Chapter 4
He was staring. And he was hard.
I was doing my level best to ignore the dick waving a foot and a half from my bowl of cold soup but it wasn’t easy. The stress of the last few days had burned away the last of my adrenaline, and I was too tired and hungry to worry about my new buddy’s intentions toward me.
Apparently, safety came after food on my pyramid of survival.
I forced myself not to guzzle all the water, and took painfully tiny sips of soup. That last thing my worn-out body needed was to get sick and puke all over the hulking, erect monstrosity staring at me.
Chewing on a piece of stale gray bread, I met his yellow eyes warily. He was squatting in front of me, his bulky arms resting on his strangely shaped knees, his short tufted tail dragging slowly on the floor behind him.
Damn, he was one big son of a gun. If he stepped on me, his hoof would reach from shoulder to shoulder. Squishing me would be way too easy for this beast.
I shouldn’t have risked climbing into his cell. Hunger had gotten the better of my common sense because it was blatantly obvious I’d made a stupid move.
On the other hand...
I was eating food, my stomach had stopped twisting itself in knots and I could swallow without my throat trying to close up in thirst. Whatever sick turn this scenario took, I couldn’t regret the meal.
Both his long, mobile ears swiveled toward me, his eyes following my every movement like he was trying to catch me playing slight of hand with his lunch. I swallowed my bite of bread and forced myself to pause and let my stomach adjust.
The pinch of hunger finally muted, I took stock of the rest of my body. My knees were red and bruised from crawling on metal for two days, I was covered in gooseflesh from the chilly air and I’d already lost weight. But all in all, I’d looked a lot worse and felt a lot worse in the past.
The alien’s eyes followed my gaze down my body and I fought the urge to cover myself with my hands.
The tray covered my crotch and he’d already seen everything else.
Plus it only seemed fair to let him look, I’d dropped into his room, took his food and stared at his dick for the last several minutes.
I could handle the scandal of him looking at my knees.
Speaking of knees, his attention was fixated on one knee in particular. I sighed, used to the attention, even as it irritated me that’s all anyone stared at. I had pretty eyes dammit, look at those.
A massive red hand reached out and cupped the stub of my right calf, hot fingers reaching from the back of my knee to the old scar at the edge of my leg.
I froze. Being an amputee didn’t bother me.
I had my prosthetic to walk around on, I was a pro on crutches and jeans could hide just about anything.
If people were weird, that was on them, I was usually too busy for social events that led to awkward questions anyway.
But all of my past experiences assumed I was living on Earth, among humans raised in a civilized society. I didn’t know what to expect from an alien. Was this a world where survival of the fittest was law?
The big guy might be looking at my leg and deciding whether or not to smash me into the floor over the injury. Didn’t chickens pick apart injured flock mates?
Did my missing leg make me a target?
I assumed kidnapping a bunch of humans was related to some sort of space slavery. Hopefully, because it would really suck if we were meat. Would anyone want a one-legged slave? Or would I find myself tossed out like galactic trash upon further inspection?
I was under no delusion I’d be released out of pity.
The alien male slowly traced my scar with the rough pad of his thumb.
The friction of his callous on the sensitive area made that damn itch flare up on the bottom of my invisible foot and I gritted my teeth against the impossible-to-ignore sensation.
Normally I’d take a scalding hot shower to try and drown out the phantom sensations but I didn’t have that option here.
His eyes darted up to my face and he prodded the fleshy part of my nub, his touch shockingly gentle.
I cleared my throat. “It doesn’t hurt, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
He dropped his gaze back to my leg and gently placed it back over my other knee. Resisting the urge to sit on my legs to hide them, I nibbled on the bread and boldly met his stare.
Aside from the raging boner and his initial looming, he wasn’t being aggressive at all. I didn’t know what to make of it. His eyes never left me, scanning me constantly like I was a complex puzzle he was trying to solve.
The rattle of steps outside the door jolted me out of my moment and I scrambled up in a panic. There was no way I could get back up into the ceiling without help, and who knew if Big Red was interested in shoving me through a vent.
The alien snatched me into his arms and nearly hurled me under his tiny ass cot.
My bare back squeaked over the cold metal floor from the force of his push and I gritted my teeth against the painful drag.
Hidden under the cot it didn’t seem so small anymore, but I pulled my legs up to my chest anyway, making myself as small and unnoticeable as possible while my new buddy planted himself in front of the cot and faced the door.
Call me crazy, but it looked like he was protecting me.
Someone pounded on the door and a muffled yell warned of its opening. A slim blue hand cautiously pulled the door to the side with a rusty squeak and a tentacle-crowned head poked inside. After staring at the giant, bright red male, the blue alien looked pathetically small in comparison.
The alien guard’s face was pale and sweaty, if I had to guess I’d say he was terrified of my new friend. The thought made me grin like the Cheshire cat. Anyone who could make my kidnappers piss themselves was my new best bud.
