Chapter 5
FIVE
NICOLE
Seems like I've gone from one huge alien to another.
Greharm is literally as big as a Clydesdale, but there's nothing gentle about this giant.
I saw how he smashed Arture again and again into the kitchen counter.
That could easily be me. I gulp my stuttering breaths and curl my shaking fingers into my palm so my new captor won't notice.
Greharm picks up Arture's limp body and slings him over his shoulder. I can see the exile’s breathing, so that's something, but he'll have a concussion and some breaks for sure if he's anything like a human.
“Come, Nikola. I put your present in my ship.”
I dig my nails into my palms, preparing to get smashed into the floor. “It's Nicole. Nicola is a different name entirely.”
“Ah, Nikkel! A thousand apologies, I will learn your speech, my pretty little bugrath.”
I follow behind him, nerves clawing at my stomach. I've dealt with big dangerous animals before, I can do this. “Thanks for, uh, rescuing me.”
“Blessed bugrath Nikkel, it is entirely my pleasure. Greharm get an interesting fight, new supplies, and, most importantly, the new mother of my brood.”
Digging my nails into my palm, I try to smile. I probably look like a wide-mouthed frog. “In my culture, we, uh, we don't move so fast.”
“Where you from?”
“I'm a human. From Earth. Have you heard of it?”
“No, but your words fascinate me. Tell me what it is you want to share, and I will listen.”
“So, on Earth, we take a while before we declare we want to get married.” I bring out one of my ex’s favorite phrases: “We don’t try before we buy.”
Fuck, that was hard to say. It makes me feel two feet tall and, even though I’m the one saying it, the phrase sends me right back to my twenty-first birthday.
Greharm doesn’t slow. “Marriage fast for Nexas and, as you join my culture, you will enjoy our customs. Oh, yes, you will enjoy. Greharm has never displeased a female yet.”
Given Arture said there weren't any female Nexas, that's not a high bar.
We enter his ship through the door of our own, and I have to start watching where I put my feet.
In contrast to the smooth shiny metal of the Olorian vessel, this is a hodge podge of pipes, wires, slabs and sheets.
I spot at least eight different colors of metal in varying thicknesses carpeting the floor, rattling with Greharm's heavy steps.
Thank goodness I have boots on, or my feet would be cut to pieces.
The lights are so much brighter than fluorescent high beams, they make my eyes water.
Spent casings of bullets litter the floor, rolling with a silvery tinkle wherever I step. This guy's messy as fuck.
“Well, um, Earth’s my home, and I want to go back there. Please.”
He glances over his considerable shoulder at me, the crystals on it glittering in the harsh artificial light of his ship. “Pretty bugrath, your home is with Greharm now. I will see your belly full every day, swelling with good food and my seed.”
I stop dead. Oh, shit. Nausea tracks up my throat. “W…what if I don't want that?”
He frowns at me, Arture’s dangling form swaying side to side. “Space is cold, female. No warmth, no air. No life. Is very simple.”
This Greharm clearly won't be taking no for an answer. But I have to try.
Taking a deep breath, I blurt, “I really want to go home.”
As if I haven't said anything, Greharm opens a door made of a grate of metal and a sheet of super strong alien glass, letting out a wall of heat. He dumps Arture inside, and the crack when his head hits the floor makes me wince.
“One second.” I sidle past the huge alien. In the space, my shoulders brush against his arm.
A deep, dark sound rumbles in his chest. “Careful, bugrath. Greharm has been many cycles without the release of a female.”
I fight the urge to cringe away from him. Just as if he's an aggressive horse, I can't show fear, or he might get agitated too.
I get to my knees and haul Arture’s limp body into the recovery position, sliding his metal arm as support underneath his head and tipping his chin slightly so if he vomits, he won't choke.
Even unconscious, he stayed as a Gara-type clone, his severe expression softened by slack muscles.
It makes sense he didn't change back, otherwise he'd have turned into the gold and black clone every time he went to sleep on Earth.
