Barbarian Alien(27)

He enters the cave shortly, two smaller creatures hanging from his hand. Tonight’s dinner.

“Welcome back,” I tell him.

Raahosh pauses and frowns at me, and I can see the wheels working in his mind. He’s trying to figure out my angle. Like I have an angle other than trying to be a decent human being? I sigh. “Look. We started off on the wrong foot, all right? You forced me to get the cootie, and I’ve been making you pay for it ever since. Can we call a truce for a bit? I’m tired.”

He grunts and kneels by the fire, stoking it.

“You’re not a chatty sort even on the best of days, are you?”

He glances over at me. “And you would talk to the walls if they would listen.”

My smile grows tight. “You’re making this whole ‘truce’ thing hard, dude. Fair warning.”

I expect another grunt from him. Instead, he nods. “That was not kind of me. I apologize.”

I sit back, surprised that he caved. “Well…okay then.” I move toward the fire and sit across from him. “You want help with dinner?”

“Dinner?”

I gesture at the kills. “Dressing those? Skinning? Making it food?”

He gives me another narrow-eyed look. Not an angry one, I think, but more along the lines of trying to figure me out. “It is my job to provide for my mate.”

“Ah.” I think for a minute, and then hug my knees to my chest. My bare feet wiggle near the fire. “Can we save some of those skins for boots for me?”

He nods.

“Thank you,” I say softly. “I’m not going to run away, just so you know. There’s nowhere for me to go.”

Again, he nods. I stare into the fire as he begins to skin his kills. I need to get him talking, if only so I can crack open the hard shell that seems to be around his mind. He’s a hard man to figure out, this Raahosh. “So tell me about this place.”

He looks up at me. “This is my cave.”

“No, not this place specifically,” I say, gesturing at the cave. “This planet. This entire world. I don’t know anything about it other than that it’s cold.”

Raahosh grunts, and for a long moment, I think he’s going to ignore my questions. Then, he pulls out a smaller knife than his skinning one and begins to cut the meat into smaller, bite-sized chunks. “This…is the warm season. We say it is the bitter season, and the colder months the brutal season.”

My eyes go wide. I sputter. “But there’s three feet of snow on the ground!” How can this possibly be warm?

His mouth curves slowly, and I see a devastating smile spread across his face. It makes the breath escape my lungs and turns his hard, blade-sharp features into something deadly sexy. “You will just have to get used to the snow.”

“Snow. Right.” I ignore the throb of my girl parts in response to that smile. My cootie starts up and I mock-cough, thumping my chest to try and shut it up. “So this is…summer?”

He cocks his head, mentally searching through words, I imagine, and then nods. “What you call winter is a time of very little light. The suns barely show their faces and there is much darkness. It grows much colder and game grows scarce. That is why it is so important to hunt so much during the warm months.”

I nod, digesting this. Okay, if this is about as warm as it’ll ever get, I’ll live. I won’t like it, but I’ll live. “And you’re a hunter?”

He nods and offers me a bite of red, bloody meat. I take the bit from him and pop it into my mouth, raw. A burst of flavor sweeps over my tongue and I moan. It’s so good this way.

His hands jerk against the kill and as I watch, his breech-cloth gets tight over his groin. Oops.

“Um, it’s tasty. Sorry.”

“Do not apologize.” He cuts into the meat viciously. “I am pleased that I can feed my mate.”

Yeah, I can see that he’s pleased. There’s no hiding that fact. I eye the enormous length from under my lashes for a long moment. He hands me another tiny chunk, and I lean forward and take it into my mouth directly from his fingers without thinking. His glowing blue eyes flare, and my cootie starts up all over again.

Stupid cootie, always fronting me out.

Raahosh watches me chew, and when he holds another piece of meat out to me, he pulls it away when I reach for it with my fingers. He wants me to eat from his hand again. I lean in and let my tongue graze his fingertips, just because it’s cruelly fun to tease him.

And it turns me on. Just a little.

His bloody fingertips trace my lips before he pulls back again, and then he shifts on his haunches. His cock is a hard bar against his leg, bigger than any dude’s junk has the right to be.