When Salukh returns with a frozen dvisti carcass and a bag full of fire-fuel, I shower him with kisses and groping until he forgets all about food or fire and makes love to me. After we eat and build a fire, we snuggle in the furs, naked. My fingers are interlaced with his larger ones, and he keeps kissing my shoulder, no doubt ready for another round in the sack.
He surprises me with his words, though. “Do you miss home? Your home before here?”
I look over at him. “Why do you ask?”
He presses another kiss to my shoulder and then lightly licks my skin. “Because I imagine you in a place like this.” He gestures at the old ship. “And it makes me wonder how you can ever be happy living in a cave.”
I smile and pull his hand to my breast so he can play with my nipple. “My home wasn’t like this.”
“No?”
“Nope. I grew up on a farm. We had chickens and cows and even had a little garden. It was a lot of work.”
“Did you have a mate? A family?”
“I had an aunt. My mother’s older sister,” I explain, because I realize there’s no word in their language for ‘aunt’. “Both of my parents were soldiers and they died overseas. My father died in a transport accident, and my mother from friendly fire.” I used to think I was the unluckiest kid ever to lose both parents in the same war. “My aunt was older than my mother by about fifteen years but I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so she took me in. If I wanted to earn my keep, I had to work, she said, so I did. I woke up every morning and fed the chickens, collected eggs, then I went to the barn and baled hay, fed the cattle, milked, let them out to the pasture, and then I went to school. Came home and did more chores, cleaned up around the house, and went to bed. When I graduated high school, I went to cosmetology classes for a bit, but I had to drop them because they were expensive.” My aunt wasn’t giving me money to help, and between my farm chores and the classes, I barely had time to hold down a job. “It was…tough sometimes.”
“And that is why you are always working? Because you feel you must?”
I blink at the fire, surprised at his words. “I’ve never thought of it that way, but I guess you’re right. My parents loved me, but my aunt didn’t know what to do with me. She made it clear that I needed to earn my place if I wanted to stay.” I’d never felt loved by my aunt, just felt like a frustrating sort of obligation or maybe even more like a farmhand that she couldn’t get rid of. Add to the fact that I’d had diabetes pre-khui and I felt like a never-ending problem for her. I never felt like family. I’d carried that feeling over onto the ice planet, where I kept myself busy with tanning and farming and trying to come up with ways to show that I could pull my weight. Some of it was the fact that I just couldn’t sit around idle, and some of it was insecurity.
Huh.
He nibbles on my shoulder and then kisses his way up my neck. “And now? Now you will become fat and lazy and have your mate bring you foods?”
I laugh. “I doubt that. More like I’ll still work my tail off and then when you come home, I’ll work your tail off in the furs.”
He gives my butt a sad pat. “You have already worked your tail off, my mate.”
My giggles fill the Elders’ Cave.
SALUKH
I rub at my teeth with a small stick to clean them and watch as my mate sits curled up near the fire, sewing. It is daylight outside and has not snowed for two days, which means I should get out and gather more fuel for the fire, and look for hunting. I am strangely reluctant to leave, though. My chest rumbles contentedly as I gaze at my mate, my khui humming a happy song.
My mate. She is breath-taking to look at and know that she is mine. I watch as Tee-fah-nee bends her head closer to the fire and pushes the bone awl through the furs, then tugs the cord through with long, delicate fingers. Her brown skin is flickered with orange in the firelight, and her wild halo of hair gleams. She catches me staring at her and a small smile curves her mouth.
“What is it?”
I shake my head. “Just admiring my beautiful mate and her busy fingers.”
Her smile broadens. “Your mate wouldn’t have to stay so busy if you’d be more careful with the furs at night.”
I grin, thinking of last night. In my eagerness to put my mouth on my mate, I might have ripped the furs…twice. “Your male is hungry for his female.”
“My male is not just hungry, he’s insatiable,” she teases. Her words are sharp, but the look she gives me tells me that she’s thinking about sex, too. Her breasts are rising and falling more rapidly and I can hear the hum of her khui as her arousal begins. Ah, being a resonance mate is the finest pleasure I have ever known.