by A. G. Wilde
Sohut blinked. “Am I what?”
“Are you going to join me?”
He blinked again before moving into action.
His clothes came off easily and he followed her, sinking into the pool just as the warm water covered her body to her shoulders.
Cleo watched him, her eyes glued to his.
“You know…your eyes, when they go like that, it’s a bit startling.”
Sohut blinked again. “Go like how?”
“All black.”
Cleo watched his throat move as he studied her, and for the first time, it dawned on her that he was really a hunter.
The way he looked right now, feral and hyperaware…it should scare her, but it didn’t.
“Does it scare you?”
Cleo smiled but kept his gaze. “No.”
“Good.”
Without warning he was crouching over her and Cleo let out a yelp of surprise.
His arms found her legs under the water as he held them apart, enough for him to settle between them.
“Clee-yo,” he groaned, before he captured her lips.
His kiss was insistent. It was the type that would probably leave a bruise.
The type that pushed her head back as he demanded her lips.
Between them, she could feel his hardness pressing against her cunt.
He was gyrating his hips, causing his dick to rub against her clit, and that made her cling to him.
Water sloshed over the side of the bath, as he ground against her, and when one of his hands cupped her breasts, she cried out against his mouth.
“Clee-yo,” Sohut broke the kiss and his hot breath brushed against her ear.
His cock was insistent against her clit, those cords that ringed his dick moving over her softness as he drove himself between her inner lips.
“Clee-yo,” Sohut groaned her name again before her took her earlobe into his mouth.
She was so close she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to hold off before he entered her.
“Sohut—”
“I’m going to make you come. I’m going to make you come right now, like this.”
His free hand gripped her ass and pulled her harder against him.
“Do you know why, Clee-yo?”
She barely had the conscious thought to answer him, but she didn’t need to.
“Because you’re mine, Clee-yo,” he growled into her ear. “Mine.”
Her orgasm crashed through her like a wrecking ball to a wall and Cleo screamed against Sohut’s skin.
“Mine,” he whispered.
And as the quakes of her orgasm made her shudder, the word lingered in her mind.
Mine.
How could she ever leave this jungle and think otherwise?
She didn’t know when or how it’d happened but somewhere along the way, everything had changed.
Because he was right.
She was his.
24
The days seemed to bleed into each other. So much so that she wasn’t aware how much time had passed since they’d entered the Torian camp. All she was aware of was that time was passing.
After that first night in the Torian camp, one of the lookouts had notified Sohut that they’d seen some Tasqal guards on the outskirts of the jungle.
It had caused quite a stir in the camp and because of that Sohut had thought it was best they stayed put for a while.
And so they had.
It wasn’t a bad idea. Life in the camp was refreshing.
The Torians woke early and went to bed late but most days were spent singing and dancing at the center of the camp.
When they weren’t dragging her towards huts to do crafts, they were meditating in the sun. Sometimes they even did a strange form of stretching that resembled yoga…only they were alarmed at her trying to do it with her lack of limbs.
It was like living in an ethnic enclave and Cleo slowly grew to appreciate and even enjoy the company of some of the aliens that lived there.
They were all still wary of Wawa and kept their distance whenever he was around. Still, they tried to make her comfortable by constantly offering her woogli smoke and more of the salt and vinegar rice cakes whenever they saw her alone in the camp—which was hardly ever.
Sohut stayed by her side, only leaving now and then to scout the perimeter.
When she wasn’t caught in his arms or doing some activities with the Torians, she would head into the nearby jungle to catch mogs for dinner.
Today was one of those days. The camp was running low on food.
Sohut was just coming out of Senrit’s hut when he noticed her heading into the jungle. He jogged up to her and caught her around the waist.
“Going hunting again?”
Cleo smiled and leaned into him. “They’ve been so nice to me, to us, it’s the one way I can contribute.”
Sohut glanced back at Senrit’s hut before eyeing the jungle beyond the clearing.
“Where’s Wawa?”
“He ran off into the woods some hours ago,” she replied.
“I’m coming with you then.”
Cleo nodded as they started to move toward the growth of trees.
It was usual.
If Wawa wasn’t around, Sohut didn’t let her enter the jungle alone.
They were her two bodyguards.
An unlikely pair, but she treasured them both anyway.
“Is Senrit still wary?”
“Yes, but there’s been no sight of the Tasqal’s Hedgerud fighters. I don’t know why they’d been in Koznia anyway.”
Cleo nodded.
If the aliens were wary, she was too.
As they made their way into the jungle, away from the camp, she kept her eyes and ears peeled.
With Sohut around, he could just whistle and the jungle-penguins would come but she knew they still had to be alert.
They were walking in silence and the undergrowth was becoming thick.
Being in the camp for the last few days made the jungle seem terrifying and if she hadn’t been living in it for a year, she wasn’t sure she could have gone hunting alone with only Wawa by her side.