“Carn,” the guard barked, gesturing at the abandoned tray in the corner. There were more words, all of which the red male ignored, but ‘Carn’ got repeated enough I guessed it was his name.
From what I could see, ‘Carn’ didn’t play well with others. The guard's increasingly frantic motions at the tray made me think he really didn’t want to walk into the cell. From the low rumble emanating from Carn, that seemed like a wise fear to have.
With a hissing curse, the guard dashed into the cell, snatched the tray off the floor, and was promptly kicked into the wall. I barely held back my gasp as his body crumpled into the metal, the sickening clang of his skull making impact turned my stomach.
The guard let out a low gurgle of pain and slumped face-first onto the floor, his tentacles splayed out around his head like a fleshy blue halo.
A moment later, there was more yelling and commotion from outside and another guard crept through the door, gun trained on Carn as a third blue alien dashed in after the one Carn had turned into a puddle.
My new friend didn’t move from the middle of the room, but his snarl echoed against the walls in a spine-chilling warning as he watched his victim get dragged out by the ankle.
Within moments we were alone again. The only evidence the guards had visited was the body-shaped dent in the metal wall.
I peered out from under the cot, watching Carn’s short, tufted tail flick spasmodically against his thigh.
They hadn’t even tried to fight him. Three armed guards had quivered and fled as soon as he attacked him.
And yet, my new friend was standing stock still in the middle of the room, glaring at the dented wall as his tail attempted to flay the red skin off his leg.
I couldn’t see his face from this angle, but my gut told me he wasn’t okay. Scooting out from under the cot, I pulled myself up and cleared my throat.
“You doing okay, big guy?”
He flinched at my words, shoulders rippling with an insane amount of muscle. Veins popped over his arms and his tail flicked harder.
“Thank you for hiding me,” I said quietly, hoping my calm tone would soothe whatever was happening inside him. He’d given me his food and protected me and he had no reason to do either. The least I could do was calm him down.
After a moment his tail stilled and he turned to face me. His pupils were blown wide, his nostrils flared and his jaw clenched like he was chewing through a bar of lead.
“Your name is Carn, right?” I ventured, gauging his expression for any sign he was about to go apeshit on me. I really knew nothing about this guy, other than he needed a chill pill and he could kick like a mule.
His ears flicked forward at his name and his pupils contracted slightly.
Hoping my words were helping, I inched closer and slowly reached for his hand.
“My name’s Naomi. Not that you can understand what I’m saying.” He watched my hand like it was a snake as I gently grabbed his thick forefinger and gave it a squeeze. Holy crap, his hand was huge.
The moment I grasped his finger, his shoulders slumped like someone had let the air out of him and all the rage in his eyes evaporated.
“That’s better,” I cooed, feeling like a moron for treating him like a feral pit-bull. “You’re just stressed out and trapped in this tiny box and you needed some love, right?”
I could feel myself blushing the more I talked. The stuff coming out of my mouth was utterly ridiculous but Carn’s expression had been so clearly not right I couldn’t help myself. The feral dog comparison seemed pretty accurate.
Back in my volunteering days, I’d encountered many a dog that acted like the second coming of Cujo until someone was brave enough to get up close and pet them.
Then again, I’d also seen just as many of those dogs bite holes in friendly hands, so this was a gamble.
He looked tortured and strangely empty, despite the waves of menace he threw off and I just wanted the unhinged look to go away. Besides, what were the chances an alien understood English?
I could recite the Gettysburg Address in a lovey-dovey voice and it’d mean just as much to the big guy. Rubbing my thumb over his bulky knuckles, I tried to untangle our fingers now that he seemed calmer and he snatched me right off the ground.
His massive arms banded around my body, clamping my arms to my sides and he squeezed me like I was a brand new teddy bear and he had nightmares.
“Oof,” I squeaked out, desperately trying to pull air into my collapsing lungs.
Carn took one massive step towards the bed, turned his back to it, and dropped straight down.
I felt the impact through his chest, my head banging into his ribs with the aftershocks.
My gut was screaming at me to bite him, scratch him, anything to get away from the huge alien male who’d dragged me onto a bed.
But my brain finally registered the shaky, gulping breaths he was taking in and the chokehold he had on me.
This wasn’t sexual or threatening at all. Which was bizarre, since even laying with my back to his chest I could see his erection looming between my knees like the freaking Washington Monument.
Carn was hugging me like his life depended on it, one arm sliding perilously close to my throat as his massive body shook beneath me.
I swallowed, ignoring the uncomfortable press of his arm against my neck and patted his elbow.
“Hey, big guy, it’s okay. If you keep feeding me, I’ll happily be your stuffed animal.”
Hot breath fluttered the hair on the back of my neck as he smashed his face against my shoulder and breathed heavily. Past the exhaustion, shock, and grim determination to live, my heart gave a pitiful little thump.
Carn might look like hell’s bouncer but the big guy needed a hug like nobody's business, and for some reason, I was glad I was the one to give it to him.