by Ruby Dixon
Stop it, Liz! You suck!
I do suck. I sigh. I need a game plan. The longer I’m in this cave with no one but Raahosh and my cootie, the harder it is to deny the urgings my body is singing with. I need a plan of escape. I’m not sure where to go, but I know I can’t stay here. I mentally catalog the things I’ll need for survival. Food. Drink. Weapons. Shoes. Warm clothing. Shelter.
My dad and I used to go on hunting trips back in Oklahoma, back before he died. I know how to build a fire. I know not to drink the yellow snow. I’ve got clothing and these blankets will do just fine as wraps to keep the coldest winds out. I know how to hunt, so food can be had if I have a weapon. Shelter might be tricky but I can’t plan for that, really. I just have to hope for the best.
I’m really down to shoes and weapons. I can make shoes with leather from my pants and one of the blankets here – I just need to do it when Raahosh is out hunting so he won’t notice.
As for weapons…I could steal Raahosh’s spear, I suppose, but it’s huge and heavy, and my muscles are wimpy. I don’t know that I’d be effective with it. What I really need is a bow. If I had a bow, I’d be able to rock this survival shit. I’ve got mad skills with a bow and arrow.
So. Shoes first, then I can look for stuff to make a bow. Once I have a bow, I can get away out into the wild white yonder.
And do what? Not entirely sure, but it’s a plan. Sometimes all you can do is run with what you’ve got.
RAAHOSH
My mate’s too quiet.
Liz, who talks endlessly even though she knows I can’t understand her, Liz, who would talk to a stone if it had ears, Liz, who even talks in her sleep — is silent. She awoke from her nap with a cunning look in her glowing blue eyes, and watches me as I prepare to go hunting again.
I’m out for most of the day, getting food for my mate, and when I return, she’s still silent, but her mood is pleasant. She lets me feed her raw bits of food and doesn’t even push me away when I caress her cheek.
I sense a trap.
But she yawns sweetly and smiles at me when she crawls back to the furs for sleep, and I’m drawn to her anyhow, my khui thrumming with need and want. Is this…part of the human mating ritual? Do I tell her newwwwp now? Will she fall into my arms and part her legs for me so we can mate and become one?
I have no experience in this. I lay down in the bed with her, unable to stop from caressing the shoulder and back turned in my direction.
She flicks my hand away, and oddly enough, that makes me feel better. That is familiar. I wait until she goes to sleep, and then I drift off as well.
Sometime just before dawn, I feel her small form tense next to mine.
I keep my breathing even so I don’t alert her to the fact that I’m awake. I’m curious to see what she’s going to do. Run? Try to kill me? This isn’t like before when she rolled out of bed and smacked her lips noisily before heading out to relieve herself. This time, she’s trying to be sneaky. She slowly, carefully removes my hand from her waist and lays it flat on the furs. Then she carefully peels the furs back and wiggles her way out, trying not to disturb me as I ‘sleep’. When she’s out of the furs, she looks over at me, but I’m still feigning, my eyes closed, breathing peaceful. Satisfied, I hear her take a few steps away and I open my eyes a slit, peering at her through my lashes.
She’s moving to the corner of the cave, and as I watch, she takes my boots and slides them onto her smaller legs. I watch as she rolls the leather up to her thigh and then secures it with the ties, and the picture is breathtaking in its eroticism…despite my curiosity as to what she’s doing. My cock’s hard as stone by the time she puts my other boot on. My khui hasn’t stopped thrumming all night due to her nearness, and the ache in my body is becoming a palpable thing. I need to possess my mate.
She looks at my spear, considers it, and then glances back at me to see if I’m still asleep.
I remain still, waiting to see what she does.
Liz turns away and pads out of the cave on quiet feet, my spear in her hand.
Well, now I have to see what is going through her mind. I roll from the bed and decide to follow a safe distance behind. The snow’s cold on my feet, but I ignore it. My skin’s used to the harsh conditions and I can stand a little ice, unlike her fragile human flesh. I notice she’s also finished her leggings while I was gone. I admire the curve of her bottom as she moves through the snow, clearly struggling in my larger shoes. The snow near the ice wall is up to my knee, and goes to her hips. She mutters unhappy words in her human language as she struggles forward, every footfall sinking into the powder. Perhaps she’ll get tired and turn around.
