The Barbarian's Owned(2)

The competition for tenure-track slots was fierce, and Reese too professionally jealous for their relationship to work. Since then, he’d mocked Rae’s research as either “methodologically flawed” or “kooky.”

Rae shut down her fear instinct and focused, instead, on how good it would feel if he finally mocked her to her face. If, instead of sniping, he attacked her theories in a public forum, she could finally have it out with him.

The moderator signaled her. Time to talk. She stood, took to the microphone, cleared her throat, and began: “I’ll level with you. There are two types of people in this room right now. One, the journalists, who get to write a punchy story about aliens killing the dinosaurs.” Rae’s aside had them in the palm of her hand, and she gave them every watt of her smile.

“The others, of course, are the scientists who hate the fact that the public only cares about space when it’s full of aliens who we imagine to be hilariously like us.”

Just then, her eye caught someone strange. He stood at the room’s edge, a head taller than the professors and scientists around him. He wore what looked like a black kurta, a sort of long jacket that hit knee-level, and white pants beneath that.

Black-eyed with charcoal hair, he seemed to project a bubble of space in the crowd on all sides. Though he had his hands in his pockets, there was something dangerous in his stance. She couldn’t put her finger on what, but the intensity of his stare set her fine hairs on end.

She fumbled her next line and her words stalled.

For two heartbeats, she tried to breathe. The man hadn’t moved. There was no logical reason for him to even draw her gaze, other than his size and that unrelenting, fiery-eyed stare.

Forcing herself to look away, she focused on Reese and reminded herself: If I mess this up, he wins. It put just enough iron in her backbone that she could ignore the kurta-wearing giant.

He hadn’t disappeared, though. She dove into her lecture, acutely aware he still watched her; with heart in throat, she had the strangest sense she was putting on this performance for him.

***

He’d come halfway across the quadrant on the whim of his domé, whose dreams had been disturbed by meddling on this side of the spiral arm; but now that he saw the troublesome female in person, Garr knew his own needs and his goddess’s would align.

Even with domé Kaython translating in his ear through her linguistic microbes, the aliens were hard to comprehend. The problem was their culture. He gathered that he stood in some primitive war council, though they were too backward to have a prime.

He’d noticed they permitted mating-class females to participate. Folly, surely. And they listened to the female at front, whose dangerous tampering had brought him to this world.

Garr could see her pulse race in her throat—smell the faint traces of floral perfume on her body through the crowd. He repressed the impulse to stride up and peel open the collar of that stiff, primitive shirt near her throat and inhale.

What insane male permitted a female so exquisite to head a war council? She was just standing there, publicly, no protector in sight. At any moment, he expected someone to issue a challenge and claim her.

Can you believe that’s her? messaged Vaya from her position in the seats. Kaython’s microbes didn’t just translate: they also let he and his soldier communicate silently. Vaya couldn’t stand among the aliens without them gawping, because this species lacked the bioform diversity that characterized his own. Vaya would… stand out among them. Those scouting reports I showed you didn’t really get it across.

No, Garr had known from the moment he’d seen those reports that this human was special. He’d announced his interest in her then, to the obvious dismay of Vaya. Now that he saw her in person, he wanted her that much more.

I can’t believe someone so soft and small is causing Kaython so much distress, Vaya complained.

Garr wasn’t certain Kaython was distressed. Like all domé, she could be damnably obscure in what she desired. Certainly, Garr didn’t want this alien to be his enemy.

He surveyed the way those trim, primitive fabrics clung to the curves in her hips, body, and bust—she’d be softer than a Ythirian female. She kept her golden hair in a tight braid like a warrior, and he wanted to comb it out with his fingers.

Are you seriously still interested in her? Vaya asked, distaste obvious. You won’t claim a 98 percent match, but you’re interested in the one whose genetics are twenty cycles behind ours?

I do as I will, Vaya.

Fine. But mark my words, boss. The short ones are always trouble.

Hold position. I want a closer look. He needed one, really, and soon had the opportunity: the female’s gaze had shifted elsewhere during her talk, and he crept toward the stage.