by Zoey Draven
He wore the loincloth again, leaving his chest and legs bare. Isn’t he cold? she wondered, frowning. The wind was picking up. It was howling up the shaft Jaxor had disappeared into earlier.
He brought the kekevir closer to the fire, kneeling surprisingly close to her as he drove the spit through it with force, from one end to the other. Erin pressed her lips together, but she knew that if she wanted meat that night, this was how it was done.
Jaxor set the spit over the fire and turned the crank at the side briefly. He had a mechanism set up so that it turned automatically and for the first time, Erin wondered how he’d done that. He was intelligent, that much was clear.
He settled a short distance away from her. Luckily, her arousal was gone so she didn’t have to worry he’d scent it. Still, even he seemed wary and Erin didn’t know how she felt about that.
It was the first time she’d seen him rest all day. When she looked up and saw a peek of black sky through the clouds, she knew he’d had a long day. He’d been up long before her. Compared to him, Erin felt lazy. All she’d managed to do was learn two buttons of the hovercraft and cut her foot.
Then again, what was she expected to do? She didn’t even know what she was doing there and Jaxor refused to answer her whenever she asked what he intended to do with her.
It was not knowing that frustrated her most.
Magnets, she thought again, jolting a bit when she saw his gaze on her. They regarded one another silently. His knees were bent, his arms locked around them in an almost casual, relaxed position. Erin had been around her Luxirian guards back in the Golden City long enough to not be surprised when his skin took on a golden hue next to the fire. All Luxirians’ skin color shifted with the light, an alien feature to her, certainly, but one she was used to now.
Beautiful. It shimmered, reflecting back shadows and highlights. Erin wondered if Jaxor thought her skin was strange since it didn’t shift with the light.
“Have you ever seen humans before Crystal and me?” she asked softly, curiosity winning over their silent little stare-down.
The question might’ve surprised him. He didn’t respond immediately, long enough for Erin to think he wouldn’t, but finally he murmured, “Tev.”
“Where?” she asked, her lips turning down briefly.
“At the Lallarix,” he said, as if she knew what that meant.
“Is…is that in the Golden City?” she asked, confused.
“Nix. It is in the wild lands.”
Did he see one of the others with their mates? He must’ve.
Erin was about to speak again, but he added, “It was the Prime Leader’s mate.”
“Kate?” Erin asked, cocking her head. “You saw Kate with Vaxa’an?”
Jaxor seemed to start at the name. He didn’t reply, but she figured it was a yes regardless. There was only one Prime Leader on Luxiria, as far as Erin knew.
“Do I…do I look very strange to you, then?” she asked, wanting to know, curious again. “Since you’ve only seen one other human before?”
Jaxor exhaled a sharp breath. “Humans compared with Luxirians are not so different. There are many species spread throughout the universe. Some that look very different.”
A flash, a memory from the Pit, a place she would rather never remember, returned to her. The darkness of the cages. Seemingly thousands of beings, all congregated in one place. Hot, burning sand. The feel of hot wind across her naked flesh as thousands of eyes were on the line of women. Inhuman howls and grunts and roars. The fear, the uncertainty. The scent of blood, of—
Erin squeezed her eyes shut, locking those memories away.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I know.”
There were many species at the Pit that day. Thanks to the Luxirians, they were freed of that place. And until Jaxor, she’d been very close to returning home, back to Earth. Back to California, back to Jake and Ellora, back to her students, her old life.
Now what?
A drop of fat fell from the meat and sizzled in the fire. A shriek from the tunnel came echoing down. The kekevir seemed more active that night and she spared the darkness behind Jaxor a nervous glance.
“Are they…” she trailed off, not quite sure how to phrase her question.
“I will work on a gate in the morning,” was all he told her.
His response gave her pause and she tilted her head as she looked at him. A gate?
“Why haven’t you built one before?” she questioned.
“Because I can handle a kekevir if it makes it into my base,” was what he said in reply. His unspoken implication was that she could not.
Erin’s brows furrowed, not certain whether to feel thankful or insulted. Even still, him building a gate…that was a big undertaking, wasn’t it? Did that mean he expected to keep her around? That she would remain here? And for how long? Did that mean he’d decided not to trade her off to the Mevirax?
She processed this quietly, trying to decipher what this meant.
Erin decided to change the subject. If she questioned him about it, he would close off. He was finally speaking with her and she couldn’t waste the opportunity.
“Where did you go today?” she asked instead, pulling the fur he’d draped over her shoulders earlier closer as the wind howled louder. She didn’t know how long he’d been gone, just that she’d slept and then awoken to him tearing the door off the cave’s entrance. At least a few hours, she decided, especially since it got dark not long after he returned.
Jaxor watched as she draped the fur over her body, huddling into its warmth. She still wore the tunic she’d gone to sleep in the night before he’d abducted them. Her legs were bare, the material was thin. If she was going to be there for a little while—at least until she saw her crazy plan through to the end—she would have to try to procure more suitable clothes. These were beginning to smell.
“To check traps and get more fuel,” he replied, sliding his arms away from his knees, planting his hands behind him and leaning back. The muscles in his chest shifted with the almost lazy movement, but Erin darted her gaze away.
