A foul odor struck his nose as he neared the flowerbed, halting Zevris in his tracks. He looked down to see several of his daisies uprooted and a large, fresh pile of feces in their place.
He gritted his teeth and swallowed the anger rising from his gut. As silly as it seemed, he was proud of his garden. He’d spent many hours kneeling in the dirt to plant seeds, bulbs, and seedlings, had read countless articles to learn which plants were best suited to this region and how to tend them, had fine-tuned the sprinkler system to ensure they received the water they required. He’d made extra trips to the Hardware Emporium to buy plants, fertilizers, and soil.
All that had started because his understanding had been that untended property drew unwanted attention, but he’d come to enjoy the work. Like woodworking, it was simple, soothing, and satisfying.
He’d not put in all that labor for a dog to dig up his flowerbed and shit in it.
Zevris strode to the fence, bracing his hands atop it, and peered over. Tabitha’s yard was plain and unkempt. The grass, having been left uncut, was shaggy and overgrown in several places, and the raised flowerbed at the rear of the yard was brimming with vegetation—flowers, bushes, and weeds gone wild, all gathered around a central tree. With a little tending, the spot would’ve been lovely.
For a moment, he wondered what Tabitha had planned to do with her yard. Would she have planted flowers? Would she have tended her plants regularly? Would she have simply left it to the dog?
His eyes met Dexter’s. The dog, who was lying on Tabitha’s patio with his tongue lolling, tilted his head questioningly.
“You and I are going to need to reach an understanding,” Zevris said. He scanned his surroundings, checking for onlookers, and drew himself over the fence smoothly.
Dexter did not move save to wag his tail.
Failed to protect his human, failing to protect his home. This is no guard beast.
Brows falling low, Zevris walked across the grass, approaching Dexter directly. The dog’s ears perked, and his tail sped. Dexter and Zevris stared at one another for several seconds. A strange, faint itching sensation soon pulsed along Zevris’s tail, the sort of feeling that almost compelled it into motion—as though he subconsciously longed to wag it, just like the dog was wagging his.
“No. I refuse,” he said.
Dexter made a soft whining sound, keeping his big, dark eyes on Zevris.
“I also refuse to have a rivalry with an animal,” he continued. “You are my female’s beast, and so you will defer to me as your master. Do you understand?”
The dog’s tail thumped the concrete beneath him, and a tendril of drool oozed from his tongue to splatter on the ground.
“This world has driven me to madness,” Zevris snapped as he walked past Dexter to Tabitha’s back door. The screen was closed, but the glass door behind it was wide open.
Claws softly clacking on the concrete signaled that Dexter was following. Zevris twisted to look back at the dog, jabbing a finger toward the animal. “Behave.”
If Dexter had any intention of complying with the command, he made no indication. Perhaps that was why dogs were considered humankind’s best friends—they were just as headstrong and difficult to read as their human owners.
Leaning close to the screen, Zevris sniffed the air. Though there were traces of many scents inside her home—far more than he could identify, but most of which were pleasant—he thankfully did not detect the one that had thrown him into that lustful frenzy.
Zevris opened the screen door and stepped inside. Dexter sauntered in behind him, brushed past Zevris’s legs, and continued into the kitchen, where he dipped his head to lap noisily from a water-filled bowl on the floor. Zevris slid the glass door shut and looked around.
Tabitha’s walls were painted a different color than Zevris’s, and the floorboards were a paler, warmer wood, but the similarities outnumbered the difference. The layouts of the two residences were almost identical mirrors of one another.
There were numerous cardboard containers in sight; some were stacked neatly, some were open with flaps askew, some were flattened and piled haphazardly. Wadded papers and sheets of plastic were scattered about, as well. Zevris might have mistaken this for disorganization, but he realized quickly that she’d still been in the process of unpacking her belongings. He could see signs everywhere of her having been creating order out of chaos.
His gaze settled on her dining table. He stepped over to it, reached down, and plucked her phone from its stand at the center of the table. When he attempted to unlock the device, he was greeted by a screen asking for a passcode.
Releasing a huff, he roused his neural transceiver and initiated a connection with the phone. As simple as it was to hack human technology, Zevris didn’t like doing so with his neural transceiver; human devices were especially vulnerable to malicious software, and he had no desire to have whatever garbage they flung through their virtual networks get stuck in his head. Who knew what viruses and corruptions could affect him?
Once the phone’s code had been cracked, he severed the connection between the device and his neural transceiver and entered the code with his thumb. The display opened on Tabitha’s home screen.
As Dexter’s loud drinking gave way to eating of equal volume—and considerably more crunchiness—Zevris looked through Tabitha’s phone. The busiest form of communication for her seemed to be her email, which was filled with order submissions, payment and shipping confirmations, and message notifications from various social media platforms. Her contacts list was small but well organized, and her message and call history were sparse, both consisting primarily of calls and text messages to and from a contact labeled Mia Jones.
There were no contacts marked as Brother or Sister, none labeled Mother or Father. Only one seemed to have any family connection—Nan. Zevris seemed to recall it being synonymous with grandmother.