Such were the thoughts in her head that when Sohut’s heavy hand landed on her shoulder, the suddenness of it had her freezing.
Turning slightly, she cast a wide-eyed look at him.
He was holding her rigidly as he came to press his body against hers—so close she could feel the cords of his chest muscles pressing into her back.
His hot breath fanned her over her ear. “Don’t. Move. Don’t even breathe.”
Cleo stiffened.
Something about his entire being made goosebumps rise over her skin.
He was staring straight ahead into the bushes, his green gaze cold, and every muscle in his body felt alert and ready.
A chill traveled down her spine and Cleo stiffened even farther as a strange feeling suddenly enveloped the area.
It was the sort of feeling you get when you become aware that you’re in the presence of something very, very dangerous.
She was vaguely aware that Sohut was reaching into his trousers and pulling something free and a side-eye told her it was his blade.
There was something out there, something threatening, and she wondered if it was one of those guards the Torians had spotted.
The thought that there was an enemy in their midst…
For a few long seconds, nothing happened.
There wasn’t even a sound.
Still, she didn’t dare to move. She didn’t dare to breathe, as Sohut had said, and as she held her breath, the bushes in front of them stirred.
Wawa…please let it be Wawa.
But what appeared through the bushes looked nothing like her little companion.
It was as black as night. So black that it took a few moments to realize she was looking at an animal and not into a dark void.
Even its eyes were dark.
It stood on four legs but on its back, rising into the air
, were four sharp spikes that stood from its spine.
It stepped out of the bushes and paused, looking at them.
Behind her, Sohut was as hard as stone and she realized he was moving slowly to stand in front of her, blocking her from the literal nightmare in front of them.
“The fuck…” She breathed almost soundlessly. “…is that?”
“A spined creature…” Sohut was in front of her now, blocking her from the beast that stood unmoving. “Don’t move.”
A spined creature?
The same creature he mentioned was Wawa’s prey?
How the…
Moving just slightly enough that she could see around Sohut, Cleo’s eyes widened in disbelief.
No way.
That…thing in front of them was huge. There was no way little Wawa could take it on and survive.
Even as she looked it now and the rest of its body appeared from the bushes, she couldn’t imagine Wawa taking down something that was that big.
There weren’t four spikes on the thing’s back. There were many. Four large ones came before the smaller ones that ran along its spine right down to its long reptilian-like tail.
“Run.”
One word.
One word uttered from Sohut’s mouth before there was a blur of black in front of them and a horrible, horrible growl that seemed to shake even the leaves around them.
In the panic of her mind, it took a second for the word to register and then adrenaline pumped through her so fast, she took off, heading in the direction from which they came.
As her feet beat against the jungle floor, she prayed this wasn’t the time she fell over a root or vine. This was the exact time people fell in the movies—when their lives depended on them not stumbling.
Fear pushed her forward. But as she ran, her breath coming in sharp gasps, she realized something.
She was running alone.
Cleo stopped dead in her tracks, a bunch of low-hanging branches giving her a sharp slap in the face as she did.
Turning, she searched the bushes behind her for some movement, any movement.
Where the fuck was he?
In the few moments she took searching the orange bushes for some sign of blue, a gut-wrenching reality dawned on her.
Sohut wasn’t coming.
He was frickin’ fighting the thing.
Panic had her frozen for a few moments.
She was an idiot.
She shouldn’t turn back as she was doing now.
She shouldn’t run back toward danger.
The fuck was wrong with her?
Her lungs were about to give out, but the closer she got, the more she could hear.
It was a deep growling sound that made the air vibrate.
The creature sounded powerful, lethal, unyielding…
As she reached the spot, her gaze followed the trampled leaves and bushes that led farther into the undergrowth.
That’s where the growling was coming from and her heart beat so hard, it almost broke through her ribs.
She couldn’t hear Sohut, only the beast.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
He couldn’t be dead.
Oh God, please don’t make it so he’s dead.
Then she heard it, another snarl, one that obviously came from the throat of a man, a huge dangerous man, but a man nonetheless.
The relief she felt was almost staggering, but she had no time to decipher it as she rushed closer.
For a second, she saw blue and then black.
They were wrestling and she didn’t know who was winning.
Sharp black teeth glinted in the light as they were aimed at Sohut’s throat, but he managed to hold them off, grabbing both jaws of the beast with his two hands.
The beast reared, flicking its tail in a semicircle that connected with Sohut’s legs, bringing both of them down into the bushes.
It had its two front paws on Sohut now, pressing him into the ground below as its tail lashed behind it.
Dislodging her piece of shrapnel from the edge of her dress, Cleo gripped it in her hand.
She knew she had to do something.
There was a tree just behind them. If she could get there…
Her feet were moving before she could finish the thought.
