Emerald shrugged, but her predator looking eyes didn’t blink.
“Yeah,” I said with a shrug as we walked back toward where the gray-feathered man had fallen from the sky. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. Hell, I should really just bring his body back to his friends, but they didn’t ask for it back. Part of me is glad since I didn’t want to make another trip back to the beach.”
Emerald tapped her temple, frowned, and then shook her head.
“Naw,” I answered. “Well. Okay, I should feel bad, but I don’t. How much more should I do to help them? I hauled ass out there, saved their lives, and then offered to trade with them. I would have made another trip with Will-Lack’s body if they asked, but I’m not sad they didn’t. We have too much shit to do.”
Emerald nodded, and I gestured for her to grab a few branches from the pile that we would use for the fire. We didn’t speak as we dragged them across the clearing, and then we set them down next to the big man’s feathery body. I was used to seeing dead animals at my parents’ clinic, and I had witnessed plenty of violent deaths during my stay at Dinosaurland, so the sight of another corpse didn’t really phase me that much.
I looked at the grass next to him, raised my stick, and then slammed it into the ground. The dirt was still a bit soft from yesterday’s rain, so it came up pretty easily with the makeshift shovel, and Emerald joined me after I had taken a third stab into the ground.
“This kind of reminds me of when my parents died,” I muttered as I threw a small chunk of dirt away from where we were digging. “I didn’t actually bury them, though. Just like the funeral.”
Emerald looked over to me, raised an eyebrow, and then drew a line over her throat with a long finger.
“They died in a car accident,” I said, and then she tilted her head a bit more. “Oh, cars are kind of like the sled.” I pointed over to where we had parked the sled next to the pile of wood. “But they have wheels on them, and you can control them as you ride. They are machines, made of metal and plastic. Do you have anything like that on your world?”
Emerald nodded, but then she tapped her temple, made the line over her slender neck again, and shrugged.
“Your’s drive themselves?” I asked, and she nodded. “So there aren’t any accidents?”
Emerald nodded again, frowned at me, tapped her chest where her heart was then pushed her shovel into the dirt again.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Thanks. They were good people. We are working on cars that can drive themselves, but probably still a few years away.” I laughed a bit, shook my head, and then moved to push my shovel back into the dirt, but she touched her lips and raised another eyebrow.
“Well, I was just thinking about how crazy it all is. We are here, but our worlds are still continuing on. I had a few friends, but no one really close. I kind of distanced myself from people after my parents died. I don’t think that anyone but my co-workers will even know I am gone. They probably will just think I quit and not even bother looking for me. No one knows I am here. No one is looking for me. Self-driving cars are just one thing that I’ll miss, but there will be thousands of others. I feel like I should be sad, but I’m not.”
Emerald tilted her head again and motioned for me to continue.
“I like being here,” I said. “I like my friends and the work. I kind of wish dinosaurs weren’t trying to eat us all the time, and there weren’t other hostile tribes, but once our fortress gets developed enough, I don’t think we’ll have to worry that much about dinosaurs. We’ll just have to worry about the other tribes coming after us.”
Emerald, raised her stick-shovel, and then made a motion as if she was swinging it at someone.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I guess I don’t really have to wait for a tribe to come after us, I could just attack first.”
Emerald nodded, and her smile looked dangerous when combined with her white reptile looking eyes.
“You are pretty feisty, aren’t you?” I laughed, and the beautiful scaled woman nodded. Her smile grew larger again, and it actually looked a bit creepy. Her teeth were human looking, but her eyes just seemed to stare into my soul without blinking.
“What did you do for work on your homeworld?” I asked. “Or did you have work?”
Emerald nodded, bit her lip, and seemed to consider how to explain what she did. While she thought about it, I went back to digging and realized that we were about halfway done with the hole.
“Did you figure out how to tell me?” I smiled at her after she had gone back to digging and a few minutes had passed.
Emerald shook her head, but then her eyes got large and she gestured for me to come near her.
