Chapter 5
I stared at the dark ceiling above my cot and sucked in another lungful of the floral musk that clung to Naomi’s hair. She’d surrendered to sleep hours ago, and delicate snores now rattled a few inches below my jaw.
My arms tightened involuntarily and she let out a sleepy protest. Forcing myself to loosen my grip, I breathed her in again and wrestled with the tangle of thoughts and feelings fighting for control of my body.
I hadn’t been so present in years. I was aware of time passing, I could smell Naomi, count her breaths, and feel her heart beating through her spine. So many tiny, separate details all at once was overwhelming.
Until she’d climbed out of the ceiling, I’d been lost in a years-long haze of rage and pain. I felt like I’d rediscovered my senses and it was almost more than I could handle.
This tiny female had cleared over a decade of mindlessness away with just her voice and a squeeze of her minuscule fingers. No matter what, I couldn’t lose this clarity, lose her. She thought I couldn’t understand her when she cooed at me.
But I heard every gentle word she aimed at me, and every single one felt like a soothing balm on an acidic burn.
I’d come so close to raging, to destroying every guard in my cell and endangering Naomi.
I’d been terrified, struggling to hold back the vicious wave surging through my brain, telling me to rip apart every living thing in sight just to make the pressure in my skull go away.
A battle-tested turoch would have retreated in the face of my impending rage.
Noami had reached for me.
One of her legs fell between my thighs and I stroked the tip of my tail over her bare skin. She was so small and fearless. I didn’t know how she’d ended up in my cell, but the sheer fact she’d escaped from the slave holds was remarkable.
I’d never heard of anyone surviving an attempt. Then again, no one talked to the murderous gladiator famous for slaughtering his own kind. The thought was like a gaping wound in my chest.
I was thinking clearly again, and with that came a mountain of memories and guilt.
I was a monster. My captivity was soaked in the blood of other turochs and I’d betrayed my people and our ancestors by becoming the champion of the syto arena.
My arms tightened around her again. I’d done nothing to deserve her presence in my cell, but I knew I’d do anything to keep her here. This slim female was all that stood between me and madness.
My pulse picked up, my mind spinning with every threat, every possible outcome of keeping her close. The cell was small, no one dared to enter it while I was inside, but I was often taken for training, or more experiments and I had no idea if she’d be safe hiding under my cot while I was gone.
***
THREE DAYS LATER MY worries had grown in severity. I was rarely left alone for more than a few days and by my count, it’d been nearly five since I’d trained. They’d take me away soon, and I’d have to leave Naomi defenseless while I was gone.
“I know this probably tastes terrible,” her voice broke through my thoughts as she mopped the last of the soup with a bread crust. “But I’m just so happy to have food.”
I’d given her all my meals since she’d dropped into my cell. My portions were too large for her, and I was more than satisfied with the scraps she left. Hunger was another discomfort I was skilled at ignoring.
But Naomi was far too small to go long without proper meals and even as she patted her full belly, I could see the shadow of her ribs. Feeding her was the least I could do in exchange for the mental calm she’d given me.
Naomi sighed and slouched back against the cot, stretching her legs with a grimace.
“You’ve got to get so bored in here,” she mused, more to herself than me.
She didn’t seem aware of my translator, she spoke often and aimlessly.
Her words were meant for herself instead of me.
I hadn’t attempted to respond yet, I was still acclimating to having my mind back, communication seemed too complicated.
I contented myself with absorbing every word she said.
Her head lolled back on her shoulders and she cast me a speculative look.
“You’re awfully quiet Carn.”
I flinched at the sound of my name and forced myself to focus on her face.
Her hair was a tangled poof around her head, she’d combed her fingers through it earlier but the strands had resisted all her efforts at taming.
She’d snarled in frustration when she’d given up, but I enjoyed the lawless waves.
Her hair was as indomitable as Naomi herself.
The last few days have been the strangest I remembered. I was all at once calm and vibrating with tension. Naomi’s presence had released me from the awful hell of my own mind, and yet I found myself craving more.
Urges I didn’t fully understand took the place of the rage and I’d spent long hours combing through the few memories I had of Oska. I was young when I was taken, too young to really take notice of the ways males and females interacted.
I’d heard the old males boasting of their gentlings of course, no fire was complete without such a story. But the details were fuzzy, my younger self had more interest in burning bits of dry grass in the flames than listening to how many times an ancient male made his female scream a lifetime ago.
Now I’d give anything to know what I was supposed to do with a female.
