Chapter 8
EIGHT
Ethan
I opened my eyes. The room was lit with a dull glow of a lamp-like object in the ceiling. Goldie lay with her back to me, still asleep.
Last night, I’d tried to sleep on the floor. On the other side of the room. But she’d refused. So I’d separated us by a blanket border that had collapsed sometime in the middle of the night. Fortunately, the bed was big enough that I hadn’t touched her.
On my back, I remained on my side of the bed and folded my hands behind my head. Anger simmered in my blood, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get rid of it. Not for a long time. Maybe not ever.
One minute, Goldie’s perfect fingers had brushed my aching cock, and in the next, she’d been a shaking, huddling, sobbing ball.
Whatever she relived in her head for those brief seconds were enough to terrify her so badly that she lost all control.
I assumed she had a flashback. Malcolm had experienced sexual assault, and I’d been at his side as he worked through the trauma through therapy.
He experienced progress and setbacks. Healing wasn’t linear.
I saw the same haunted look in Goldie’s eyes that I’d seen in Malcolm’s.
Her males had hurt her. One or more, it didn’t matter to me—I hated them all. Fuck the Kaluma. They could fly right into the sun. How anyone could hurt Goldie, the actual most perfect creature in the entire universe—any universe—was a mystery to me.
My dreams about her were not clear once I woke. I knew I dreamed about her, and I remembered the feeling. Her presence. But not the actual dream. But the way she’d reacted last night… I’d seen her like that before. I’d dreamed it.
She’d been curious about me, my body, and I’d been happy to let her explore.
If I would have known about her past, I would have stopped it.
But the worst had to be what came after, when she’d looked at me with nothing but shame.
She had nothing to feel shame for. That rested solely on her males.
She said they were bigger than me, but fuck that.
If I saw one, I’d kill them first and ask questions later.
She murmured in her sleep and rolled onto her back. Her hair brushed the inside of my arm as her head turned to face me. The dim light made the fine features of her face glow like priceless gold.
I had to get out of this bed and away from her. Despite her reaction to touching me yesterday, my cock didn’t quite get the memo. Alone in a room with Goldie, it could only think with its single stupid head. I reached down to adjust myself before rising from the bed.
Last night, Goldie had handed me a pair of pants that were too big, but that I could cinch tight enough not to fall off.
I couldn’t quite figure out why those tiny green aliens had pants that big.
Unless… we were somewhere that one of her males had been.
Was I wearing some alien rapist’s pants? Fuck.
I drank some water. Ate some leftover food from last night. A desk in the opposite corner of the room called to me, so I sat in a chair and began to snoop in the drawers. I found a few weapons—a wicked blade and a gun that I didn’t touch for fear of firing it without meaning to.
I also found a small square device about the side of a golf ball.
It looked familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen something like it.
I turned it over in my hands and noticed a small button on the side.
I was curious as hell, but I also did not want to set off some alien bomb because I pressed buttons I shouldn’t have.
Then a gasp came from the bed. I glanced up to see Goldie already on her feet and running toward me. I placed the device on the desk and slid back with my hands up. “I didn’t press any buttons, I swear.”
She snatched up the device and turned it over in her hands. Her big eyes turned to me, and a wide smile split her face. She tucked her hair behind her ear and pointed to the device there and—
“Oh, damn,” I whispered. “That’s why it looks familiar.”
Goldie had the same device behind the rim of her ear, and if I had understood her correctly when we first met, that device was why she could understand me. Which meant—
“Can you put that on me?” I asked. “So we can talk?”
She bit her lip and ran her fingers over the device. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, because she gave me an excited nod.
“All right, well, do what you need to do.” I turned my head so she had access to my left ear. “Put it on me, Goldie.”
She turned my chin to face her. With a swallow, she pointed to the device and then clutched her head and let out a cry of pain. Concerned, I reached for her when she suddenly stopped and looked at me expectantly. I realized she’d been acting.
“It’ll hurt me, is what you’re saying?”
She nodded.
“Does the pain last forever?”
Head shake.
I shrugged. “Okay. I can handle it.”
She grimaced.
“For real, just do it.” I turned my head again and pointed to my ear. My skin prickled with the anticipation of being able to understand Goldie.
Her fingers settled on my bare shoulder. Then she brushed them over the short hair of my scalp. A tingle went down my spine as I felt the cold device touch the skin behind my left ear. I heard a beep.
And then blinding pain.
I thought I was prepared, but I was not.
Because the device was like claws digging through my scalp to tear apart my brain.
Dignity went out the window. I screamed.
I pitched forward off the chair onto all fours.
My skull was being torn apart. This was going to kill me.
Holy shit, I was going to die before ever getting a chance to understand Goldie’s words.
Fuck, what a way to go, to succumb to a tiny alien device smaller than my own heart.
And then, as sharp and intense as the pain started, it faded.
My ears rang. My vision returned in pieces. I blinked as I catalogued my position on the ground in front of the desk, where I was curled in the fetal position clutching my head. Goldie remained crouched at my side and rubbed my back like I was a child.
She was upset. Her eyes were huge and wet. She trembled. Her lips moved, and it was then I realized she was talking. She’d been talking this whole time.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her musical voice was the same, but her words were no longer foreign. “Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
The breath left my lungs in a rush.
She looked miserable. “I—I’m sorry the translator implant hurts. I never saw when the females had theirs on. I just knew it was possible because they all have them. I—” her hand slid up to cup my chin. Her thumb rubbed the stubble there. “I’m sorry, my Ee-than.”
I cupped my hands over hers. “Goldie.”
Her breathing stuttered.
“Goldie,” I said again. “I can hear you. I can understand you.”
