Rainbow Snippet for 12-24-2016

Rainbow Snippets is a group for LGBTQ+ authors, bloggers, and readers to gather once a week and share six sentences from a work of fiction–a WIP or a finished work or even a 6-sentence book recommendation (no spoilers please!).   Check out all the other awesome snippets by clicking on the picture above.

I’m still posting from Onyx Sun, a science fiction novel that is currently in revision. The revisions are turning out to be more complex than originally expected so the release date is, um, to be determined. (I’ve given up trying to predict one, but now that NaNoWriMo is over I’m going to be diving back into work on it.)

Following on from last week.

“Yes, Ma’am.   Do you want us to unchain it, too?” he added, nodding toward Ayess.

Taliya bit back her anger.  “Yes, please,” she replied. “It would make it much easier to get him to my ship that way.”

“I suppose it would.  But this one is an ‘it’ not a ‘he’ – its race doesn’t have sex.”  He undid the wrist cuffs that had held Ayess – and the others – to the table. 

“I’m sure they do,” Taliya replied.  “Or else there wouldn’t be any new Araxians and the race would die out.”

The man flushed.  “I mean they don’t have male or female parts.  The boss can explain it better.”

“And I’m sure Ayess could explain it even better than she can,” Taliya replied coolly.  She waited until the others had been escorted from the room and when the door closed she turned to Ayess, wanting to apologize for the man’s behavior. 

He had risen, and she got her first look at the rest of him.  He was tall and unclothed save for a brief work apron.  Powerful legs surrounded by a skirt of tentacles terminated in large flat webbed feet, but it was the look of humor in his large dark eyes and at the barest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth that caught her attention, and she tilted her head at him curiously.

“I have never seen anyone put them in their place so well,” he said.