That time she giggled. It sounded as if she was amused, but at the same time he detected a note of hysteria. “No harm Fk r slf, alright?”
It dawned on Anya that the alien was trying to convince her that he didn’t mean to hurt her. Not that she believed the bastard! As if she was so stupid as to believe that when the son-of-a-bitch had invaded her world with some kind of bomb that was destroying everything in its path!
Chapter Three
On the other hand, even though it had relieved some of her fear and frustration to tell him to go fuck himself, and it had amused her to realize he’d completely misunderstood—although, of course, she’d intentionally deceived him by smiling when she’d said it—she discovered she didn’t especially like being called ‘fuck yourself’. “I’m Anya. My name is Anya.”
He frowned, but she could see it was because he didn’t understand what she was trying to tell him, not because he was angry.
Bizarre that his features were similar enough to human that she could actually read his expressions/emotions!
Mental note! If she could read his because of the similarity, it seemed to follow that he’d be able to read hers.
He looked … cat-like, she decided. She wondered if it wasn’t just the exotic slant of his eyes or the elongated pupils of his golden eyes, but decided it extended beyond that particular feature. His nose and mouth and even the shape of his face were vaguely cat-like—similar enough to her pet that she thought she might have been inclined to accept him with friendliness under different circumstances.
They must have evolved from some cat-like creature, she decided, just as humans had evolved from something in the primate family and still bore some resemblance to other branches of that family that hadn’t evolved as they had.
But did that make them closer to cats in behavioral characteristics? Or humans/primates?
He stood up, pulling her with him, to her disappointment. She’d already planned her next attack, thinking she could grab a couple of fistfuls of dirt and debris from the ground and blind him with it long enough to escape. Instead, when she thought he might be off balance, she gave him a shove.
She hadn’t miscalculated … completely. He was off balance and the push sent him over backwards. Unfortunately, he still had a good grip on her wrists and he took her with him. She bumped her forehead on his chin when she landed on top of him.
He glared up at her, the narrowing of his eyes making him look just that much more feline—and unnerving.
She gaped at him a moment, wondering if she could convince him it had been accidental.
Ok, so she could see right off that he wasn’t going for that. Forcing what she hoped was a seductive smile—although she found that in itself unnerving considering she was pretty sure he’d already gotten a woody from wallowing all over her—she hunched him a couple of times and then tried to nuzzle his neck.
He heaved her up and flipped her off, springing to his feet.
Stunned, Anya lay where he’d dumped her, gaping up at him.
His lips tightened. “Get up!”
She didn’t know what he’d said, but the motion of his hand seemed pretty self-explanatory. Grunting, she pushed herself upright and finally managed to get to her feet. Realizing he was staring at her, particularly uncomfortable since he’d seemed immune to her attempt to seduce him, she covered her breasts and her mound the best she could with her hands.
Aidan frowned, puzzled at her attempt to cover herself for a few moments. Then it dawned on him that the nanites were already at work. Undoubtedly, she’d been close enough to one—and wearing clothing made of materials they were designed to break down—to lose whatever she’d been wearing and she wasn’t a primitive as he’d supposed.
The thoughts of the terra-formers abruptly diverted him and he glanced around. “I need to find that damned satellite,” he muttered grimly, “while there’s still a chance that there’s something left.”
He transferred his attention to the alien female, Fk r slf, when her movement caught his attention and he realized she was preparing to run. “Don’t even think about it, Fk r slf!” he growled. “If there’s nothing left of that gods damned satellite when I find the spot where it crashed, I’m going to need something as proof.”
Anya froze, struggling with the urge to ignore his command, the fear that made her knees weak when he growled at her, and the indignation that he was still calling her fuck yourself. Her lips tightened. She patted her chest. “My name is Anya, damn it!”
He tilted his head curiously, obviously confused. “Ah-na dam dit?”
Anya stomped her foot in frustration. “No, shithead!” She pointed at him. “Fucktard.” She pointed at herself. “Anya. Anya Dupris,” she added as an afterthought.
Something glittered in his eyes—anger, she thought, feeling her heart trip over itself. It had to be the tone. He couldn’t possibly understand what she’d said.
“Aidan,” he responded, touching a hand to his chest.
Anya smiled a little weakly and decided to pretend she hadn’t grasped that before. “Uh-lane,” she repeated dutifully and then touched her chest. “Anya.”
“A-lain,” he corrected her.
“Uh-lane.”
He rolled his eyes.
She glared at him and then erased the expression quickly when he focused on her again. She had the feeling from the look he gave her that he’d caught the glare. “Ah-na.”
She smiled tightly. “Close enough.”
Aidan studied Ah-na with an entirely new perspective. His first guess, not the second, had been correct, he decided. She’d been through hell—probably all because of the terra-formers—and guilt smote him, not because he was personally responsible for the disaster but because he’d been against it and had failed in all attempts to make a change. The terra-formers certainly explained why she’d looked so primitive, though, and he supposed she held him responsible for the attack and that explained her earnest attempts to claw him.
