by Lisa Lace
But more importantly, I was nothing but a stranger to her.
I knew there was a chance that she might have been cleaning, but I assumed she would be washing her feet or arms. The last thing I imagined was her being nude out in the middle of the woods. Why would she think it was a good idea to be naked in enemy territory? My eyes rolled up to the heavens. I had been in the company of Gabriella for less than two days, but her erratic and unpredictable decisions were already starting to drive me up the wall.
The thought triggered the memory of Marshall Hathaway. He was the only other human I had ever known. Up until this point, I presumed the majority of Earthlings were level-headed and pragmatic by nature, as he was. Apart from Upa and my father, Marshall was the only other man who ever gave a damn about me.
As for my mother, I never knew the lady and didn’t care to learn more about her. She had disappeared soon after I was born and never returned. I was raised by Upa and my father until they were both killed in the Fallgold incident twenty-five years ago.
Marshall was part of a small community of humans stationed on Maztek. The man was intelligent and sincere, which garnered the respect of Upa and my father. The three had met a couple of years before I was born. The way I heard it, they became instant friends.
Even though Marshall was not a fighter, he always accompanied them when they went out on the field. He risked his life numerous times in different Xylo war zones tending to injured warriors. When the frequency of the Xylo attacks decreased, he dedicated his time to helping Maztek in impoverished villages afflicted with mysterious and debilitating diseases.
When my blood family perished in the Fallgold battle, Marshall made sure to check on me when he could. He never tried to refill the hole Upa and my father left in my life, but he acknowledged it existed. That was all I needed. The visits were brief, but they remained some of the most pleasant memories I had.
In a cruel twist of fate, Marshall died a horrible death under the hand of Synic. Synic had taken command in place of his father, Dyron, who perished in Fallgold. Thirsting for blood and having something to prove, Synic executed Marshall when he refused to give up information he knew about the Maztek forces.
The deaths of all three males in my life had a long-lasting effect on me. I knew I needed to be the one to take down those Xylo sons of bitches. I joined a military academy funded by Maztek royalty and began training at the age of fifteen.
I made a left turn, heading back to camp. Now that I was thinking about Marshall, I remembered one time I had seen his composure challenged. The man had a reputation for a consistently chipper mood and the ability to keep calm under pressure, making him respected by most Maztek. His exterior remained stoic and calm through Upa and my father’s death, but it was finally put to the test two months after Fallgold.
Treating thousands of dying Maztek civilians had preoccupied him, making him miss the birth of his daughter. At the time, he hadn’t seen me, but I was lurking in the back of the stock room when he burst inside on one of his breaks. Not knowing what to do, I hid behind one of the massive containers.
Without warning, I saw the person I knew as an unbreakable, happy-go-lucky man collapse on the ground. He sobbed more than I had ever seen any grown man cry. The sound of helpless emotion in his voice was unforgettable.
I suppose even he had a breaking point.
Maybe I needed to rethink my strategy with Gabriella. At this stage, I hoped an open-minded approach would work. It would be in both of our best interests if I put in the effort to make her journey to a foreign, war-torn planet a little more pleasant.
It was an uncomfortable feeling. I had been looking for my naima for many years. Now that I had the chance for companionship, I realized I was unprepared. It was like being a rookie all over again. I could only rely on what I knew ��� to improvise, conquer, and overcome whatever situation came my way.
I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew I didn’t want to scare her away forever.
As I inched closer to the cave, something made me halt in my tracks. I moved into a crouch and concealed myself behind the trunk of a tree. The pungent odor of rotting fruit drifted down from above, penetrating the rag on my face and burning in my nose. I fixed the rag’s knot behind my head and put my hands on the tree trunk as I looked at our camp from a distance.
A pair of Xylo hitchhikers hobbled out of the cave on their hands and feet. One carried winoa meat in his pockets and under his arms. The other had his hands full with a pot of bone stock.
One Xylo had a green eye and a brown one. He barked to his companion in a high-pitched local dialect. The other screeched in agreement. The pair moved east toward an inclined path.
They were headed straight for the waterfall and Gabriella.
Chapter 8
GABRIELLA
“Crap!” I caught the square of soap just before it slipped through my fingers. My lips broke out into a grin at my small victory, but I embraced it. It was the first genuine smile that had crossed my face since my arrival on this godforsaken planet. I rubbed the wrinkled tips of my fingers with my other hand. My quick shower had taken much longer than had intended.
I set the soap down on a rock and moved into the path of falling water to rinse off one final time. A soft pop sounded from my back as I bent forward to wash the lather off my legs.
What occurred next happened so fast, it caught me completely off-guard.
The noise of sudden, rushed movement filled my ears. My fingertips were moved from my calves in one swift motion. A pair of sweaty, hulking arms closed in over me and tackled me to the ground.
To a bystander, it all happened within a few seconds, but it felt like the moment lasted forever. I flopped around like a struggling fish out of water, trying to get a look at my attacker.
“Laz? I was just relaxing! And I’m naked!”
He rolled me on top of him and hooked his feet over my ankles to prevent any movement. He used his arms to prevent my limbs from flailing.
