3. Sloane

three

Sloane

I pull out all the ingredients I brought from my house to make cookies from my duffel bag. Sure, I could've brought something to share with everyone already premade. But one of my favorite hobbies, when I had enough time to have a hobby that wasn't working every waking moment of my life in a soul-sucking office job, was baking. Plus, I'm never going back to my apartment. There wasn't a point in keeping anything perishable there.

Essa gives me a worried look when I pull out eggs and butter from my suitcase. Her gaze, looking more and more concerned with each new ingredient, I plop onto the bed.

"What are you doing?" Essa asks, standing in the doorway to my room.

I have to admit, it's a pretty nice room. The bed is enormous—big enough to fit a few people, and it takes up most of the space in the room. That part makes sense, considering what I'm here to do. There's a small dresser for my clothes and a bathroom off to the side that I haven't gone to look at yet, but I imagine it has all the important things like a shower and a toilet.

"I brought stuff to make cookies," I say as I hand her the flour and sugar. She takes it without question but continues to stare at me like I've done something confusing. I turn with my hands on my hips. "Am I not allowed to bake anything as part of the pleasure crew? Because I'm human crew right now, and I think that means I can make food."

Essa's eyes widen a fraction as her tail thrashes behind her in a motion that tells me she's either upset or worried. Lots of species that have tails normally have their movement tied to emotions, but different cultures mean different tail twitches for different things. I don't know enough about any of their cultures to know if this is an angry thrash, an uncomfortable one, or an embarrassed one.

"Sorry," Essa says, her tail swishing back and forth even harder. She winces as her eyes crinkle, her lips pressed awkwardly together like she isn't sure what to do. Okay, so the tail thrashing right now is embarrassment. That's good to know. "You're right. This is all new for me as well. Normally, I show you to your room, you close the door, and you don't speak to me for the entirety of the mission."

"We're the only girls here now. We gotta stick together, right?"

Essa's tail pauses its movements before locking around my ankle again as she leads me down the halls to what I'm assuming is the kitchen. "I'd very much like to stick together with you, Sloane."

I let out a snort of a laugh right as Essa looks back at me, a serious look on her face that tells me she isn't joking. I silence my laugh, schooling my features to be serious like hers and give her a quick nod. She shakes her head, a smile tugging at her lips before turning back around.

"I think we'll make fast friends," Essa says.

"Yeah, I think so too."

What's crazy is I actually feel like they're true, even though we've only known each other for maybe an hour at this point. Sometimes, there are people you meet in life whose vibes match up so well with yours that you just know you're meant to be friends, and that's how I feel about Essa. Sure, I feel that way about a lot of people, but I also get along with most people, so it works out most of the time.

We turn around one last corner to a closed door that whooshes open when we near it. There are two males inside, the other two who came out to see me when I first arrived. The human-looking one notices us first, his eyes lifting from whatever he's reading on his comm and then widening when he sees me right behind Essa.

He stands from his seat and steps up with a hand out toward me. "Holoth, Rytharian crew."

"Sloane, human crew," I take his hand, noticing how his eyes flicker down to the pendant that's still turned off between my breasts before flicking back up to my face after only a second. Holoth offers me a small smile and then turns to the other male, who's standing behind the counter in the center of the kitchen with a confused look on his face.

"Did you not read my message?" Essa asks as she moves deeper into the kitchen, dropping the flour and sugar onto the counter and nudging me to her side so I can set my stuff down as well.

Holoth sits back down and holds his comm up like he's reading, but his attention keeps snagging on the area where the rest of us are still chatting.

"Sorry," the reptilian-looking male says.

The dark feathers that adorn his head and go down his back like his species' version of hair rustle softly, and he tries to smooth them down with one of his four-fingered hands. Sharp, black talons jut out from the tips of each of his fingers, and his scales seem to shimmer softly before settling into a dark navy shade. He's the smallest of the other crew members. He's probably as tall as me, maybe a fraction of an inch taller because of the feathers.

"So sorry," the scaled male says again, this time wiping his hands on his pants. His feathers lift from his head again, and he frowns as he goes to flatten them. Finally, he huffs out a desperate sound and walks over to me. "Phial, Sytharan crew."

I take his hand, noticing that his talons have sunken into his fingers enough so they're not looking as scary as they were earlier. I give him a bright smile and hope he doesn't feel awkward for much longer since we're all about to spend a lot of time together, trapped on this ship. He returns my smile, and his body seems to relax.

I'm just about to tell him my name, as though he didn't just hear me introduce myself to Holoth when the door to the kitchen whooshes open again.

A low growl vibrates in the air. "Get your hands off my pleasure crew."

