by Marie Dry
“You gave the raiders the names of women to kidnap.” He said it in that deep gravelly voice, as if he discussed the weather, his body tense, his eyes bleeding to red.
She took a stumbling step away from him, away from the idea that she could ever do anything so ugly. “No.”
“You had enough food and never shared with the other women. You made sure the men hurt her. Sarah and several of the woman said you seemed to get a strange enjoyment from hurting Sarah.”
Maeve turned, the silver walls blinding her with accusation. They shrank in on her until she couldn’t breathe. For one moment on the mountain, one terrible second, the monster inside her mind whispered to throw Sarah down the mountain. To kill her.
“When we found Sarah, she was thin and bruised. You were well fed and unhurt.”
Her knees crashed down on the silver floor. She barely registered the pain, struggling to breathe through her tight chest. And through it all, she saw the alien, the only being standing between her and death, look at her without pity or mercy.
“It was before I went through my second change.”
“I don’t remember.” She didn’t want to remember, couldn’t cope with the thought of being that evil.
“You were loud and insisted that we take you with us.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You were rude to the breeders.”
“Please, I don’t remember.”
“You called me needle dick.”
She clutched her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to remember.”
He drew her up, held her captive with his hands on her arms. “It took me a while to figure out what that meant.”
“Please, it can’t be true. I’m not like that.”
“You are exactly like that.”
“So what happens now? You keep me cooped up here for the rest of this miserable existence.”
He moved a thumb over her cheek, a strangely tender caress. “You will only be allowed outside if I am with you.”
Maeve clenched her fists. She couldn’t sit here, day in and day out. Waiting for the moment she’d remember being a monster. She wanted to run and keep running. Maybe she could outrun being Marcie.
“No.”
“No what?”
“You cannot run from me.”
She stared at him. “How did you know that was what I was thinking?” It was eerie how easily he read her, considering he was a closed book to her with his expressionless face and grating way of talking. The way he emphasised some words.
“Humans have very expressive faces. I have Natalie’s memories of what they mean.”
She didn’t understand why the thought of him despising her hurt so deeply she sometimes thought her heart was physically injured. “If I have to stay in this place with no windows one more day, I will go crazy,” she said between clenched teeth.
Though she was beginning to wonder if she didn’t deserve being buried in a deep dark hole. Nausea stirred, a vague impression of smothering, of things with too many legs crawling over her. She swallowed and before she could grab onto it the vague thought disappeared.
“If you behave and learn to treat them with respect, you may visit with the breeders.” He said this in such a magnanimous voice that she really wanted to kick him.
She laughed, an ugly shrill sound. “Why would they want to visit with me? They can’t stand me. The other blonde woman looked daggers at me.”
“That was Julia, and if you are polite, they will like you.”
She snorted. “Fat chance of me ever being polite to those bitches.” She closed her eyes in despair. What the hell was wrong with her? It was as if a stranger had hold of her tongue. “I don’t know why I said that. I didn’t mean to say that.” She didn’t use such crude language.
His black eyes narrowed. For a moment she thought she saw his claws lengthen, when she glanced at them again they were normal.
He drew her up and put her on the couch. “You forgot to pretend amnesia.”
“Shoot me, cut off my head, do whatever you have to punish me, if you think I’m lying about not remembering. Anything would be better than being cooped up in this silver monstrosity.”
“You would not be able to endure the punishment a Zyrgin would endure to regain his honor.”
The contempt in his voice flayed her skin. He obviously thought she wouldn’t be willing to endure punishment for her actions. She probably wouldn’t be able to withstand their brand of retribution.
“I will shower. I have duties at early sunrise.” He walked down the hall toward the bedroom.
Maeve went after him. Oh no, this conversation wasn’t over yet. She stormed into the bathroom. “You will let me go outside or punish--” She stared at his back. He’d been whipped, this beautiful man had been whipped. For her? She’d made love with him. Why hadn’t she noticed his wounds before? It made horrific sense. In one terrible instant, she knew why his back was raw. “You took my punishment,” she whispered.
“Leave.” He said it with something in his voice that scared her. Now she knew what had bothered her earlier. His face was swollen and bruised. In places it was a deeper green which had to be the equivalent of a purple bruise on a human.
“Who did this to you?” She’d find them and make them sorry they were ever born.
“That is not your business, human.”
“We can argue about that later. I have to look at your wounds and put a compress on your face.”
The temperature dropped until she expected to see ice dripping from the ceiling. “You think me weak, human female?”
“No. Why would you think that?”
“You think I cannot endure wounds without a female easing my pain?”
“Why on earth would you have to?”
“I have mekrin bar gera. I will endure the wounds without the aid of a female.”
“You’ve got what?”
“Honor, it means honor.”
“I don’t doubt your honor, but I can’t allow you to just hurt and bleed and do nothing.”