“Be quiet,” he whispered. “We’re not alone.”
He had his hand over my mouth, so it wasn’t like I could say anything. His fingers stunk. No matter how much he washed, he wouldn’t be able to clean himself from the stench of the winoa kill. Was he trying to have his way with me?
“Damn it, Gabriella. Stop struggling. And try not to make any noise!”
“Mmmphhh!” Every instinct I had told me to move away and hide. I didn’t know what to do, but I didn’t want to be here. Maybe I hadn’t recovered from the crash landing. My mind was aflutter, and I couldn’t think straight.
All I knew was that I needed to get myself out of this situation. I wanted to survive. I was not going to let myself be captured again.
I bared my teeth frantically and positioned them over the flesh between his thumb and his index finger. I had my mouth open, ready to bite down and run when two figures crept into the side of my view. I turned to look at the new sight.
It was two Xylo. I guess we weren’t alone after all.
One was female. Her thinning and unwashed hair hung in loose clumps over the back of her enlarged head. The male Xylo’s left eye nearly made my meal of winoa meat come back up my throat. His eye had yellow gunk and was half-eaten by chubby maggots that appeared to have set up a permanent residence in his skull. They looked malnourished, and their oversized clothing made them look bony as well. Dirt covered the backs of their necks and their faces were marked with multiple scabs.
I felt muscles start to relax slowly. Laz had loosened his grip over my mouth the moment I finally stopped resisting. What was more, this whole time, he didn’t have an erection. I guess he wasn’t trying to rape me after all.
All the pieces quickly fell into place. The thumping of my irregular heartbeat began to slow down to its normal pace.
I turned my attention back to the Xylo intruders. My eyes fell on the familiar pot and sacks of raw pink meat they carried. Behind Laz’s hand, my jaw opened. I watched bitterly as the Xylos disc
arded the delicious soup onto the ground and filled the pot with water. They tipped the rims of the pot toward their faces and caught the water messily with wagging purple tongues. Freeloading seemed to be universal. Why hadn’t Laz done anything to stop or scare off these good-for-nothing scavengers?
A tingling sensation arising from my gut disrupted my thoughts. With my nerves finally settling, I abruptly realized I was completely naked. Laz’s sweaty chest was pressed up against me. I could feel his heart beating against my back.
Now that I wasn’t actively moving away from him, he had switched his hold around my arms. He held my wrists together with his closed fists, but his arms were raised slightly above my heaving breasts. He didn’t have a hard-on, but I could still feel the length of his cock through his pants. As he shifted underneath me, my thighs clenched involuntarily. I could feel the solid ridges of his washboard stomach muscles gently brushing against the flesh of my lower back.
I felt the walls of my pussy contracting. Now I was losing control of my body. A dribble of my pussy juices oozed out against my will, lubricating my sex. I couldn’t explain the conflicted feelings of arousal pulsing through my body.
The sensation triggered a buzz in my left ear once again, and I could feel my cheeks heating up as they turned pink. Part of me liked how everything felt, but a smarter part of me knew this was neither the place nor time for intimacy.
As luck would have it, an insufferable itch appeared on my ankle.
In my position, all I could do was nudge one ankle against the other and try to rub them together. But as I adjusted my hips, his cock fell into my butt crack. My hips ground against him as I maneuvered to scratch myself. I started to feel his stiffening length swell in the cushion of my cheeks.
“The coast is clear. You can get off me now.”
I wonder if you were getting off already, I thought to myself. I rolled off of Laz right away. Glancing to my right between two mossy boulders, I saw the little backs of the retreating aliens. Laz reached for my clothes, turning away as he handed them to me. I grabbed my clothes and dressed with lightning speed before he turned around.
“Are you going to let them get away with our stuff?” I asked him curiously. My forehead wrinkled.
“Affirmative,” grunted Laz. He took the bar of soap and started to scrub off the smell from his fingers under the waterfall.
“But why?”
“They’re not our enemy,” Laz replied without skipping a beat. His eyes remained focused on his hands, but I thought I could hear a hint of emotion in his tone. “They were just hungry.”
The raw honesty in his words made me ashamed I had asked about their future.
“That’s a good point. I guess I’m paranoid from my only other Xylo encounter.”
“Next time you want to prance around naked in the middle of enemy territory, I suggest you let me know ahead of time. It will be easier for me to take care of you if I know you’re going to do something stupid before anything happens.”
“Excuse me? I can look after myself, thank you very much. Wait, where are you going?”
“Back to the cave. Where else?”
“There you go. Walking away from me again in the middle of a conversation. No surprise there.” I sighed at the sight of Laz’s back growing smaller in the distance.
“Thirty-eight…thirty-nine…forty.”
The moment my body touched the ground, I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I didn’t even move my arms. They were still crossed against my chest as I slowly caught my breath. My calf muscles were starting to get tired. They had been propped up against the wall for over thirty minutes. I placed my fingers into the slight hollows of my abs and examined the work-in-progress.
Satisfied, I swung my legs off the wall and sat up. I reached for my water jug to replenish the sweat I had lost from my workout. With Laz doing his own thing for most of the day, I was left to find ways to entertain myself.
