9. Darcy
9
DARCY
I t had been obvious, even when he’d been fully dressed, that Fallon was pretty big and buff. But I’d had no idea he was packing all this under there. The man’s titties were bigger than mine!
I was practically fucking hypnotized by the man’s pecs. I couldn’t stop staring at how tiny my not-so-small hands looked stretched across the bulging curves of him.
And it wasn’t just his chest that was impressive. Below that was an eye-popping array of corded muscle arranged in ridges that honestly made it look like his abs had abs. The shoulders that I’d been gripping a moment before led down into whopping biceps and a set of thick forearms lined with the most enticing set of ropy veins I’d ever seen.
Forget porn. Jesus Christ, I was certain that I could make myself a million credits just by selling photos of Fallon’s forearms. Maybe videos, too. Of him flexing. Or gripping stuff. Snap a pic of the man making a fist and panties across the cosmos would disappear. Poof.
How the heck could anyone actually look like that? How did he maintain that much muscle with what looked to be precisely 0.0001% body fat? What the hell did he do all day? What the hell did he eat?
And what the hell was I doing, petting the man’s pecs like they were my new favourite baby animals? Oh, God, I was even naming them inside my head. Beefy and Brawny contracted under my touch as Fallon’s breath hitched.
I never should have touched him. Never should have let him help me down. Because now I was apparently hypnotized by Fallon’s shirtless hotness at such close proximity.
My mind? Nowhere to be fucking found. I cursed my weak ankles and doubly cursed my mother who didn’t believe in strength training or weight lifting or letting me participate in sports because she deemed it all far too masculine.
I was weak and I was trapped. Stuck. Bamboozled by Fallon’s boobs, Terra help me.
And, for fuck’s sake, his face was also just as nice to look at. The sky behind him was a breathtaking combination of Terratribe II tangerine and bruising indigo, perfectly complimenting that sunset-orange shade of his skin.
“Dar-”
A barking yip of sound shattered the spell that held me. I wrenched myself out of Fallon’s hold, turning just in time to see a massive dark streak of something approaching at top speed. I had no time to react before the creature collided with me, sending me flailing backwards so hard I was certain I was about to crack my tailbone right up the middle.
But I never hit the ground. A hard arm fastened around my waist, pulling me roughly up at the same moment that the thing that had toppled me was yanked away.
“Sora! Down, girl!”
Breathing rapidly and attempting to get my bearings, I put my weight onto shaky legs. Fallon was holding me tightly to his side, while his tail was wrapped like a rope around the collar of a…
Dog?
Holy hills of Terra. The man had a dog. An alien one, to be sure. But we had dogs on Terratribe II, and there was no mistaking the bright, intelligent, curious gleam in those winter-blue eyes and the happy flop of the long red tongue in front of me.
The creature was shaggy, all black apart from the tongue and eyes, and had two massive, adorably pointed ears atop its big, blocky head. Even down on its haunches as it now was, it was the size of a small Terratribe II pony.
The fact that Fallon had been able to wrench something that big back with only his tail around its collar was beyond impressive. His tail was so slender and agile, it boggled my mind that it could also contain so much brute strength.
“Stay, Sora!”
Fallon released the collar and turned his full attention to me. His hands cupped my jaw, then my shoulders, then returned to where they’d been at my waist before.
“Are you alright?” he asked, sounding choked, his eyes extra bright white in the rapidly darkening air. “Sora always jumps up on me like that, but I’m much stronger and heavier than you. She did not think you’d fall. I do not think she meant to hurt you-”
“I’m not hurt,” I said quickly, trying to calm my heart. I was a little shaken up, sure, but who wouldn’t be after getting semi-tackled by the biggest alien herding hound in existence?
I was already pulling out of Fallon’s grip, trying to get a better look at Sora. When she saw me looking at her, her tail went wild, snapping back and forth across the ground, throwing up massive amounts of dirt and dust. I reached a tentative hand towards her, and she instantly bumped her snout to my palm and gave me a big, messy lick, her tail going even more crazy.
Oh my God. I’m in love.
“Hi, Sora! Hi, baby,” I found myself crooning in a high, sweet voice I hadn’t used since I was sixteen. “Oh, look at you,” I purred, getting down on my knees to dig my fingers into the thick fur at her neck. “You’re lovely. You’re such a good girl, aren’t you?”
She gave a high bark of agreement.
