Bebe

by Phelps, Darla

  Shutting off his computer, after a moment, Tral got up to check on her.

  No longer curled up in the bottom of the tub, he found his little stray female sitting in the middle of the tub, surrounded by a hip-high sea of muddy-looking and very tepid water. Hugging her slender legs to her chest, she twisted back her head to look at him.

  She had the bluest eyes that he’d ever seen in his life. Not for the first time, he was struck at how remarkably people-like the human animal was. If one looked beyond her strangely colored eyes and that golden mane of very soft hair, Tral could almost understand why some men took humans for recreational purposes. Looking at her was like looking at a real woman, only in miniature—a real woman with small, peaked breasts and a trim waist that rounded gently into the hourglass-swells of feminine hips and buttocks.

  Six years of solitary confinement in the wilds of the Preserve caught up to him with a stab of such unexpected lust, that Tral could only shake his head at himself. Over an animal, too. “You’ve been out here too long.”

  She blinked at him, then sadly turned her face away. Her thin shoulders sagged dejectedly as she hugged her knees tighter and bowed to press her forehead against them.

  Clearing his throat uncomfortably, he made an effort to locate a clean—or mostly clean—towel. Letting it unfold between his hands, he gestured for her to stand. “Come here.”

  Turning her face to the wall, she pressed her cheek to her knees now and didn’t move.

  “Come on.” Whistling, he snapped his fingers twice and gestured for her to stand. He held the towel open wider.

  Heaving a small sigh, she unfolded herself. Gripping the edge of the tub with both hands, in obvious pain, she rose onto her tender feet and shuffled in limping half-steps until she had turned toward him. She made no attempt to take the towel from his hands. She simply stood there, waiting, with leaves and sticks tangled in the long curls of her hair and smudges of dirt on her cheek, chin, knees, and even under her breasts. He’d been so concerned with pulling the vouka thistles out of her that bathing her had never occurred to him.

  Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to her, either. She stood before him, a small, unhappy animal, casting glances from him to the towel and back again, and waited for him to decide what to do.

  Dropping the towel on the sink behind him, Tral rolled up his shirt sleeves. Not really sure how she might take being touched (he was a stranger, after all), he moved slowly, reaching in past her to let the dirty water out of the bottom of the tub, turn the clean water on and pull the showerhead down off the wall. Adjusting the temperature to a comfortable warmth, he lay a steadying hand upon her shoulder and then began to clean her up.

  She ducked when the first pulsing spray struck the top of her head, saturating her hair and sending a few dead leaves flowing from tangled hair. They cascaded down her back, following the curve of her spine and buttocks before washing down her legs into the bottom of the tub. Otherwise, she didn’t move. Not when he passed the showerhead over her bruised and scratched shoulders, letting the force of the spray wash her clean. Not even when he wet down a bath cloth and, shutting off the water, began to wash her physically. With every pass of the cloth, the dirt was wiped away and cuts, bruises and scrapes revealed.

  “You’ve had a bad couple of days,” he said with a tsk, dabbing gently at the cut he found just under her chin.

  She stared into his eyes, silent and still.

  “Not much of a talker, huh?” Tilting her face towards the light, he brushed a corner of the cloth up over the curve of her cheek, gently washing her face. “That’s okay. There’s some who’d cheerfully say I talk enough for at least two people.”

  Tral soaped up her hair next, and found two more vouka spines hidden behind her ear. After that, he felt carefully all over her scalp, taking his time while he worked the forest debris out of that mess of yellow tangles. Finally, when he was certain there was nothing on top of her head but golden hair, he rinsed the soap away.

  He’d just taken care of the only two safe places on the whole of her small body that he felt comfortable touching. Tral picked up the soap and bath cloth again. He cleared his throat, trying to cover his awkwardness with a smile. “If you were a real woman, you’d probably be ready to slap me silly in a minute.”

  Rubbing a fresh cleaning lather into the cloth, he began to scrub the rest of her. He tackled her shoulders first, and then her arms, soaping between each of her five fingers and cleaning the dirt out from under her fingernails. His hand barely trembled at all when he rinsed and re-lathered, before laying the cloth flat against her chest.

