Switched: Brides of the Kindred 17 (26 page)

“
So,” he said, taking one of the plates, now loaded with long,
thin, slippery strips in sauce and various colorful vegetables.
“How old are you, Ramlow?”

“
Oh, uh…well, you know, mid-thirties, early forties. Age is
just a number as far as I’m concerned.” Ramlow looked slightly
uncomfortable.

“
Uh-huh. And how long have we known each other now, would you
say?” Kerov continued.

“
What are you doing?”
Frankie asked in his head.
“Trying to make small talk or interrogate
him?”

Kerov couldn’t
answer her without looking like he was talking to himself so he
kept his silence and stared at the other male as they settled
themselves at Frankie’s small kitchen table.

“
Oh, well…it must be six months now, right? Ever since you
took my Literature by Women of Color lecture.” Ramlow gave him what
Kerov supposed was meant to be a seductive smile. It turned his
stomach.

“
Yes,” he said neutrally. “That lecture was…most
instructive.”

Ramlow looked at him
with half-lidded eyes.

“
All I know is that the minute I saw you sitting there in the
front row, so eager to learn, with those big, gorgeous eyes of
yours, I wanted to know you better.”

“
See, now
that’s
flirting,”
Frankie informed him, her mental voice sounding slightly
breathless.
“Go
on—say something flirty back.”

Kerov cleared his
throat. “I felt…the same when I saw your big, uh, head,” he said
haltingly.

“
No, no! You don’t compliment his head—that sounds wrong! Like
you think he’s conceited. Talk about something else—how smart he
is! Or his hands—I always notice hands on a man.”

“
Excuse me a moment.” Kerov rose from the table and went to the
sink where Ramlow wouldn’t be able to see his mouth move. “I
will
not
compliment his hands,” he
muttered to Frankie as softly as he could. “He has a weak
grip—there is nothing to compliment.”

“
Go back to the table! He’ll think you’re crazy, standing by
the sink talking to yourself. No wait—grab some paper towels first
from the roll there. That’s a good excuse. And if you can’t
compliment him back, at least don’t insult him!”

Kerov didn’t like
this a bit but he grabbed a few of the thin, white sheets of paper
she’d indicated and brought them back to the table.

“
Towels of paper,” he said, handing one to Ramlow. “I thought
we might need them.”

“
Of course.” Ramlow didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. He
had opened the green glass bottle while Kerov was at the sink and
now he filled both their glasses with a slightly alcoholic smelling
liquid. “Here,” he added, handing Kerov a paper package containing
two long, thin sticks which were stuck together at one
end.

Kerov watched carefully as Ramlow took his own package of
sticks and broke them apart before digging in to the succulent
smelling food on the plate. Then he did the same but the slippery
strands which looked a little like
li-lah
eels refused to stay on the sticks.

“
Not like that,”
Frankie instructed.
“Anchor the bottom stick against your thumb and your
middle finger. Then use your pointer finger to manipulate the top
stick. No, try again…”

Kerov did, with
increasing frustration. But try as he might to follow her
instructions, he couldn’t get any of the food to his mouth. At last
he put one stick down, speared a green, crenellated thing on the
end of the other stick and shoved it into his mouth.

“
Well, at least you finally got something to eat.”
Frankie sounded
amused.
“That’s
broccoli, by the way. It’s really good for you.”

The food crunched
and a bitter, complex taste met his tongue. Kerov didn’t much like
it but it was a little better than the food he’d had at lunch so he
chewed and swallowed and then tried stabbing a different kind of
food—a round orange coin shaped object which turned out to be
slightly sweeter. Frankie informed him it was called a
“carrot.”

“
I
hope you like it,” Ramlow said, looking up from his own plate. “I
know you’re a strict vegetarian so I told them to keep it
completely meat free. Even the Pad Thai is meatless.”

“
Oh,” Kerov said flatly. Inwardly, he sighed. Was he never
going to taste anything good on this whole planet? What he wouldn’t
give for a good chunk of
bezore
steak or even a smoked
chin-o-chin
snout!

