by Ella Maven
Blushing, I dropped my head into my arms and let out a giggle. I wished I had friends. Someone I could talk to about this. Back home, I would have called my college roommates, Kelly and Trisha, to join me for a beer at our favorite bar. We would have noshed on cheese fries and a lager, then called Beth, who’d moved away to Colorado, while we were toasted and slurring our words.
I would have told them all about Bosa’s tongue and his heartfelt words while they grilled me on his facial expressions and body language to determine if he was being truthful or a player. The night would have ended with us singing karaoke classics like “Man, I Feel Like a Woman” and “I Will Survive.”
Fuck, I missed my friends. I wasn’t close with my parents because they’d both gone off the rails since divorcing when I was eighteen, so my friends were my lifeline. They were the ones I called when my day job as an overloaded social worker stressed me the hell out, and when my night job as a manga fan podcast host gave me an endorphin high.
I’d thought about them nonstop when I’d first arrived here, until their memory grew too painful. Now, I smiled thinking of how they’d react to Bosa. They’d be completely suspect of him, as they should, and I imagined how Bosa would react to them. I guessed he wouldn’t really care about their opinion of him, but he’d work to stay on their good side for my sake.
Maybe I was putting too much stock in how he felt about me, but I’d looked into his gorgeous eyes when he’d confided in me about his home. When he’d said he wanted to stay by my side. I believed him, which was maybe crazy. But other than our initial meeting when he thought I was capable of something terrible, he hadn’t done anything to betray my trust. He’d been dependable and deadly—all in my favor.
A few bubbles burst at the surface of the water, and I gasped just before a white head and bronze face burst to the surface. I exhaled roughly with relief before sliding over to the side on my knees. “So?”
“It’s clear,” he said, water dripping from his hair. He reached for me, and after talking a gulp of air, I dove into the water at his side. I didn’t have to swim very hard—which was good as I wasn’t the strongest swimmer—because Bosa didn’t let go of my arm. He struck through the water like Michael Phelps until we burst to the surface in front of the waterfall.
I glanced around warily, but there was no loud buzzing or disturbance in the brush surrounding our small oasis. I had a moment to ogle Bosa’s high and tight butt as he hauled himself out of the water before he began to dress. He gestured to me urgently to follow suit, so I pulled on my clothes and finger-combed my wet hair.
He grabbed my hand again, this time linking our fingers as he headed toward the hidden buggy. “We’re heading to get your supplies now. We can’t waste much more time. Frenz is getting too close for my comfort.”
My stomach swooped with a nervous thrill at completing my mission. “I agree.”
He straddled the buggy, and I found myself appreciating his physique now that I knew what he looked like beneath his clothes. His thighs alone were a work of art. I got caught ogling because he reached out and flicked a claw at my hip. When I jerked to attention, his smile was wicked. “I’m flattered.”
I snorted as I settled in front of him and tossed my wet hair, so it definitely smacked him in the face… “Flattered about what? I was just… checking the mechanics.”
A fist wrapped around the length, and I let out a squeak as he jerked my head back. I swallowed thickly as his eyes narrowed. A hardness throbbed against my lower back, and the matz on his neck shimmered. “Don’t lie to me, Karina,” he said in a low, raspy tone that spread heat down my spine like dripping honey. He rolled his hips, and I gasped as I felt his shaft pulse through the thin material of my shirt.
He released my hair and slid his hand down my neck to squeeze one of my breasts before continuing lower until he possessively cupped my pussy, just like in my dream. “You can stare at me all you want. Because I intend to look and touch you as much as I want.” His tongue played over the rim of my ear before sucking a patch on my neck.
My vision swam and I couldn’t help but buck against his hand.
“Bosa…” was all I managed to whisper.
His eyes turned a little softer as his thumb carefully brushed my lower stomach. “I don’t know what will happen to us, kotche. Whether we will survive this rotation or the next. I haven’t had anything for myself ever in my life, and even though I know I don’t deserve it, I plan on tasting your sweetness as much as I can before our time is up.”
