by C. F. Harris
Though again as I looked him up and down I felt a shiver that showed exactly how much of a lie that was. I might be telling him I was in no mood to give myself to him, but my body was saying it was time to have some fun. Even if I was pretty sure there were Kliks watching. I didn't for a moment think they weren't keeping a very close eye on us.
He held up his hands as though he was trying to ward off an attack. After the way I just went at him I guess I could understand why he thought he needed to ward off an attack.
I had gone a little overboard when I woke up, sure, but could you really blame a girl? I woke up with a strange alien hovering over me. A strange alien who’d just fought another strange alien to the death with me as the prize for the winner. After witnessing all that I figured it was okay to be a little on edge.
But I couldn't stay on edge forever. Particularly if I was going to be locked in here with this guy for a while. I'd always been good at picking up new languages. I was the top of my class when it came into learning the Klik language, and long before that I'd done very well at Mandarin and Spanish in my earth studies thank you very much.
I sat down and smiled. Tried to look as nonthreatening as possible. I'm not sure how good a job I did. The important thing was I was trying to start a dialogue here. I was trying to make it clear we were friends.
Even if I had been a little overzealous in trying to fight him off initially. Hopefully he’d be able to forgive and forget.
I sighed. This was going to involve a hell of a lot more “me Tarzan you Jane” with this guy, but there wasn't any other choice but to go ahead with it.
I held up my hand. Wiggled it. "Fingers."
I smiled at him. Tried to look encouraging. Though from the way he blinked and looked confused I'm not sure how well I got the message across.
I looked at the sleeping arrangements. There was only the one cot, and it barely looked big enough for two people.
I decided maybe it’d be a good idea to start with language that had to do with those sleeping arrangements. I had a feeling that was language we were going to need very shortly.
I sighed and pointed to the cot. "Bed."
Again there wasn't any comprehension on his face. He merely looked confused. I let out a growl. I’d always been good at learning languages, but apparently my teaching left something to be desired.
This was going to be a long day. Night. Whatever the fuck time it was here.
12
Kir
I woke up and looked to the side. Blinked a couple of times. To say I was surprised at what I saw would be an understatement.
The strange girl. The one from my dreams. She was cuddled up against me with one arm draped around my chest and down below her leg was hitched over my own.
I was no stranger to waking up in the company of a strange woman. Back when I'd been the master of my own domain running my trading operation of somewhat questionable legality, never piracy, I'd spent many nights in out of the way spaceports finding a pretty young lass to spend a little time with.
Only it’d never been like this. I'd never been as surprised as I was in this moment staring down at this beauty from no species I recognized. She was beautiful, and I didn't mind her getting up close and personal with me.
No, I didn't mind that one bit. Even if it was creating a slightly awkward situation down between my legs.
I was surprised that she would get so close to me. Especially after the disastrous attempt she'd made to try and communicate the night before. The less I thought about that the better.
It’d been obvious she was trying to teach me words that had something to do with the sleeping arrangements, but I’d been unwilling to give up my spot on the cot no matter how many times she patiently worked through how much she thought I should sleep on the floor in her language.
I might be enticed by this woman, but I wasn't enticed to the point of giving up the relative comfort of my cot. At least as comfortable as you could get as a prisoner on a Klik ship.
If she wanted to sleep on the cot then she could sleep with me. There was enough room that we could both be comfortable, even if it wasn't sleeping with her in the way I’d like.
So I'd deliberately played dumb while she did her teaching routine. It’d been amusing watching her getting more and more frustrated. She might think I was a dolt, but I was a dolt who wasn’t sleeping on the floor.
She shifted slightly and I tensed. A situation had developed between my legs, and something told me she wouldn’t appreciate it. It wasn't out of the ordinary for me to wake up in a completely aroused state, but it was new for me to wake up this aroused with a beautiful but volatile alien pressed up against me with her legs hitched over my body in such a way that she could feel exactly what was going on between my legs.
I knew nothing about the mating habits of her species, but she resembled my species closely enough that I assumed she’d know exactly what the hardness growing between my legs meant.
Her eyes fluttered open and I waited for the explosion. To my surprise she merely looked down and smiled. She traced a hand up my body and it felt good. I was only wearing a simple pair of bottoms the Kliks had provided me, which meant her hand was roaming up my bare chest. Which felt really fucking good.
It’d been far too long since anyone touched me like this. Far too long since I was king of my freighter going between various grey market spaceports.
And that only added to the already awkward situation down between my legs. It was as though this woman knew exactly what she was doing to me, and she was trying to do more of it.
It was a change from the freakout yesterday. I wasn’t sure if it was a welcome change. More confusing than anything.