Because he knew it must seem like an attack to her and she’d felt like she was fighting for her life.
Given her intelligence, he seriously doubted that anything he’d said or done had convinced her to trust him one iota. It might have been easier, upon reflection, if she had been more animal than intelligent being. No doubt she would’ve been harder to subdue, but food would probably have convinced her to trust him.
He considered that for a moment and shrugged inwardly. It was worth a try. Lifting a hand to his mouth he mimed eating. “Ah-na hungry?”
Anya watched him. She was pretty sure he was talking about food, but she couldn’t decide if he wanted some or he was offering.
Her stomach growled.
At this point, she thought she could be won over with food … if he hadn’t been a damned alien! She smiled at him, nodding. “I don’t trust you worth a fuck. I don’t care how much you offer, you fucktard.”
He eyed her speculatively. “Fk r slf. Fkd ard.”
Uh oh! He might be catching on. She hadn’t counted on him being intelligent enough to begin figuring out the language that fast!
Aidan studied her reaction and decided that whatever it was that she’d said it wasn’t anything flattering. Shrugging off his impatience, he dug into the pocket of his suit for the emergency rations it should be equipped with. He wasn’t disappointed. His hand touched a metallic pouch and he grasped it and withdrew it. He curled his lip unconsciously as he read the label. The colonists often referred to the emergency rations as shit bars and he had a feeling that meant it wasn’t exactly palatable, but then again it was more in the nature of medicine since it had been designed to supply all nutritional and caloric needs to insure survival, not for enjoyment. Unwrapping it, he sniffed it, tried to hide the distaste he felt at the smell and carefully broke it in half, offering her the other piece.
She eyed it distrustfully and slowly shook her head.
Since she’d seemed to nod in agreement previously, he decided the shake meant negati
ve. Still holding out the piece, he took a bite of his own to show her it was safe to eat.
It tasted like shit, though, and it was all he could do to prevent a shudder.
She watched him swallow and finally held out her hand.
When she took it, she lifted it to her nose, sniffed it, and made a face.
He looked away, trying to pretend he hadn’t noticed her reaction and been amused by it since he was afraid she’d interpret his amusement as an attempt at deception.
“It smells like shit and if the look on your face is any indication, I bet it takes like it, too,” Anya said dryly.
She supposed it must be something like military rations, though, designed for survival. Holding her breath, she took a tiny bite, chewed it a couple of times and swallowed. If was unfortunate that she’d already swallowed before it occurred to her that ‘good for him’ might be poison for her—because that bite was gone.
She placed a hand over her racing heart, trying to decide whether she should wait to see if there were any ill effects to the food or run her finger down her throat and try to bring that bite back up. Surely one bite wouldn’t kill her, though?
“Thirsty?”
Anya looked up at the alien—Aidan—when he spoke, wondering if he’d said something like ‘gotcha!’. She saw he’d either eaten his piece already, though … or he’d tossed it away while she wasn’t looking.
He began digging in the pockets of his pants again and pulled something else out. It didn’t look a lot different from the thing he’d pulled out before. When he’d taken the end off, though, he put it to his mouth, tipped it back and swallowed. Her throat closed instantly. She could almost have sworn she smelled water, liquid anyway. She didn’t hesitate that time when he offered it. She grabbed it with both hands. Unfortunately, it was malleable and when she did, she squeezed some of the contents out.
Consternation filled her when she saw it was water she’d spilled, but there was still some left in it and she turned it up and drank.
It tasted like water, which was to say not terribly good. She’d never liked plain water, but it felt good going down.
He wrestled it away from her after a few gulps and she eyed him resentfully when he closed it again and shoved it back in his pocket, watching every move he made like a hawk and wondering if she could get it away from him again.
“You might be dehydrated. It’ll just make you sick if you drink too much at the time. I’ll give you more in a little bit.”
She didn’t know what he said but after studying her while she licked the water off her fingers he began tugging at the top of his suit. Anya’s heart skipped a beat and she jerked her gaze from the closure he was slowly opening to his face. He seemed intent on what he was doing.
She wasn’t about to wait around to see what he had in mind! Deciding that was as good a chance as she was likely to get, she took to her heels. If she could just get a little bit of a head start, she thought, she could hide in the woods ….
He caught her before she’d managed to do much more than launch herself into a run.
“No! I told you I wouldn’t harm you.”
Gritting her teeth, Anya struggled for several moments to free herself and finally gave up. As soon as she did, he released his hold on her. She eyed him with misgiving. He frowned at her. “Don’t move!” Since he emphasized whatever it was he said with a stern shake of his head, she decided he was telling her he wasn’t about to let her escape.
Well, he had to sleep sometime!
She didn’t know what he had in mind, but he’d proven he was faster than she was and stronger. The only way she was going to escape was to wait until he had his guard down. Maybe he’d fall asleep and she could find a rock and bash his head in? She smiled at him at the thought.
He studied her uneasily for a moment and finally smiled back.
Two things happened when he did that. Her heart quickened and an oddly weak sensation flowed through her behind it. And guilt smote her.