I blinked at him, my head spinning. “If you knew we’d live until we were old and gray, would you keep me?”
His other arm came around me, and he pressed me tightly to him while burying his face in my hair.
I stared straight ahead unseeing, terrified he’d answer and at the same time aching to know what he’d say.
“I don’t let myself think about the future, kotche,” he said. “I can’t.”
“I get it,” I whispered because I did. That was also how I’d lived my life since I’d been taken from Earth.
“You’ll live a rotation at a time with me?” He punctuated his last two words with sharp squeezes to my torso.
I swallowed and squeezed my eyes shut. “Yes,” I said softly. “I will.”
His lips grazed the top of my head, and only then did he release me before starting the buggy. We were in the air and off before I caught my breath.
Ten
Karina
By the time we arrived back at the farm, the sun was setting. Bosa told me to stay inside while he went out to gather firewood, and I looked around for the expeller. Finding none, I wondered how the Pucin relieved themselves, but then I wasn’t quite sure of their anatomy. Needing to pee, I quickly stole outside. I could hear Bosa in the distance working at some dried logs.
Finding a well-hidden area in the nearby forest, I pulled my pants down and squatted, exhaling happily when my bladder vacated. All I could hear was the distant sound of Bosa chopping wood and the splatter of my urine.
A breeze rustled the trees above my head, startling me for a moment. “Calm down, Karina,” I muttered to myself. As soon as I finished peeing, I yanked up my pants. A lock of hair fell into my eyes, and I blew it away just as the rustling grew louder. Freezing for a second, I listened more carefully before peering up to the branch canopy.
The leaves weren’t moving. They were still, and yet the rustling sound was louder than ever. Panic sent my heart plunging into my feet just as the sound stopped abruptly, plunging the forest into silence. I blinked into the dark, wanting to scream for Bosa but also not wanting to draw attention to myself.
Black shapes emerged slowly, creeping around the tree trunks. Frozen in terror, I watched as the starlight caught on a large, round, shiny orb. An opaque film descended over the orb before peeling back again, like a blink. It was a giant eye—or really, a hundred tiny eyes that made up one large one about the size of a beach ball. Below that were two fangs, slick with what I could only imagine was venom.
And attached to that eye was a spider-like body, the size of a sedan, covered in thin hairs. Six legs crept toward me and rising from its back were two massive scorpion-esque stingers that waved in the sky threateningly.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, my muscles locked in horror. The rustling sound came again, louder now, and I realized the spider-thing was making the sound with its mouth by rubbing little skin flaps against its fangs.
Before I could open my mouth to let out a shout, a leg swept under my feet and sent me slamming onto my back. The air rushed from my lungs, and I gasped for air just as small hooks on the ends of its feet snagged my pants and tugged me under the massive body. My arm brushed the hairs on its legs, and a burning pain singed the skin there, like my skin had been held on a direct flame.
I tried to focus through the pain and the fear as the spider thing continued to walk backward, tugging me with it. Probably taking me to its lair where it would lay eggs inside my live body so its y
oung could eat me from the inside out.
What had Bosa told me? Find its weakness. Exploit it. Then run as fast as I could. I scrabbled with my hands on the forest floor, still gasping for breath through the pain. My hand closed around a stick and I swung it, catching the spider on one of its legs. The spider shifted to the side, and I caught the sight of one of its stingers plunging down. Rolling to the side at the last second, the stinger sank into the dirt at my side with a force that would have completely caved in my chest cavity.
The rustling started again, and I noticed when the stinger retreated, the spider had to angle its body, revealing a hairless section of lighter, thinner skin under one leg—like an armpit. If I could jam the stick there…
I hit another leg, knowing that stinger was coming for me, but needing the advantage its attack gave me. Sure enough, the spider shifted to the other side, smashing the stinger right at my head. With a yell and a lunge, I jammed the stick into its armpit.