I nodded, stepped next to her, and then she turned her neck up so that I could see the slender profile of it. Before I could ask her what she wanted me to look at, she moved her finger across her skin-like scales and tapped behind her ear. I looked over and saw another gem there, but this one wasn’t purple or green like the ones on her face. This one was black and polished like the obsidian.
“What am I looking at?” I asked.
Emerald raised a finger to tap on my lips, and then she gestured to the camp.
“Hmm,” I said as I thought about what she was telling me. I was normally pretty good at figuring out what she was trying to say, but the gem on her neck had me a bit stumped.
Emerald seemed to understand that I was lost, so she rubbed her fingers over my temple, gestured to the dinosaurs, and then gestured at the gem on her neck.
“You control people?” I asked, but I suspected that I wasn’t quite understanding her correctly.
Emerald bit her lower lip, shook her head, tapped me on the chest again, and then motioned to the camp.
“Okay, I think I got it,” I said. “You are some sort of manager or government employee, and you tell everyone what to do all day.”
Emerald nodded enthusiastically and then raised up two fingers.
“So government?” I asked, and she clapped her hands together.
“Ahh great,” I said. “Does the black gem on your neck mean that you were born into it?”
She nodded and then gestured to the other gems on her face.
“I’m guessing that a lot of your politics have to do with the way those gems are set?”
She nodded again.
“Well, that’s cool. Since you are used to leading people, am I doing a good job? Do you think there is anything I could do better?” I felt a bit self-conscious now that I knew that Emerald was used to managing people. I’d just been getting by with my basic organizational real time strategy video game skills, and I worried that I was doing all sorts of stuff wrong. Yeah, it was working, but it wasn’t like I was Vince Lombardi, and I knew I had a lot to learn.
Emerald pushed her full lips together with a pensive look, but then she touched the black gems on her neck and pointed to the group of parasaurs. Then she stepped closer to me, touched my mouth, and then touched her chest above her firm breasts.
“Huh, sorry, I don’t get it.”
The green-haired woman tapped on her gem, pointed to me, and then motioned for me to start digging. I smiled at her and then pushed my shovel into the ground, but then she raised her hand to make me stop.
Then she touched my lips and tapped her chest again.
All of a sudden, I realized what she was saying, and I felt goosebumps descend my spine.
“Your gems let you control them?” I whispered, and Emerald nodded.
“Like… uhhh… all of them?” I asked.
Emerald shrugged and then shook her head.
“So are you like a queen then?” I asked. “Or a duchess like Trel? How does it work?”
Emerald made a cup with her hands like she was holding water and then moved her hands outward. Then she closed her fists and gave me a sly smile.
“You were trying to conquer your world?” I asked.
Emerald’s shoulders slumped, she nodded and then shrugged.
“Holy shit,” I w
hispered. “Sooo, uhhh, how many of your kind, did you, uhhh--”
Emerald raised four fingers and then tilted her head back and forth.
“Around four million?” I guessed.
Emerald shook her head and pointed up to the sky with a long finger.
“Four billion?” I gasped.
She nodded and then shrugged.
“Damn,” I hissed. “Uhhh. Soooooo. Yeah. I must seem like an idiot trying to tell you what to do--”
Emerald shook her head urgently, tapped her chest above her left breast, and then moved her fingers up to touch my lips. She kept them there, and I was conscious of the cool temperature of her scales.
“You… uhhh, like me?” The words sounded stupid coming out of my mouth, but Emerald nodded and the smile faded from her lips.
“So you--” I started to say, but Emerald’s other hand suddenly shot up around my neck.
I hadn’t expected the movement, and it was almost too quick to see. I couldn’t twist away in time, and I felt my stomach drop.
Then I felt Emerald’s lips pressed against mine, and her hand began to massage the back of my neck.
