Dirk laughs, presses his lips to the sweat-drenched nape of your neck, lets his teeth scrape the skin. "Don't worry, babe, I'm not going to leave you hanging. I've got something special for you. Get up."

Crackling quiet on the line for a second. "Are you serious?" Jake asks at last. "You've programmed that machine of yours to...?" He trails off but the question mark is audible.

Honestly you don't give two shits what the kid looks like. Your audience will go for it even if you get someone who got beaten half to death with the troll ugly stick. The picture loads. You're going to make so much alien fetish money you're going to have to hire somebody to build a swimming pool on the roof, just so you can fill it with sleazy intergalactic flesh trade dollars and roll around in it like an asshole.

"I got you this." He sets a tiny box on the table between you and nudges it in your direction with psionics. You stare at it. It's the right size to hold a human-style commitment-designation ring, which you sometimes think would be a cool thing to have but as far as you know he's never been interested in. "For those times when I'm being a jackass and you need to snap me out of it." A little smile, a hint of the smug asslord creeping back in around the edges of the apologetic matesprit. "Or when you just want a shortcut to getting my attention."