Everything seems to happen a bit too fast for me to really understand. One second, I'm shaking Phial's hand, and we're all doing great at getting to know one another. The next, Holoth is jumping out of his seat, tugging Phial away from me. Essa is wrapping her tail tighter around my ankle as she herds me into a corner of the kitchen, her body blocking mine from whatever else is happening. Alik comes huffing and puffing into the kitchen, his eyes piercing into mine, deep, cold blackness staring right at me. His lips pull back, and he turns his attention to Phial, who's now standing behind Holoth, his hands in the air like he's trying to show he isn't a threat.

"Woah, woah, woah!" Jovi comes running into the kitchen, placing two of his hands on Alik's chest and pushing him back out into the hallway—or at least he tries. Alik only growls louder, his teeth snapping together as he tries to push Jovi off him. "Are you ordering me to let you go, or do you realize you need to go calm down?"

Alik's eyes snap over to me again. This time, the icy coldness in them flickers back to how they looked earlier when we were all talking in the living room. Warmth returns to his eyes and makes him appear less like a predator. Not that he did much talking then, but he wasn't losing his shit and threatening people for touching me.

The look on his face when he comes back to reality in the kitchen is heartbreaking. His lips fall, his eyes screw shut, and then he turns from everyone and stomps back out without saying another word to any of us.

"Is he okay?" I ask.

I peek around Essa's arm and see everyone looking at me. A smile breaks across Jovi's lips when he realizes I'm asking about Alik. I'm worried about Phial, too, but he's here with us. I'll ask about him in a second. Alik definitely acted weird, and I don't think it was a normal occurrence, considering how everyone reacted. He didn't even stay long enough for any of us to check on him.

"He'll be fine," Jovi says, one of his upper hands rubbing the back of his neck. "We're a little territorial over our pleasure crew, but he's never acted like that before. I'll have a talk with him tonight."

"I was introducing myself," Phial says, working diligently to smooth his now almost straight-up feathers back down on his head. "I was being perfectly cordial. Tell him, Sloane. I didn't even look at her breasts, unlike Holoth, who stared."

"Staring implies it was for longer than a fraction of a second," Holoth interjects before anyone can even react to Phial throwing him under the bus.

It doesn't stop the laugh that bubbles in my chest or the cackle that comes out of Essa's. Jovi smiles wide at the two of us and then tilts his head back to the counter, telling us we don't need to stay hidden in the corner. Essa steps away first, giving me more space, and we move back over to everyone else.

"Are you going to try to attack everyone, too?" Essa asks Jovi. Her tail loosens a bit on my ankle but doesn't release it.

"You know I don't attack people," Jovi says, tapping his fingers on the island counter in the middle of the kitchen. He glances over all the stuff I have laid out on the counter as he slides into one of the stools on the opposite side of the counter from me. He's in the perfect seat to watch me bake. "What are you two up to?"

"I'm making you guys some cookies," I say with way too much enthusiasm, considering there was almost a murder in this kitchen not even two minutes ago. "I figured it could be my way of saying thanks for letting me join you guys on this mission."

Holoth chokes on his drink. Essa snorts a sound that's definitely her trying to hold back her laugh. Even Phial shakes his head at how absurd they all seem to think what I'm saying is.

"Sloane, I don't know if you know this, but you're going to show your thanks for being on this ship plenty of times before this mission is over." Jovi's words fill me with a warmth that I wasn't expecting.

The flush in my cheeks grows warmer and warmer as the violet of his chest seems to do the same. His arms go to cover it again, but he stays smiling at me, almost like he knows exactly what he's doing when he says stuff like that.

"Treat her as you would me," Essa grumbles as she moves over to a stool next to Jovi and sits down, finally releasing my ankle.

"I would flirt with you too if I didn't think you'd cut my dick off," Jovi says, pushing Essa in the shoulder in a playful way. "Now, let's all watch and judge Sloane as she makes us her human treat."

My face is still flushed as I take inventory of all of my supplies. Then, being the petty creature I am, I move closer to Jovi, leaning close to his ear as I pretend to grab something I'll need.

"I think we all know what human treat you actually want," I whisper, just loud enough for him to hear.

A low growl rumbles in his chest as he turns his face to look at me. The icy coldness that was in Alik's eyes when he came in here, all angry and possessive, flickers in Jovi's eyes before it dissipates, leaving him smiling even brighter than before.

"Sloane, I think we're all going to enjoy having you as part of the crew."

"I hope so," I say as I grab whatever I'm pretending to grab that's near him. I turn away, swaying my hips a bit more.

"Enough flirting," Essa says as she leans over the counter and watches me begin to pull out a bowl and whisk. "You have plenty of time to do that when no one else is around. For now, let's figure out how much we do or do not like cookies."

"First of all, you're going to love the cookies," I say, pointing my whisk at Essa and not removing it until she relents and nods her head. "Second of all," I look at Jovi and give him a seductive smile. "I get to flirt with anyone whenever I want."

Jovi's violet flush grows even more underneath his arms, and he shifts in his seat, obviously affected by me. I chew on my lower lip, wondering if this is really going to be much of a job if I'm already enjoying myself so much.