Chapter 13 #2
Eun, right now, was like one of the bad ones, the ones who were snarling beasts who had to be locked up after they killed and ate the ones they promised to love.
He was locked up in that room for me. To keep me safe.
The thing was, I wasn't a prey species, not by the definitions of this planet.
No humans were, even if we swore off animal products altogether, it didn't change the physical needs of our bodies.
We could go without, but only if we had ample supplements available in a technologically modern society.
I could understand why he would think of me as prey.
I had the look of one who was sure, with my blunt nails, softer features, and mostly flat teeth.
But ultimately, if I were dumped on a primitive planet with nothing but a rabbit, there would be no question about where I stood on the food chain.
I looked down at the petals in my lap, surrounding the key to the deadbolt.
They were pale blue, trembling slightly in the breeze from the ventilation system.
The thing was, Eun hadn't hurt me. When he put his teeth against my neck, it didn't hurt.
He hadn't bitten me. Even when covered in blood and clearly out of his mind, he was gentle with me.
Something deep inside of him recognized me for who I was and who I could be to him.
He was there for me when I needed him the most.
I couldn't stop thinking about him moving against me.
The details of it would come to me late at night, swirling in my mind with the remembrance of the hard lines of his body, the soft texture of touching him, how he seemed lost in me.
The first time I had squeezed him in my hand, I felt so in control and out of it.
It had aroused me like no other moment I could think of in my life.
The second time, when he had pinned me to the floor and humped me, the memory lived rent-free in my thoughts, playing over and over again.
He hadn't hurt me. He had saved me. He wanted me.
And yet he still locked himself up like he thought he was a danger to me.
I knew he wasn't, but I also knew there was only one way to be sure about that.
I picked up the key, rising to my feet and letting the blue flower petals scatter to the ground around my feet.
One thing I knew for certain was that this was going to be one of the best or worst decisions of my life.
It was okay. Even if I was wrong, he was still chained. I just had to stay out of his reach.
"Eun," I whispered, leaning my forehead against the door. "I'm going to come in there."
He let out a groan, as if he were trying to speak, but the words wouldn't come.
I unlocked the door and pushed it open.
Eun stood in the center of the room, slack in the chain that attached to the thick metal collar around his neck, staring at me with his feral eyes, his hair reaching out towards me, looking longer than before, framing his face.
He stood perfectly still, as if the slightest movement would cause me to flee.
He wasn't wearing much, just a pair of tight-fitting black boxers that were darker than his slate grey skin, the rest of his beautiful body on display.
His muscles tensed as I looked at him, accenting the gorgeous lines of his muscular frame, his skin pulled tight against them to show them off in extreme detail, as if every additional bit of fat in his body had been devoured for some other purpose.
The sight of him was so disjointed from the reality of his work.
This wasn't the body of a server in a restaurant.
This was the body of a man who lived and breathed movement and strength.
The rest of his clothing was trashed, torn apart into tattered rags as if a wild animal had been let loose in the room.
The rags were piled up near his mattress, which he had dragged off its frame and onto the floor, with all the sheets, blankets, and pillows piled up near it, but not on it.
On the far end of the room, where the chain was bolted to the wall by a metal plate, the wall was cracked around it.
I stepped into the room, and his eyes never left me, tracking my movement.
"Eun?" I asked. I found the words in his language, framing them as I had practiced. "Talk to me."
He just watched me, not moving, not saying anything.
I stayed where I was, just inside the door, my hand lingering on the cool frame.
I wasn't afraid of him. If Eun wanted to hurt me the way the shows dramatized, he'd had more than enough chances.
He hadn't. Not once. The fact held me in place as much as the unease did.
The problem wasn't fear... it was the gap I couldn't cross without the language to build the bridge.
I didn't fully understand what I was seeing, what was unfolding between us.
He was alien in more than shape. His silence carried weight I couldn't measure, his stillness too exact, too deliberate to map against human reactions.
If I tried to layer my own logic over his, it slipped off, useless.
Whatever he did, whatever choice flickered behind the intense focus of his gaze on me, it came from a place I had no map for.
And so I stayed, rooted just inside the threshold, aware of how close and far that line between us really was.
"Eun, talk," I said. "You need? What do you need?"
I wanted to ask him what he needed to get through this, what I could give, what would ease the weight he carried...
but my words were limited. So I used the few I had learned, shaping them carefully, and hoped he would find some way to answer me.
Gratitude pressed at me; he had saved me, and I felt the truth of owing him my life.
Yet I had always believed that a gift, once given, should never demand return.
I wasn’t standing here out of obligation.
I stayed because I wanted to, because the memory of his arms around me still lingered...
a phantom pressure against my ribs, a warmth that fluttered low in my chest. Maybe it was nothing more than trauma’s echo binding me closer than I should be.
Or maybe it was the beginning of something far deeper.
More than anything, I wanted to know that when I finally found my way back to Earth, I wouldn’t be leaving him broken, but better than I had found him.
He didn't answer, so I just stared back at him.
He had enough length in his chain to use the ensuite bathroom, but it didn't look like he had washed himself in a few days.
His skin was greasy, and the musk in the room, though it wasn't unpleasant, made it clear that showering hadn't been on his to-do list. There was still dried blood on his skin, dark and disgusting.
He had light purple slashes on his skin from where his cuts were freshly healed.
I turned and went back into the apartment to search for what I needed.
I left the door wide open so he could see me moving around, and he remained silent, still.
I found a large bowl under the sink and filled it with warm water.
I got a washcloth and put some of the soap I had in my own ensuite in the water.
I put the bowl down, grabbed a small table that was next to one of the arms of the couch, and walked back to the doorway.
I placed it inside his room, halfway between the door and him, out of his reach.
There were claw marks on the floor that marked the edge of where I thought he could reach.
I went and got the bowl, brought it in, and set it down on the table.
I dunked a washcloth in the water and then went right up to the claw marks.
His nostrils flared as I approached, but he didn't move.
He was a little bit back from that line, with slack in his chain.
I wanted to trust him. I really did. But Abby had gone out of her way to show me those programs, frame by frame, filled with warnings I couldn’t quite scrub from my mind.
Back home, I’d sat through bad dates...awkward conversations, mismatched expectations, but never once had a man tried to hurt me.
I knew other women hadn’t been so lucky.
I also knew the way the mind worked, how easy it was to dismiss someone else’s nightmare if you’d never lived it yourself.
That blind spot was always there, waiting to make you careless.
So even as part of me wanted to write off her warnings as nothing more than media propaganda, I couldn’t.
I held them close, like a splinter under the skin I couldn’t dig out.
I didn't believe he would hurt me, but my belief wasn't good enough.
Belief was never good enough. It had to be supported by truth.
Truth was discovered through the basic scientific method.
Make a hypothesis and then try to prove it wrong, over and over again.
My hypothesis was that he wouldn't hurt me.
He'd already shown he wouldn't, but the truth wasn't found in a single test; it required multiple tests.
It required me to be careful, slow, and methodical.
If he failed the test, even once, I would know I was wrong.
When he looked at me with a tension that sent shivers of excitement through me, making my heart beat faster, my instincts telling me that if I went within his reach, he would pounce.
Heat flared between my legs at the thought.
I wasn't just in here to help him, I realized.
I was in here because I couldn't stop thinking of his body moving on top of me.
"I wash," I told him, holding out the washcloth as I pointed at the line with my other hand. "You come here."
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then he took one step forward, then another, stalking towards me like a lion slinking through the grass, until the chain around his neck snapped taut, stopping him at the end of its range, his tail and hair all reaching towards me even though his hands stayed down by his side.
"I will wash you," I said again.