“Aw, I knew it,” I said, smiling bigger and brighter than I probably had in years. She barked again, then let her tongue hang out as she panted in excitement. Her smelly breath fanned over my face and a big, fat drop of dog drool landed with a messy splat on my left boot.
Perfection. Absolutely flawless. I loved her.
“You have hounds where you come from?” Fallon asked, crouching down beside us and giving Sora a friendly scrub between her ears.
“Yes. Not this big, but yes.”
“Did you have one?”
“No. I never had a pet.”
Well, I’d kind of had one as a teenager. But I’d only been able to keep Maple until my mom had found out about her. It probably didn’t count if you only managed to hold onto your pet for three too-short days. Fighting an unexpected tightness in my throat, I focused on giving Sora a big hug around her thick neck. I laughed – a real, genuine laugh – when her big, happy tongue slapped itself enthusiastically against my cheek.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Otherwise, something that was very definitely not a tear might have slipped out.
In the background, I was vaguely aware of Fallon grabbing the bags from the wagon and some quiet conversation between him and Magnolia. When I was mostly certain that I wasn’t going to start blubbering like a total idiot, I gave Sora a final squeeze and stood.
The sun had almost completely disappeared, a last-coal sort of light warming the horizon and illuminating various barns, buildings, fencing, trees, and garden patches. I felt a flicker of curiosity about the property, and resolved to explore it as soon as possible. Maybe Magnolia would like to come along.
I turned away from the back area of the ranch towards the house I’d glimpsed from the road earlier. It was bungalow-style, a long, surprisingly large building made of lumber. A beautiful wooden porch spanned the entire length of the rectangular house.
Fallon was standing on it and watching me.
“Magnolia is inside,” he said, apparently noticing the way I suddenly looked around for her. “So are your things.”
“Oh. Thank you,” I said stiffly, trying to shake off something that suddenly didn’t feel quite right. Fallon had been staring at me all day. Why did it suddenly feel so weird?
Then it hit me. His eyes weren’t glowing white anymore! What the hell? In the darkness of early evening, they should have been super bright.
Confused and curious, I started walking towards him without even meaning to, my feet moving all on their own. Sora padded along beside me then plopped her big, furry butt down on the ground by the house as I mounted the three steps up to the back porch.
I came to a stop before Fallon. There was no light on the porch, no fires or lightbulbs or lanterns. It was just him and me in the dwindling sun of our wedding day.
“Are you hungry?” he said, a huskiness creeping into his voice that made me shiver.
“Oh! Yes. I can prepare something.”
How many days had I spent with my mother in our massive kitchen, learning how to please a man by filling his stomach? How many recipes had I perfected over the years? How many times had she smacked me with a wooden spoon when I’d gotten something wrong?
“Oh, no. It is already done! You only just got here and it has been a long journey for you! I am not going to make you cook for me!”
“You’re… You don’t want me to cook for you?” I asked. That made no sense. My dad hadn’t made a meal for himself… well… ever.
“It is already taken care of,” Fallon said breezily. Then, more seriously, he added “I can be a provider for you, Darcy. Let me.”
So what the hell did this guy need a wife for, then?
Sex. It had to be sex. I thought about his excitement at the wedding, the way he’d nearly ended up buck naked and brandishing his raging boner in front of everyone, and realized that must be it. He was used to doing all his own chores and fending for himself in the kitchen, but he was no longer content to fuck his own fist at night.
I followed him inside, trying to calm my nerves and preparing myself to consummate our wedding tonight.
The back door led us into a small sort of mud room. It had a few brooms, buckets, and extra pairs of boots. I went to remove mine before going inside, but Fallon balked.
“Oh, no, keep them on! I don’t want you to get dirty,” he insisted. “I do my best with the dust, but…” He trailed off, his tail flicking behind him in what seemed to be a sort of shrug.
I eyed that tail, remembering how strong and prehensile it had been holding Sora back by her collar. How come I’d never seen it dragging around in the dirt? It’s not like he looped it over his shoulder like rope when it wasn’t in use.
“I can certainly help you with keeping the floors clean,” I responded automatically. Cleaning was another area I’d been well trained in.
“If you enjoy that sort of work, you are welcome to try,” Fallon said with a grimace and another flicker of that snakey orange tail. “But it’s a rather impossible task. Everything you manage in one day is undone by the next.”
OK. This guy was way too nice. I was starting to worry it meant he was going to want some really freaky fucking shit in the bedroom.