His injuries make me wince, but the cuts seal up slowly before my eyes, and his bruises go from deep purples and blacks to yellow-greens that blend with his moss-colored scales. It erases the evidence that he fought fiercely.
He told me to run while Gerharm was busy.
I check his pulse out of habit and frown. It's going wild, leaping like a foal in springtime. The aliens have two hearts, but this is too much.
Easing my hands over his chest, I try to isolate each heart. I think I've got them; there's one in the center of his sternum, and one way off to the left under his breast. Both are pumping hard, his body laboring under too much stress.
Was it the sedative? Did I do that to him?
A crystal fist lowers onto my shoulder, the jagged stones digging into my back with the weight of it. “Mate, do not touch the stringy male like that.”
“I told you, I'm a healer. I'm making sure he doesn't die.” Could it be his body's suffering from the shock of the sedative?
“Hm. Mate is kind. Gentle.” The crystals tug me back from Arture. “Too soft for the dangers of space. Cannot face it alone. You stay with Greharm.”
“Do I have a choice?” I look up at him.
The giant is a stark outline, his other hand on the door. He could easily lock me in with Arture and I’d be a prisoner again in a worse cell than before.
I stand up quickly, shucking off his hand but making it look accidental. “I'm really tired, I'd like to rest,” I lie. I'm as hyper as Tammy when she's gotten into the cider apple field.
He takes a step toward me, shoulders filling the doorway of the cell, and squints at my face like he's examining it. The crystal fist comes up again, turning my chin to one side then the other.
Barely suppressing my shudder, I clamp my mouth closed.
Greharm presses a hard finger against my lips. “Open, pretty bugrath.”
He's seriously trying to examine my teeth like I would a horse's. I can't fight his strength, so my jaw opens, but I quickly snap it shut on his thumb.
My molars throb as they crash down on stone, tears springing to my eyes. That hurts like a hoof to the face.
He chuckles. “My fiery bugrath, you make my desire hard as rock.”
Fuck. I didn't dissuade him, I turned him on.
He pulls me to his broad chest and strokes my hair, as if attempting to gentle me like a skittish mare.
“First, we bandage your wounds and prepare buggazah feast. I'm pleased with the bounty in this ship—a mate, yes, but also new materials to salvage and add to the strength of our ship, and plenty food and fuel to sustain us and our brood for many cycles.”
I gulp, as he drags me out of the cell. The door slams behind us with a clang, but I can't help but feel I'm the one in the cage.
The massive alien insists on bandaging my head and hand himself, but he doesn't seem to believe in antiseptics or pain killers.
He smears some mud on my face while I sit on his lap, despite my protests, and I have to hope the hardness I feel under his fur pants is some kind of armor, not…
anything else. I definitely resist the urge to squirm; in the Planet of the Pirate Prince novels, that always gets the hapless females skewered.
Greharm leaves me to stew with worry in the corridor as he moves back and forth between the ships, taking all the food from our pantry and putting it wherever he can find space in his haphazard rabbit warren of a ship.
It's boiling hot in here, sweat soaking through my undershirt until it clings limply, trickles tracing between my breasts, but no way am I even so much as rolling up my sleeves around this horny alien.
Once he's flung big dented barrels of what I assume is our siphoned-off fuel into his ship, Gerharm rubs his crystal hands together.
“I prepare buggazah with all the excellent vigor foods we've obtained, my little bugrath. You will cleanse yourself in Nexas home planet waters, makes you reborn as Nexan female.”
A bath sounds good, but reborn? What does that involve? My limbs ache, my head hurting from the smack I took falling about the med bay when the All-Mother’s ship tried evading Gerharm’s. Fuck, that seems like years ago, when my only problem was getting hold of some sedative.
My breathing quickens. Ah. What worked for one alien might well work for another.
“I'll bathe in my ship, thanks. It has all my toiletries,” I tell him.
His brows lower. There's flecks of crystal even there. “No. Have to purify yourself in Nexan waters.”
