“I’ve never been with anybody.”
“So you will be mine in every way. You will learn the ways of pleasure from me. This is a responsibility I take seriously. I want you to experience the grandest of romances, fit for a king’s mate.”
The sun is setting, and we are sitting at the very top of the fortress. Rex has prepared the finest foods at hand, which are the same foods we ate yesterday, and this morning and at mid-day. But they taste even more special for being served on individual leaf plates at a table he put atop the fortress.
It’s supposed to be an arrow stand. There are grooves along the top to let the arrows settle, and a lip around the edge to stop them falling off. I find myself looking at everything but him. I wanted this, but I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m worried that I’m going to say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing. I’m worried that I’ll end up resorting to just throwing myself at him and tearing at his pants like a wild animal…
“When I was on my world, and I welcomed a new female to my harem, I used to throw a great banquet.”
And just like that, the mood is absolutely obliterated.
“What is wrong? Your face just slipped.”
“Where I am from, we are not… I don’t…” God. Males of any species can kill the mood fucking dead with one sentence, it’s like their self-sabotaging superpower or something.
“What is it you are trying to say?”
I look him dead in his pitch-black eyes. “I don’t want to be some part of a new harem. I want to be a man’s only woman.”
“Oh!” He seems genuinely surprised. “You wish to be my only mate!”
“Ideally, yeah.”
Monogamy sounds really kind of selfish when you have to explain it to someone who has never done it before. But it’s not selfish. It’s sensible. It’s what I was made for, and it’s what I think I have the right to demand.
“There are only the two of us here,” he says.
“Sure, but some other person could show up at any moment. We don’t know how we got here. Tomorrow twelve women could be put here. Or twelve men.”
“Then I would have twelve warriors for my army, and twelve women for my ha…” He does not finish the sentence, but it is obvious that Rex considers absolutely everything and everyone his. He is the most possessive creature I have ever encountered.
“In my harem, I had mates who each performed different roles. Every female according to her interests and her times. I could sate my passions as needed. I have produced over a hundred offspring…”
He’s saying that like it’s going to be appealing to me as a human, but he is very good at reading my expressions and he is working out that I’m not only not impressed by that, I’m getting increasingly turned off by his confession of being a baby daddy en masse. I suppose I shouldn’t judge him for what he did before he came here. I know I wouldn’t want him to judge me for what I did. I need to explain myself.
“Where I come from, if a relationship is a good one, a man commits to a woman for life. For better or worse. In sickness and health. Richer or poorer. It’s a bond that should last forever, something that both people can put their trust in and raise their family in.”
“Fascinating,” he murmurs. “You must be very limited in familial numbers.”
“Surprisingly not. Some people have…” I’m not being completely honest. “Listen, some people don’t follow the rules. They cheat on each other. Or they swap one partner for another after dumping the first one.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they don’t get along anymore, or because one has secretly been an asshole…”
He lets out a regal utterance of what might be shock. I’d call it a gasp, but massive, muscular kings do not gasp. Probably. “You mean your species simultaneously has these rules for mating, and then is unable to meet the conditions they set themselves? What is the point of that?”
“I guess… I mean, a lot of people do find true love. They meet, they marry, and they live happily ever after. That’s what I want. Happily ever after. But I never had a relationship because they’re complicated, and because I never met anyone I trusted enough.”
“So you need this single mate bond, this complete, all-encompassing promise for eternity if you are to give yourself to someone.”
“Yes.”
“Fascinating.”
He’s not angry. For some reason, I thought he would be angry. I guess because I’m used to dealing with guys who assume they have access to my body if I go to dinner with them. Rex, who thinks absolutely everything in the physical universe is his, somehow understands better.