I tried to push that possibility out of my mind and nodded. Fallon turned to open a door. With his back to me once more, I finally saw it. A small metal hook on the back of his belt. His tail snapped up and looped around the hook in an oddly satisfying movement, hanging easily there as he opened the door.
Light flooded in, as well as warmth. It had been hot during the day, but the air was cooling now that the sun had set. But in the next room, which looked to be a kitchen, it was cozy and bright. A big fire blazed in an open hearth, and candles had been lit on a windowsill as well as on a rustic-looking table with old, mis-matched chairs. Plates of food had already been laid out, presumably when I’d been squeezing Sora half-to-death. It looked like a nice assortment of meats, fruits, root vegetables, and maybe some pickled items.
I didn’t realize just how hungry I was until I sat down. Magnolia was already at the table, and the two of us inhaled our food. We’d eaten on the shuttle, but that was back in the morning.
If Fallon was hungry, he didn’t show it. Which honestly didn’t make sense, because he’d gone just as long as we had without eating. With the amount of muscle that man had to maintain, he had to be ravenous.
But he didn’t eat. He didn’t even sit down. Instead, he hovered around us, refilling water cups and plates, his gaze sometimes flicking over to Magnolia but mostly fastened on me.
At one point, he reached up as if to run his clawed fingers through his hair but they bumped his hat instead. He looked surprised for a moment, like he’d forgotten it was there, and then he quickly took it off and set it on the stone counter by the sink.
I knew that Magnolia and I saw his ears at the exact same time, because precisely one millisecond later, our gazes met, both of us with wide eyes that screamed the soundless cry of What the fuck?
The man had the cutest fucking ears in existence. Silky-looking, rounded, and sticking straight up from his skull, they looked like something that belonged on a Terratribe II field mouse, not a seven-foot-something alien male.
So cute! Magnolia mouthed to me from across the table.
She did not tell a single fucking lie. His ears were so adorable it was practically a crime. No one should be allowed to have a face that fine, a body that insane, all topped off with cute little cartoon mousey ears. It went against every single law of nature not to mention my own sense of justice, balance, and fairness.
Completely oblivious to Magnolia and me losing our collective human shit over the discovery of Zabrian ears, Fallon buzzed around like a sexy, mouse-eared, orange bumblebee, getting us yet more water. Magnolia used the next moment to excuse herself to go freshen up, and Fallon began to clear away the empty plates.
I forced myself to focus. Or, rather, the echo of my mother’s voice did. A proper wife wouldn’t sit around on her ass and make her husband clean up like this. I jumped up, reaching for a plate at the exact moment that Fallon did. Our hands collided, and the plate went smashing to the ground.
“I’m so sorry!” I said instantly, half-expecting the whizz of a wooden spoon towards the back of my head. Of course, it didn’t come. My stomach muscles tightened, my face hot as I knelt down on the floor and reached for one of the broken pieces.
“Darcy, don’t!”
Before I could grab one of the pieces, something smooth, warm, and strong wrapped itself around my wrist. Fallon’s tail tugged my hand firmly and away from the mess.
Shit. He was pissed. Well, now was as good a time as any to find out what made my husband tick. If it made him tick loudly enough, or explosively enough, maybe I would have to leave at the end of the thirty days of the trial marriage after all. I absolutely refused to stay with an angry, abusive man. Even if I had to scrub toilets or sell drugs or strip on Elora Station, I wouldn’t submit to the destiny my mother had picked out for me.
I would have rather died.
I pulled experimentally against Fallon’s hold on my wrist, but that tail was like an iron fucking chain around my arm.
But the hands that settled on my waist were gentle.
“Don’t touch it. You’ll hurt yourself,” Fallon breathed, lifting me from the floor and setting me back on my chair. “I will clean it up.”
He put me down on my chair as if I weighed no more than a child. I gawked at him as he disappeared into the mud room and returned with one of the brooms, sweeping up all the shattered bits with graceful, efficient movements that made those legendary forearms flex.
“What are you doing?” I found myself asking. The absurdity of a question with such an obvious answer made Fallon falter.
“I am… I am cleaning up the pieces. Do you…” He looked down, then back at me and said, “This is called a broom.”
I snorted and then shook my head. “We have brooms on Terratribe II!” I told him. I couldn’t tell if I should be offended that he thought I didn’t know what a broom was or happy that he’d tried to educate me in such a nice way. Good grief.