Curious, he went to the text thread associated with Nan, and frowned as he noticed the date of the last message—slightly over two years ago.
Nan had texted, I’m so glad you stopped by this weekend, hon. Dexter misses you already! If you’re still having trouble keeping up with those orders, let me know. I’m not too old to pitch in and teach you a thing or two more.
Tell Dex I’m still mad at him for eating the turkey off my sandwich, Tabitha had replied with a little laughing face. It was nice to be home for a little while. And I may have to take you up on that offer. Things are picking up! It’s not enough to quit my day job or anything yet, but who knows? Maybe one day. Love you!
Love you too, Nan had sent two minutes later, the words surrounded by pink hearts.
The last message on the thread was from ten days afterward, sent by Tabitha.
I know this is stupid, and all I’m going to do is sit here hoping that I’ll get some kind of response, but…I really miss you. I really, really miss you, so much that I can barely breathe. I know you urged me to find my own way, to make my own life, but you were always there for me anyway, and I just don’t know how to keep going without you. I miss you, Nan.
Zevris stared down at the screen, a tightness seizing his chest that he couldn’t quite define. He’d spent his years as an althicar spying, infiltrating, sabotaging, and waging what the humans called guerilla warfare on numerous planets. He’d found compromising information of both political and personal nature on numerous targets, but he’d never felt this sense of wrongness in doing so.
He’d just intruded on something deeply private. On something no one was meant to see. As simple as that last message had been, he could not ignore the weight of emotion it bore. Because that message—and the inactivity afterward—made it easy to infer what had happened to Nan.
Exhaling slowly, he exited the messages, locked the screen, and slipped the phone into his pocket. The tightness in his chest didn’t fade as he resumed his search of the house; in fact, it only strengthened when he noticed the framed pictures on display. Several were of Tabitha and an o
lder woman with grayish hair but the same green eyes. That older female appeared in a number of the other photographs in which her hair was light brown instead of gray, often alongside a young girl with blond hair and emerald eyes.
There was one in which the pair were standing in front of a huge, misshapen witch’s head, looking as though they were about to be swallowed by the gaping mouth—though their exaggerated expressions could not hide the smiles in their eyes. Another showed the two on a beach with the ocean behind them, their hair swept to the side by the wind.
Realization struck him suddenly—the young female was Tabitha in her youth, and the older female must’ve been Nan. The happiness on their faces in all those pictures was in total contrast to the sorrow in that final text from Tabitha.
He picked up one of the picture frames and tilted it to eliminate the glare on its glass. The photo was of Nan and Tabitha—the latter clearly younger than she was now, but not by much—holding a little dog in their arms as it licked at Tabitha’s face. The position of Tabitha’s right arm suggested she’d been holding the camera that had captured the image.
Zevris looked at Dexter, who was lying on the floor near the food and water bowls. “You were cuter as a pup.”
Dexter released a huff that flapped his lips before lowering his chin onto his paws.
Zevris placed the picture down carefully and swept his gaze around again. This time, it stopped on a small splash of green and pink over the kitchen sink—the cactus he’d gifted Tabitha, sitting on the windowsill. He smiled to himself. Perhaps it was of no real significance, but seeing his gift there, on open display, instilled him with a bit of pride and satisfaction.
He continued his perusal of her home with unbridled curiosity. As much as he felt like an intruder, as bad as he felt about what he’d had to do, he could not pass up this chance to learn more about Tabitha.
Her workroom was on the ground floor; he could tell by the smell as he approached the closed door. He only peeked in for a moment, glancing over all the supplies and containers that were neatly arranged on shelves along the walls. Even if the rest of her home was not quite put together, she’d made sure her workspace was prepared. Her passion for her work warmed his heart.
Zevris climbed the stairs and entered her bedroom. The tightness inside him now centered on a different spot—his groin. Despite all the other smells present, Tabitha’s scent was so strong here that Zevris could do nothing more than stand in place and breath for several seconds, each inhalation heating his blood a little further.
He could not wait for his bedroom to take on her fragrance, could not wait for her to be the only thing he could smell.
Her bed was positioned with its headboard against the wall, centered between two windows. The bedframe was a distressed white and gray, with intricate flowers carved at the top of the headboard. The bed was neatly made, with white, gray, and purple decorative pillows laid atop the billowing white comforter. A pair of matching nightstands flanked the bed. One was topped with a lamp, the other with a violet vase of fake flowers. Her dresser stood against the opposite wall.
Two bookcases were situated along the wall beside the door, with boxes stacked on the floor in front of them. Zevris walked to the boxes and opened one of the flaps, tilting his head as he surveyed the contents—books. That shouldn’t have been surprising in itself, but it was the apparent subject matter of those books that stood out to him.
The covers bore images of males with naked chests and no heads, or of males and females together, clutching one another close, their expressions mixtures of possessiveness and pleasure. Other covers displayed inhuman characters—a male with a scorpion-like body; a tentacled, gray-skinned male holding a female; muscled, blue men with horns and tails; part-machine, part-animal males apparently called Cyborg Shifters.
