Chapter 15
Lacey’s cheeks warmed. “Okay. Bath and story time.”
What a story to tell, knowing his hands are going to be all over me.
He picked her up with even more effortlessness than usual and sank into a sitting position, raising a bent foreleg before him. When he sat her upon that leg and curled his lower left arm around her, her pussy touched his hide, and she released a small, startled sound.
Telok froze, and she felt the hairs on his leg rise around her ass and thighs.
Lacey knew exactly why that was.
She buried her face in her hands, groaning in embarrassment. “Telok…”
He shuddered, and his fingers flexed around her hips, pricking her with his claws. “Your story, vi’jatai. Now.”
Her story. Right. It’d be a good distraction for the both of them.
She slowly dropped her hands to her lap and once more peered downstream. Though she could hear some of the chatter from Cole and the thornskulls, she couldn’t make out their words, and they remained out of sight. Telok and Lacey were alone.
That didn’t quell her uncertainty. She was in the middle of the jungle, naked and completely exposed, about to open up and bare her soul just as wholly as he had her body.
Lacey looked at Telok, who watched her with silent intensity. “I’ve…never talked to anyone about any of this before.”
He placed a finger beneath her chin and tipped her face up. “Tell me all.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”
After passing the bar of soap to his upper hand, Telok drew Lacey’s hair to the side, letting it hang in front of her shoulder. He rubbed the soap against her back and shoulders in slow, soothing circles.
“I already told you I used to be bigger,” she began.
“My weight was something I fought with my whole life, ever since I was a kid. I had shit parents. A mom who didn’t want me, and a dad who used me as a verbal punching bag.
My mom left when I was seven, and my dad was an alcoholic and a gambler.
I was mostly on my own, so I had to take care of myself, eating whatever food was around, which was usually junk food since he never cooked.
Food… It became a source of comfort for me.
An escape, a high, if only for a brief time.
And that habit stuck with me for years.”
Those soothing circles trailed down her spine.
“Which lead to me being fat,” she said, dropping her gaze to her thighs.
She ran a finger alongside one of the inflamed scars.
“I tried to stay out of the house as much as possible when Dad was home. I hated it when he yelled at me, blaming me for all his problems, calling me names like piggy and fat bitch. But I had nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to.”
“You were alone,” Telok said, his gravelly voice soft.
“I was. I didn’t have any close friends, and lived in a trailer in a small town, so everyone knew about my parents. About my dad’s behavior.”
Taking hold of her left wrist, he lifted her arm and moved the soap to her shoulder, gently scrubbing downward. When he reached the scar on the inside of her bicep, he paused to gently stroke it with his thumb before proceeding along her arm.
Lacey watched his ministrations. His hands, so large and lethal with their wicked claws, were tender as he handled her.
“I was determined to finish school,” she continued as he spread her fingers and cleaned between each one.
“I wanted to do something with my life. So I studied hard, graduated, and got out of that trailer, away from my father, as fast as I could. I lived out of my junky car for a while, working as much as I could until I was able to save enough for a down payment on a tiny house and to get a little home business running.”
“What is a bizness?” Telok asked as he picked up her other hand and began running the soap along that arm.
“I’m sorry, you probably don’t understand half of those words. Business is what I did for work, like how you’re a hunter and Rekosh is a weaver. My business was making soaps and lotions and things like that. Like the things I make now.”
“Ah.” He gave her forearm a comforting little squeeze. “I do not know all your words, but I understand your story. I will ask when I must know more.”
She nodded and smiled as she watched him lace his fingers with hers and use a claw to meticulously clean under her nails.
He glanced up at her. “You were not done. Talk.”
“You’re pretty invested, huh?”
“I do not know that word, but I want your story.”
Lacey chuckled. Though she hated talking about the past and digging up those old hurts, it was…nice to finally share it with someone. She’d just never thought that someone would be Telok, much less while he was taking immense care in bathing her.
“I was doing all right for myself, and I was happy with what I had accomplished. I loved the things I created and the work I did. But… I don’t know.”
She frowned and stared off into the jungle, only vaguely aware of Telok setting her hand down and cupping handfuls of water to rinse away the soap.
“One day I caught myself talking to the goats like they were my best friends, and it just really dawned on me how freaking alone and isolated I was. And I just sat there, surrounded by goat shit, and cried. It’s like, no matter how much you try to run from the past, from yourself, it’s just there lurking, waiting until you’re at your most vulnerable to attack.
“I thought about how my own mother hated me so much that she abandoned me, how my father preferred to drink himself into oblivion, only giving me attention when he wanted to say cruel things to make me feel like shit. His own daughter, his flesh and blood. His words burrowed deep into my brain like a parasite. Every time I looked in the mirror, every time I saw myself, all I could think about were the horrible things he’d said and how unloved and unwanted I was.