I set the jug down next to me. This boredom was enough to drive anyone to tears. What was I supposed to do around here all day?
I poked around in the open box of supplies Laz left laying around and found a couple of thick, multipurpose bands. Holding the bands between my hands, I pulled them apart to test their durability. I leaned back against the wall and gathered the front part of my hair. As I settled into the silence, I began to braid my hair lazily.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I jumped off the ground immediately. My hands fell to my sides. Laz was standing by the cave entrance. The daylight struck him at an angle that made his upper body appear cloaked in shadows.
“I was just fixing my hair.”
My teeth were chattering, and I was stuttering uncontrollably. Laz moved toward me and stopped next to his open toolbox. He whipped around and scowled at me expectantly, waiting for an explanation.
Why was he so angry? He was acting like I had disrespected his mother. I knew I shouldn’t have been poking around in his tool box in the first place, but this was too much. I was starting to get ticked off by his cocky attitude. I hadn’t signed up to live in a cave.
I rolled my eyes and turned away from him. “I’m sorry,” I started, beginning to reconstruct my braid.
“No, you’re not,” snarled Laz from behind me. “But you will be.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Laz descended on me from behind, putting a hand over my nose and mouth. I clawed at his arms with weak fingers that slipped off him. That wasn’t going to work. I stomped on the toes of his boots with the heels of my bare feet with all my might, but all that did was hurt my foot. I tried to demand that he move. My howling disappeared in the suffocating curve of his arm.
I shoved the back of my head against his chest and dug my nails into his arm. Feeling his grip loosen, I slid my head out the gap of his elbow.
“Get off of me, Laz! What do you think you’re doing? This isn’t funny.”
“Do you think I find it amusing that you came in here and disrespected me and my property?”
“I’m not disrespecting anybody! Are you crazy? I’m sorry! Please. Let me go. I’ll do anything.”
Laz released me from his hold. I slid to the ground, landing on my hands and feet. My braids had unraveled in the commotion. I had struggled with him so much that I could see little jewels of blood in my fingertips.
“What are you going to do for me?” asked Laz matter-of-factly. He roughly stroked the bristles of his beard.
“I don’t know. I’m already down here. Do you want me to drop and give you twenty push-ups?”
Laz’s low, dry chuckle sent an icy blast through the pit of my gut. “Almost funny, but not quite, Earthling.”
“What do you want?”
I gulped back the rest of my words. Laz’s smoldering green eyes were looking at my face, but they lingered on my mouth. I gaped at him, staring at the bulge visible through his pants. His gaze was fixated on my mouth as he unfastened his pants and kicked them aside.
A tight black loincloth barely covered his full-blown erection.
My panties were moist. Shame and embarrassment smacked me in the face, but I couldn’t help it. The thickness of his cock prominently protruded through the stretchy material of his loincloth. I peeled my eyes away from the swollen package between his legs and pushed all the shamefully dirty thoughts to the back of my mind.
What was wrong with me? I shouldn’t like this or get turned on by it.
“Take off your clothes.”
“What? But I…”
“Did I fucking stutter?” Laz spat at me. He bent down on one knee and looked into my face. I knew he was strikingly handsome, but from this angle and distance, I realized he was frightening as well. “That was an order.”
He didn’t shout, but for some reason, his lowered voice was more terrifying. I got to my feet, and I realized I was shaking like I never had before. I unzipped the back of my stained pastel dress. My shoulders emerged one at a time. A blast of
cold open air embraced me as my dress fell around my navel.
I had to wiggle to pull it down over my hips. Instinctively, I moved my hands to cover my exposed boobs and my wet pussy lips. I nervously twiddled with the smooth ends of my light blonde pubes, feeling vulnerable and nude in the middle of a strange cave.
“At ease.”
I lifted my arms slowly and tucked them behind my back.
“Feet apart. Straighten your back,” Laz commanded scathingly. “I should let you have it right now for that shit stance you’re giving me.”
I obeyed immediately and placed my feet shoulder-length apart. Laz circled me repeatedly holding his arms behind his back. He made soft grunts of approval as he inspected me from head to toe. I could feel his burning eyes looking over every inch of my body. It was taking every ounce of self-control I had not to move a muscle or make the smallest sound.
Laz slapped a hand on my left breast and gave it an abrasive, hearty squeeze. I bit down on my tongue and curled my toes as his fingers clamped down on my puffy nipples. He leaned in close to me, watching my reaction as he jerked them back and twisted them. His lips opened as he watched me struggle to contain all my sounds and reactions. My glazed eyes looked straight ahead. Something told me he was genuinely enjoying my discomfort.
He smacked an open hand against my left butt cheek. He gripped it so hard I imagined his fingertips disappearing into my flesh. I gasped at the sting, but made the mistake of lifting my eyes off the ground and taking a peek at him.
“What the hell do you think you’re looking at? Get down on your knees.”
I slunk back down to the ground. A coat of dirt from the cave floors covered my kneecaps. I found my mouth stretching open without prompting - I didn’t want to get yelled at again. Laz laughed darkly as he began to remove his loincloth.