"No one has seen me naked since I was three years old," she said softly. "Before today, that is."
"The universe has been missing something beautiful!"
Roxie kissed his shoulder, surprised at his words. "You wouldn't mind if someone saw me naked? If your brother walked in on us?" It seemed odd to her to not worry about nudity, but she liked it. She didn't know if she'd ever be able to be nude in front of someone other than her husband, but maybe it could happen. Just then, she was still embarrassed to be nude in front of him.
"Of course not! It's your natural state. You should be nude."
"Do people on your planet run around with no clothes on?" she asked, shocked at the very idea.
"Not usually, but it wouldn't be a big deal to anyone if they did. We're mostly men, of course, but we're not—what's the right word in your language? Prudish. That's it."
She hadn't thought of the way she'd been raised as prudish, only modest. Of course, she could see where he was coming from. Adam and Eve had been created nude. They all came into the world with no clothes on. That thought made her wonder.
"Will I be able to have daughters? Or will your curse affect me and only allow sons?"
He frowned. "You'll only have sons, I'm sure. The curse has affected every woman any of us has ever married. It's heartbreaking."
She nodded slowly. "At least I'll be able to keep any sons I have with me. I never could wrap my mind around having a child just to let it be raised by the state. I want to raise my own sons."
He smiled. "You will do that on Mcy. My mother will want to have some time with them, of course, but they will be your children." He studied her for a moment. "What about your mother? Do you ever get to see her?"
She shook her head sadly. "We're not even allowed to know who they are. We are sent to the compound and that's the last time we see our parents. If we happen to figure out who they are later in life, we're not supposed to acknowledge it."
"But—that's barbaric! How can you exist without parents? Without a family?"
She shrugged. "It's been this way since the theocracy went into place. I don't have to like it to obey the rules. I was planning to climb the wall and leave the compound when they announced my impending marriage." She'd never admitted that to anyone else. "I wouldn't have stayed."
"What would you have done? You wouldn't have been able to re-enter society would you?"
She shook her head. "I would have doomed myself to a life of living alone. I would have lived in the wilderness, eating what I could forage or kill. Living in whatever shelter I could build."
"Would that have been safe?"
She shrugged. "I have knowledge most don't in how to survive. I would have been able to fashion weapons out of sticks. I had already started sneaking things into the woods, just a few at a time, and covering them. I would have taken a bag with me."
"Are you sad that I interrupted those plans?" He didn't see how she could be, but the woman thought differently than he did. She thought differently than anyone he'd ever met!
Roxie shrugged. "I don't think so. I mean, it would have been an adventure certainly, but I would rather live with someone who—cares about me." She couldn't bring herself to say that he loved her. He'd never said it to her.
"I'm glad. I would have been hurt if you'd preferred the idea of a life of solitude in dangerous conditions to being my wife." Bnjmn sounded hurt by the idea she could have preferred anything over a life with him.
She sighed. "I haven't shown you how much I enjoy your presence yet?" she asked, turning into him and bringing his mouth down to hers for a ravenous kiss. When she pulled away, she looked back at the vid. "I think we're going to have to start this episode over. What if they get off the island, and I miss it?"
"You know, they do eventually get off the island, and they all hate what the world has become. They were gone for a very long time."
She frowned. "It would be like someone who fought for our theocracy to go into power seeing the world as it is today. I know the way we live couldn't have been something they realized they were fighting for. Who would ever want families to be split up?"
"Once a woman leaves the compound, does she always live with her husband?" He was fascinated by Earth society. It was so strange to him that he wanted to go back and study it.
Roxie shrugged. "I asked that question many times, but no one was ever able to answer it for me. As far as I know, women are killed off after their child bearing years are over." She sighed. "I'm sure that doesn't really happen, but no one would tell me differently. I wish everything wasn't so secretive."
He frowned. "I'm sure we could find out if you're worried about it. We could use our screens to watch what goes on outside the compounds." It would put them in even more danger than just getting Lacey and getting out, but if it would put her mind at ease, he was willing to do anything.
"No, of course not. I wouldn't know who to look at. I wish I could track down my mother, and find out what she's doing now, but there's no way." She stared off at the vid, seeing Gilligan get a coconut cream pie in the face. "I guess it doesn't matter at this point. We can't rescue the entire population of Earth."
"No. We can't. We can continue to rescue one woman at a time, though. The men of my planet would welcome the opportunity to know them."
"Know them? You mean fuck them." She shook her head. "No, we can get Lacey, and maybe a few others, but eventually we're going to get caught. I do think it would be best if we always had an Earth woman on the ships when you go on your rescue missions, though. It will ease the transition. If Lela had been here on the ship when I was teleported, we'd have had a much easier time."
"I can see the wisdom in that."
"Of course, you had me under you with my legs spread within twenty-four hours of meeting me. What more do you need?"
He chuckled. "Twenty-four minutes would have made me much happier."
"I'm sure it would have. You, my dear husband, can't control your libido!"
"Do you want me to?"
She giggled softly. "Not particularly."