“Oh! I did not… It is just, you went down to clean it up with your bare hands,” he said, resuming sweeping until everything was in a neat pile. “I was worried you would-”
He dropped the broom with a clatter that made me nearly jump out of my skin.
“Jesus! What is it?” I asked, nearly wrenching my neck with how fast I looked around for the source of Fallon’s alarm.
But he wasn’t looking around like I was. He was staring straight at me. Or, more specifically, the skirt of my dress. I looked down at myself to see a bloom of scarlet over my right knee. His eyes, which had remained mysteriously dark throughout the meal, blazed bright white.
In an instant, he was on his knees before me, wrenching up my skirt.
“Um, excuse me!” I stammered, ignoring everything my mother had ever taught me about not refusing your husband’s advances. The dress wasn’t stretchy, kind of a sheath style, which meant the skirt had absolutely no give. When Fallon couldn’t easily flip the skirt up over my thighs, his face darkened, his ears twitched, those glorious forearms tightened and…
He fucking ripped it. Like it was paper. Wet paper.
The sound of tearing fabric startled me so badly that my body reacted on instinct, my uninjured leg bucking upward. I was about to send my solid, size-ten boot right into the man’s nose.
But without appearing to even notice my foot flying towards his face, he darted to the side and effortlessly dodged it. Before my leg fell, he caught my ankle in the air, slinging it over his shoulder like it was a bit of spare rope or the strap of a bag.
“Sorry,” I breathed, heart in my throat. “I didn’t mean to… I wasn’t going to…”
And then the man had the nerve to grin up at me and say, “I’ve dodged enough shuldu kicks that should have killed me in my time. You’ll have to be faster than that.”
Despite his words, I wondered if he actually was worried about me accidentally trying to shove the heel of my boot into his eye again. Because his tail wrapped itself around my ankle. It pulled until my foot was partway down his back, my knee bent over his shoulder.
His grin vanished as his big hands settled on the meaty part of my calf above the boot of my other leg.
Trying and mostly failing to ignore the suddenly erotic positioning of our bodies – me with one of my legs slung up over his shoulder, him with his head bent low near my crotch, his hands on my bare skin – I looked down at my knee.
It was fine. Bleeding, sure. But fine.
“I must have knelt on one of the broken pieces,” I explained, even though it was completely obvious what had happened.
His white gaze drilled into my knee before snapping up to my face.
“How do you feel?” he asked with an intensity that probably should have scared me. “Feverish? Light-headed? Weak from blood loss?”
“Blood loss?” I blinked at him. “Are you serious?”
“About my wife?” he replied without hesitation. “ Always. ”
He jolted up to his feet, simultaneously using his tail to put my left foot back on the ground. I moved to stand, but he made an affronted sound of complaint and instantly swept me up into his arms.
“I can walk!” I sputtered as Fallon moved with furious purpose out of the kitchen and into a hallway.
“Not on that leg!”
Not on that leg? Not on that leg?
Was this man for real? I was barely worse-off than if I’d simply scraped my knee, and he was out here saying, Not on that leg! like I was some kind of suicidal idiot?
Before I knew it, Fallon had brought me into what appeared to be a simple but spacious bedroom. He placed me down on the edge of a large rectangular bed and yanked open a closet door with so much force I was shocked it didn’t come swinging off its hinges. He stepped inside the closet, and a half-second later stuff started flying out, flung frantically over his shoulders as he looked for… who the hell knew what.
“Do you… Do you need help?” I asked cautiously.
Mental help, maybe?
“No!” he practically shouted. “I need you to just stay there and… found it!”
Fallon came careening back out of the closet with a small metal box in his hands.
“What’s that?” I asked as Fallon thundered back across the room and flopped down on his knees once more.
“Bandages. Antiseptic. Suture materials,” he rattled off. He opened the box with such chaotic energy that half the shit inside went bouncing out like a wound-up Jack-in-the-box.
“Fallon,” I said in what I hoped was a soothing and not exasperated tone as he cursed and collected the fallen materials from the floor. “I do not need sutures!”
“You might!” he responded instantly. “Human blood does not clot as quickly as Zabrians’. I read it in the book.”
“What is this book I keep hearing so much about?”
Without answering verbally and using only his tail, Fallon opened a drawer from a wooden dresser nearby and pulled out an honest-to-goodness book.