Moving as fast as she could, she gripped the trunk of the tree, finding a low-hanging branch that would give her some leverage. Finding a foothold, up she went, slowly at first then her muscles remembered what they needed to do.
It was just like the time her father had left her alone in the wild, when she’d had to climb a tree at night after she’d been too afraid to sleep alone on the ground.
She could do this.
Soon, she was high enough above them to see.
There was a branch that jutted out, close to where they were and she headed for that one, hugging the branch with her legs as she moved slowly forward.
The branch was rough, and her thighs were going to hate her for this later.
But she didn’t care.
The only thing in her mind was that Sohut was in danger.
He needed her help.
Sohut was on the ground, his teeth grit, his face twisted into a ferocious snarl as he wrestled to get the animal off him.
His sole focus was the beast and it seemed neither he nor the beast realized she was there for when Sohut’s gaze caught movement above them and his eyes settled on her, the look in his eyes moved swiftly from ferocity to horror.
That one second of hesitation and the beast pressed into him harder, its sharp teeth moving even closer to Sohut’s neck.
Cleo breathed hard.
She didn’t have a plan.
She didn’t have a frickin’ plan!
Just then, the beast did something she didn’t expect.
Its dark spines flattened against its back as its tail lashed menacingly, and she knew then exactly what she was going to do.
Gripping the piece of metal, she didn’t think twice.
She let go of the branch.
It was like slow motion when she fell.
Her eyes were locked on Sohut’s, on his brilliant greens as his gaze widened even more.
Gravity being her ally, Cleo aimed and when she landed, she slammed her hand as hard as she could into the beast.
The sharp pain that she felt immediately almost made her cry out.
The metal sunk deep into the creature’s back, slicing her hand open in the process.
It reared back. One moment she was on its leathery back, the next she was landing in the bushes.
She barely had time to see Sohut rise with a growl she didn’t know a man could produce, his blade slicing through the creature’s midsection.
The sick squelch of guts spilling reached her ear.
The beasts’ huge body went limp and only then did she breathe.
Her hand hurt.
Turning her palm to her face, Cleo winced.
It looked bad. Her blood was so red against the yellow-orange bushes around her that she didn’t know if she should be awed or horrified that she was bleeding so much.
She was looking at her hand when a shadow fell over her.
“YOU.” Sohut was glaring at her and when she looked up, she didn’t know what to say.
His face was a mixture of horror, dismay, disbelief, anger, and…yearning.
Before she could protest, she was in his arms.
He pulled her from the bushes, pulling her against him as he buried his head against her neck.
“Why did you come back?”
Cleo swallowed hard.
Because I couldn’t leave you to die?
“You could have found a way back to the camp. The Torians would have protected you. You could’ve left me…”
“No.” Was that her voice? That shaky thing? “I couldn’t leave you.”
He nuzzled her neck for a few seconds and Cleo allowed herself to relax against him.
“You could have died.” His words were
just a whisper.
“You too,” she whispered back.
Sohut inhaled deeply and eased off her to study her face.
His eyes filled with rage by the second.
“Metal…I smell metal,” he uttered, before snatching her hand.
His eyes didn’t calm down when he saw the state of her palm and for the first time in her life, she wished she didn’t bleed.
He bared his teeth, his fangs protruding in a snarl so ferocious she almost pulled her hand away.
As a matter of fact, she did try to pull her hand away, but he held her fast.
“You hurt yourself.” It was as if he was choking on the words. They came out of his mouth as if his throat was suddenly not working as it used to.
His gaze met hers.
“You hurt yourself because of me.”
The look in his eyes was so tortured, she opened her mouth to tell him that she was all right and he didn’t have to make such a big deal over it. But he cut her off before she was even able to mouth the words.
“Never, do that again.”
Sohut set her down and began cleaning her wound and all she could do was blink at him.
Somewhere behind them lay a huge beast that they’d just killed, yet he was tending to her so carefully and gently that she couldn’t believe it was the same person that had just sliced the beast in two.
For more than a few minutes, he crouched over her, meticulously removing every single foreign object from her wound.
Bits of leaves and sticks were removed by his dark claws one by one and never did he let her help.
He seemed adamant about doing it himself and as he worked he kept his gaze on his task, not raising his eyes to hers.
He cleaned her wound with dew from a nearby leaf and dug into his pocket for that vial of healing stuff he carried around. Still, he didn’t look at her the entire time.
“Sohut?”
He didn’t reply but she knew he heard her because the muscles in his shoulders stiffened slightly.
“Sohut.”
He finally raised his gaze to hers, and Cleo inhaled deeply.
Did aliens cry?
Because he sure looked like he could cry.
The pain in his eyes was so real it made something within her wring into a knot.
She reached forward, cupping his face with her good hand without even thinking about it.
“You don’t have to feel so bad. I’ve cut myself worse before,” she murmured, her gaze searching his.