My body relaxed instantly, and I felt my lips return her kiss of their own accord. Her tongue pushed into my mouth as soon as she felt me return her kiss, and it explored the roof of my mouth as if searching for hidden treasure. She tasted like grapes or sweet wine, and my head started to swim as my tongue pushed against hers.
She pushed her lithe body against mine, and my hands roamed down her slender back before they came to her tight butt. I squeezed both of her ass cheeks, but she didn’t let out a gasp of pleasure, she just kissed me with more intensity.
Her teeth playfully bit my lower lip once, and I gasped, but then she bit down harder on me, and I hissed when pain shot through my mouth.
“Ouch,” I whispered when she pulled away from me. I half-expected her to apologize, but she just licked her lips and ran her nails through my hair. Her white predator eyes stared into mine intently, and I couldn’t help but feel equal parts attraction and fear.
It had just taken one passionate kiss for me to realize that Emerald was the kind of woman that mothers warned their sons about.
“I… uhhh… kind of don’t know what to say other than that you are a really good kisser.”
Emerald nodded and tapped on my lips again. It was still sore where she bit me, and I saw a bit of blood on her finger. Then she licked my blood off that finger with a long movement of her tongue that left little to my imagination.
My dick was hard enough to pound some nails, but a tiny part of my brain was screaming “danger, dude!” and I had gotten pretty good at surviving Dinosaurland by listening to that little voice. Emerald was all sorts of alien-babe beautiful, but it seemed that she wanted to either fuck my brains out or eat me, and I didn’t want to get distracted by trying to get her alone in my hut so I could figure out which one.
“Uhhh, let’s finish digging,” I said after I gulped and swallowed a throatful of air.
Emerald nodded, leaned back into me, and gave me a soft kiss that I returned. Then she licked my lower lip where she had bitten me and stepped away from me.
Then she went back to digging with her shovel as if nothing had ever happened.
I looked around the camp quickly to see if anyone else had noticed our make-out session, but Sheela was busy sorting wood pieces into piles for weapons, Trel was bent over a hunk of clay by the kilns, and Galmine, Kacerie, and Liahpa were sitting by the cook fires with their heads together looking at the obsidian.
I realized that I hadn’t breathed for probably half a minute, so I let my breath out slowly and then focused on digging for a bit. After the tenth fling of dirt, I opened my Eye-Q and looked to the Women tab. Galmine, Trel, Sheela, and Kacerie were all there, but Emerald wasn’t. I didn’t know quite what to make of the information, but I figured that I still needed to be cautious around the green-haired woman.
Especially since she had just told me that she controlled four billion of her own people and was trying to conquer her own planet. Maybe she really did like me, but I found it easier to believe that she knew I was powerful, and was just following my directions until she could figure out how to manipulate me better.
Or maybe I was just being paranoid.
I wanted to ask her a bit more details about her race, and the war she was fighting, but I also wanted to avoid talking to her until I could gather my wits better. I was still all flustered from when she had kissed me, and all the digging wasn’t causing my erection to go away. Finally, we finished clearing a three foot deep hole, and I gestured for her to help me arrange the branches inside.
We made a raised bed of the branches, pine leaves, and some dried maple-looking leaves that we often used for kindling. As soon as it was finished, we moved over to Will-Lack, and I squatted beside him. His body was still filled with arrows, and I debated what I should do with them before I just decided to yank them out. The bolts were just sharpened into wood points, and I guessed the Burners either hadn’t figured out how to make arrowheads yet, or they had been like us and didn’t have the time.
“Alright,” I said as I gestured for Emerald to take his feet, “let’s put him in.”
The green-haired woman nodded, squatted down, and grabbed both of the gray bird-man’s legs. Then I nodded, and we both stood. I had expected him to be a bit heavier than he was, but he was capable of flying, so I guessed that his bones might have been hollow.
“That’s good,” I said as Emerald and I laid him into the lowered hole on top of the wood. “It’s still daylight now, and I don’t want anyone to see our smoke, so I’m going to wait until the sun sets before I light it.”
