Chapter 12
I couldn’t sleep.
For the first time since I’d dropped into Carn’s cell, his aggressive cuddling wasn’t soothing me to snore town like it usually did. He’d tucked me into his chest like normal. Both thick arms banded around my body, his legs pulled up to fully enclose me in a nest of alien muscle.
Normally I felt warm and safe wrapped up like this. Normally I passed out minutes after his breathing slowed and I knew whatever stress was setting him off had calmed.
But ever since our conversation, Carn didn’t seem as jittery as usual. Which made the whole nude, platonic cuddling thing an issue.
He didn’t need a human stress ball right now, he wasn’t freaking out or having a panic attack.
He just... wanted to hold me.
It didn’t help that I couldn’t stop thinking about the last thing he’d said before the lights went out.
Turochs mate for life.
He’d said it so matter of fact, meeting my eyes unflinching before bundling me into his chest, and falling asleep. After last night’s activities, it was hard to pretend that was a random statement.
Every time I replayed those words my stomach dropped and the blood rushed in my ears. Was I panicking or having an attack of butterflies at the implication?
That had to count as making a move, right?
Then again, Carn was an alien. Maybe that had been his way of telling me his never ending erection was to be saved for his future mate and not to look too deep into any nighttime grinding.
I snorted at that thought. If he planned on rubbing up on me like an unneutered cocker spaniel, he had another thing coming.
Unless he was hinting he wanted more...
The uncertainty was killing me. I’d always been a bit of a social loner. Having a gaggle of friends prying into my personal affairs seemed like the first circle of hell in my opinion, but I’d give my remaining foot to have a girl to talk to right now.
The odds of finally finding a solid friend group after an alien apocalypse seemed low, even if I did escape this stupid ship. Abruptly depressed, and irritated at myself for being depressed about the state of my life, I huffed and wiggled up the cot until I was eye level with the zonked out male.
I couldn’t see much. Sometimes when he was awake, Carn’s pupil’s would catch the light and reflect a flash of orange so I knew where he was. Now though, all I could see was the faintest outline of his jaw and the shadow of his dark hair.
Feeling stupid but refusing to stew in my stupid thoughts a minute longer, I reached out and tapped his chin.
“Carn?” I whispered.
A flash of orange answered me and I shivered when I realized how intently he was staring at me.
“Naomi.” He waited for me to say something and the boldness of my question nearly shriveled my tongue.
I cleared my throat and glared where I thought his collarbone was.
“Do you want me to be your mate?”
His breathing stalled. If I didn’t know better, I’d say his heart stopped beating. A long minute passed in utter silence, then another, and another until the only thing I could hear was the rapid rhythm of my own breathes.
This was by far the most humiliating thing I’d ever experienced and I’d given up on dating when a man introduced me to his roommate as his ‘good deed for the year’.
“Carn?”
His chest shuddered under my hands and I yanked them back.
“Naomi, I-” He sounded like he was strangling on the words.
“Nevermind,” I blurted out, hating myself for bringing it up and hating that I’d chickened out before getting a solid answer. Somehow I’d gotten the worst of both knowing and not knowing. “Just go back to sleep, please.”
I ducked down under his chin to hide and squeezed my eyes shut as if I could blind myself to the awkwardness of the last five minutes. I didn’t even know what I wanted him to say.
No, I don’t see you that way, no need to worry about your virtue.
Or
You’re the sexiest thing to ever fall through a ceiling, please be mine.
I was so damn mad I woke him up to ask. If I was lucky, he’d pass out again and think this whole conversation was a dream. Clearly the end of the world had damaged my brain. Carn was an alien. A giant, ‘roided up, naked alien. With horns.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and muffled a groan of frustration. Where did I think this was going?
If I succeeded in escaping back to Earth, what future did Carn have on a planet full of traumatized humans?
We were tribal and violent when things were good, take away electricity, food and safety and any survivors were more likely to shoot Carn on sight than listen to why my alien boyfriend was harmless.
Especially since ‘harmless’ was the most unbelievable description of Carn I could think of. He was built like a monster truck, he was bright red and had scary horns. The male was terrifying and I was just too stupid to be scared.
One of his huge hands slid down my spine and I shivered at the rasp of his callouses over my skin. Why did such a simple touch make me react like this? I was practically hyperventilating and he wasn’t even doing anything.
Down girl.
“Naomi?” His voice was hesitant.
“Mmhm?” I squeaked.
“Are you angry with me?”
I blew out a slow breath and tried to wrestle my wild thoughts under control.
“No,” I answered truthfully. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He shifted, pulling me closer as he rolled onto his back.
“I don’t know how to answer your question,” he said, his hand stroking slow circles on my side.
For all our cuddling, he’d never petted me in this easy, casual way before and I found myself holding breath to keep from reacting.
