1
HARLOW
One of the first mornings at the beach, I wake up to something scuttling over my foot.
It hasn't been the most comfortable night's sleep already. Sand is everywhere, and the cave we're bunking in is tiny and cold. Those things don't matter the moment I look up at the sunlight streaming in from the cave and see one of the scorpion-things perched on my boot. I kick it off, sliding backward in the cave in horror. Everywhere I look, there's more of the damn things. They're on the furs, at the mouth of the cave, and I swear there's one on the wall. I make a noise of distress at the sight.
My mate, Rukh, is instantly awake at my terrified sound. He sits up, growling and ready to protect me, a question in his eyes. I point at one of the things. They're horrid looking, a cross between a crab and a scorpion with lots of legs and a segmented tail. Rukh plucks the nearest one off the wall and promptly bites the head off.
I squeal in horror again.
He holds the limp thing out to me, an offering. "Har-loh?"
"I'm not eating that," I cry. "Not on your life!" The defunct vegetarian in me is appalled at the thought. I've had to make a lot of changes since coming to this icy planet, not the least of them being a change in my dietary habits. And so far eating meat hasn't been too bad, even if I do randomly get cravings for a hamburger, of all things. But seeing Rukh holding that awful-looking thing out to me to eat? I can't do it. My throat clenched tight, I shake my head.
He stares at it, and the look in his eyes is uneasy. "Har-loh…no?"
"No," I manage. "My seafood has to be cooked."
"Cookt?" he echoes, shaking the floppy thing at me. "Rukh cookt?"
Rukh doesn't know a lot of language—any at all—because he's been feral for so long. He's picking up some of my words, though, desperate to talk to me. And “cook” is one of them he knows.
I stare at the thing, trying to get over my initial disgust. It's food, I remind myself. It's food it's food it's food.
"Cook it, sure," I manage. "Thank you."
Rukh grunts, the sound full of pleasure, and tosses the dead thing down on the ground. Then he grabs another one of the things. He lifts it to his mouth, ready to bite the head off, and then glances over at me. As if recalling the horror on my face, he changes tactics at the last moment and snaps the head off instead. It makes an awful crunching sound, followed by a splat of liquid, and then tosses it down onto the other. Within moments, we have a neat, tidy little pile. He doesn't care that they pinch at him with their stinger-pincher things, or that they scuttle away fast when they see his hand descending. Rukh is faster than them, and something tells me he's done this plenty of times before.
I can't begrudge the man for surviving, even if it is a little rough on my sensibilities.
I curl up in the back of the small cave and watch Rukh as he chases the smaller ones out of the cave with a flick of his hand and beheads the larger ones. It hasn't been very long at all since Rukh and I resonated. Not very long since he hit me over the head and stole me, and I'm still adjusting. It's a lot to take in all at once—leaving behind the sa-khui tribe that's welcomed me since I got to this planet to go out into the wild alone with Rukh, but he's made it clear that to him, they're the enemy.
Since he's my person, I'm not leaving his side. We'll just have to figure out how to manage with just the two of us.
It's one reason we're at this beach, I think. From what I can tell from our (admittedly short and mostly inferred) conversations, the weather will be warmer here throughout the wintry brutal season, and we're much farther away from the tribe that he wants so desperately to avoid. His father's grave is here, too, and I suspect he just likes the beach. It's pretty, even if it's nothing like the beaches back home. It's cold and rocky and a little violent, but the tide still rolls in to hit the sands, and there's a comforting familiarity with that, even if the sands are greenish and the tide is slushy with ice.
Rukh piles up all the dead scorpion-crabs and then begins to make a fire near the entrance to the cave. It's a small one, and I inwardly wince when he tosses the dead things directly onto the flames. I have to remind myself that Rukh's used to eating his food cold and raw, and the fire's for me. I can't really complain that he's not skilled at grilling his food if he's never grilled before, can I?
He's trying to please me, and really, that's all a girl can ask for.
Once they're all on the fire, he looks over at me with expectation. I beam approval at him, and love that a slow smile curves his mouth. "Thank you," I say softly.
"Cook," Rukh says as he moves around the fire and back to my side. "Rukh cook Har-loh."
I giggle. I know what he means, but it just sounds a little funny to hear. "You're doing lovely, Rukh. I appreciate it."
He sits extremely close to me, pushing aside some of the loose furs I piled atop us when we slept. He's naked—he's pretty much always naked—and Rukh leans in close, touching my jaw. "Rukh kiss Har-loh," he murmurs. "Yes?"
He's definitely learned all the “important” words, my wild, ferocious mate. He's got kiss down pat, that's for sure. "Kiss," I whisper, and lean in to brush my lips over his. I won't think about him biting off the head of one of those scorpion-crab things, because I might think it's gross, but to him, it's just food. I don't want him to ever feel ashamed around me. There's nothing wrong with him; it's me that has to adjust to life here.
So I touch his face gently and kiss him. Kissing Rukh is never a chore. If anything, it feels a bit like Christmas every time, which is an odd way to think about it, but it fits. He acts as if every time I kiss him, it's a gift. And I feel like every time that I kiss him, I'm being given something special as well. So…Christmas. It makes me happy to touch him, to kiss his firm mouth, to give him pleasure. I think about all the years he grew up in the wild without anyone to talk to, much less anyone to kiss, and I'm happy that resonance paired us together. It doesn't matter that he scared me in the beginning. I saw the lonely, aching man beneath all the dirt and fell in love.
Rukh groans softly against my mouth, tugging me to the furs. He's ravenous for attention, my mate. Doesn't matter how insignificant the touch is, he wants more. I keep that in mind as I kiss him, making sure to touch him all over, brushing my fingers over his skin and down his neck. I murmur his name between little presses of our lips, letting him know how pleased I am with him and how happy I am to be here with him. He can't understand my words yet, so I'll give it to him in actions.
"Har-loh," he rumbles, his khui purring despite the fact that we've already resonated. Just being around one another is enough to make our khuis respond, and I place my hand over his heart, where his khui “sings” to me.
Rukh brushes his nose against mine, then nips at my lower lip. His hand slides to the loose waist of my leggings, and then he pushes inside. He's ravenous, my mate, and it's an eagerness that I share. I thought things were supposed to slow down with resonance, but it's been a few days now and I still feel as insanely hungry for him as ever. I still wake up with him touching me in the middle of the night, and it excites me.