He picked her up and carried her to the bed. “You will do something. You will ease me in the correct manner.”
She was half afraid he’d hurt her, be rough with her, but he laid her down with care. He came down on the bed and loomed over her.
“Why do you keep me around? You don’t like me or respect me, and I don’t see you developing any tender feelings for me.”
There was something almost fanatical in the way he looked at her. Those black eyes bleeding blood red, branding her. “You belong to me. You will always belong to me.”
“But why? My God, your back is raw from taking lashes meant for me. And don’t argue. I know it’s because of me. How can you still want me?”
“You are my human. No one will take you from me. Not even my leader.”
Maeve stared up at him. She should be afraid or repulsed by his obsession with keeping her. Instead, she found it oddly reassuring. In her messed-up brain, she knew she could count on him being there for her.
They stared at each other and the silence was so intense she could hear their breathing. His long and measured, hers almost panting.
He kissed her, a brief, almost-touching of his lips to hers, before he lifted his head. He stared down at her, as if waiting for a reaction.
Maeve touched her lips, still feeling that brief pressure. His lips appeared stern and she’d thought they would feel like stone against hers.
The first time he’d kissed her their soft texture had amazed and pleased her. Made her want more of his kisses. She parted her lips and reached up to pull him down to her for another kiss. She could die happy as long as she had his lips against her, his taste on her tongue.
He leaned over her and pushed her hair away from her face. “You are mine.” Those eyes--that should be frightening, but that made her think of writhing bodies and rumpled sheets--stared at her with scary possessiveness.
She would never admit it out loud but, at this mome
nt, she belonged more to him than to herself. When she woke without her memory and saw him crouched over her, she’d been frightened. He’d appeared alien and deadly and, still, a small part of her had known she belonged with him. That first time they made love, the first time she remembered, had seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
She knew he didn’t trust her and sometimes it seemed as if he despised her. Still, she knew with rock-solid certainty that he’d never let her go.
He kissed her cheek, lingered over her neck. “I will protect you.” He kissed her breasts but didn’t linger. He moved down her stomach, gently gripped her inner thighs with his hands, and parted her legs. He bit her stomach, a soft almost playful bite. His eyes stared up at her, holding her gaze captive as he moved lower until he parted her folds for his lethal tongue to drive her out of her mind. Time had no meaning as he kissed, sucked, and licked her until she knew only pleasure, only his touch. She only came down to earth when he kissed her knee.
She frowned when he passed her knee.
“What are you doing?”
He moved back and crouched between her ankles. The way he stared at her feet made her really nervous and she jerked them out of his way. Or tried to.
Faster than the strike of a snake, he grabbed her left ankle and held her foot in front of his face.
“Don’t bite my foot,” she shrieked.
He cocked his head, her words echoing around them. “Why would I bite your foot?”
She squirmed and tried to get her foot back but he tightened his grip. “It’s just the way you looked at it. As if you wanted to take a bite out of it.”
“Zyrgins don’t eat feet.”
She never knew he could put so much disgust in a few words. “Okay.”
“We do not eat the feet of the Eduki when we feast.”
She patted his chest. “All right, all right, it was just a little misunderstanding.”
Still managing to appear disgusted without changing his expression, he touched her foot with a curious finger. Staring up at her, he moved his claws over the sole of her foot he held firmly in his hand.
She couldn’t stop a giggle and her foot jerked in his hands. “What on earth are you doing? Stop that.”
He continued to move his fingers over her soles until she was a shivering laughing mess. When he put down her foot, she had almost no breath, she’d been forced to laugh so hard. She thought he’d satisfied his curiosity but he picked up her other foot.
“Please, no, I can’t laugh anymore.”
He ignored her pleas and tickled the other foot until she was again a laughing quivering mess.
At last, Larz moved up her body and settled over her. “Why do humans do that?”
“I don’t know. Some of us are ticklish and can’t help laughing when we are touched in certain places on our bodies.”
His eyes narrowed. “Ticklish. Natalie used to do that to our feet when Zorlof and I were pre-first change. It never made sense. She seemed to think we would enjoy it.”
Maeve laughed softly. She could just imagine Larz as a small Zyrgin, puzzled at his human mother’s actions.
“Did she do it a lot?”
“Until we went through our first change.” He kissed her and, when he lifted his head, he took a strand of her hair in his hand. “Something is different about your hair.”
She shrugged. “It needs conditioner.” Lately, it seemed as if it didn’t glow as bright red as when she first saw herself in the mirror after she woke with amnesia. She simply didn’t care at this moment. She wanted him to kiss her, touch her, make her forget that she used to be a monster that hurt an innocent woman.
As if reading her mind, he kissed her again and she lost herself in his touch, explored his beautiful body as much as he would allow.
“Now I pleasure you,” he said.
