Chapter 3 #2
“Forgive me, beautiful mate,” my strange alien companion said in a rush.
My eyes locked on his face, and I saw that his were wide and shocked, rapidly filling with remorse.
“I did not mean to frighten you,” he said, and he hunkered down lower beside the pod, as if he were trying to make himself small.
“Please, forgive me.” I nodded again because what else was I going to say?
I was pretty sure I was going to have to depend on him to get my ship up and running again.
A little tail petting was going to have to be acceptable.
“Will you still allow me to heal you?” he asked again, and I weakly shrugged.
A bit of hand-waving wasn’t going to do much, but he could give it his best shot.
The fright with that tail had made my adrenaline surge enough that the nausea was now firmly fading to the back of my mind.
That didn’t mean my stomach wasn’t still extremely uneasy, but I no longer felt like throwing up was imminent.
He brought the hand holding the gold and silver object over my chest, hovering just above my suit, then slowly lowered it to my stomach.
A light flared, catching me by surprise, and a gentle hum resonated between us.
My stomach eased, and the cramps in my body—the stiffness I hadn’t known was there—also began to fade.
Whatever that device was, it was no simple hand-waving.
That was actual technology, something far more advanced than we had on Earth.
Hope surged. Maybe he really could help me fix my ship, find out where I was, and send me back on my way.
Maybe his kind really could be of help to Earth somehow—an alliance, the beginning of a new era.
“Better, sweet mate?” he asked after a moment.
The light on the device flicked off, but he did not remove his hand from where it hovered over my belly.
When I nodded, he smiled, and that expression made my insides twist in funny ways.
Holy Hannah, that was sexy. That mouth too lush, his eyes sparkling, and the strange nubbed ridges that formed his brow scrunching up in a very adorable way.
“How did you do that?” I asked, rising on my elbows to peer more closely at the device.
He obliged by lifting it closer to my face and angling his hand so I could see the portion he’d aimed at my body.
It appeared to be a disk, a black gem embedded in a gold frame, nothing more.
Sinuous lines decorated it, but they did not appear to have a purpose. It was a mystery.
“With this,” he said, and then he launched into an explanation, words falling over one another as he tried to explain a very complex technical concept I couldn’t possibly understand.
Something about light waves and healing matrices and precise ways of stimulating the body.
Well, that answered the big question: was his society advanced?
Clearly, I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.
He might look a little primitive, but he definitely wasn’t.
“Okay, okay,” I said, halfway through his explanation, or at least, I hoped it was the halfway point.
“Thank you, but that’s a bit above my pay grade.
I’m a pilot, not a doctor, I’m afraid. Let’s start with the basics: I’m Captain Felicia Haines.
Who are you?” I held my breath and waited, hoping I hadn’t been rude by interrupting him.
He seemed so earnest in helping me that I didn’t think I could offend him at this point.
After all, the man did tell me I could puke on him again if that pleased me. I was never going to forget that.
He froze, his eyes beginning to sparkle as his mouth snapped shut.
“My apologies. I am new to this, and I very much want to do it right.” He smiled, and I liked that.
It was a little self-deprecating, and a man who could find humor in his own mistakes, that was sexy.
“I am Shaman Levant,” he said. Levant—I liked that.
It was foreign but familiar at the same time.
Shaman, that also made sense, even if it was an interestingly primitive word.
“That’s okay, I’m new at this too,” I said to him.
After all, I was the one who had screwed up our first meeting with an alarming amount of bodily fluids.
I hoped I was never reminded of that again.
First contact was hard, but I was starting to believe we’d weathered our first hurdles all right. “I’m from a planet called Earth.”
“I know,” he responded immediately. “You are human, a human from Earth.” I didn’t know how to respond to that; hell, I didn’t know how to feel about it.
He knew what I was, and where I came from?
How was that possible? That put me at a distinct disadvantage; I knew absolutely nothing about him.