  Those entirely too feminine breasts would barely fill the palms of his hands, he discovered as he passed the cloth over and around them. The nipples peaked under each soapy caress. His mouth watered, and the temptation to simply lean over and try a little taste of her was perversely strong. He kept himself in stern check, his washing hand moving down to rub the cloth impersonally—as impersonally as he could manage it—over the soft trim length of her belly, her hips, her legs. His eyes were drawn to the shadowy valley between her thighs and that slight trim patch of blonde hair, no bigger than the tip of his thumb. He rinsed and re-soaped the cloth, staring at her there for a long time before trying to offer her the cloth.

  “Do you want to—” he gestured between her legs, but she made no move to take over the task of bathing herself.

  No longer watering, his mouth was now bone dry.

  “Okay.” He nudged her thighs apart, looking anywhere but at her as he slipped his hand between them. Those piecing blue unwavering eyes of hers never left him as he stroked back and forth. He felt a sharp prick at the tip of his fingers and, setting the cloth aside, he let his fingers replace it. His fingers slipped soapily all along and around the folds of her womanly sex, feeling for spines and finding two of them. “Ouch. Don’t move.”

  He had to sanitize his needle and picked up his tweezers again, and then get all the way down on his knees, peeling her open with one hand and bringing his face in so close that it was an education to discover he had that many twisted, perverted tendencies lurking deep inside himself. Up until that moment, he’d thought he was a pretty respectable male. Up until that moment, he’d also had no idea a female human had a clitoris. It wasn’t even located in the right place. It was outside her body, right where it would be the most awkward to stimulate during sex.

  “Hunh,” he said and, once he’d removed the slivers, he touched it. Strictly for scientific, zoological purposes, of course.

  The little female stiffened, latching onto his shoulders, her face contorting with pain when she came arching up onto her tiptoes.

  “I’m sorry.” He took his hand away at once. “I’m sorry. Your poor, tender feet.”

  She eased back off his shoulders and he motioned her to turn around. She shuffled to face the wall, putting her back to him and bracing her hands against the tiles. He kept his hands out from between her tense thighs this time, and washed down her back instead.

  Using the showerhead, he rinsed her twice before he could pass that cloth from her shoulders to her ankles without the lather turning dingy. Then he let his hands wander over her, feeling along every inch of her limbs for any more vouka stickers. Tral turned his face away, as if that might make it any less personal while he fondled her buttocks, his fingers slipping easily between them, following the crack down to the slit of her sex.

  “No more thistles,” he finally declared, and took his hands completely off her. She was now the cleanest human he’d ever seen in his life, pale here and there, but with the ugliest bruises covering her buttocks and in two nasty lines between her shoulders and across the small of her back. He had no idea what she’d been hit with, but it must have been a terrible beating. He ran his fingertips over the worst of the marks, ignoring it when she flinched from his touch. “I think I can fix some of this.”

  He shut the water off and reached for the towel again. Draping it over her head, he wrapped her in t
he folds, briefly waged a mental debate on where he could grip her that might hurt less than any other place and then just lifted her out. She whimpered when he set her on her feet.

  “Yeah, I know it hurts,” he said sympathetically, and she slowly straightened her wobbly legs.

  As gently as possible, he patted her dry, taking special care with her back, buttocks and legs.

  “It’s hard to imagine a little thing like you doing anything to warrant something like this.” Turning her around, he lowered himself to one knee to caress the surface of her mottled buttocks. When he nudged her shoulders, she tried to limp away from him.

  “No, no.” He caught her arm and pulled her back into place facing the tub. “Bend over.”

  She tried to turn and face him.

  “No,” he said again, striving for patience. He took hold of her arm and her far shoulder and gradually applied pressure until she bent, whimpering once again as she lay her hands upon the lip of the tub.