I squeezed my eyes shut and let out a long shuddering sigh. Yeah, that might be confusing, but it felt really good. I couldn't get over how good it felt having her pressed against me. It was a surprisingly intimate moment, and I wanted to stay like this forever. Maybe even if it meant staying like this forever in captivity.
Then the woman stopped. She looked down at her finger and back up at me. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth puckered up in a frown that was cute even though I’m sure that’s not what she was going for. She stared at me as though I'd somehow tricked her into running her finger along my chest.
All I could do was grin. She might think I'd tricked her, but she’d done that all on her own. I knew she wanted me, and my mind went to some very interesting places at that thought. I wasn't going to take her like a prize won in the arena, but if we were trapped in here together and she was willing to pass the time that way…
She said something in her language and pushed me away. I didn’t understand her words, but I caught the tone and it wasn’t happy. The only problem with her plan was I was pressed up against the wall, so she couldn't push me very far. The force of her push had the opposite effect of what she’d intended as her action had an equal and opposite reaction and she flew back off the cot. Though it was only a thin mattress so she didn't have very far to fall.
Still, I couldn't help but grin at the predicament she found herself as she sprawled on the ground. I also took the opportunity to look her over once more.
The Kliks had dressed her in an outfit similar to mine, only designed for a female. Her garment covered those curved orbs on her chest as well as down below so I couldn't tell how closely the genitals on her species resembled those of my species.
I licked my lips as I stared between her legs. I couldn't tell how closely she resembled my species, but I very much wanted to find out.
And those orbs up top. I'd seen surgically enhanced women in mating videos on my own world, but those looked like they were natural. It was like nothing I'd seen before, and I very much wanted to see what she looked like under that thin strip of cloth protecting her modesty.
But I wasn't going to see what was under that thin cloth unless she gave me permission. I was better than that feral officer I’d run up against in the arena. I was better than that giant
hunk of meat I'd squared off against yesterday when I was trying to save this woman.
A strange alien woman, I might add, who didn't seem to care that I'd saved her from the way she scowled at me.
I thought back to the previous evening. To the interminable time she’d spent trying to communicate using a mix of her language and snippets she picked up of my language as I talked back at her. Snippets she’d used incorrectly, I might add. I thought about the prospect of spending another day being tortured with an alien grammar lesson.
More than anything I thought of how she’d felt with her body pressed against mine. With her leg thrown over mine. She’d felt so soft and yet so firm.
I came to a decision. I wasn't going to do the translation thing again. I wasn't going to spend another day playing dumb. I had no idea how long the Kliks were going to keep us confined together, and it would get very old very fast if we couldn't communicate.
I was giving something up, but it would be worth it to avoid frustration.
“You're very ungrateful for someone who's life got saved yesterday," I said in passable Klik.
I saw the recognition on her face I knew she understood. She understood and she was trying very hard to look as though she had no idea what I’d said.
She glanced up to the ceiling, then to the door. No doubt she was looking for the listening devices we both knew were hidden around here somewhere.
"I know you can understand me,” I said.
"You idiot," she hissed, and it was in the perfect hissing and clicking language of the Kliks. “Do you have any idea what you’ve given up?”
I grinned. Well then. We were finally getting somewhere. We could communicate. A little. I had no way of knowing if she was fluent like I was. I was fluent in most of the major trade languages of this area. It was one of the things you had to know if you were going to be involved in the slightly less then legal grey market trade.
Never call it piracy.
I shrugged. "What's the point in playing stupid? If we have a way to communicate we might as well use it."
"But the guards…"
I held up a finger and she stopped talking. That was good. Maybe that gesture was universal, or maybe she was quieting down because I'd just made a very rude gesture for her culture. Communicating with new alien species could be tricky, and I had no way of knowing if I’d just told her to be quiet or to go fuck her mother with that raised finger.
“You're thinking the guards might give something away if they don't know we speak their language, right? I thought the same thing when they took me on board," I said.
Her lip jutted out and I found it impossibly sexy. I wondered what it would feel like to lean down and nip at that pouting lip of hers, and I pushed that thought away. Getting distracted by how damn hot she was wouldn't get anything productive done.
This conversation, though, was the first productive thing I felt like I’d done since I was taken captive.
"Well they might," she said.
I shrugged. "I have a feeling I've been here a little longer than you, and in all that time they've never given up anything useful.”
Granted I probably hadn’t been here much longer than her, but she didn’t have to know that.
“It's too late now," she said with a sigh. "I'm sure they're listening, and they know we can speak their language now. No chance of them giving anything away.”
"You're absolutely right," I said with what I hoped was my most winning grin. I wasn't sure how well it worked. "So there’s no point trying to hide it anymore, right?"
She glared at me. She seemed to be fond of glaring. She could glare all she wanted, but the clawed glorfin beast was out of the container. No that it was very easy to keep clawed glorfin beasts in a container if they didn’t want to be in there. Unless the container was made out of a reinforced neutronium weave, and that wasn’t exaggerating by much considering how strong those things were.