“How about I do that afterwards?” I counter.
The massive alien grimaces, then shakes his head. “Ah, bugrath, you will be running this ship before long. Yes, go to that side, but hurry back.”
Score.
I rush back into the Olorian ship, and while the transition from rusted cobbled together sheets to sleek lines is stark, the connection between them is solid under my feet.
I guess Gerharm’s planning on ripping the All-Mother’s ship apart for spares, because there's heavy duty tools with rust spots dotted around ready.
He must live a nomadic life, conquering other ships to sustain his. Kind of a lone wolf existence.
Still, I’m not enthusiastic about being his new hobby. I need to arm myself.
Slipping into the med bay, I confront the mess, groaning at the sea of bottles and vials strewn all over the floor.
It's nearly as disorganized as Gerharm’s ship.
I pick out as many sedatives as I can see, then stack the other bottles on the shelves as quickly as I can in any order.
I can't bear to leave them all out like this, it's a horrible way to treat medicine and against all my training for safe handling.
Before long the rhythmic tramp of Gerharm’s boots ring out, coming down the gangplank. “Nikkel, are you done bathing? Or perhaps Gerharm can help lick you clean?”
I shudder, popping up from the med bay. There's no point in hiding. “I got distracted cleaning up. I'll just go and bathe now.”
He approaches me, and it's like I forgot how big he is. My neck cricks looking up at him towering above me, a real mountain of a male. He has a metallic scent, like copper pennies warmed in a pocket, and if he's close enough to smell, he's too close.
“No more time,” he says, voice husky. “You be purified now, because meal is almost ready. Here are my mother's mother’s kraal. You must wear.”
He passes me a jumble of leather straps and buckles.
Some kind of bridle? Seeing my confused face, he loops it over my head and shoulders and pulls it down to my thighs, settling it on my back.
“Hm, bit big. Will need to shrink, especially because you won't have these cloth coverings.” He picks at my shirt.
I gape. He can't be serious. “You expect me to wear just this?” It's not even a bikini’s worth of fabric.
“Of course. Ship runs hot, and you will not want to wear clothes around me and my skills.” His encrusted fist reaches down and rips at my see-through wraps, tearing a section at my thigh.
I yank out of his reach, wrapping my arms around my chest. My heart thumps hard, as desperate to get out as I am. Putting all the authority I can into my voice, I snap, “Don't touch me.”
He chuckles. “Soon you will not want to hide your body from your bugmora. Once the buggazah is complete, you will want to give it to me, again and again.”
“I'm on my period,” I lie, backing away into the lounge. I bump up against one of his rusty machines. “I'm menstruating, bleeding. You won't want to touch me for at least a… month,” I say, thinking fast.
He cocks his head. “I know not what this is, but I will taste every inch of you. Tonight.” With one of his giant steps, he's right next to me, breath hot against my forehead. “Come now to the feast.”
He takes my arm, dragging me behind him. I dig in my heels, trying to find purchase on the smooth floor, but I don't slow him in the slightest.
He kicks aside the hundreds of tiny cubes that made up our door and pulls me up the gangplank into the heat of his ship.
The only reassurance is the sturdy weight in my pockets. As soon as we get to where he's taking me, he's getting a sedative to the face.
A horrible singed smell hits me, quickly turning to choking smoke, as if there's a raging fire in the detritus of his ship. Then it hits me. It's the worst smell in the world.
He deposits me in front of a blue-tinged burner. Above it turns a spit laden with dripping meat. Thick chunks sizzle as layers of fat catch alight.
“See the vigor feast I provide you. It is nearly ready, and then”—his eyes gleam—“I will be able to complete our buggazah.”
He drops something heavy around my shoulders. I turn my head stiffly, the faint whisper of strands stroking my cheek. It's fur. From a helpless animal.
My stomach turns inside out. If I'd had any food whatsoever in there, I'd be sick.
Enough. I wrap a hand around a bottle.