I knew the basics, you couldn’t spend a decade in slavery without witnessing some sort of sex act.
But nothing I’d seen looked anything like the tales of gentling I was raised hearing about and the last thing I wanted to do was reduce this fearless female to the empty husks the breeder slaves turned into.
I shuddered at the thought, even as the idea of pushing Naomi to the floor and mounting her made my heart pound.
“Carn?” Her wary tone snapped me out of my rapidly devolving thoughts and I shook my head to clear my mind. Almost as if she could read my thoughts, Naomi eyed me cautiously.
“What’s going on in that head, big guy?” she murmured, her low voice soothing the raw edges of my thoughts. “Or don’t I want to know?”
I flicked my tail against the hard floor and cocked my head to the side. She was a tiny thing compared to me, nearly defenseless. Aside from fear, there was a very real chance she wouldn’t find me attractive. If her males looked anything like she did, I had to appear monstrous in comparison.
A little of my optimism wilted. Even if she could be convinced to mate with me, I still didn’t know what I was doing and it was only a matter of time until her presence in my cell was discovered.
Then they’d take her away from me, just like they’d taken everything else and I’d be back in the endless hell that was my mind.
My throat tightened and I found myself reaching for Naomi like I did every time a wave of emotion hit me.
Her eyes widened slightly but she didn’t flinch away when my hand settled on her bare thigh.
The deep red of my skin made her own complexion seem almost translucent and I found myself captivated by the silky softness of her skin.
Naomi settled her own hand on mine, halting the cautious stroking of my thumb on her leg.
“I’d apologize about the stubble, but we’re not dating and it’s not my fault.”
I flicked my eyes toward her face, trying to parse out the meaning in her strange words. Naomi scrubbed her palm up and down her leg aggressively.
“Human women shave the hairs off their legs,” she explained, somehow understanding my confusion without my saying a word.
I peered down at her pale legs and finally noticed the hairs she was referring to.
Dragging my fingertips over the short, wispy down, I couldn’t help but snort at the ridiculousness of calling these fine strands hair.
They were so thin, they were nearly invisible and if she hadn’t pointed them out, I wouldn’t even have felt them against my hand.
“Are you laughing at me?” she demanded, humor coloring her voice.
I glanced up at her and smirked, plucking at the tiny ‘hairs’ she’d apologized for, doing my best to point out how pitiful they were.
She jerked her legs back with a laugh and wrapped her arms around them protectively.
“Hey, some human men are grossed out by leg hair,” she giggled defensively.
I pulled a lock of my coarse hair forward and shook it at her before scrubbing my hand down the line of thick, wiry hair that arrowed toward my groin.
I had hair, real hair, not flimsy, invisible wisps. Her human males were delusional.
Her eyes followed the motion of my hand before jerking up towards my face.
“Yeah, I see you’ve got more hair. This wasn’t supposed to be a competition, you know.”
She was only saying that because my hair was clearly superior to hers. I huffed and settled back on my haunches to stare at her some more.
Thoughts of mating filled my head again as I retraced the lines of her exposed body.
The skin on her chest and belly was several shades paler than the rest of her and I couldn’t decide if I liked the milky paleness or preferred the slightly golden hue of her face and arms. The strip of fabric over her breasts was a dingy white, and left the upper swells of her chest exposed.
The chill in the air had forced her nipples into permanent points and I found myself caught on the suggestion the fabric couldn’t hide.
“You’re staring again,” Naomi warned.
I sighed and wished I could talk to her. She didn’t have a translator and even if she did, it had been so many years since I’d formed words, I couldn’t seem to make my voice work.
I let my gaze roam back up her body until I met her eyes. The wary expression I saw there made my chest tighten in guilt. This female was trapped with me, tied to the food I could provide and the meager protection I could offer. The last thing I wanted to do was make her fear me.
Her eyes darted over me as she pulled in a slow breath.
“You said you weren’t going to rape me,” her voice was steady. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t want... things.”
Shame drowned out my curiosity. I did want her. Every instinct in my body was urging me to claim her as my mate in the way of my people, to protect this precious gift that had fallen into my lap. But if knowing that made her fear me...
I didn’t know how to respond to her words, so I just met her gaze and flicked my ears against my skull in frustration. She was safe with me, safe from me, if she could understand the words, I’d swear it to her. Naomi’s attention snagged on my pinned ears and her lips twitched into a half smile.
“You really are the strangest guy I’ve ever met.”
That fact didn’t surprise me.
She didn’t say anything else for a long time, and I kept my hands to myself.