"So what do we do now?" she asked.
“I’d think that's obvious," I said.
“Obviously it's not too obvious if I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
"We get to know each other better," I said. "It's not like we have anything better to do."
She stared at me and I got the feeling she really didn't like me, but I also had the memory of her body pressed against mine as we slept. I had the memory of her running her finger along my chest. I closed my eyes and shivered thinking about it. That was a nice memory. The kind of memory that was going to keep me going even if I was in captivity with the Kliks for a long time.
Hey, when you were in the equivalent of solitary confinement you had to take your entertainment where you could get it.
Finally she moved over to sit down next to me.
"Fine," she said.
She didn't sound happy about our situation, but I could understand that. I wasn’t happy about it either, but at least her company would be something different. She looked over at me and again her eyes ran up and down my body. It was the briefest of looks, but it was there. And I was looking for any sign of interest from her, so you bet your ass I noticed that.
“So what do you want to know?" she asked.
13
Dalia
"I suppose we should start with the basics," the alien said. "What does your species call itself?"
"You're not going to start by asking my name?" I asked.
He shrugged, and it was slightly hypnotic watching his muscles rippling as he did. I could get used to watching this guy. I figured if the only entertainment I had was looking at him then there were worse things I could do with the abundance of time I appeared to have now that I’d been taken captive.
"I already know your name. Dalia," he said.
My mouth fell open and I stared at him in disbelief. "How did you…"
Then it hit me exactly how he knew my name. All that time I’d spent yesterday evening trying to bridge the language gap. All that time he'd acted dumber than a box of rocks whenever I tried to and teach him a new word.
It suddenly occurred to me that maybe it wasn't that he was dumber than a box of rocks. Maybe there was something more to it.
He could speak the Klik language, so obviously he was capable of learning other languages. Difficult languages, even, considering Klik was so far off the charts when it came to learning difficulty that it made going from English to Mandarin or Japanese seem like going from English to Spanish in comparison. He'd been playing dumb the whole time.
"You asshole,” I said.
Though it didn't come out quite right. The closest equivalent the Kliks had in their language was "waste hole,” and it didn't have quite the same poetic efficiency to it as asshole did in various human languages. Though he seemed to get the gist of what I was saying from the way his eyes widened.
"What did I do?” he asked.
“You understood a lot more than you were letting on when I was trying to bridge the language barrier last night," I said.
He shrugged again, and again I found myself very distracted by the mechanics of that shrug. This was going to get very annoying if he kept that up.
"Maybe I did and maybe I didn't," he said.
"So why did you spend so much time playing dumb?” I asked.
"I should think that would be simple enough to see," he replied. "You were trying to take my cot that’s plenty big enough for both of us, with some creative arranging, and I was in no mood to sleep on the floor.”
My eyes narrowed. Not only was I stuck in here with a hunk of an alien, but he was a trickster too. I was going to have to keep that in mind if I was going to be stuck in here with him long term.
I leaned back against the bulkhead, though it wasn't entirely comfortable. The entire room was shaped like a cylinder with a flat bottom, and that meant the sides were a curve that felt unnatural. I had to hunch up so the shape of my back matched the shape of the wall.
"So how did they catch you?" Kir asked. At least I was going to assume that was
his name since that's what he’d told me yesterday when we were playing lost in translation. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking his name now that we work talking in the language of our enemy.
It occurred to me that maybe I didn't want to tell this man how I’d been taken captive. After all, he was from another species I knew nothing about. There was still a chance anything I told him now might be used against humanity in the future.
"You don't want to tell me?" he asked.
"It's just that…"
Kir smiled. "What's the problem? Don't want to reveal critical information about your precious species? Afraid I'm going to use it against you?"
He looked around the cell and shrugged. Moved his arms out wide. As wide as they’d go without bumping into me. Then he looked back at me and amusement danced in his eyes.
"What could I possibly do to threaten your species from in here? You might think about escape, but there's not a chance we're getting out of here.”
He leaned in closer. "So why don't you tell me a little bit about who you are and where you're from," he whispered. "Because I plan on escaping, and I'm going to take you with me."
I cocked an eyebrow and looked at him with what must've been obvious confusion, because he threw his head back and laughed.
"You're crazy," he said. "I know when someone is first captured all they can think about is escape, but I can assure you nothing like that is possible. We’re all the guests of the Kliks here, and there's no way that's ever going to change. Unless we die."
He leaned in again, and it was all I could do to keep up with the rapid changes in his personality. He winked and whispered again.
"They record everything that goes on in these rooms," he said. “Best to look like you're going to play nice, understand?"
I looked around the room and then back to him. It was far more pleasant looking at him than the rest of the room. I nodded slowly.