She gasped, shaking fingers touching her lips as she went to her knees. “Ee-than?”
“Yeah, babe,” I said with a groan as I sat up with my back against the wall.
“Yeah, I’m here. Fuck, that thing was no joke.
” I touched the device. The skin around it felt sensitive, and my head still ached with a dull throb, but it was nothing compared to the acute pain of thinking my skull was cracking.
I reached for her hand. “Did it hurt this badly when you had yours installed? Or am I just special?”
“It hurt,” she said. “But it was a long time ago. I don’t remember it well.”
No way would I forget this pain. She was probably just making me feel better and it hadn’t hurt her at all.
But whatever, the pain was gone. All that mattered now was I could understand her.
I smiled. “I want to hear you talk. Fuck, Goldie. I want to know so much about you. I don’t know where to start. ”
She shuffled closer, until she kneeled between my spread legs. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything about you. What’s your name? How and why did you save me? Why do you seem to know about humans?” That was a lot of questions at once and didn’t even scratch the surface of what I wanted to know.
“I’m Hara,” she said. “I’m a healer for my settlement.”
A healer. That made so much sense. “Hara,” I tested her name. “Can I still call you Goldie?”
“I—” she ducked her head with a shy smile. “I prefer it. What does it mean though?”
I ran the backs of my fingers down the shimmering scales of her arm. “Back on earth we have a mineral we call gold. It’s beautiful and expensive. Your scales are the same color. Humans would say you’re golden.”
Her smile got bigger. “I like that.”
“Goldie it is then,” I said softly.
“I saved you because you’re not the first human I’ve seen. But you’re the first male human.”
My jaw dropped. “I’m sorry, what? You’ve seen human women?”
“They live at our settlement.”
“What?”
In her musical voice, she told me about how human women had been stolen from earth.
Not once, not twice, but many times. For maybe decades.
Some of them probably experienced unspeakable horrors, but many met kind aliens—her words—like some species called the Drixonians, and her species, the Kaluma.
The translator implant seemed to be adapting in real time.
When she first started speaking, I only caught a few words here and there, but by the end, I could understand nearly everything.
“Some of my males have human female mates,” she explained. “Even our pardux has a human mate.”
“Pardux?”
“Our leader.”
I didn’t know how to feel about this. She claimed her males were kind and that they treated their mates well, but her reaction last night haunted me. I wouldn’t ask her about it, though. If she wanted to tell me, she would. Still, I decide to pry a little bit.
“Goldie, why did you refuse to go home when I asked you to?” I asked. “Are you safe there?”
“I’m safe,” she assured me.
“So why—?”
“You needed me.” She said it very matter-of-factly. “And it just felt right to stay with you. You were in my visul and I—” she looked away then. “I just had to.”
“What’s a visul?”
“What I see when I sleep.”
I dragged in a breath. “You dreamed about me?”
“Yes.”
“Goldie,” I took her hand in my lap. “I dream about you too.”
I thought that would make her happy, but instead, she winced and looked down at her hand. I squeezed gently. “What? Is that not good?”
“No, it’s fine… I just… it’s fine.”
She wasn’t telling me something. “What—?”
A knock at the door interrupted me. Goldie rose to her feet and answered the door. The same creature that had brought us food last night stood in the doorway. She spoke in rapid, short phrases that my implant didn’t translate well. I thought I caught something about food.
Goldie turned to me and extended her hand. “They invited us for the first meal.”
I raised my eyebrows as I stood. Based on their response to me yesterday, I didn’t think I’d be welcome to break bread with them. “They want me there? Yesterday I could have sworn they were going to gut me when you weren’t looking.”
“They have never seen a human, and you were armed. You were also scowling.”
“They pointed arrows at us. A scowl was the mildest reaction I could give.”
She laughed, and fuck, but the sound was beautiful. “Come on. I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”
Of course I was hungry. I took her hand and didn’t let it go as we left the room and followed the short alien down the narrow hallway.
My head nearly brushed the ceiling. Goldie told me the alien in front of us was I’lly, and she was the mate of the leader, K’il.
She told me that because of the varied herbs the drubles grew, many Kaluma healers came here to gain skills on how to use the plants properly.
The suite we stayed in was made for the Kaluma healers, which explained why the pants I wore were in the room.
We entered the main cavern of their cave home where we’d been yesterday.
A large fire roared in the center and the smoke rose to a small hole in the ceiling, some fifty yards above us.
Meat roasted on nearly half a dozen rotating spits, filling the cave with a delicious smoky scent that made my mouth water.
Food was everywhere—fruits and nuts in shapes and colors I had never seen before.
Goldie told me she knew what I could eat, so she piled a plate for the both of us.
We sat at a small table near I’lly and the K’il guy.
I drank some cold brew that reminded me of iced tea and ate juicy fruits with gamey meat.
My implant began to pick up more of the druble conversations, but my mouth was too full to add much.
Plus, I didn’t want to say anything to piss them off.
I wasn’t known for my manners. What if I said something that they found incredibly offensive and then I ruined the Kaluma and druble allyship?
That would suck. I didn’t want to do anything to hurt Goldie.
Even if the rest of her people could suck it.
I still couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that her males had human females. She made it seem like everyone had free will, and the women had chosen their Kaluma mates, but I couldn’t accept that. Not when I’d seen how Goldie had reacted to touching me.
And that weighed on me, more than I thought it would. Were the women okay? Was Goldie really safe? And why was I making this my problem when I had enough worries of my own? I wasn’t here to stay, and I wasn’t a hero.
But that didn’t stop the uneasy feeling in my gut. Did I have time to travel to her settlement to investigate? And what the fuck would I do against a whole tribe of males who could probably crush me in one fist?