Chapter 52
POV Melissa
I know I shouldn't have provoked that guy, my rational side understands that better than anyone. But there's something inside me bubbling up right now, something wild, a hatred that's growing every second because of the rut and how he thought he could humiliate Kaleo.
He won’t do that to the man who cared about me more than anyone else.
"You don’t even know what that means!" Salton tries to sound sarcastic, but I see the surprise on his face that I know the name of one of the vital organs of a faleu.
The pump helps to pump a green slime called ilisoil into his body, one of the vital fluids for his species.
"If I shove my knife into this pump, right there, in a soft spot of your belly..." I point to where I know the thing is. "You’ll die instantly. You’ll rot for days because I’ll shove the knife in and twist, Salton." I savor each of the words, savoring the power I’ve never had before. "I’ll shove it in and I won’t take it out, and nothing will happen to the treaty because I’m not azuri."
I’m literally shaking now, breathing fast and trembling, but I won’t back down. When a bully attacks, all you can do is fight back.
"Crazy bitch!" he curses and doesn’t move closer because I’m right.
I did my research thoroughly on the only night I had before being thrown on this planet, and if there's one thing I looked up, it was quick ways to stop a faleu. With human men, it’s just a kick to the balls, but since those four arms are huge and fast, I needed something more effective, and I found the “ilisoil pump” as a substitute.
"Don't call my man wild, you disgusting son of a bitch, now go back to your hologram and stay away from me!" I order, staring deep into his light eyes, and I almost want to applaud myself when he actually backs off, growling a lot.
Damn, I stared down a four-armed giant and came out unscathed!
Then, less than thirty seconds later, Kaleo and the other faleu appear, and both look at me and Salton, not understanding the clear tension in the air. But I prefer to keep my mouth shut and wait until I get home to tell Kaleo everything that happened, and in response, I get a big kiss and a huge smile from my giant, along with a light scolding for my recklessness in saying all that alone. He said he wanted to be there to see it.
***
POV Melissa
One month later
I open my eyes feeling cold, it even feels like my toes and fingers are ice cubes because I’m completely naked and uncovered. Then other fingers, much warmer than mine, wrap around my hand and pull me into a very warm chest, which helps me instantly.
I cuddle against Kaleo’s warm, also naked body, and he finds the blanket to cover me. I must have kicked the animal skin to the foot of the bed, like always, and almost froze to death.
"Good morning, Melissa," Kaleo murmurs with his usual tone when we wake up, very low and firm, and it sends a shiver through my whole body.
"Not Melissa," I grumble, still with my eyes closed, but already feeling the morning light flooding the room.
After a month living with the blue giant, I think he realized he wasn’t saying my name as correctly as he thought. This happens a lot when we start to come into contact with other languages; to our ears, we sound 100% right, and only after a while do we adjust our pronunciation. And since I didn’t want Cirion messing with the translators in our ears, I got used to "Melisha" and even started to look forward to it.
"Good morning, Melisha," he repeats, with obvious good humor in his tone, and I smile against his chest.
There are a million "Melissas" out there, but I’m the "Melisha" of Kaleo, and anyway, it’s hard for him to say "Melissa" correctly.
"This is better," I murmur and snuggle even closer to him, like Bella in Eclipse when Jacob warmed her up on the mountain.
But after a few minutes of rolling around in this embrace and inhaling Kaleo’s delicious scent, I end up having to open my eyes and realize he has one of my hands in his, looking at my fingers in a very curious way.
"What is it, big guy?"
"Your fingers are so pink, I wonder if our babies will be pink too, or if they’ll be blue," he says thoughtfully, almost distracted, but hearing that only forms a lump of pain in the middle of my throat.
Even after a month, Kaleo and I are still in heat. It seems that it’s not as easy to get pregnant here as I thought it would be, and every day we go through a little rollercoaster.
Some days, we live our lives normally, and other days we don’t leave the room. Some days, I freeze to death, and other days, heat warms me up quite a bit. Sometimes Kaleo acts like I’m going to stay forever, and sometimes, he spends all his time grumpy thinking about the moment I’ll have to leave.
And me? I’m getting more and more attached, which makes it very hard to think about going anywhere.
"I’m so grateful you stayed, my little wife," he whispers, and that only worsens the pain in my throat because Kaleo still expects our marriage to happen.
I asked for more time to think, and thank God Virg thought it was a great idea, so he has more weeks to plan an even bigger wedding, with more leaders from other azuri villages. Kaleo doesn’t understand why I hesitate to stay, and, to be honest, I don’t even know what I’d do outside of here anymore.
Day after day, I feel more affection for him, and he for me. I’ve been learning to deal with Selvaria, learning what true nature is, what true affection is.
The other day, Kaleo and I went to the village so I could finally see how the women really adore "General Ni," and that made me bubble with jealousy. Each one of them looked like the Exorcist girl turning her head to look at him on top of his horse, and that was like a punch to my face.
Inside me, I feel like he’s mine, and I don’t know how to deal with it anymore.
"Are you okay, Melisha? You’re quiet," he says, with his head resting on pillows as he slides one of his hands around my waist, keeping me close to his body.
"I’m just… recovering from the weird dream I had," I say the first thing that comes to my mind, and Kaleo nods, knowing very well I’m dodging the subject but staying silent about it.
But the sad way his eyebrows move tells me that with every refusal of mine, he gets more hurt, so I decide to move up his body a little, so our faces are closer.
I think I’m using Kaleo’s body more like a mattress than the actual mattress now, which makes me bump into the scales on his shoulders.
"I’m grateful I met you, Kaleo, there’s no one like you for me," I confess, and that makes the male start purring right away, which makes me laugh just a few seconds before he tries to pull me into a kiss.
"I haven’t brushed my teeth yet!" I argue, but of course, he doesn’t care about that and presses our lips together.
Kaleo is like a force of nature, he always fixes everything, always finds a way, never makes excuses, and I want to be like that for him too. But it’s very hard when I still have a secret kept, maybe the biggest one for him, who likes to follow his planet’s traditions.
I think that’s why I can’t kiss him for long, because guilt and fear are consuming me. I’ve never had anything close to what I have now, and more and more I recognize that maybe… I’ll never have it again.
But I know I need to tell him that I was a camgirl, at least that way all the cards are on the table, and then he can decide what he wants for our future.
Since I arrived, all Kaleo has done is take care of me. Everything he could do for me, he did, and I haven’t even told him the truth about where I came from, and that’s killing me inside.
Shit, Melissa! You need to stop rehearsing and tell him already!
"I need to go to the bathroom," I whisper, and find a way to jump out of his warm embrace, feeling anxious, not even knowing where to start telling him about my past, while I walk naked to our bathroom.
Things have changed a lot here, and with Cirion’s help, I no longer bury my poop and pee like a cat. I have a device very similar to a toilet, but it doesn’t need running water because it simply disintegrates anything with the push of a button.
So I use this almost magical device, in my opinion, and also use the kind of shower we have, so I can feel fresher and less anxious about the idea of having to tell Kaleo where I came from.
I wrap myself in a towel after finishing my shower, with the new bathroom still full of steam, so to look at myself in the full-length mirror the giant hung on the wall, I have to rub my hands on it.
And as it’s happened in the last few weeks, I get a little startled when I see my reflection and the huge amount of hair on my head, because this is definitely not normal.