Boring.
The door to the training room opens and when I open my eyes, Zebah slinks in. She’s got her long hair pulled into a high ponytail and her clothes have been freshened. I’m annoyed to see that her eyes light up at the sight of me. “Well hello, stranger,” she purrs. “What are you up to?”
“Contemplating ways to kill you while I practice,” I say, and flick another knife at the target.
She seems startled at my words, and there’s no arousal scent this time. “You want to kill me?”
“I do. I don’t like you. And I don’t like being enclosed with you. Mathiras says if you touch me I can snap your arm, but I’d much rather kill you and apologize later.” I shrug, switch hands, and close my eyes when I throw the next knife. A little bit off center, which means room to improve on. I like it. I move to the target and pluck the blades from the center, then glance over at her.
Zebah looks shocked and unhappy. “You don’t like me?”
“No. You’re creepy. I don’t like that we’re stuck with you. So I’m trying to figure out ways to fix that.”
“Damn.” She sits down at the edge of the room, far away from my target and just watches me. “You’re not what I expected a qura’aki to be.”
“And how did you expect them to be?” I’m practically bristling at my own question.
“Sweet. Soft.”
“I can be sweet and soft. Just not to you.” I sniff the air. “No arousal today? I thought you liked danger.”
“I like danger but I’m not keffing stupid.” She crosses her legs and leans back in the chair, watching me. “So how would you kill me? Not poison, I assume?”
I shake my head. “Waste of perfectly good food.”
“Ouch.” But she doesn’t seem surprised. “You’re good at breaking necks. You could always do that…except mesakkah have horns, and those might get in the way when you grab. You don’t want to lose an eye.”
She’s not wrong. I finger one of my blades. “I was thinking stabbing.”
“Blood would get into the filtration systems. Makes the water taste too salty. Trust me, I know.” She grimaces. “My first time out on a pirate ship, the male I was apprenticing with thought it meant I should serve him in his bed since he was ‘doing me a favor’ by teaching me how to corsair. He tried to touch me, and I stabbed the kef out of him.” She shakes her head. “Blood everywhere. You don’t realize how much blood is in a single person until you have to scrub it from the floors and the filters. The bots were useless.”
I hate her a little less after this. “Did he try to pinch you, that man?”
“Oh, he pinched me all the time.” Zebah makes a face. “I endured that. It was when he tried to stroke my tail that I stabbed him.”
I think about Mathiras’s tail. I toss another blade toward the target with my off-hand, but I’m more interested in the conversation. “Is stroking tails bad?”
“No, but it’s a very private sort of touch. You only want someone you love and trust to touch your tail, because they’re fragile. They can get broken easily, and it’s painful if they’re yanked on. They’re sensitive, too. Lots of nerve endings.”
“I see.” I consider this a bit more. “So not neck-breaking. Not stabbing. Maybe a blaster.”
“Maybe,” Zebah adds. “But if you shoot the wrong spot, there’s a lot of blood.”
“I wouldn’t shoot the wrong spot. I’m perfect.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to see that.” The look she gives me is guardedly wary. “You know what the best idea is, then? If you don’t use a blaster? Suffocation.” She nods approvingly. “You got plas-film and upper body strength? Suffocation is absolutely the way to go.”
This is fascinating. “Tell me more.”
“Well, it involves a bit of maneuvering, but you’re fast, right? You could probably do it. What you need is some adhesive plas-film and to get close enough to someone to cover both their nose and mouth all at once. Then you pin the arms and legs and wait for them to just…stop breathing.” Zebah snaps her fingers. “Easy enough, and all the messy things stay inside.”
I’m impressed. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“I’ve had to kill a few people in my day,” she agrees. “When you don’t have a crew, you have to learn how to handle things yourself. A female in this universe is expected to either have a male with her or to be dangerous, so I’ve become dangerous. I’m a pro at seducing a male and then choking him on his own plas-film before he can even get his cock out.”
She’s saying things that make me like her. I toss another knife and glance over at her. “My female friends and I were stuck on a ship alone for years. The only males we saw were ones that tried to hurt us or steal us. So we stole back from them.”