Emerald nodded, and I commanded Tom to trot over to me. We both grabbed onto his horns, and he carried us over to where Galmine, Kacerie, and Liahpa were working by the fires.
“How’s it going?” I asked as soon as we arrived.
“Good!” Kacerie said as she gestured to the four roasting corpses of the Balaur Bondoc. All of their hands were covered with blood, and I saw another pile of cut up meat on the side of the flat-top boulder where they were working.
“The obsidian cuts very well,” Galmine said as she held up the small blade in her hand. It looked like black glass and I saw Liahpa slicing through sinew and feathers as if they were made out of Play-doh.
“Galmine taught me how to knap,” the athletic-woman said when she saw me look at her hands. “It’s not as hard as I thought. We’ll have all this meat salted and smoking in the next half hour.”
“Great,” I said. I turned to Kacerie, but before I could ask her about the needle, she held up three long ones.
“Damn,” I said as I leaned in close to look at them. “Those look perfect.”
“Yep,” she said. “Not as slender as the ones I had on my world, but I can fit the sinew through and it should be fine for Nicole’s gash. I was about to sterilize it, but I knew you said you were going to go herb hunting with Galmine.”
“Yeah,” I said as I smiled to the rock-skinned woman. “You ready to go? We’ve got a few hours before the sun sets, so I thought we’d go check out the bamboo and then do another tour around the river.”
“Ohhh, that sounds very fun,” Galmine cooed. “I’m looking forward to some alone time with you, Victor.”
“We aren’t going to have that much time,” I chuckled, “but let’s get going.” I commanded Tom to crouch down, helped Galmine mount on his back, and then grabbed a spear that was leaning against the wall.
“Damn, who loaded Tom up with empty baskets and pots?” I asked as soon as I climbed on his back.
“That was me,” Kacerie said as she looked up from the work table. “I thought you’d need them and I didn’t want to waste your time loading them up when I could do it.”
“Uhhh, thanks,” I said.
“You are welcome.” She smiled at me, winked a light blue colored eye, and then leaned in closer to Liahpa so that she co
uld help the other woman slice up the meat.
I turned Tom around and trotted him over to the gate where Sheela sat Indian-style on the grass. She had finished sorting the branches and was carving a slot into a spear haft with a piece of flint.
“We are going to go look for some herbs and check out the bamboo,” I said to her as I stopped Tom in front of the door.
“Should I come with you?” Sheela asked as she uncrossed her legs and sprang to her feet like a gymnast.
“Nope,” I said. “I need you to work on the weapons. I’m going to take the troodons and the balaur bondocs and hope that we can get some hunting in. We’ll be back in a few hours. Can you help us with the gate?”
“Of course,” Sheela said, and then she moved over to the door, pulled one of the massive laced up gates, and gestured for us to exit.
“See you soon!” Galmine waved to Sheela as we rode out with a train of eleven raptors.
We made a left once we crossed the bridge and then trotted across the wide clearing in the direction of the fallen log. It felt like I had made this short journey to get water hundreds of times, and maybe I had, but I forced myself to pay attention to every shadow behind every tree.
“I thought it would be cooler under the trees,” I said as I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. “It got really hot.”
“I don’t mind the heat,” Galmine purred in my ear. Her arms were wrapped around my waist, and her fingers slid down my stomach until she was rubbing them across the bulge in my pants.
“Uhhh,” I sighed. “Not to complain, but I kinda need to pay attention while I’m steering Tom.”
“Oh, darn,” she giggled. “How about when we get to the bamboo? I’d like to see something else that is hard, long, and thick.”
“Hmmmm,” I sighed as her hands continued to rub me. “We have to find herbs to treat Nicole’s cut. Then I should bring back some bamboo, maybe some clay if I can reach any. We only have a few hours before the sun sets.”
“You always work so much, Victor,” Galmine said, and I felt her lean her head into my back.
Tamer- King of Dinosaurs 4 Page 11