He picked up one of the books, this one featuring an alien with green scales, four arms, and four eyes. He opened it to the middle and scanned the words. His brow furrowed as he read, and the heat that had been pooling in his loins intensified. He’d assumed there were written versions of those instructional mating videos, but what he was reading here went well beyond anything he’d seen watching pornography.
This was not merely describing sex between a male and female, it was describing their emotions during the act, describing their connection in terms far deeper than the physical. He read faster, turning to the next page.
Perhaps the task before Zevris was not so daunting as he’d believed. His female apparently found appeal in the notion of mating with inhuman males. A slow grin stretched across his face.
By the time he placed the book down, his cock was hard as stone, the result of his imagination having inserted himself and Tabitha into the scene. Perhaps he’d have to read a few of her books—he had a feeling there was more to learn within them than in any available porn.
I am here for a purpose, he reminded himself. His female would need clean clothing and hygienic products if he was going to keep her in his dwelling.
Zevris snatched up an empty cardboard box from the floor and walked to her dresser, trailing his fingertips across the bedding as he moved. He set the box down atop the dresser and opened the bottom drawer, taking out articles of folded clothing to add to the box as he worked his way up—pants, skirts, shirts, socks, thin, silky tank tops, and pajamas. When he opened the top drawer, he paused.
The wide drawer was divided into two sections. One side was filled with bras of various colors. Some were plain, others were adorned with lace or floral patterns. These garments had cupped her full breasts, had touched her soft skin.
Her panties were on the other side, and they were even more varied than her bras. Some were cut smaller than others, some appeared nearly see through, some were lacy, some were patterned, and some were unadorned. He plucked a pair out and lifted it to his nose, drawing in a deep breath.
There was a clean, floral scent—her detergent, most likely—on the surface, but deeper than that, just barely noticeable, was a fragrance belonging wholly to Tabitha. He’d picked it up once before. It was the scent of her essence, of her sex. He groaned, and his cock hardened painfully further, stretching the front of his sweatpants as it throbbed.
He needed to get back to her.
But could he trust himself around her in this state?
He tossed several of her undergarments into the open box and was about to shove the drawer shut when something caught his eye. Removing those panties had exposed the items that had been hidden beneath them. He withdrew the objects, disrupting the remaining panties as he did so.
The first was small, about the size of his thumb, and its pink covering was soft and smooth. A thin wire dangled from one end, wrapped in a neat bundle, leading to a small controller. He pressed the button on the control. The plastic object vibrated with surprising power.
He knew what this was—it was a sex toy, used to bring females pleasure.
The other object was larger and heavier, immediately unmistakable in its nature. It was a piece of purple, semiflexible silicone in the shape of a human phallus, at least eight inches long from one end to the other. Like her panties, the fake cock carried the faintest hint of Tabitha’s scent.
It had been inside his female.
Zevris bared his fangs and growled at the thing, knowing how foolish it was but unable to help his flare of jealousy. She was his to claim, his to mate, his and no one else’s. A small voice in the back of his mind told him this was her property, that no matter his feelings, he had no right to destroy it.
Flexing his fingers, he extended his claws and tore the purple cock to pieces. He let the remains fall to the floor and kicked them under the dresser.
He was about to do the same with the small vibrator, but he stopped himself and reconsidered. Perhaps it would be of use at some point…
Zevris stuffed it into the box, tucking it away under her clothing. His female was a thirsty thing, and he was not averse to finding creative ways to satisfy her, but that wo
uld only come after he proved that he was the only source of pleasure she’d need for the rest of her days. She would never have use for one of these toys again—unless the two of them decided it would somehow enhance their mating.
Of course, he needed to earn her trust first. Considering that she was currently tied to his bed, possibly still screaming for help, he feared he had a long way to go on that front.
But he looked forward to the challenge.
Ten
Tabitha had glared at the bedroom door for a long time after Zevris left. She’d screamed herself hoarse calling for him, calling for help, but it had been to no avail. No one had come. She’d heard things from outside just fine—cars driving by, people conversing as they walked along the sidewalk, kids playing and laughing, a bouncing basketball, barking dogs. But no one had heard her. It was like she’d ceased to exist, like she’d become a ghost.
She growled, smacked her knuckles against the headboard, and immediately regretted it. She winced. The pain was sharp and radiating but slowly mellowed to a dull throb.
It was no worse than the pain she felt at her wrists, which also happened to be her own fault for fighting her restraints for so long. While she was still, her bindings were as flexible as silk ribbons, snug but not painful. Yet when she tugged against them, they became hard and firm, more like bands of steel—and the degree of that change seemed proportionate to the strength of her struggle.
There was nothing for her to do but sit there and stew.
Zevris’s room didn’t offer much in the way of scenery, and she was annoyed that she found that a little disappointing. The queen bed was draped with a plain blue comforter, the pillowcases were a mixture of white and blue, all tied together by the oak slatted headboard and a matching nightstand beside the bed, the latter of which had a small lamp set atop it. Even the dresser had the same oak finish. The walls were white, the carpet beige. There was a large flatscreen TV mounted on the wall, apparently hiding a secret compartment full of all sorts of alien devices that she didn’t want anything to do with.
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