But my human is made of sterner stuff, and I suppress a smirk as she struggles onward, muttering human words under her breath that I can’t quite catch.
To my surprise, she heads for the distant trees. Is she hungry? The leaves are inedible, and the bark is only medicinal, good when steeped in hot water for long hours and left to soak overnight. Curious, I follow a safe distance behind. What is she up to?
I wish the khui let me read her thoughts, because my human mate is impossible to understand.
LIZ
There are trees not too far from our hidey hole. I make a beeline for them, slugging through the heavy snow. I have to be fast, because if Raahosh discovers that I’m gone, he’s going to lose it. I’m not trying to escape — not yet. I’m looking for materials for a bow. I need some elastic sort of material for the string, but rawhide will do if I can twist it into a tough, flexible cord. Raahosh has been saving the pelts from our kills, and I have plans for them. I can even make a string from fibers or even my own goddamn braided hair if I have to – I’ll figure something out.
But I haven’t seen a lot of material that would make a good bow itself. It has to be a long length of something wood-like. It needs to flex a bit, and bend, but not too much.
I spent a lot of time studying Raahosh’s spear, because it’s nearly seven feet long and has a bit of flex to it, but it’s too heavy for what I need. I need lighter, stronger.
So I trudge through the snow, heading for the trees. They don’t look like any sort of regular tree that I know of. For one, they look more like eyelashes or feathers than actual trees. They whip back and forth in the bitter winter winds, and the leaves look like pinkish, fluttering floss. Still, they’re the closest thing I can think of to wood, so I head toward them.
I make it to the trees and the snow shallows out a bit, which is nice. It makes it easier to trudge along, and I head for the first tree, running my hand along the bark. At least, I think it’s bark. But it feels spongy and slightly sticky, which squicks me out. The trunk itself is maybe as thick as a can of soda, and as another breeze rises, it flaps and flutters in the wind. Damn it. This probably won’t work. I use the big stone spearhead on Raahosh’s spear to cut into the side of the bark. Maybe if I get past the bark, the core itself is solid and usable?
But as I saw into the wood (and really, calling it that might be a joke), it just seems to get more gelatinous and mushy, and begins to ooze pink stuff that smells terrible and sticks to my fingers. I wipe my hands on the snow and wrinkle my nose.
That is not going to work for a bow.
I sigh and stare around me, miserable. There has to be something on this damn ice planet that will function as a bow. Seriously. I know that Raahosh and Vektal’s people are super low-tech due to being as stranded here as we are, but come on. Bows are basic.
Then again, I haven’t seen anyone here with a bow, either. They all had slings, spears, and knives.
Dammit.
I haven’t been gone that long, so I trudge onward in a straight line. I’m not sure where I’m heading off to but fuck it. There’s a big giant glacier of ice behind me that I know the cave is at the base of. I’ll just follow it home if I get lost. I crest a hill or two when I see…something. I trudge through the snow a bit more – while it’s nippy, it’s not bone-chilling cold like it was before, and I know
my cootie’s probably the one to thank for that. It’s adjusting my body to the environment, adapting me.
I’m still a little bitter about that shit, no matter the benefits. I can’t smell like I used to, I can’t taste things like I used to, and it’s matchmaking me with the surliest alien imaginable.
With the biggest junk. Not that I’m thinking about that. Dammit. Or his hand slowly stroking down the length of it, taunting me.
My cootie immediately starts purring, jiggling my breasts with the force of its intensity. “God, cootie, you are such an asshole!” I tell it, thumping my chest again to try and make it calm down. Not that it works, but I do it anyhow.
Then I pause, because in the distance I see a dark, threading line in the snow. Curious, I step toward it, and as I get closer, I realize that it’s a stream of some kind. There are some pole-type bamboo looking things sticking out of the water. They look lightweight and stiff. I wonder if I could use them? Encouraged, I slog forward. I can check it out, haul one out of the water, and then head home before Raahosh wakes up. I’ll hide my prize in the snow at the mouth of the cave and he’ll never know that I’m secretly constructing myself a nice, handy weapon so I can escape his ass.
