Chapter 10
There was a dead alien’s earring in my ear and I didn’t even care.
Carn was talking and I could understand him. Mostly. It was clear to me that even with the translator, there were still some communication issues. Mainly that every word he spoke was slow, grinding and semi painful to listen to.
I didn’t think it was a speech impediment, he mostly sounded... rusty. Like a gate no one had opened in a very long time.
“I know it’s a long shot, but is there an easy way out of here?
” I felt like an idiot while I waited for him to answer.
Why was there a little twist of hope in my gut?
I knew it wasn’t going to be so simple, and yet, part of me wanted to believe he’d just show me some secret portal that zapped me straight back to Earth.
Carn grimaced, swallowing hard before forcing out a strained, “No.”
I deflated, leaning forward until my forehead rested on his chest.
“I figured,” I groaned. “But I really hoped.”
“You are safe... here,” he said haltingly, still tracing cautious circles on my arm. The gentle touch made my skin pucker as I remembered the feeling of him groaning over me last night. I both wanted to bring it up and pretend it hadn’t happened.
I smiled up at him and a little of the worry left his yellow eyes.
“Thank you for protecting me, and feeding me. I know I sort of invaded your space.” Thanking him had been at the top of my list of things I needed to get off my chest.
Carn pulled me a little closer, his ears drooping as he inspected my face. Despite the fact I’d been chattering away to him for days, I was suddenly worried someone would overhear us.
“It’s safe to talk in here, right?”
He nodded. “No one listen to me.”
“That’s a relief,” I sighed. “Thank you for the translator.”
I was still in his lap, but he didn’t seem willing to put me down and I’d grown used to his slightly ham-fisted cuddling, so I didn’t try to escape. He didn’t have to say anything for it to be clear he was lonely and touch starved.
Besides, I’d come to a realization while I huddled in the freezing air blasting through the vents. I liked Carn, I liked that he squeezed me like a teddy bear in his sleep, I liked the way he watched me like I was the center of his world and how he always gave me the last bite of food.
I still wasn’t sure how I’d gone from having a non-existent social life to having an alien buddy/boyfriend, but it was the only good thing that had come from the invasion that wrecked my reality.
Still ignoring my perch on his lap, I reached up and rubbed my thumb against the thick ridges that covered his bulky, oversized horns.
“I saw other males like you today,” I murmured, still paranoid of being overheard.
Carn’s eyes followed my every movement with frightening intensity.
“Turoch,” he said, his voice barely more than a hoarse rasp.
“Turochs.” I filed the word away and wondered why having his hands on me didn’t bother me. There was barely more than a scrap of cloth between us, but being in his lap didn’t feel pushy or too intimate. Then again, I’d let him do a lot worse than hold me. I’d liked it, too.
A fact I had no idea what to do with. Carn wasn’t human, he wasn’t civilized, some days he was barely more than feral.
And yet he had moments like this where his eyes never left my face and he’d pet my skin like I was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.
He could be so freaking gentle, it blew my mind.
I couldn’t lie, the worshipful attention felt good. Like he was seeing me in a way no one else ever had. I’d had a great life before everything went up in extraterrestrial flames. My parents loved me, I rarely worried about money and aside from the obvious, I was in good health.
But ever since the accident, my family watched me with eyes filled with worry or the suffocating relief that came from having a child survive several medical emergencies.
Strangers saw me as a novelty or worse, treated me like their own personal inspirational story.
Keeping to myself came naturally and I was too introverted to miss out on the friendship of coworkers or highschool friends I’d long since lost contact with.
But being around Carn made me realize I was a human being that needed someone.
Carn never treated me like I was damaged or strange, and I had to seem strange to him. He was an alien after all. I liked the way he looked at me, he made me feel precious and beautiful. As if just existing made me special to him.
I had no idea what I’d done to earn those looks but I wasn’t going to complain.
Clearing my throat, I forced my eyes back to his horns.
“The other turochs didn’t have horns like you. They were smaller, and smoother.”
Carn’s tail slapped against the cot and I’d been reading his body language long enough to know the statement bothered him. He let out a huff and swallowed like the few words he’d said had strained his throat.
“Horns...” he rapped a closed fist against a particularly lumpy section of bone. “Hit, break... many times. Grow wrong now.”
I couldn’t help but trace his bobbing throat with my fingertips as he painstakingly pushed the last words out. I was starting to realize my new friend wasn’t a talker, even when people could understand him.
“How many times do you have to hit your horns to make them grow like this?” I wondered.
He shrugged. “Not supposed to grow back.”
So much about Carn didn’t match the other turochs I’d spied on. Either he was a freak of nature or the squid guys had seriously altered him. I was starting to suspect he was a pet project around here and the thought was sickening.
Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t notice his attention wandering over me until a hot calloused palm curled around the scarred end of my leg.
I flinched as the nerves sizzled at the unexpected touch.
A grimace twisted my face, the scrape of his callouses triggered the haunting itch that never seemed too far away.
“How?” he asked gruffly.
I cocked my head to the side as I debated how much to tell him. Most of the time I either blew the question off or condensed two and a half years of pain and anxiety down to a succinct ‘car accident’.