It hadn’t taken long to get used to his nudity and my skimpy outfit, but my body was starting to realize there was a lot of big, virile male nearby.
Aside from a few brief kisses, I’d never been intimate with anyone. I certainly hadn’t cuddled up to a naked someone while he stroked my ribs. Foreign sensations were buzzing over my skin wherever he touched me, and my core was slowly tightening in a way I couldn’t describe.
“What do you mean?” I forced out. The familiar sound of Carn’s tail slapping the cot made me smile. I couldn’t see anything but I knew he was nervous from that tell alone.
In just a few days I’d come to know him better than I thought possible. Even without the translator, I’d learned to gauge his emotions and his intentions. For all his gruff and grumble, Carn had never been anything but gentle with me.
“I do not want to make you fear me,” he answered slowly. “And I do not know the ways of my people well enough to properly mate you.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say to that. For some reason, I wasn’t thinking long term when I said ‘mate’. But if there was a proper way to do it, was he talking marriage? Or at least the alien equivalent.
I was crazy for even considering it.
“Well, I’m not scared of you,” I said firmly, trying to deal with the part I understood before we got to the complicated stuff. If Carn was attracted to me, I didn’t think he’d suddenly attack me if I told him no. I’d been completely at his mercy for days and he hadn’t done anything.
The arm around my shoulders squeezed me and I smiled into the darkness at the affection in the movement.
“Fearless female,” he rumbled proudly.
I blushed, relieved he couldn’t see it. He called me fearless when I’d just spent an hour having an anxiety attack in the darkness over a few words. I wasn’t fearless, I was just scared of the wrong things.
Giant, violent alien gladiator? No problem.
Feelings? Terrified.
It felt like I’d always been like this. Life was tough, shit got scary, I could handle just about anything thrown at me if I just didn’t think about it too much. Being forced to sit in the dark and ruminate on my emotions left me feeling shaky in a way I didn’t like.
I needed action, I needed a plan, the next step that could carry me past whatever stupid challenge life had decided to throw at me next.
If Carn wanted more, I could deal with that, whether or not I felt the same. What I couldn’t handle was wondering.
“So you do want to... properly mate me?” The words coming out of my mouth were surreal.
“What is human mating?” he asked after a few moments.
“It’s swearing to stay with someone in front of a lot of people. Then you live together and have kids and stuff. We call it marriage.”
He considered my words and I wondered again just how old he was when he was taken. How old was I when I understood, actually understood, the mechanics and meaning of getting married?
Fairly young right? Younger than a teenager.
My stomach roiled as I came to the sickening conclusion that Carn hadn’t been ‘young’ when he was taken, he’d been a child.
“How do turochs do it? Do you have families?” My mind spun as I realized I had no clue how his culture worked.
Maybe mates were like fuck buddies? Or breeding partners instead of people who were romantically involved.
If turochs were polygamists, I was backing out of this conversation so fast. There was no way I was signing up to be part of a harem.
Carn inhaled and tucked me closer into his side.
“A male claims a female, and he... gentles her.” The pause after that made me think he wasn’t super sure about that part of the process. “They share a tent and raise their young until their sons leave the band to roam the plains with the other young males.”
That sounded like a family to me, assuming I wasn’t missing something major.
He grunted like he was struggling to remember things.
“My brother had just left our mother band when I was taken, I was not yet old enough. But close?” He hesitated. “It was very long time ago.”
My hands clenched into fists as I wrestled with the urge to punch whatever asshole had kidnapped baby Carn and enslaved him. A child, so young he barely remembered what his family life had been like. And they turned him into an oversized killing machine and locked him away from his own species.
Even cattle were allowed to live in herds. The worst factory farm kept animals near each other. Turochs were clearly a social species and they’d stuck Carn in solitary confinement for who knew how many years, only letting him out to kill people.
“I can’t believe you’re still sane,” I whispered, nauseous the longer I let myself think about it.
He huffed a laugh.
“I’m not-I wasn’t,” he corrected himself, turning his face until his nose rested in my hair as he inhaled. I felt his muscles relax as he breathed me in. “My mind was a fog of rage. Then a tiny human female crawled out of the ceiling and I was awake again.”
“Are you saying I cured you?” I asked, unsure if I wanted that kind of responsibility for his tenuous sanity.
“Not cured,” he admitted. “But showed me something worth waking up for.”
“That was sweet,” I whispered. This conversation had taken several turns I hadn’t expected, but the panicked spin of my thoughts was gone and I felt my eyes growing heavy as I nestled into the bulky safety of Carn’s chest.
Just as I was drifting off, I heard his low murmur rumble out of him.
“I would be honored to claim you as my female, but only if I can earn it. Only if I can free you, Naomi.”