  “Stay,” he told her, releasing her one hand at a time until he was sure she wasn’t going to straight immediately upright again. Kneeling behind her, he dug through his medical kit. He found a small vial of ulali oil tucked underneath a roll of bandages in the very bottom. As he dug it out, he winced slightly and looked at her again. “You’re going to have to trust me. This won’t feel good going on, but it will heal those bruises faster than if we let time take its course.”

  Her fingers gripped the edge of the tub so tightly that her knuckles whitened. Considering the vulnerability of her pose, he supposed she had a good reason to be concerned. She never said a word, however, and she didn’t move, not even when he uncorked the vial of oil. She twisted back her head to stare at the vial and then quickly turned her face away. She stared into the tub again, her buttocks clenching and her breasts heaving as her breaths came faster, becoming shallow and faintly panicked.

  “Yeah, I know,” he gave the slope of her back a comforting pat before donning a pair of protective gloves. “It’s scary stuff. It’s hard to believe, but some guys actually like how this stuff heats up and will use it while they...” He made a pumping gesture with one hand down near his hips. Her eyes remained firmly fixed on the bottom of the tub.

  “Do you understand anything I’m saying?” he finally asked. He tapped her on the shoulder when she refused to look at him. “Nod your head if you understand me. Can you nod your head?”

  She stared at him, pale, her knees trembling a little as she remained tensely bent into position over the side of the tub.

  “No, huh?” Oh well. He could still probably talk enough for the both of them. “Brace yourself. It’s going to burn like fire for about five minutes, but then it’ll feel pretty darn good the rest of the night. By morning, most of these bruises will be gone. I’d use the stuff on your feet, except it would make the outside heal faster than the inside, and if the interior festers and then I’d have to cut them open again. Trust me, that wouldn’t feel good either.”

  He let a sparse dribble fall from the vial onto her back and, as softly as he could, rubbed it into the bruised weals. He knew the precise moment when the oil began to absorb and heat because that’s when she sucked a sharp breath in through her nose. Her muscles stiffened and, pain or not, she came right up onto her tiptoes. Her gasp became a high-pitched whine when he poured a more liberal dose directly onto her buttocks. He set the vial aside to catch her hips, holding her steady with one hand while he rubbed the oil over every inch of bruise-marked flesh.

  “Liquid fire,” he reminded when she tried to push herself up. Her hips twisted towards him, as if she thought tucking up against him might make it harder for him to reach her bottom and somehow alleviate the pain. He locked his arm around her waist, trying to keep her steady. “I know, I know. It hurts. Hold still.”

  But she didn’t hold still. Her wiggles grew more frantic still as the fire in her flanks intensified. Her stance finally broke, and he barely caught her arm before she lurched forward, scrambling into the tub just to get away from the heat and from him.

  She burst into tears when Tral dragged her right back out again. Standing, he hooked his arm around her waist and pinned her bent across his hip. Being bigger and stronger definitely had its benefits. He held her firmly and, no matter how she fought and wiggled, didn’t stop his ministrations until the entire oily surface of her backside shone wet in the light.

  Wailing sobs shook her as she wiggled against him, flashing peek-a-boo glimpses of that little puckered bud nestled between her clenching buttocks and of the feminine folds of her sex, again so much like a real woman’s that Tral almost tried to touch her. That would have been devastating, considering the hand he reached for her with was the gloved one still covered with healing, heating oil.

  “Maybe not,” he said removing it from his hand. Just in case he forgot himself and tried to touch her again. He ended up holding her until her skin had absorbed the majority of the wet shininess. Her wild thrashing dwindled to exhausted gasps and the minute grasping motions of her hands as she still struggled to reach back and put out the unseen flames, which had turned her flesh everywhere a brilliant shade of pink, speckled by dark red dots every place he had plucked a vouka spine. Those scattered across the hills of her buttocks were swelling as ulali encountered poison, resulting in a fresh breakout of tender weals. There were several dozen across her bottom alone, and that didn’t count the wounds stretching the length and breadth of her everywhere else, each one festering with poison.

  Tral shook his head. “You’re in for a rough couple of days. The vouka is going to make you incredibly sick.” He smoothed his hand over the back of her thigh, encountering more tiny red dots than he cared to count. “Maybe we caught it in time.”

