She moves even closer to me, pressing herself against my side. Her hand moves to my thigh and she squeezes it. As well as I know Helen, I don’t know if this is an innocent or deliberate move, but my cock gets hard regardless. “I’m glad you’re finally seeing me for me,” she says in a low voice. “I’ve been right here, waiting for you to notice me.”
Noticing her isn’t the problem. I’ve noticed her, and noticed her, and I’ve done my best to try and ignore her deliberately. Now I’m wondering why the hell I even tried. “Helen—”
She gasps, sitting up and staring off at a distant table. “Are those glowing vegetables?”
I look over, and sure enough, someone’s got a plate of colorful, luminescent veg from a nearby moon. “They are. They don’t taste great, though, but they look nice.”
“Can we try them?” She looks up at me with excitement.
Nodding, I reach over and tap the service panel on the center of the table. It rises up, displaying the menu options, and I order the veg…and another dish full of crispy, fried treats, because the veg really does look great and taste terrible. I order myself an ale, and a fruity cocktail with lots of colorful globes inside it for Helen. Our order taken, the panel chimes and sinks in again, displaying the wait time. “You’re still hungry after all we ate?”
“I just love new experiences,” she tells me. Helen rests her cheek on my shoulder and strokes the inside of my thigh, and my cock twitches in response.
Immediately, I cover her hand with mine, stopping it before she can grab me under the table. I need to be watching for my contact, not getting an innocent hand-job under the table. “Helen,” I manage, my voice slightly strangled. “Remember when I said we’d move slow? Explain to me what that means to you.”
She sighs. “That we’d wait to have babies.”
Our drinks arrive, and I’m glad that I didn’t have any yet, because I’m pretty sure I would have spewed it all over the table. “Not exactly,” I manage, sliding the colorful fruit drink in front of her. That gets her attention, and she sits up, taking a sip and making a happy sound at the taste. I pull my drink close but don’t taste it yet. I don’t trust this conversation enough yet. “When I say we’re going to move slow, it means we’re going to take our time exploring everything. Our feelings about each other, our bodies, how fast we move. Everything is going to go at a leisurely pace between you and me.”
“So no sex yet?” she asks between sips.
“No sex yet,” I agree. “Very small steps. I want you to be comfortable with everything we do before we move to that.”
“I’m already comfortable.” She leans over, eyeing my drink. “Can I taste yours?”
I move it toward her. Helen takes a sip, and her ooli face scrunches up. I chuckle. “Not good?”
“Not good,” she manages to choke out, pushing the drink back toward me. “Why would you put that in your mouth?”
That makes me laugh harder. “The bitter taste is one you get used to after a while. It becomes refreshing. At first you don’t know what to think when you taste it, but with a few more sips, you realize it’s got a pleasant taste on the tongue.”
“Kind of like our relationship?” She gives me a thoughtful look. “Am I pleasant on your tongue now that you’ve had another taste of me?”
It’s a good thing I’m seated, because Helen is killing me with these innuendos. Worse than that, I don’t think she even realizes they’re innuendo.
CHAPTER 31
HELEN
I know we should be paying attention to the scary guy we’re supposed to be meeting here, but the cantina is full of so many fascinating people—and Mathiras is saying so many interesting things—that if our contact shows up too quickly, I might pull out my blaster and march him away from our table until I’m ready to let him talk. Because Mathiras is sipping his beer and looking at me with those intense dark eyes, and he’s talking about his feelings and I need more of this.
“What do I mean to you?” I ask him, breathless. “You said you wanted to go slow, but you have to be specific with me. Tell me exactly what you mean so I make sure I understand and you don’t push me away again.”
A look of remorse crosses his handsome, stern face. He takes my hand in his before I can reach for my pretty drink again and runs his thumb over my gloved knuckles, then presses a kiss there. Oh. I liked that. I smile at him, and he smiles back, and my insides melt, just a little. “It means you and I talk a lot. We really get to know each other. We decide that this is absolutely what we want as we move forward. And then we move very gradually into the physical aspects of things.”