At least his healing device had worked wonders, and I felt much more like myself as I rose to a full sitting position inside the pod.
I’d take stock of my surroundings and the situation, and then I’d tailor my questions accordingly.
Perhaps it was a mistake to trust so quickly, but I didn’t think Levant wanted to harm me.
If anything, the way his gaze had dropped to linger on my chest suggested he wanted to please, not harm.
The attraction I saw simmering like banked fire in his eyes wasn’t unwelcome.
I felt the same intriguing pull to explore our differences in ways that were probably entirely against military regulations.
The Future was not exactly a small ship, but most of her bulk was taken up by the experimental FTL drive.
The interior of the ship was very limited, and Levant was taking up most of its space.
There really was a lot of long, black, scaly tail everywhere.
The tip still lay against my neck, touching skin, and the warm light that spilled over the gray metal came from the glowing slashes along those coils.
He used a scrap of fabric from a pouch to finally wipe away the evidence of my upset stomach from earlier.
Then he seemed to be all business as he began fiddling with the side of my pod, detaching strange-looking wires and a small, triangular-shaped device.
As he pulled it free, the lights on my pod dimmed, then winked out entirely, and a feeling of deep unease unfurled inside my belly.
If the lights on the stasis pod went out, did that mean the battery was dead?
How was that possible? It was designed to last for several centuries.
“What now?” I asked carefully, trying to keep my voice neutral.
The ship was priceless; I couldn’t abandon it, but at the same time I needed to find out as much as I could about Levant’s world, too.
One thing was certain: we couldn’t stay here indefinitely, and I would probably need supplies to get the Future ready for the return trip.
Power definitely seemed to be the first order of business to get her back in working order.
“Now, I take you to my camp, sweet mate. We need to bundle up warm against the cold. It is very bad outside, and night has fallen.” That sounded incredibly ominous, and camp made it sound like he was only here temporarily.
A scout, a forerunner, sent to investigate my ship’s landing?
Or had it crashed? Nothing about the interior seemed to indicate damage, but I couldn’t be sure.
In any case, Levant was very prepared, with a large pack of supplies he’d wedged into my pilot seat.
From it, he began pulling a thick fur tunic and more purple-furred items. They were clothes he wanted to bundle me up in, and though the ship’s interior wasn’t anywhere close to freezing, I did as he wanted.
The tunic had to be his, as it smelled distinctly masculine, spicy and sweet at the same time.
It was a really good smell, and I might have stuck my nose into the white-and-black ruff at the neck to inhale an extra whiff.
He had a very rudimentary kind of pants for me, too.
They were clearly handsewn, and possibly created in a hurry.
Since he did not have legs, he must have crafted them specifically for me.
As he took up all the floor space, I had to wriggle into the pants while lying down in the stasis pod, in an awkward shimmy—made all the more awkward by his tail still lingering against my neck, and his avid stare as I moved around.
“This would be easier if you could let go for a minute,” I suggested as politely as I could. I thought it might be rude to touch the tip of his tail, so I only vaguely gestured at my neck, where the slender curl had slipped into the collar of my oversized tunic.
He hissed, for the first time sounding anything but amicable and sweet. His head shook firmly, no, and something tapped against the low ceiling. Horns, how had I not noticed the pair of horns rising from his hair? They were a spiraling, antelope kind of affair, sharp and big; very impressive.
“No, if I don’t touch you, we can’t speak,” he said firmly.
He reached out with a hand and touched a finger to my knuckles, and his tail slid away from my shoulder.
He waved it between us, all aglow with those intriguing bioluminescent lines, and very demonstratively raised his finger from my flesh.
The lights winked out, then back on as soon as he touched me. Whoa, that was kind of cool!
The light show did not explain the ability to understand one another, but I wasn’t going to question it.
He hadn’t healed me with some random hand-waving, but used an actual device, so there had to be more to it that I simply didn’t understand.
At least he coiled the tip of his tail around my wrist now, and that made things a bit easier when moving around.