The thing shrieked, a sound that nearly blew out my eardrums, and fell to the side. I narrowly avoided getting crushed by its body as I scrambled onto my hands and knees and then my feet. Pumping my arms, I took off without looking back, racing blindly in the forest. “Bosa!” I screamed with all the energy I had left. “Help! Bosaaaaa!”
I glanced over my shoulder to find the spider had recovered. And that wasn’t all. Another two had joined it, and they weren’t creeping anymore. They were full on skittering toward me, covering way more ground than my short legs could.
“Bosa!” I sobbed. Where was he? He said he’d be by my side. But as I ran, no bronzed god appeared in front of me, nothing but darkness and trees that I dodged through my tears.
I tripped over a root and stumbled onto my hands. The rustling sounded right over my head and dropped onto my back just as the large spider reared above me, both stingers held high and that giant orb eye alight with glee at its next meal.
“Bosa,” I whispered.
Suddenly the eye exploded. Just like that. Before my eyes, the spider eye seemed to spontaneously combust, sending liquid and goo all over me. I screamed and scrabbled back on my palms and feet as the spider rent the air with another ear-piercing shriek. I couldn’t see well in the dark, but something was happening to the spider—it was rolling onto its side, and blood and guts seemed to be pouring from a hole in its side… what the hell? Was it sick?
As the first spider lay motionless, legs akimbo and body a mess of smeared guts, another one of the spiders began to shake and shriek. I watched as the same thing happened to that one. I told myself to get up and run, but just as I stumbled to my feet, a series of clicks echoed in the forest. I’d heard that sound before—back when I’d run from Frenz… and right into Bosa.
I blinked into the near darkness, trying to focus just as a bronzed figure appeared on a branch over top of the last living spider. Bosa stood there, materializing out of thin air like a damn magician. He was covered in a sticky fluid, and his chest was heaving. Hair loose and wild, he let out a roar as he leapt from the branch, Babe over his head. He smashed it into the head of the third spider, which didn’t even get a chance to shriek as its body collapsed in the bloody pool of its comrades.
Holding my burned arm, I panted as Bosa lifted his hand. Streaked with dirt, guts, and grime, eyes wild and filled with blood lust, he had never looked more like a warrior.
Sobbing with relief, I collapsed forward onto my knees. Bosa rushed toward me, catching me just as my body pitched forward. “Kotche,” he whispered, brushing my hair from my face with shaking hands. “Are you okay? Did the wittow sting you?”
I shook my head and pointed to my arm. “Burns.”
He twisted my arm to peer at it. “The hairs have an irritant. I need to make a poultice, but it will heal.”
With Babe strapped to his back, he lifted me into his arms and began to run. I stared at him, still processing what had happened back there. “Did you… was that you who fought all the spider things?”
“The wittows?” he said, barely panting as he sprinted toward the house. “Yes.”
“But you… I didn’t see you…”
His eyes shifted down for a brief second. “I can blank.”
“Blank?”
He burst through the door of the house and kicked it shut behind him. “I can blend into my surroundings to appear invisible.” Setting me down on the bed pallet, he immediately began digging through his pack for supplies.
“You can?” I blinked at him. This was brand new information to me. How did I not know this yet? “Why haven’t you done it before?”
He glanced at me. “Because you can’t blank. Why would I disguise myself when you’d be the only visible one and the target?”
He pulled out a packet of dried leaves and then spit on them before mashing them into a paste. I didn’t even question when he smeared the whole saliva mess on a bandage for my arm. Sure, spit on me. At this point, he could have peed on me, and I would have thanked him. That was how to treat jellyfish stings after all. What was a little spit in an alien galaxy?
“So wait, you could have blanked when we were running from the orhanus and you didn’t?”
He wrapped the bandage around my arm, and immediately the cool paste soothed the irritated skin. “Yes. I’m a bigger target. Better they hit me than you.”
My jaw dropped. Even back then he could have easily gotten rid of me. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he wanted to save his own skin, but instead he’d… protected me. At his own risk. “Jesus, Bosa.”