And that made me hate myself. All I could see was the ugly. ”
Lacey looked down at the flowing water, but all she could see was the ghost of her father’s face with his reddened cheeks and glassy, hateful eyes staring at her.
Even over the sound of the stream, she could hear the echoes of his shouted words.
Could hear all those hurtful things from across the vast span of time and space.
“That’s why it hurt so much when you changed toward me,” she said, voice thick as tears welled in her eyes. “When I…when I thought you hated me. I felt abandoned all over again.”
Telok repeated that buzzing sound, this time even more distressed and sorrowful than before. Placing a hand on her cheek, he turned her face toward him and leaned down, tipping his headcrest against her forehead. “I did not hate you. Could never hate you. I felt…much for you. I feel much. And…”
He growled low in frustration before rasping, “Kir ven’dak ithaa ikarex saal ikar arvok kir shendar. Kir ven’dak unir arvok saal najar othan.”
I do not have the words to say what I feel. I do not know what to call them.
The depth of emotion in his tone told her more than the words he did not possess ever could have.
Lifting his head, Telok met her gaze and carefully combed his claws through her wet hair. “I will not let you be alone.”
Lacey smiled through her tears and lightly touched his jaw beneath his mandibles. “Promise?”
“Kir rayathi kir’ani ikarex elush ul sythal.”
I weave my words into a bond.
Still holding her securely, Telok eased back, cupped his hand in the water, and brought it up to pour over her back and shoulders, rinsing away the rest of the soap. “No more leaking, Lacey.” His hand smoothed down her back and arms in a soothing caress. “You are here now. With me.”
She was. God, she really freaking was. Sitting naked on his leg with his hands moving over her body.
For the last several months, she couldn’t possibly have imagined anything like this, and she still wasn’t exactly sure how it was even happening now, or why so much had changed between them so quickly.
His lower right hand curled around her upper thigh, making her breath catch. She stared down at it, at those dark, clawed fingers, now so close to her pussy. His thumb stroked her skin, sending tingling currents through her that coalesced in her core.
Telok brought the soap down to her leg and began washing, his motions even gentler and more soothing than before.
But that lower hand remained in place. His thumb crept higher, tracing just beneath the spot near her pelvis where her scar wrapped around toward the front of her leg.
“Your scars. You were still telling the story.”
Lacey swallowed thickly. It was seriously hard to think with him touching her like this.
She didn’t believe it was sexual, but it certainly was sensual and intimate.
She clutched her hands on either side of her.
“It…It was around that time, when I was at my lowest, that I heard about the Homeworld Initiative.
I saw it as a chance to escape, to start over.
“Except when I first applied, I didn’t meet their criteria.
I was too fat, and my bloodwork came back showing I was prediabetic with high blood pressure and cholesterol, which was cause for immediate disqualification.
But when she saw my frustration and disappointment, the recruiter sympathized, and she told me I could reapply.
She said that if I could make the necessary changes, it would make me a more appealing candidate because it would show my determination.
And that meant losing weight, fast, because the deadline for applications was a little over a year away. ”
As Telok carefully moved the soap over the scar on her inner right thigh, Lacey flinched from the pain, parting her legs further while curling her fingers around his leg for support.
He went utterly still. “I do not want to hurt you.”
“I know. It’s okay. They’re just really, really tender right now.”
He resumed moving the soap, though he did so around the scar rather than directly on it.
As he washed her legs, he stroked his thumb over her left thigh as though to distract her.
And while it did take her mind off the pain, it only made her all the more aware of how close he was to stroking her pussy.
Lacey released a shaky breath. “Long story short, I did the work. Sometimes…not in the healthiest of ways. I had a goal, and I busted my ass to lose the weight. And I did it fast. Physically, I felt amazing, better than I ever had in my life. But mentally? When I looked at myself in the mirror, all I could see were stretch marks and all the excess, sagging skin. A new defect to replace the old. I worked so hard for a new body, and all I could see were the flaws. I hated it. But I just…”
She raised an arm and trailed her fingers over the scar running from her armpit to her elbow. “I didn’t have insurance or very much money, and my time was running out. So I did the stupidest thing. I found a shady doctor who offered to do the skin removal surgery for cheap.”
Lowering her hand, she shook her head with a short, humorless laugh.
“He cut my skin off and stitched me up like Frankenstein’s monster, leaving me with all these scars.
I was lucky I didn’t die from the infection I got afterwards, considering his negligence.
God, the fucking pain I was in for weeks… And I was alone through it all.”