  He tried to sound optimistic, but at this point, it would take a miracle to avoid infection and the longer he looked at those tiny pin-prick wounds, the more concerned he began to be. He should take her temperature. If she wasn’t feverish yet, she probably would be soon enough. But if she was feverish, that would be his first indication of how much antitoxin he’d need to give her.

  Releasing her waist, he allowed her to straighten upright once more. He caught her shoulder when she tried to slink away from him and, sitting down on the lip of the tub, tried to pull her onto his lap. It took a lot of coaxing, especially when every time she tried to put a hand back to rub at her burning bottom, he caught her wrist to prevent it.

  “Don’t rub your bottom. Trust me, you don’t want the oil on your fingers. Come here.” He patted his knee. “Come on.”

  Sniffling, casting wary peeks at his face from between the tangles of her hair, she finally complied. She perched uneasily on his lap, fidgeting with her fingers as he bent to dig through his medical kit. Finding the temperature gauge, he brushed her hair back from her forehead and ran it lightly across her brow.

  She jerked back at that slight touch, looking at both it and him in worried confusion. From this vantage he could already see her pupils were slightly dilated, which meant the poison was definitely affecting her system. He tried to catch her chin to look in her eyes, but she twisted her face away and then tried to wiggle up off his knee.

  “Hold still,” he said, and she did. Her struggles froze and she sat, stiff and unmoving, nervously picking at her fingers while he ran the gauge across her forehead again.

  The result came up inconclusive. Damn. It wasn’t calibrated to read the lower body temperature of humans.

  “I guess we’re going to have to do this the old fashioned way.” He bent to dig through his medical kit again, finding a digital thermometer in the very bottom. It must have looked familiar to her because, as he started to unwrap it, her face developed a very worried expression.

  “This won’t hurt,” he promised. Tipping a finger under her chin to angle her mouth upward, he said, “Say ah.”

  Leading by example, he opened his mouth wide. Those bright blue eyes of hers flashed from him to the end of the thermometer he brought to her l
ips. With a grimace of disgust, she shoved away from him. It was so sudden and unexpected that, had he not caught her arm, she’d have toppled backwards off his knee and landed in the bottom of the tub.

  “Whoa!” He caught her just in time, but no sooner had he steadied her than did she slap both hands over her mouth. She twisted, turning her shoulders to the thermometer, and Tral did his best to stifle an impatient sigh. “All right, fine. Apparently, someone is used to doing this the really old fashioned way.”

  Mouth still covered, she stole wary peeks at his face, trying to gauge how he was taking her disobedience.

  He frowned. There was no help for it, though. He needed to mix the antitoxin, and a fever would tell him how strong to make the dose. He tried one last time to pull her hands from her lips and wedge the tip of the thermometer into her mouth. It was like trying to thread an eel through the eye of a needle. She twisted and squirmed, turning her head this way and that, blocking her mouth with both flailing hands, and then tried to stand up. When he refused to let her, she went abruptly boneless upon his knee and very nearly slid right off him and onto the floor at his feet.

  “All right, fine!” Tral snapped, starting to lose his patience. “Just remember, I tried to make it easy on us both.”

  Before being dropped into the Preserve, Tral had been forced to take a training course on basic human first-aid techniques. During that course, he’d watched a video on how to administer basic care to a sick human and which had shown a brief segment on how best to take a rectal temperature. In that video, the temperature taker had caught his recalcitrant human, flipped him neatly across one knee, pinned his legs between strong thighs and promptly inserted the thermometer the instant the man landed face down into position. The video had made it look simple. Easy, even.

  Well, the video lied.

  When Tral tried to flip his little stray female into that very same position, all of her limbs went flying on opposite directions. In the minor struggle that ensued, her hand smacked into his, which sent the thermometer clattering to the floor. His female burst into tears, her tiny hands clutching at his trousers while he retrieved it, which showed quite plainly that she wasn’t trying to fight him. At least, not really. But she was obviously uncomfortable with what was about to happen and was not about to undergo the procedure quietly.