“I don’t know what that first word means.” He finished wrapping my arm and sat back on the balls of his feet. “Does anything else hurt?”
I could really only stare at him in awe. “Show me.”
Confusion flickered in his eyes. “What?”
“Can you show me how you blank?”
A small smile tilted his lips. It was almost shy. “It’s not that exciting.”
“It is to me.”
“Anything for you, kotche,” he said softly. Still crouched on the balls of his feet, he seemed to shimmer before my eyes as a series of clicks echoed off the walls. In seconds, he was gone, disappeared before my eyes.
“Holy cow,” I whispered before reaching out. My hands grazed the familiar feel of his scales, but I couldn’t see him. Squinting, I could just barely detect a faint blur in front of me in the outline of his body, but it was nearly undetectable, and I wouldn’t have seen it if I didn’t know how he was positioned.
A thumb swiped at my lips, and I turned my head to give the digit a play bite. My teeth closed on nothing, but I heard a chuckle near my ear. “You’re hurt,” a disembodied voice said from somewhere behind me. “Just relax.”
I turned my head to look behind me, even though I knew I couldn’t see him. “What are you—”
Hands settled on my shoulders and tugged me back. “Relax.”
I felt a warmth on my outer thighs, and when I lowered my hands, I felt the smooth surface of his pants. He was behind me, straddling me, and when I let myself fall back, I rested on a solid form—his chest.
“I’m not that hurt,” I protested weakly. My arm barely hurt anymore, thanks to his spit concoction.
“No?” He sounded amused.
“Not really.”
I squeezed my fingers, marveling at the oddness of feeling him but not seeing him. What would this look like to an outsider? Me, leaning back against…nothing?
Something brushed my upper chest, and I sucked in a breath as the ties of my shirt loosened slowly, one by one, until all that was revealed was the band I wore around my chest for support. Fingers plucked at the pin I kept there, and I squirmed as the band fell open to reveal my breasts. They felt full, and my nipples pebbled in the cool air. “Bosa,” I whispered.
“Kotche,” his voice sounded strained, and I could feel the pulsing heat of his cock at my lower back.
Invisible fingers plucked at my nipples, distending them until I ached. I pressed my head back into
his chest and moaned softly as he cupped them and flicked a claw at the sensitive flesh.
Next were my pants, which he shoved down to my knees, and I kicked off the rest of the way on my own. Naked, I looked behind me but again saw nothing but the faint shimmery outline of Bosa’s body. Feeling vulnerable, I asked, “It’s still you, right?”
His hands, which had been caressing my stomach, paused. “It’s me, kotche,” his rasp was firm. “Only me.” His hand dipped quickly to palm my pussy in that possessive way that made me slick. “This is mine.” A thumb tapped my clit and I jerked. Fingers spread me wide, and I moaned loudly as a thick finger slipped inside. “Only mine.”
His finger pumped in an out of me, and I moved my hips in time to his movements, seeking pressure on my clit. He finally fulfilled my wish when what felt like the heel of his palm pressed there. His other hand cupped one of my breasts. “Listen carefully, kotche,” he growled, adding another finger inside of me. “I’m a selfish yerk, but I’m claiming you, just as you claimed me from the moment I saw you light those Gattrix on fire. In this galaxy and the next, we belong together.”
Those thick fingers were driving me out of my mind, rubbing against my inner walls with a delicious drag that made me dizzy. “Wh-what does kotche mean?”
My body shifted forward, and I let him manipulate me onto my hands and knees. Those thick fingers never stopped teasing me. I glanced behind him, eager to see him, but frustrated at the empty room.
“Kotche means my only,” he answered just as he withdrew his fingers from my body.
I reared back, seeking the fullness again. I felt his cock against me, the shaft pulsing and throbbing while the cap on his cock slowly rotated against my clit. “Oh God,” I murmured, nearly delirious with the need to come. “Please.”
Fingers gripped my hip, and claws dug into my skin. “Don’t move,” his strained voice echoed in the room.