Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
I’m sure my car has been towed at this point, and I don’t dare to venture into the parking lot to check, so X and I are forced to leave the MRF on foot.
He lifts me in his arms and climbs the fence surrounding the Facility before I can protest, half shifting and using his tentacles to propel us over the top and over to the desert on the other side.
But he lands heavily, and as we trek toward the desert toward Ash Valley, his steps drag and blood dots the sand behind us.
My chest aches. I wish I could stop somewhere to tend to his wounds, but we need to get away from the MRF first and find somewhere safe.
I can’t go home, where the MRF will undoubtedly come looking first, so instead we head to the closest motel.
Luckily, my wallet is still in the purse I grabbed from the lab, and the bored teenager at the front desk doesn’t ask any questions about the dull-eyed man in a lab coat or the stack of files I’m carrying.
X maintains his disguise as we enter the room. He collapses onto the bed while I draw the blinds and lock the door. I grab some damp towels from the bathroom and sit beside him to attempt to clean and dress his wounds.
“Get rid of your clothing, please,” I say. He obeys without opening his eyes.
My heart twists as I clean away enough blood to see the damage.
I thought he was soaked red from massacring the guards and scientists, but he’s hurt, too.
There are multiple bullet wounds, but most are shallow, glancing hits.
The one in his chest—the one he took for me—is the worst, and it’s still sluggishly leaking blood.
I find a first-aid kit under the sink and tend to him as well as I can, wiping each wound clean, pressing adhesive bandages to stem the bleeding.
I suspect there’s still a piece of a bullet lodged in his chest, but I’m not confident in my ability to get it out, so all I can do is bandage it like the rest. X is quiet throughout the process.
When it’s done, I take a couple minutes to wash off in the shower, briskly scrub my clothes and hang them to dry, and then return to his side, wrapped in a robe.
X hasn’t moved. His breathing is labored, his skin taking on that faint blue tinge that shows he’s losing control of his form. I settle carefully on the bed beside him.
“Will you heal?” I ask softly, almost afraid of the answer.
“Yes,” he says. “Eventually. Will take…much time. And rest.” His eyes are heavy-lidded even now, like he’s fighting to stay awake.
“How long of a rest?” I ask, my gut twinging with nerves as I think of the MRF searching for us. Ash Valley is a small town. They’ll find us quickly if we don’t move.
He’s quiet for a moment before he says, “Very long, taujak. I do not know how to measure your time, but…long. A hibernation sleep.”
“Days?” I ask. I know he understands that measurement, at least, after the day-night light cycles in the cell.
“Many, many days.”
My stomach sinks, though I try not to let my despair show. He’s too injured to move, even if he were able to stay awake.
Looking at how exhausted he is, I want to tell him it’s okay to sleep, but he may not wake again before the MRF hunts us down. They’re going to find us. This may be the only time we have.
“Is there anything else I can do to help?” I ask, rubbing slow circles on his chest in an attempt to soothe him.
“No. Do not worry for me.” He looks tired, so tired, his forehead pale and beaded with sweat. Faint shivers rack his body. Realizing the air conditioning is blasting to combat the summer heat, I hurriedly pull the comforter over him and turn up the thermostat. “Is that better? Warm enough?”
He nods but continues to shiver, even beneath the blankets. Occasionally, his eyes open and are pitch-black for a moment before they adjust; other times, his shape ripples and distorts beneath the blanket, like his control over this form keeps slipping.
I don’t know how to help. I crank the heat up as high as I can and sit beside him on the bed, placing a hand against his clammy forehead. He presses against my touch and sighs but doesn’t open his eyes.
“Is it difficult to maintain this shape?” I ask softly, stroking my hand over his skin. “You should take your natural form if it’s easier.”
He opens his eyes, gazing blearily up at me. “Want you to feel safe,” he murmurs.
I smile slightly. Even now, injured and ill, he’s thinking of my comfort.
The warmth of fondness in my chest only makes my anxiety heighten, but I try to seem calm.
“I will,” I say. “I promise.” I stroke my fingers down his cheekbone and across his jawline.
“I want to see you in your true form. Please.”
He searches my eyes. Then I watch as his pupils expand, inky blackness growing to consume the irises, then the white sclera.