“And now is when you finally rest for the day?” she asked, seeing a heavy trail of blood leading from the tunnel entrance. She wondered if it would seep into the stone of the crater floor. She’d found the droplets of her own blood she’d left behind and had scrubbed at them with a spare rag she’d found until they were clean. She didn’t need Jaxor inspecting them close enough to see she didn’t cut her foot near the fire pit, but rather in the tunnel.
“For tonight. There is a storm coming. It will hit soon.”
Erin tipped her head back, exposing the column of her throat. The air felt humid but cold, a strange combination. Was that how he could tell? There was still a heavy cloud covering, no different than it’d been that morning.
“Where are we, exactly?” she questioned. She thought it was innocent enough, until he exhaled a rough breath.
“Nix, rixella,” he rasped.
Erin returned her eyes to him, pressing her lips together. “I just meant are we north? I heard it’s colder in the north on your planet.”
“Tev,” he finally said. “We are north of the Golden City.”
It told her nothing, just as he knew it would…which was why he told her in the first place. Anywhere was north of the Golden City, it seemed, based on the locations of the outposts she’d gleaned over time.
He was watching her, as if waiting for her to make a biting comment back or rise to the argument. Perhaps he liked fighting. Maybe he got off on it.
Erin wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, though the need to make a retort burned in her blood. Instead, she forced a small smile and said, almost sweetly, “That was all I wanted to know.”
He mumbled something under his breath, in Luxirian, rubbing a hand over his right horn. His horns were dark, lifted off the crown of his head, the points curled. Erin suddenly had the strongest urge to touch them, to stroke them, to feel them, but she squeezed her fists t
ight.
And since she truly couldn’t help herself, she found herself asking, “Are you always this surly? Or is it just because you haven’t really slept much?”
“Maybe because my sleep was interrupted last night,” he bit back, his voice edging on a growl though his eyes shone with the firelight when he looked at her.
He definitely gets off on arguing, she thought, her breath hitching. She paused. And maybe I do too. But only with him.
“It won’t happen again,” she said, remembering her shame that morning. Her eyes narrowed, however, and she added quietly, “You took all the weapons out of the cave, after all.”
Even as the words left her mouth, Erin wondered why she said them. What was it about Jaxor that just made her want to test him?
Erin swore she saw his lips twitch. Ever so slightly. And her heart raced at the sight. Something in her bloomed. Delight? Amusement? Whatever it was, it was ridiculous to feel, especially in that place, with him sitting so close, with a frightening creature roasting on a spit in front of her, and her future so uncertain.
Regardless, her shoulders relaxed a fraction. His lips had twitched and so an odd truce stemmed between them, though it was precarious at best. It could break at any moment, especially given both of their mercurial tempers around one another, but it was still a reprieve.
The sudden memory of him biting her neck rose, as if in reminder of who she was dealing with. Her fingers floated up to the soft bruise, remembering it was there for the first time in a couple days.
Jaxor made a sound in his throat. A purr? A growl? She couldn’t be certain. Erin’s lips parted at that sound, at the tender pain that sizzled to her belly when she pressed the bruise ever so slightly.
When she removed her hand, it was trembling. Jaxor’s eyes were glued to her, that sound in his chest never letting up. He didn’t even seem to realize he was making it.
She remembered the sharp prick of his teeth. The dull throb of shock. She remembered her sex clenching in response.
A sudden dizziness made her head swirl.
I’m not like this, she thought. But even in her mind, her voice sounded small and quiet, as if she already knew it was a lie.
Erin looked into the fire. And then she squeezed her thighs together so Jaxor wouldn’t know how disturbingly aroused she was, thinking about that bite.
I’m not like this, she thought again. The words sounded firmer, louder in her mind.
But then another voice whispered back.
Yes, you are. And what’s more…you like it.
Chapter Eleven
Erin was five when she first saw John hit her mother. She’d been peeking through the doorway. Her mother had been pregnant with Jake and Ellora at the time—they’d been due in another month. It was the first time she’d actually seen it, but not the first time she’d been aware of the abuse.
The thing was that children saw a lot, they just responded to it in different ways. Even then, Erin knew it was wrong. She knew it was a terrible thing. But after John left that day, off to work in a fancy office in San Francisco, Erin had gone into her mother’s bedroom. Quietly, she’d crawled into bed next to her. Her mother had been crying, but Erin hadn’t been. Even then, she’d held her emotions tight and close, never letting them peek out. Even at five. She’d known her mother needed her close and so she’d run her small fingers through her long, black hair. Erin liked when her mother did that to her, so she thought it would make her mother feel better.
For some reason, that was the first thing that Erin thought of the next morning, when she woke in the cave. Running her fingers through her mother’s hair after John had left a large, angry red mark across her temple.
Erin’s eyes watered and then a drop escaped, sliding across her own temple as she stared at the stone of the cave’s ceiling.
Then she squeezed her eyes tight, wiped her face, and sat up.
It was cold in the cave and she pulled the furs around her shoulders. It was cold because the door was gone and buckets of rain fell just outside the entrance. The storm had come in the middle of the night, just as Jaxor said it would.
