7. Axl

Why am I attracted to this human? She is not even of my class. She’s middling. She’s good with numbers. But I can’t help myself, I indulge her with details from my own bedroom. “A large bed in the center of a well-sized grey and black stone room. There’s a skylight over the bed. We can see the nearby planets and stars while lying down. Not that we do much stargazing while in bed together.”

“Sounds very sci-fi.”

“How often do we have sex, Georgiana?”

“I don’t know,” she answers coyly.

“We must come up with a number.” I watch her and now I wonder if she’s ever had sex. This is going to be a problem if she is completely inexperienced.

“Whatever you think is reasonable.”

“If we are married, we know exactly how much sex we have. I can’t just come up with a number. Besides, you’re supposed to be taking care of the romantic side of our story.”

Georgiana bites her lower lip and goddesses forgive me for thinking more erotic thoughts than I should about this young woman. “I don’t know. I’ve actually never been in a relationship. I’ve read a lot of books, but it was unclear how often the characters had sex and probably not very reliable.”

I need to be diplomatic, but my heart is beating so fast at the thought I might have to give her up now and that’s inconvenient because I’ve already given her a translator, my name and even more frustrating because I’m also physically attracted to her. Everything else checks out with her posing as my wife. “I’ll ask you again, have you ever had sex with anyone?”

“Almost…It’s embarrassing to say I’ve never been in a relationship that got that physical.”

I put my head in my hands. What am I going to do? If I take out her translation device she’ll still know what happened here. I’m no doctor, I can’t erase her memories. And what if I accidentally give her brain damage while trying to remove her translator? “You shouldn’t be embarrassed, but at the same time, I’m going to have to let you go.”

“Because I’m a virgin?”

“Sexually inexperienced, yes.”

“Why? How will the border control know?”

“If they guessed they might ask for proof. It would be extremely odd that you lived with me and we were married and never had a child.”

“I could be on birth control.”

“Only men take birth control in the Empire.”

“The Empire sounds like a very reasonable place,” she says. “You could have been on birth control then.”

“My medical records would have indicated that and they do not.”

“I could have lied to you and you were back so infrequently children never happened.”

“True but then they would want evidence. Unfortunately, this must be convincing. And it’s a pity because you’re so amusing and witty, as my wife. Not to mention beautiful.” I say the last words without even thinking about them. What is the matter with me?

“So that’s it? I’m disqualified just like that?” she glances at the suitcase of money.

“Don’t even think about it. I don’t buy sex.”

“And I don’t sell sex. That’s not what I was going to suggest. What if I promise to learn all your science fiction world-building to a ‘T’ and then we still try to win this? No one is going to know that I’m a virgin.”

I look into her brown eyes. Everything else about her seems right, especially my physical attraction to her and I’m guessing hers to me. The Alliance Force will have all their sensors on to make sure we truly like each other. And I’m guessing by my behavior now, I might even be in love with her. My palms are sweaty. Her pupils are dilated, maybe mine are too? I bring up my IC and scan her and then myself. I pull my eyes away from her long enough to look at the results. There’s no question that this is love.

“Well?” she interrupts my thoughts.

“We will try. But,” I put my finger over my chest. “I do not want to be your first lover in a game.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be,” she replies too quickly for my liking.