His skin turns pale blue, and his hair grows as its color bleeds away, leaving it pure white.
His features are still humanoid, but different, blocky, with a sharp jawline and prominent cheekbones.
His lips are a darker blue, and slightly parted to make room for the mouthful of sharp teeth within.
His body shifts and grows beneath the comforter.
A few tentacles protrude from within, blue and veiny, ends curling around the pillows.
One reaches for me and I reach back, letting it wrap around my wrist, suction cups adhering to my skin in a way that tickles faintly.
I trace my fingers over his face like I did when he was still in human form. His skin is cold and scaly under my touch, and I can’t recognize the emotions playing across his alien features—but I do see the being I’ve grown to love in his dark eyes.
All of my life, I have chased the unknown, craved the high of discovering things I did not yet understand.
Here, in front of me, is an alien intelligence and range of emotion that is both different and familiar at the same time.
It makes me feel something that I have been hunting for a very long time: a sense of awe.
“Are you considered very handsome, for your kind?”
His head tilts slightly, eyes opening to meet mine. “What is this word, handsome?”
“Attractive. As in, females find the way you look pleasing?”
His cheeks darken to a purplish tint, and I realize with delight that he must be blushing.
“Not very much,” he says, a little sheepish.
I prefer his voice like this, with that low grumble edging every sound, and the harsh edges as sounds hiss through his sharp teeth.
“I do not have enough scars to be considered very handsome. But…”
“But what?” It’s adorable, actually, seeing this huge alien become shy.
“I am sort of, well… Females do find me attractive, but more in the way of…how younger males are attractive, or how females are.”
I’m confused for a moment before letting out a delighted laugh. “You’re saying you’re a pretty boy among your kind?”
The purple in his face deepens. “Is that how you would translate it? Pretty boy?”
He says the words with such distaste that it makes me laugh harder. After a moment, his mouth twitches upward into a smile as well.
“You find this amusing, hm? You enjoy having a pretty boy as your taujak?”
“I do,” I say teasingly. “I love you like this.” I lean in and press a gentle kiss to one cheekbone, and then to the edge of his mouth.
By the time I reach his lips, he turns and kisses me first. What begins as sweet soon turns hot with desire, but I place my hand on his jaw and pull away, breathing hard.
“You’re hurt,” I say. He pulls me in again and presses his lips to my neck, tentacles wrapping around my arms and tugging me closer. A girlish laugh bubbles out of me despite myself. “X! We shouldn’t.”
He sighs longingly against my skin. “I want you.” His voice is almost familiar, but with a new, low rumble to it. “Want the heat of you against me.”
“X…” I want it too. I desperately want this chance to be together while we’re both free of the Facility’s control and observation. But he’s hurt. “You need to rest.”
“Calli.” He cups my face, black eyes meeting mine. “There is not much time.”
The words sink into me. I want to argue, to say that everything will be all right, but I can’t find it in me to lie when we both know the truth.
I swallow hard. “What about me making…prey noises?”
He bares his sharp natural teeth in a grin. “I am no longer hungry. Make all the noise you wish.” He reaches for me, but I gently push him back down on the bed.
“Okay, two conditions. One: you’ll tell me if I’m hurting you.”
“You could not if you tried,” he grumbles, even as he lets himself be pushed. He’s at least ten times stronger than me, but he might as well be putty under my hands.
Once he lies flat, I pull the comforter down. Every new inch of his bare natural form is fascinating, so I move slowly, eyeing the muscles of his chest and chiseled abdominals. I stop when I reach his waist, and he lets out a growl of complaint.
“Two: you lie back and let me do the work,” I tell him.
He frowns. “I do not like the sound of that.”
“No?” I lean down, my hair hanging over him—but when he tries to sit up to kiss me, I pull back with a teasing grin. “Why? Do your kind not do it like this?” I throw a leg over him to straddle him through the blanket.
“We do,” he grits out. I can see the struggle for self-control on his face, and it turns me on like nothing else, having this apex predator under my command.
“But I do not want to hold back.” He places his hands on my hips, and I grind them down against him.
I feel the press of his hard, ridged length through the comforter, making heat pool between my thighs.
“I have wanted to breed with you since I first saw you, Calli.”