Free Embracing Ember by Astrid Cielo

she yelled, “Silvius.” His heavy steps could be heard retracing their steps and there he was standing in the door, all six foot four inches of red-skinned male. She wanted to throw herself in his arms and bask in him. He was everything she could ever want in a male, but only one thing stood in her way. They thought she was a spy, which wasn’t a lie per se.
     
    “Maria?” he asked, his voice wrapping her in a cocoon of caramel and chocolate. Yeah, it was cheesy, but if there was one thing Maria understood it was food. Her Abuelita could cook the best cakes and pies you could ever wish for and Maria always wished for chocolate and caramel. Oh, yeah he was speaking.
     
    “I was wondering if you were ever going to get around to explaining what is going on?” she said and immediately regretted it when his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Look, I only need to ensure that you guys don’t have some nefarious plot to overtake the world and what-not. I’ll be honest, after what you guys did for Ember, I can honestly say I think your people are good guys, but you can’t blame my people from wanting to ensure that you are,” she hurried to say while holding her hands up in surrender. He seemed to ponder this before sighing.
     
    “I’m sorry, Maria. What you say is logical. I’d be happy to explain, but I’d also like for you to keep it a secret until we deem it necessary to relay our reasons for coming here,” he said. Maria nodded and accepted his hand.
     
    “Where are we going?” she asked.
     
    “My quarters. I share with Cedwin, but he is on duty right now.” He said.
     
    “Well, the quarters you gave me are private, if you would prefer.” She replied and couldn’t believe her own ears at her admission. Did she really want to be alone with this succulent piece of alien male? Succulent, really? Were the romance novels she secretly read giving her a weird vocabulary boost? She would never know because he took her by the hand and pulled her to the quarters that she had been assigned. It was messy. She had always been messy, though. One of the biggest reasons for punishment in her house had been not cleaning her room. She did countless push-ups and received numerous other punishments for being messy while in basic training and after. Silvius didn’t seem to mind, as he straightened up her quarters in post-haste and sat on her bed. She didn’t know what to say about that, so she ignored it and went straight for the meat and potatoes of the conversation. “So, what is your people’s big secret? What did I hear that I didn’t understand?”
     
    He took a deep breath and looked her in the eye. Maria felt her pulse quicken and her nipples bead. She was so attracted to this male, she thought as she licked her lips. He followed the path her tongue took and that only made her hotter. “It all started when a virus infected our female population. According to our records before the virus our population was roughly forty-nine percent female. After the virus ran its course, there were only eight percent. All females below the age of twenty and greater than the age of fifty were dead. Of those who survived, none were fertile. We went from a population of roughly three times the population of the United States to half in less than three years. What was worse, there was no way for us to procreate. We were looking in the stars after a seer predicted that our salvation would be on another planet,” he finally said.
     
    “Well, how do you know that we are the answer? I mean, how you know that we are compatible?” she asked. If the newspapers and television were to be believed, then they were genetically the same as humans. Their coloring had been attributed to the plant life on their planet, but how did they choose Earth out of all the other planets that had to hold life within the universe?
     
    He looked guilty before he finally said, “I am trusting that you won’t let this become common knowledge. About two