The suns are coming up on the far side of the sky, leaking a milky-pale color into the world that will never be bright enough to melt the snow. Even though there’s two of them, they’re such small lights in the sky I imagine that Not-Hoth (as I’ve taken to calling the planet) is a lot further out in its solar system than Earth is from the sun. Maybe that’s why it’s always so cold here. When I get to the stream, I can smell a faint hint of rotten eggs in the air – sulfur. It’s a hot spring, which explains why it’s running water and not a block of ice. Georgie mentioned seeing others when she was traveling with Vektal. I should be glad that it’s warm enough, because otherwise this planet would be that much more inhospitable.
The banks of the stream are muddy but smooth, and I slide down to the edge of the water. The scent of sulfur is thicker here, but the water is blue and pretty. I wonder if I should swim. The bamboo shoots are at least ten feet tall and push out of the water like random toothpicks and I lean over the blue water, reaching for the closest one. I’ll pull it out and see just how sturdy the material is. If it’s lightweight like I think it will be, it might just work—
“LIZ!” A familiar voice bellows, and I slide forward on the bank, almost into the water.
Raahosh. And he almost made me do a face plant into the stream, that jerk. “Can you not fucking yell at me when I’m standing over the water? I—“
I gasp, my angry words dying in my throat. There’s a horrible face with bulging eyes and big, jagged teeth on the other end of my stick. It looks like one of those monstrous creatures from the deep, dark parts of the ocean—except it’s about a foot away from my face.
A scream rips from my throat and I stagger backward, clutching my bamboo.
The creature comes along with the end of the bamboo, to my shock. It sticks to the end of it, thrashing and splashing wildly.
I scream again, and fling it onto the snow. It hisses and starts moving toward me, and I glance around, looking for Raahosh’s spear. It’s a few feet away, where I must have flung it. Meanwhile, the thing thrashes and hisses on the far end of the bamboo, it’s mouth snapping angrily in my direction.
Something big appears out of the corner of my eye, and I watch as Raahosh stalks toward the thing I’ve pulled out of the water, blade in hand. He looks extremely pissed off as he grabs the thing by one of its flinging flipper-things and slams it to the ground. Then, with an ease that astonishes me, he slams his knife into its eye.
The thing’s flippers flail, blood spurts onto the white snow, and then it stops moving. As I stare, wide-eyed, he glances over at me and flings his blade to the ground, then stalks toward me.
I crab-walk backward a few feet. “I didn’t know! Like I was supposed to know one of those things was attached to the end of the bamboo? All I wanted were some supplies!” My babbling doesn’t make him pause an inch. Of course not. He can’t understand me. My fast talking is futile.
The big alien stalks toward me as if I’m his prey. I scoot backward again, terrified — and a little aroused by the hard look in his eyes. My cootie immediately starts thrumming as he looms over me, to my horror and chagrin, and my nipples get hard.
Fucking cootie.
His nostrils flare and his eyes narrow as he gazes down at me.
“I’m not turned on,” I say in a shaky voice, even though I can feel my blood pulsing and thrumming in my veins, my cootie purring in my chest. I’m a shitty, shitty liar. I want nothing more than to reach between my legs and stroke my clit again. Maybe it’s adrenaline. Maybe it’s the way he’s gazing down at me as if he can’t decide if he wants to rip my clothing off or turn me over and spank me. Both mental images make me a little crazy.
Whatever it is, my body is acutely aware of him, and the cootie is going wild. I’m panting as I sit in the snow, and I realize a moment later that my legs are sprawled open.
I watch as his nostrils flare. A low moan escapes my throat. Why is that so fucking hot? God, I hate this cootie.
“Liz,” he growls, the word feral in his throat.
“I totally don’t want you,” I pant, my cootie purring so loud it practically drowns me out. “My cootie is full of lies.”
He reaches a big hand down to me, to help me up.
I slap it away, annoyed at both him and myself for being all aroused after nearly getting my face eaten by a stream-Cthulhu-on-a-stick. “Go away.”