She ignored the first, unwilling to analyze it, and chastised herself for the second. She had no reason to feel guilt just because she’d succeeded in deceiving him! Was it her fault he was dumb enough to think she was that stupid?
To her relief, although he continued to unfasten his suit once he’d assured himself she wouldn’t run, he stopped when he reached the waist, shrugged out of the top and began to work on the seam there. Her curiosity was snagged then and she watched him until he’d removed the top part of his suit. To her surprise, he handed it to her.
Studiously ignoring his bare upper torso, she looked at the ‘jacket’ and then looked at his face. He shook the jacket at her and finally, deciding he was offering it as he had the food and water, she took it and slipped her arms into it, wondering if it was yet another attempt to win her over or if he just didn’t want to have to look at her.
She was still searching for a way to fasten it when he grasped the sides and pressed them together from throat to the bottom, which ended just below the tops of her thighs. Thankfully he was enough bigger than her that it was almost decent. Unfortunately, he wasn’t tall enough that the damned thing covered her ass. She could feel that the bottom of her butt was still exposed.
It was still far better than being completely naked and she looked up at him and smiled with real appreciation for the first time. “Thank you!”
He seemed to freeze for a long moment, staring back at her, and then frowned, stepping away. “Don’t thank me,” Aidan said wryly. “I can’t think straight with all that jiggling, bare flesh to look at.” He looked around, wondering where he’d lost his suit helmet. No doubt, he’d lost it when he’d slipped and rolled to the bottom of the hill and he didn’t suppose he needed it or he’d already be dead, but he’d lost the damned communicator built into it.
Briefly, he debated whether to spare the time to look for it, but he’d already lost a lot of time dealing with the alien female. He needed to get to that satellite—if there was anything left to collect between the impact with his ship, the fiery entry into the atmosphere, and the crash.
He checked his wrist computer and that settled the matter. That was still functioning alright as far as he could see. He had a map to the satellite crash site and the onboard computer’s calculation of his ship’s probable location.
And he had the woman as proof of his theory even if he couldn’t find the satellite.
If he could hang on to her.
Not that he thought it would be easy to convince them that she was an intelligent life-form, but she was clearly a higher life-form!
Grasping her arm at the elbow, he studied the map and turned until he was lined up with the directional finder on his screen and then tugged at her arm to get her going.
Dismay flickered through Anya, but she’d told herself she needed to cooperate until he let his guard down if she was going to have any hope of escaping and she didn’t resist his urging. The problem was, even when she’d told herself that she hadn’t been completely convinced that she was his captive. She didn’t know what she had been thinking, but he hadn’t really been threatening beyond refusing to let her go.
She supposed she hadn’t been thinking beyond the moment.
Maybe he was just worried that she’d sound the alarm if she got away?
That didn’t actually make much sense, though. She was pretty sure the obelisks had alerted everybody to the invasion already.
* * * *
As focused as Aidan was on trying to reach the satellite and gather the evidence he needed, and distracted, although he hated to admit it, by Anya, it dawned on him after they’d gone only a short distance that he needed to analyze the native language and see if he could pick up enough to truly communicate.
Actually, it was probably mostly because of his preoccupation with Anya that he thought about the necessity of communications.
She was afraid and rightfully so given the fact that he was not only a stranger to her but an alien species. She seemed fairly intelli
gent, though, and that meant she had reasoning capabilities … that he couldn’t actually tap into without some means of communication. He might be able to convince her he didn’t have evil intentions if he could actually talk to her. He didn’t think he’d made much headway with the gestures.
Her continued attempts to escape seemed a pretty good indication that he’d failed in that respect, he thought wryly.
Releasing his grip on her arm, he warned her, “Don’t move!” and then focused on his wrist computer, programming it to record and analyze the sounds so that it could begin breaking down speech patterns. He looked at her again when he’d finished programming it and discovered she’d been watching him. “Computer.”
She stared at him blankly.
Impatience flickered through him. “Aidan,” he said, pointing to himself then to her and finally to the wrist computer. “Anya. Computer.”
He saw something flicker in her eyes and the suspicion arose that she understood exactly what he was trying to do, but she didn’t say anything. Deciding not to allow her to see how annoyed he was that she refused to cooperate, he urged her to walk again and continued to point at things and assign the names of them in his own language.
“Fucktard,” Anya muttered after a little while.
Aidan frowned, more convinced than before that that word, whatever it was, was something insulting. He glanced down at his wrist computer to make sure it had recorded the word. Satisfied when he saw it had, he went back to pointing things out, trying to convince himself that she just hadn’t grasped the ‘game’ yet and would jump in after a while and give him what he needed. “Grass, shrub, cloud … oh my fucking gods! Run!”
* * * *
Anya didn’t know why the stupid bastard was trying to teach her his language, but she had no interest in trying to learn it. She didn’t mean to hang around long enough to learn it or use it. The sound of alarm in his voice was, apparently, universal, however. She didn’t need to know his language to understand they were in deep shit. She glanced up instinctively at the sound of warning and froze.
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