The male himself was leaning against the mouth of the cave, looking out towards his drenched base. During the night, he’d propped the door up to help shield the entrance from rainfall, but it was morning now—a dark morning—and he’d moved it out of the way again.
Erin bit her lip, rising slowly, a shiver prickling its way up her spine. The muscles in Jaxor’s back contracted when she approached, as if his body sensed her near. She didn’t look at him as she stepped beside him, inhaling a long breath when she saw the state of his base.
Most of it was flooded, the water a foot or more deep. The waterfall to the east was pouring down twice as much as it’d been yesterday—though now the pool’s bank had all but disappeared—and when she looked up at the mountain it came from, she saw the tips peaked in a cool blue. Frost? Snow? She couldn’t be certain.
The rain was loud. It was a thunderous roar that she’d gotten used to in the middle of the night. She’d never quite seen anything like it. It looked like solid sheets of water as it poured. It had even drowned out the shrieks of the kekevir, which seemed like an impossible feat. If she concentrated hard enough, however, she could still hear them.
The cave was high enough off the ground that flooding inside wouldn’t be a concern for quite some time, even if the downpour continued at the same rate. The entrance was sloped downwards, so the rain sluiced right off the stone.
“Will we be okay?” she asked quietly, surveying the base. A fur floated near the fire pit. Just last night, they’d been sitting there, dry.
“It will take another three spans of this until it will become a problem,” was what he replied, his voice surprisingly…gentle.
Erin tilted her head to look up at him. She appreciated his honesty. It also told her that he’d experienced this type of storm before.
Those electric blue eyes were on her. They scanned her face, as if searching for something. When he moved, his arm brushed her side and Erin realized how close they were. The entrance to the cave wasn’t that spacious.
“What do we do?”
“Wait,” he said. “There are drainage lines. It will take time.”
“What about all your things?” she asked, nodding down below, into the crater. Chests and weapons. His crops. The tanning station, the furnace.
“The stores beneath the ground are sealed tight. Everything else will keep until the storm passes.”
He was being oddly calm about this. But it was obvious he’d been in this situation before, perhaps many times. Maybe it was Erin who was more concerned than necessary.
“Alright,” she said quietly.
“You are worried?” he asked next, his voice gruff but soft.
Was she?
Erin met his eyes and said slowly, “I trust that you’ll keep me safe.”
It was only after she said it that she knew she honestly believed that. At least, in regard to the storm. Beyond that…Erin didn’t know.
His pupils darkened at her words. They flickered back and forth between her eyes, as if he was trying to discern the truth. His full lips were pulled down into a frown. His jaw tightened.
He really is handsome, Erin thought, almost sadly. His hair was a little wild, knotted in places—she itched to give it a long-needed trim—but there was a strong elegance to his features that she thought seemed familiar.
His gaze changed from suspicious to something else that threatened to consume her. She exhaled a small puff of air as his eyes went to her lips. She was getting dizzy again, the rain roaring in her ears alongside her heartbeat.
“Rixella,” he rasped, the word almost an accusation, whatever it meant.
This is madness, isn’t it? she wondered. She thought that if he reached out to touch her right then, she might start trembling. The strangest part was that she wanted him to…just to see what it felt like to let that madness consume her. She wanted to fe
el wanted, needed.
He reached out and touched her cheek. Her lungs filled with crisp air, with relief—
A familiar hissing sound echoed and Jaxor broke her gaze, his hand falling away. His head snapped towards the entrance of the main tunnel. Splashing came next and Erin gasped when she turned her head and saw a kekevir.
On all six of its legs, it paced the edge of the entrance tunnel. The water came up to the middle of its thighs and it squinted its four white eyes as it shook its shiny black head. It was what she remembered, only it looked more fearsome in daylight. Unnatural. It shrunk back from the dim morning light, sticking close to the shadows of the blackened tunnel. It paced, making those muted roars and hisses in its throat.
“Vrax,” Jaxor murmured. He was already jumping down to the crater’s floor, weaponless, water splashing up around his ankles. “Stay in there,” he ordered.
“Jaxor,” she exclaimed, watching in alarm as he trudged his way towards the beast. When the kekevir spotted him, its mouth pulled back in a low snarl and it crouched in the shadows. Preparing to leap at him?
Erin’s heart pounded in her chest. The furs she’d been clutching fell away. The rain picked up, a solid haze in her vision, and she struggled to make out Jaxor as he approached the main tunnel.
Something flashed after Jaxor crouched. It was the knife she’d had last night, when she’d been waiting by the fire pit for him to return. It was a small relief that he’d managed to find a weapon in the flooded base, but the knife was small. More of a paring knife for food than an actual weapon.
Jaxor approached the kekevir without hesitation, attempting to block its way into the base.
But he didn’t get there fast enough.
Erin’s heart leapt in her throat when she heard the creature roar. In the blink of an eye, the creature lunged from the shadows.
Jaxor dodged easily, though narrowly. The water around his ankles slowed his movements, but the kekevir seemed unaffected. The beast pivoted, its six legs proving to be an advantage, bouncing through the water with ease. It lunged before Jaxor fully swung around to face it.