.
He’d slept in the nest every rest period since. It was going to be impossible for him to go back to sleeping without her small, soft, human body nestled against him. Honestly, he’d become spoiled with all the time they spent together in the nest. Even now they were sitting in it with the square laying on a small pile of pillows between them.