“
That’s not a very nice response,”
Frankie chided him.
“He’s telling you that he did
something especially for you—for me, anyway. It’s very thoughtful.
Say so.”

Kerov cleared his
throat.

“
My response to your overture was lacking,” he told Ramlow who
was staring at him quizzically. “Clearly it shows you’ve been
thinking of me a lot lately. So thank you.”

“
No, don’t say it like that…”
Frankie exclaimed but Ramlow seemed
pleased.

“
Well, I
have
been
thinking about you quite a bit, Francesca, that’s true,” he
murmured, lowering his voice and looking at Kerov meaningfully
across the table. “You might even say I’ve fantasized about this
very moment.”

“
You have, have you?” Kerov tried to restrain the urge to
glare at the other male. He didn’t like the idea of Ramlow
fantasizing about Frankie—not one damn bit.

“
Well yes, just the two of us, alone at last. You know, I
think we’ve been working up to this for quite a while, don’t
you?”

Ramlow reached
forward and took Kerov’s free hand. Squeezing gently, he began to
caress the back of Kerov’s fingers with his thumb in a way he
clearly thought was seductive.

Kerov stiffened and resisted the urge to jerk away and punch
the other male. On Tarsia such casual touching was against social
convention and good manners both. Also, he had no wish to be
touched by another male.
This is for Frankie,
he reminded himself grimly.
Do it for Frankie. She did more than
this for you with Xirnah.

Although if he was
expected to copulate with another male, even while in a female
body, he didn’t know if he could do it. He simply wasn’t wired that
way. In fact, the very idea made his gut churn—especially
considering the other male was the weak, spineless, unworthy
Ramlow, whom Kerov was actively beginning to loathe.

Speaking of Ramlow,
he was still making soulful eyes at Kerov across the table.

“
Oh look—I think you have something on your lip,” he murmured.
Leaning across the table, he cupped Kerov’s chin and swiped gently
at his lower lip with his thumb.

Seven Hells!
This time Kerov couldn’t stop the urge to jerk back. Letting
another male hold his hand in his clammy, limp grip was one
thing—actually allowing that male to touch and caress his face—was
another. Such intimate and romantic acts were forbidden on his
planet—not just between males—between anyone.

“
Francesca?” Ramlow frowned. “Are you all right?”

Kerov tried to cover
his involuntary gesture with a cough.

“
Excuse me,” he said, reaching blindly for the long stemmed
glass and taking a gulp of the alcohol. It burned pleasantly down
his throat—the first good tasting thing he’d put in his mouth since
he had taken up residence in Frankie’s body. Tilting it up, Kerov
drained the glass.

“
Sorry,” he said, setting it down at last. “I…was suddenly
thirsty.”

“
Suddenly shy, don’t you mean?” Ramlow gave him another one of
those “seductive” smiles and refilled the glass. “Have some
more?”

“
Thank you.” Kerov nodded and lifted the glass.

“
Hey, take it easy,”
Frankie protested as he drank.
“I’m a real lightweight when it comes
to alcohol. One glass of wine is usually my limit.”

Kerov stopped drinking but when he sat the glass back down, he
saw he had nearly drained it again. And Ramlow was already
refilling it. Still—what harm could it do? Back home he could drink
anyone he knew under the table. Surely he would have brought at
least
some
of his capacity for
holding his liquor with him. Right?

It seemed logical to
Kerov but clearly Frankie didn’t think so.

“
Eat some more,”
she urged.
“If you don’t I’m going to get drunk!”

“
Drunk?” Kerov muttered and hiccupped loudly.

“
Surely not,” Ramlow said, smiling. “Not on just a few glasses
of wine! Have some more, my dear—it seems to agree with
you.”

“
No—don’t!”
Frankie said urgently but Kerov had automatically raised the
glass and taken another drink. Whatever was in the green bottle
really was a very pleasant alcohol—he wondered if there was any way
to take some of it back to Tarsia with him.