He was strangely gentle, almost as if he made love to her in the fullest sense of the word. He kissed and caressed her and refused to allow her to explore him or take any active part in making love. Her body remembered him, coming alive with wanting with each touch and caress from his clever fingers and lips. He made her come three times and was gearing up for a fourth when she moaned and pushed against his chest.
“I know you’re a Zyrgin with honor and have the stamina to keep going for many more hours but I’m just a mere human. Have mercy.”
He stared down at her and then nodded and lay down on his side. She should’ve realized something was wrong the first time he did that.
“Larz?”
“Yes.”
“Is your back okay? I know you’re tough and everything, but I’m worried. Can I put something on your back or bring you anything?”
“I am fine.”
“Larz?”
She thought she heard him sigh. “Yes, my human.”
“Do you believe me? About having amnesia?”
“Go to sleep, Marcie.”
She turned to face away from him, battling a strange sensation in her chest. Making love with him had felt natural, as if she belonged in his arms but she knew he had only contempt for her.
She finally drifted off to sleep and dreamed...
***
If only she had her picture of her mother, she could stare at it and tell herself that everything would be all right. The way she did when father told her she was difficult. That he didn’t have time for her. When he was disappointed in her grades. Sometimes, she’d talk to the picture and pretend her mother was still alive, that she could hold her and give her advice.
Footsteps came and she stiffened. Being cooped up in the dark stuffy hole, insects crawling over her, was terrible, but when he allowed her out, he always hurt her. To toughen her up, he claimed, to make sure she couldn’t be tortured into telling his secrets. She knew that was a lie. He couldn’t hide his enjoyment when he hurt her. The door opened and she tried to put her hand in front of her face.
She was too weak. The light pierced her eyes like a thousand needles.
“Ready, little Maeve?” that terrible voice said and he reached for her.
She screamed even though she knew he’d punish her for it...
***
“Marcie, wake up.”
She woke and it wasn’t Parnell holding her but a monster. She screamed and, throwing off the adrenaline coursing through her, threatening to keep her immobile, jerked out of its hold and jumped out of bed. Bed? Oh God, they were in bed and she was naked, it was naked. Screaming, she ran toward the wall. It opened and swallowed her. She was in a bathroom. When he didn’t follow her inside, she relaxed slightly. She turned around, suddenly wide awake. What’s going on? Where was she?
She splashed her face with water and leaned there with her eyes closed for a moment. She’d dreamed about a monster and then...and then she woke up in bed with Larz. She sighed and wiped her face. She couldn’t remember the dream, but she still felt shaky, as if she’d run for a long time. At least she didn’t remember what she did in the camps. She preferred the monster hurting her in her dreams to the one in the mirror.
Larz stood in the doorway of the bathroom, watching her. “Did you remember?”
She had the strangest impression that he was waiting for her to do something crazy. “No.”
“Why did you scream and run away from me?”
She leaned against the silver sink and closed her eyes for a moment. It had been so real. “I’m sorry. I had a bad dream. I don’t even remember screaming.”
She felt him at her back and stiffened. How he managed to move without making some noise with those massive feet was beyond her. He lifted her chin, peered into her eyes in the mirror.
“What was the dream about?”
“I think I dreamed about being Maeve. It’s gone now.” She shook her head. “I’m so messed up, it feels as if a hundred different personalities are struggling for dominance in my head.”
“The Maeve you think is you?”
“Yes.”
He took her arm and they
walked to the bedroom. He steered her back to the bed, but she balked. “You go ahead. I can’t sleep now. I’ll go and watch the TC.”
Maybe watching another episode of Space Ranger would bore her enough to allow her to sleep. And, hopefully, by the time she fell asleep she’d be too tired to dream. She shuddered. Though the dreams about Maeve were bad, she truly feared the dream about being the killer. That dream she’d never tell him about. Someone as proud and determined to live with honor would despise anyone capable of killing a helpless old woman.
“I will come with you.”
She stared up at him, saw no expression on his face, but this person who “wasn’t Marcie” appreciated his offer to keep her company.
“I thought I’d watch the Space Ranger. It could bore anyone to sleep.” She remembered each episode as if it was imprinted on her mind. Then why couldn’t she remember where and with whom she watched them?
He checked slightly before continuing on to the living room. “I thought all Earth women thought him outrageously handsome.”
The way he said the last two words was an obvious imitation of his mother, Natalie. She’d bet all her money that was what Natalie and Julia called the Space Ranger. Maeve shied away from thinking of them, of the blonde woman with the empty eyes--the eyes she’d emptied with her actions.
“He’s too pretty. I like men who are more rugged.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Men with muscles like steel and skin that gleams a beautiful gold and green.” Her cheeks warmed at her candor, but it was the truth. He was the most beautiful male she’d ever seen. She still thought he looked like a reptile forever, but a part of her was hoping he’d be her reptile. She searched for something to change the subject. “Do you have series like the Space Ranger on your planet?”