Angry, he bends down and grabs at the front of my shirt. I know he’s about to haul me upright since I won’t take his help, but the moment his face nears mine?
I lose all sensibility. I grab him by the one horn jutting from his brow, my fingers curling around the broken stump of the other, and I drag his face toward me for a kiss. I’m sure I’ll regret it later, but right now, my hormones are singing and my body desperately wants his mouth on mine. I barely hear his small gasp as I take his lower lip between my teeth and gently bite down.
Raahosh makes a low, rasping groan in his throat, and then he mashes his mouth against mine.
It’s clear the guy doesn’t know how to kiss. That’s okay – my cootie’s purring so hard I don’t think I could stop if I wanted to. A soft whimper escapes my throat, and then I begin to show him how a kiss works. My lips caress his, slow and sensual. He freezes against me, his big hands down along my sides, his body looming over mine, and he’s stiff and unyielding. So I continue to coax him with my mouth. “This is how you kiss, big guy,” I murmur between pecks of my mouth against his, letting my lips caress the hard line of his mouth.
For a long moment, he’s tense above me, and then his lips part, letting me in. I slick my tongue over the seam of his mouth, and it brushes against his fangs, a reminder that he’s an alien. I shiver, and start to pull away.
That’s when Raahosh kisses me back. At first hesitant, his movements grow bolder when my tongue meets his, and I make needy little noises in the back of my throat. His tongue has bumps on it, much like the ridges that cover his body. It drags over my own tongue, sending unique sensations skyrocketing through my body. Oh…wow. Georgie didn’t mention this. She didn’t mention anything even remotely close to this. I wonder if he’s got the amazing bumps in other fun locations.
He’s taking to kissing well, his lips caressing mine and then his tongue dragging against my own, until my cootie is rumbling so loud that I can barely think, and it feels as if my entire torso is vibrating with need. My pussy aches with a similar need, and I feel, for a moment, as if I might die if he doesn’t touch me soon. I break away from him, panting.
He immediately captures my mouth with his again. His tongue flicks against mine, a silent question.
“I don’t want this,” I breathe, even as I grab his horns and drag his mouth against mine once more. My moans of pure delight are swallowed against his tongue, and I wr
ap my legs around his waist, feeling him stiffen against me in surprise. “I totally don’t want you tonguing me,” I hiss at him, and then proceed to tongue his mouth all over, like a wild woman.
Raahosh breaks away from my kiss and stares down at me, eyes as feral as I feel. He leans in and captures my mouth in another breathtaking kiss, and I nearly lose my mind when he sucks on my upper lip. This man is a fast learner. Maybe too fast. I feel as if I’m losing control of the situation.
Of course, I’m assuming I ever had control of the situation.
I pull my mouth away from his again, and I drag one of his hands from the snow to my breast. “I don’t want you to touch this,” I tell him, fierce and just a little bit angry. Truth is, I am angry as much as I’m aroused. I’m not sure if this is me or the cootie, but I know I can’t stop. And when he squeezes my breast through the thick fabric of the borrowed tunic, I fling my head back and moan again, my hips undulating against the snow.
I need him so bad. It’s like my body has been half asleep and now that we’re touching, I’m alive. My senses are awakened, and my body is singing—
And I need sex like I need air.
He rubs his thumb over my nipple through the leather, and my breath hisses from my throat. That should not feel that good. It should not. And yet, I want more than just that. He bares his teeth in a snarl, and I gasp at the sight of those sharp fangs. I must be sick in the head, because they’re arousing to me, too, and I give his head a little push.
“I don’t want you to lick my pussy,” I tell him, nudging him lower to emphasize just what it is I want despite my words. It’s okay, anyhow, because I’m babbling like a crazy person. “I don’t want your mouth on me at all,” I tell him, even when I lift my hips and use one hand to start to pull my newly-made pants down.
Even though he can’t understand me, he gets the idea, and his hands go to my pants, pulling them down to my knees. He gives me a hot look that makes me melt, and my nipples feel like hard, aching points of agony under the leather. They’re dying to be touched, so I reach up and toy with them myself. My cootie’s humming so hard my entire body feels as if it’s vibrating, and I’m hurting with need.