“
This ish…I mean, is very tashty,” he said, wondering why his
words were coming out slurred. Could the alcohol be having a
greater effect on him than anticipated? He tried to think—had he
heard somewhere that people who were Switched into each others
bodies were more sensitive to such things? Especially the one who
had jumped into the host body?

“
Oh my God, you’re drunk! Or almost drunk!”
Frankie interrupted his cloudy
thoughts, sounding like she was frowning.
“You’d better be careful—too much alcohol
makes me sick.”

Kerov didn’t know
what she was talking about until he looked down at his plate again.
Suddenly the formerly savory smelling food turned his stomach. He
pushed the plate away clumsily, not wanting it near him.

“
Are you all right, Francesca?” Ramlow asked again.

“
Fine,” Kerov said slowly and distinctly. He was determined to
sober up or at least not sound quite so drunk. “Jusht…I mean just
not…very hungry right now.”

“
You know, I’m not very hungry either. Not for food, anyway,”
Ramlow said, smiling knowingly. “Maybe we should leave the cleaning
up for later and go get comfortable someplace else. What do you
say?”

Without waiting for
an answer, he rose and came around the table. Taking Kerov by both
hands, he pulled him to his feet. Kerov came willingly enough,
although his stomach lurched as he stood.

“
Hey,”
Frankie
protested in his head, sounding uncertain.
“This is moving kind of fast. What does he
think he’s doing?”

Kerov wasn’t sure
but he followed Ramlow, who appeared to be leading him into the
sleeping chamber.

Ramlow settled on
the side of Frankie’s bed and pulled Kerov down to sit beside
him.

“
You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, running a hand through
Frankie’s long, curly black hair. “So exotic…so…so
ethnic.”

“
What the hell is he talking about?”
Frankie demanded, sounding more and more
upset.
“And what
does he think he’s doing?”

“
I
think…think he’s attempt…tempting to have shexual relations,” Kerov
muttered in a hoarse whisper. He had a vague feeling that he wasn’t
supposed to be talking to Frankie in front of Ramlow—at least not
where the other male could hear—but he couldn’t seem to remember
why. Not that Ramlow was paying much attention to what he was
saying.

“
Yes, sexual—that’s exactly what it is between us,” he
murmured in Kerov’s ear, tickling him unbearably. “That’s what it’s
always been, hasn’t it, Francesca?”

“
I
don’t like this!”
Frankie yelled in Kerov’s head, making him jerk.
“Ask him about the TA job
he promised me. That’s why he was supposed to come here tonight—not
to creep all over me.”

Kerov tried to get
hold of himself and pull back from the alcoholic stupor he seemed
to have drifted into.

“
Wha’ ‘bout the…the T and A job you pr’mised me?” he asked,
looking sternly at Ramlow, though his eyes kept wanting to cross.
This close to the other male, he could smell a strangely
sickly-sweet odor that must be some kind of cologne or scent. It
made his stomach turn over again in a very uncomfortable
way.

“
We don’t need to talk about the TA position right now,”
Ramlow said, still nuzzling Kerov’s ear. “In fact, we don’t need to
talk at all. Let’s just communicate via the language of love, shall
we?”

“
Bullshit we will!”
Frankie bugled in Kerov’s head, making him
wince.
“Ask him
about his wife, Nancy—ask him if he’s really divorcing
her.”

“
Your…your Nasty wife…no…” Kerov shook his head, trying to get
it right. “Nanshy, your wife…”

“
Yes?” Ramlow was frowning at him.

“
Are you…are you really div…divor…sep’rating from her?” Kerov
demanded, attempting to sound stern.

“
We’re spending time apart,” Ramlow said dismissively. “But
let’s not talk about her right now.”

“
But Frankie—I mean
I—
really
want
to talk
about her right now,” Kerov insisted. “If Nasty…I mean Nashty is
your mate—your wife—you shouldn’t be with ‘nother female. It’s not
…not right.”