Chapter Eight
Twenty-four hours later, Roxie stood at the teleportation controls with Bnjmn at her side. "We need to find her. I think she'll try to find me in the woods again, even though I have to have been reported missing by now." She checked the time. "It's the time for the two of us to meet for the one-on-one lesson we scheduled."
As they watched the area where she'd agreed to meet Lacey, she could see women she didn't know walking around, searching. Obviously they were trying to find her. Over the years she'd been in the compound, a handful of females had drowned in the stream. They may assume that had happened to her.
She wanted to let them know she was safe, but she didn't want them to be alerted to her being so close. No, it was best if she said nothing. Hopefully they would see Lacey on her own, and they would be able to bring her to the ship.
Roxie's eyes continually scanned the screen, watching for her small friend. Finally, after more than an hour of watching, she came onto the screen. "There!" she cried out, pointing at the girl in the upper right corner of the area. "She's alone."
"I'm going to lock in on her and bring her up. We have to do it quickly and get out of here." Bnjmn walked to the controls, getting a fix on the girl and immediately teleporting her onto the ship.
Lacey's face was frightened as she materialized, but Roxie rushed to her friend's side. "I'm here. We're here to give you an opportunity to escape your marriage, but we have to talk quickly."
"Where am I?" Lacey turned to Roxie, burying herself in her friend's arms. "Roxie, everyone is out looking for you. Your name was called after supper two nights ago. They found you a match, but you didn't step forward."
Roxie led Lacey into the vid room where she could talk to her while they were sitting down. "You're on an alien space craft. It's a long story, so I'm going to shorten it as much as I can. The day I disappeared, the day I was matched, I was teleported aboard this ship, jus
t as you were a few moments ago. I was brought here by the man who was with us, Bnjmn. He's my mate."
Lacey gaped at Roxie. "Are you kidding me? You escaped an Earth marriage to marry an alien? Have you lost your mind?"
"Hear me out. These aliens are from the planet Mcy. They are a family who has been exiled from their home planet and cursed to never have female offspring, so basically, they've been exiled as a form of genocide."
Bnjmn listened to his wife but had to interrupt. "Not genocide. The home planet does send us women."
"Convicts. Hush. I'm telling this story!" Roxie glared at him, before turning back to Lacey. "Anyway, these men are all looking for women to marry. There's a whole planet of men looking for women to marry, and we're headed there as soon as you say go. You get the choice though. You can come with us, and choose a husband for yourself from among the men on Mcy, or you can go back to Earth and marry your computer match."
"I would have a choice?" Lacey asked, the idea obviously appealing to her.
Roxie nodded. "You would."
"Are they all as big as he is? He must be seven and a half feet tall!" Lacey was less than five feet. Marrying a man of his size would be very intimidating to her.
"I never thought of that." Roxie looked over her shoulder at Bnjmn. "Are all the men on Mcy as big as you?"
He shrugged. "I'm taller than most, but we are all a great deal taller than you are."
"Are all of the men on Mcy taller than Lela?" Roxie asked.
"Lela? Is that where she disappeared to? And Maria and Carissa too?" Lacey asked, confused.
"Not Maria and Carissa," Roxie told her. "But Lela is married to Bnjmn's brother."
"Lela is short for a woman of my planet, and all the men are much taller than she is," Bnjmn interjected before the women could start talking about people they knew again.
"You would be tiny compared to any man you chose there then," Roxie told Lacey.
"I would help you to make sure you married a man of good character," Bnjmn added. "I wouldn't let you be abused by a man on my world."
Lacey considered it for a moment. "Carissa's still being held and studied. I don't want to be treated like she's being treated. If I go back to Earth, they'll do that to me." She shuddered.
Roxie shook her head. "We'd make sure you were put back where no one could see you. I wouldn't let that happen to you. You have a choice."
Lacey closed her eyes, obviously thinking about the decision. Finally she said softly, "I'm going with you. I'll marry an alien."
Roxie smiled. "I'm so glad. I think you're making the right choice. One strange thing about the aliens is that they are able to think into their fated mate's heads. So Bnjmn could say something to me in my mind, and I would know what it was. I was destined to be his mate."
"So would I find someone like that? That I was destined to marry?" Lacey asked.
Bnjmn shrugged, coming into the room to sit beside Roxie now that Lacey had made her decision to stay with them. "We don't know if one of our men will be your fated mate, but there's a good chance of it. Lela was fated to marry my brother, Drrrl. Roxie was destined for me. You could be destined for my brother, Kvn, who is the captain of this ship, or you could be destined for another Mcy. Or maybe none at all."
Roxie looked over her shoulder at him. "Speaking of Kvn, shouldn't you let him know that we can leave Earth?"
Bnjmn got to his feet. "On my way." He left the room to go tell his brother that Lacey had decided to stay.
"He's a good man," Roxie told her friend. "Kvn seems like a decent man as well, but I've spent very little time with him."
Lacey frowned. "What are you wearing anyway? You look like your foundation garment is off you!"
Roxie grinned. "I'm wearing a blanket with a hole cut in the top, and a piece of blanket as a belt to keep it all together. I feel so free!" She looked down at herself, realizing how strange she must look to her friend, who was used to seeing her in the uniform of the compound as well as a tight foundation garment, holding her curves in.