But Carn had acted like he cared about my missing pieces, and I was strangely confident he wouldn’t pity me for the truth or turn my answer into a game of ‘well my life is shitty, too’. If anyone could win that game it had to be the guy locked in a cell, naked and enslaved.
“I was in a car accident when I was fourteen,” I said quietly, watching his face as he reacted to the simple statement. He probably didn’t know what a car was but he didn’t interrupt.
“My ankle was crushed when the front end crumpled, they tried to pin everything together and save my foot. I spent a month and a half in the hospital fighting off infections before they sent me home. Then a year in physical therapy until they finally decided I wasn’t going to get any function back below my calf. ”
I sighed as the memories crept to the front of my mind. Physical therapy had hurt more than anything I’d experienced in my short life. At that point I hadn’t cared about my foot, I just wanted to stop getting tortured pointlessly three days a week.
“Then I slipped going down the stairs, landed on my bad foot and totally shattered everything. There weren’t enough pieces to put back together and while they were trying to save my foot, I got sepsis that ended in an emergency amputation.”
I stretched the leg in question out and twisted it to look at the old scar.
“Sounds crazy, but I was so relieved when I woke up and the damn thing was gone. Felt like I could finally start moving forward with my life.”
Yellow eyes caught mine and held as Carn gently cupped my shortened calf and stroked his thumb over the muscle.
“Fearless female,” he said.
I chuckled at the misplaced pride in his voice.
“Not fearless, just not afraid of losing something that did nothing but hurt me.”
He tilted his head back and rested against the wall.
“Not afraid of me.”
“No.” I laid my hand on his torso, just above his abs and marveled again at how massive he was. There was more muscle on one of his arms than in my entire body. “I’m not afraid of you, Carn.”
That might make me an idiot, but without Carn, I’d have starved to death in the vents or been caught trying to steal water. He’d never hurt me, and aside from some aggressive cuddling, and last night’s fevered humping, he was always respectful about touching me.
“Feels good,” he murmured, letting his eyes close.
“Me not being afraid or this?” I asked, trailing my hand down between his abs until I reached his belly button. The unspoken barrier stopped me and I quickly decided to explore upwards and pretend I couldn’t feel his massive dick trying to lift me out of his lap.
“Both.”
With his eyes closed I felt a little bolder, sweeping my fingertips from his belly to his collarbone, tracing every muscle along the way.
“I know you probably don’t have a choice about all this,” I said, gesturing at his body. “But you really are spectacular to look at. I’ve never seen anything so... powerful.”
His skin shivered under my touch as I circled the dark purple of his small nipples, errantly wondering how gold rings would look piercing the exotic color. Then I realized what I was thinking and blushed so hot, my cheeks burned.
Sitting on Carn’s naked, aroused dick, touching him, fantasizing about his fricken nipples...
I’d never acted like this before.
“Not powerful, useful.” He shivered again and his eyes opened a slit as if waiting for my reaction. “Useful for killing turochs.”
My hands froze on his chest and I met his gaze cautiously. He was trying to get a reaction and that made me think how I responded mattered to him.
“You kill turochs?”
“Mm. Many.” His tail slapped the cot hard and I swore I watched him force it still.
Resuming my gentle touches, I kept my voice level.
“Why?”
“Sytos like to watch.”
That shouldn’t surprise me but it did, my eyebrows rose as I put together the pieces.
“You’re a gladiator?”
He shrugged. “I fight, I kill. Sytos watch. I’m...” he hesitated like he was searching for the word. “Pet,” he finished quietly. “I’m syto pet.”
The thought of reducing the beastly male under me to a mere pet was disgusting. From my perspective, Carn was practically a force of nature, not an attack dog on a chain.
The look on his face said he wasn’t enjoying the idea any more than I was, so I changed the subject.
“Carn,” I hesitated when I realized what I’d almost blurted out. But the question had been on my mind for days and I could finally ask. “Are all turochs hard... all the time?”
I shifted over his erection as if he might be confused about what I was referring to.
He stared at me blankly for a long moment and I focused my attention on the uneven locks of hair brushing his shoulders. I assumed he hacked his hair off with some sort of weapon. There wasn’t a comb or hair ties in the cell, but surely I could figure out some way of taming his hair.
“I am hard... always,” he said slowly, as if trying to decide how to answer me. “Always since I was taken. They changed me.” His bulky hand circled the base of his dick. “Made me big and now this stays.”
My brows rose.
“They made your dick big? Like as an intimidation thing?” I couldn’t deny he was frighteningly large. If I didn’t know how respectful he was, I’d be scared spitless if he came at me with that thing swinging.
He snorted. “All of me is big, this is... side effect?”
“Oh.” I couldn’t help but chuckle at the misunderstanding. “So you’re all hopped up on drugs that make you muscley and hard.”
One shoulder rose in a half shrug. Carn seemed very disinterested in his own physical state.
“You’re not curious about what they’re giving you?” I asked.
“I was young when I was taken,” he said quietly. “But even the mature males on my planet would not understand the sytos and their ways.”
His answer made me sad. To think of a young Carn stolen away to be experimented on and kept alone in a cell when he wasn’t forced to kill his own people...
This place sucked donkey balls.