I consumed pretty much every form of media digitally on my comms tablet, so seeing a book with actual pages was a bit of a novelty. Fallon’s tail dropped it into my lap as his hands got to work dumping some kind of spicy-smelling liquid onto a clean square of white fabric. He dabbed the wet fabric on my knee, and I nearly tried to kick him again.
I inhaled sharply through my nostrils at the sting of it.
“Sorry,” Fallon said, sounding pained but continuing to rub the acid-like burn of the liquid onto my knee anyway. “It’s antiseptic made from a local plant. Very effective, but blazes, does it burn.” His left hand stroked my thigh soothingly as his right hand cleaned my wound. My pulse fluttered as I watched that strong hand moving up and down my thigh the way it might a horse’s – or a shuldu’s – neck.
The sting of the antiseptic was fading a bit after the first shock of it. Unfortunately, that meant there was nothing to detract from the exquisite sensation of Fallon’s calloused hand running its warm, rough surface up and down my sensitive skin. My entire thigh tingled. The place between my legs throbbed.
Oh, no. Absolutely not. I was not going to get turned on by my own husband.
Trying to distract myself, I took a look at the book Fallon had dropped in my lap. The front cover had an illustration of a human woman in a wedding dress. A quick flip through the pages told me that everything was written in Zabrian, but based on the pictures here and there it seem like a book with information about human customs, anatomy, and history. All pretty tame, until…
“Is this pornography?!”
Somewhere across the galaxy my mother had a heart attack at the word that just came out of my mouth. A wife was never supposed to question her husband’s pornographic proclivities.
But I couldn’t help it. It had just slipped out in my surprise. I stared at the horny-ass, illustrated humans in their various sexual poses.
“What?” Fallon asked distractedly as he wrapped a clean bandage around my knee. He tied it off and then looked up at me. I spun the book so the pages faced him.
“This!” I cried before turning it around to look at the pages myself once more.
Oh, no. Oh my fucking God…
“Did you try to colour her hair pink?!”
Yup. There was absolutely no mistaking it. The woman in the images had brown hair that appeared to have been covered over with some sort of pink substance. And now that I looked closer, the virile and extremely happy-looking man featured in the poses with the pink-haired lady had a suspiciously orange tint to his skin tone…
“Oh. That? Yes,” Fallon said without a hint of artifice, modesty, or guilt, the bastard.
“You coloured these images to look more like us?” I squawked, heat rising to my face. This was so freaking awkward. Why wasn’t he embarrassed?!
“I was… visualizing…” he muttered, scratching the back of his head, his bicep bulging.
Visualizing. That was one hell of a euphemism for masturbating if I’d ever heard one. There was no way to miss the fact that the sexy pages with Fallon’s DIY art seemed more creased and handled than the rest of the book. An image of Fallon lying down and holding the book over his face with one hand while his other hand –
No. Begone, intrusive thought. Jesus Christ on a cracker.
I snapped the book shut, fighting to maintain the sort of cool, placid demeanour my mother had always expected of me but had always been so fucking hard for me to fake.
“I… I see… Um…”
My brain was short circuiting. There was not a single word left in my head to grasp onto.
But really, what was there to say about the fact that your new alien husband had jerked off to porn he’d doodled of you before your arrival? Very nice use of shading and colour, Fallon? You have a great artistic eye?
“If you think you’re feeling well enough…”
Oh, boy. Here it came. He was going to ask me to act out the book. I could feel it.
“… then I’m going to leave you for a moment.”
Oh. Hold on. What?
Fallon ran a thumb down my bandaged knee then stood.
“I unhitched Kolt and Reesha but I still have to rub them down and make sure they have enough water after the long day.” His face twisted in an apologetic grimace. “I’ll hurry, though.”
Rub them down . Why was I imagining Fallon rubbing me down right now?
And why was I disappointed he was leaving?
“Of course!” I squeaked out. “That’s fine. I’m fine.”
Fallon didn’t move. It was like he was planted there in the room, a big, orange, immovable tree.
“Seriously, go. I’m fine,” I reiterated, flapping a dismissive hand at him. I needed some space and some time to think, not to mention the fact that I didn’t want his cute alien horses suffering just because I had a stupid bloodied knee.
“Keep your leg elevated,” Fallon instructed at the same moment that he bent down and grabbed my ankles. In one swift movement, he removed my boots and swung my legs up onto the bed. He plumped up a pillow behind me, then shoved a second one under my bandaged knee. “Don’t move!”
With that, my new husband raced from the room.