"No foundation garment?" Lacey stared at her friend as if she was an alien herself.
"The foundation garment is so uncomfortable, and Bnjmn likes to have better access to my body. He is a man who has a strong sex drive." She knew she probably shouldn't mention sex to her friend, but Lacey needed to understand more than she'd been taught.
Lacey's eyes widened at her friend's words. "Is it painful?"
Roxie knew she was referring to sex. "Not at all! I was given to believe it was something to be endured, but it's wonderful. The way Bnjmn touches me leaves me in no doubt that there is a loving creator, because it's the best feeling I've ever had."
"Really? You're not just trying to make me feel better?" Lacey asked.
"No, I'm not. Your room is near ours, and I guarantee you will hear my cries of pleasure through the night. I love every minute that we're together." Roxie didn't want to speak so intimately with her friend, but she hated the idea of her going into marriage as naive as she had been.
Lacey was obviously surprised at her friend's words. "But—That's not what we were taught."
"No, it's not, which is the only reason I'm discussing it. It's an embarrassing topic, but one that we've been misled about. I won't have you fearing intimacy as I did. When you find a man you care about, you should marry him, and you will enjoy what the two of you do together."
Lacey blushed. "I will still have to marry, won't I?"
Roxie nodded. "I don't know of a way to keep that from being required of you, but we can make sure you have time to look over all the men on Mcy and choose the one you like the best. There's no reason not to."
"Can you make that happen?"
"I think so. Bnjmn loves me and turned around to rescue you for me. He's also a prince on his planet. His father is king. He will have some bargaining power with his rank." Roxie paused. "I'll talk to him."
"Thank you! You're a good friend!"
Roxie smiled. "You know I hated the idea of computer arranged marriages more than most. I don't know how I would have felt if you'd been forced to marry your chosen match without learning the self-defense I wanted to teach you."
"Will you still teach me?"
"Of course I will! I will teach you as we fly through the stars toward Mcy. There's good space in a couple of rooms here on the ship." Roxie stood up. "It's getting late. I see you trying not to yawn. I'll take you to the room you'll use here on the ship." She hadn't talked to Bnjmn about where to put Lacey, but it only made sense for the girl to use the chamber she'd vacated. "I used this room until I married Bnjmn yesterday afternoon."
"You waited to marry him?" Lacey asked, surprised. "Even though you knew he was your fated mate?"
"He agreed to wait for me, so we waited. I'm pleased he let me get to know him before we got intimate. I was so worried about it."
"I'm terrified of mating," Lacey admitted.
"I was too, but there's really no reason to be. If you care for the man you marry, and he cares for you, he will treat you well. Lovemaking is a pleasurable thing. You'll see." Roxie led her into the small room she'd vacated. "The baths are the best thing on this ship. Let me show you how to use yours."
Five minutes later, she left her friend alone, running into Bnjmn in the hall. "She's settling in."
"Good. I don't want to take time to stop at the space station with her. We've made too many extractions in the past couple of days for me to feel safe doing that."
"We can come back for food," Roxie said. "Right?"
Bnjmn nodded. "We'll have to. Is she all right? Scared?"
"Oh, she's frightened, of course. Any woman would be. She's going to be happy she made the choice she did, though."
"I think so," he said with a grin. "Why stay with an Earth man when you can have a Mcy?"
She rolled her eyes at him. "Do you want to watch more vids? I promised Lacey we'd practice self-defense tomorrow."
"She won't need to defend herself against a Mcy man.
It's against the law for us to raise a hand to a woman. Death penalty."
"Still. I want her to feel safe." She shrugged. "She's so small that she has the right to be able to feel safe around others. Especially around men twice her size."
"That's true. Sure, let's go watch our vids." He eyed her with a grin. "Can we watch vids naked?" He loved the idea of making love to her while the vid was still playing on the screen. There was just something about the show that made him want to make love with his wife.
"You have some problems with clothes! Did you wear some that ate you when you were a baby or something?" She really didn't understand why he hated clothing so much, but she could eventually learn to deal with it.
He laughed. "I just like being comfortable. And I'm most comfortable when I'm wearing nothing but you."
She shook her head at him. "Sometimes, you worry me, husband."
"You always worry me, wife."
Chapter Nine
Roxie didn't think to talk to Bnjmn about Lacey's request until much later. "Would you be willing to promise Lacey that she can have some time to meet and decide on her new husband once we reach Mcy?"
He frowned for a moment. "It's important to you?"
"Yes, it is. I think women should have the right to get to know a man before she marries him." She propped her chin on her hands which rested on his shoulder.
"How long are you thinking?" he asked warily. He knew the men would want the woman to choose quickly so they could get to the wedding and bedding part of the program.
"Two months," she said, knowing he would do his best to bargain her down. It was a game he enjoyed playing.
"A week," he countered.
"That's not nearly long enough unless there's only one man! Six weeks."
"Too long! Men will be fighting over her!" He narrowed his eyes at her. "Two weeks."
"Five weeks. Anything less than that is just not enough!"
Seduced by the Alien Barbarian Page 5