by H. E. Trent
At the main house, she’d been able to go into the kitchen and help herself to a snack if she needed one between meals, but she didn’t recognize any of the things in Owen’s cupboards. Eating unrecognized Terran foods was rarely a good idea. Hybrid digestive systems were unused to grains and sweeteners from Earth. Ais may have been more human than the standard hybrid, but she preferred to only introduce new foods in controlled circumstances. Amy and Erin had been helping her log her safe foods.
“Everything is on the damn floor!” Owen yelled.
She rocked, eyes still closed, and hummed the one song she knew.
Reg never left her enough food, and he’d be gone for so long. She’d had to ration, and even then, she’d starved. Hunger was a trigger for her anger. Certainly, she couldn’t be blamed for that.
“Goddammit.”
She opened her eyes and watched Owen scoop up the linens she’d ripped off the bed. She hadn’t bothered remaking the bed with fresh sheets, either. If she’d planned on sleeping in his bed, she might have. She wanted to be back in her own bed, and in her familiar room—not in the lair of a man who sought to stifle her independence. Eileen had said that the ability to make choices was the most powerful thing a woman had, and Ais trusted her. Ais wanted to be assertive like Eileen, and that meant exercising the choices she was entitled to.
Owen dumped the linens into the corner to the right of the door, and set about picking up this and that. “Unbelievable,” he muttered. “Seriously, a tantrum?”
She didn’t like that word, tantrum. She’d learned it reading a Regency romance and had to use the dictionary to help her parse the statement it was in. She hadn’t immediately understood the context. That had come weeks later when Courtney had laughed and accused her funny little girl of having a tantrum. Kerry had been on the ground, wailing about some trifling thing. Being locked up was not trifling, and tantrums were for children, not grown women who’d made men’s lives moderately more difficult by demanding an iota of respect.
“Not…tantrum,” she spat.
“What do you call the reason for this mess, then?”
She bobbed her shoulders in a jerky shrug and slowly massaged words together into sentences in her mind. Courtney kept telling her that she didn’t need to make a speech to put people in their places, but Ais still was hung up on getting the English words just right.
“You… I…”
Some small, slow-moving thing pulled her gaze downward and made the train of words in her mind float away like untethered balloons.
The thing moved again, and she shifted forward to tried to snag it in her gaze.
Alive?
She couldn’t make out what the thing was, but it was brown, and blurry, and moving.
Owen scooped up more things—clothes and tools and whatever else she’d been able to reach—and carried them back to their places.
Tuning out Owen’s grumbling, she committed all her focus to the moving blur.
“What that?” she whispered.
The brown thing was at the base of the bench. She squinted down, and managed to make out a brown nose and triangular ears.
The little creature skittered around the base, then turned two dark orbs—eyes—up at her.
“Dog!” she shrieked with glee. There was a little pet like Jerry beneath the bench. “Oh. Fast, you.”
Owen stopped his noisy tidying, and muttered, “Oh.”
Ais uncurled her body and reached down to pat the dog on the head. Its tongue unfurled against her palm, cold and wet, and ticklish.
She giggled as the dog sniffed and then energetically butted her palm with its head.
“Aw.” She kept rubbing and scratching until her back started to ache from its curve, but the dog hadn’t seemed to have met its quota of touches. “Come.”
Slowly, she slipped down to the floor onto her bottom and let the dog into the hammock her skirt made between her legs.
The dog settled into the little nook on its side, its tongue lolling, and head pressed to her thigh. Sleepy, maybe, though she had no experience to judge such things. She’d never had a pet before. The Tyneali didn’t keep any, and Fastida had told her when she’d been playing with Jerry that Jekhans didn’t really keep animals indoors, either.
“Don’t get too attached,” Owen said. “He’s going to Court’s as soon as she can puppy-proof the house.”
Ais gave no response. Whether she got attached or not was her business, and besides, she wasn’t the kind of woman who could just shut off her affection…no more than she could shut off her rare bouts of anger. Owen was cleaning up the evidence of the latter.
“I wasn’t gone that fucking long,” he said.
Ais hummed her memorized melody at the puppy and scratched the wiry hairs under its chin. With her hands moving and her brain flooded with curiosity and wonder, she could almost ignore how her stomach rumbled and how her mouth watered.
“I go without meals all the time when I’m busy,” Owen said, as if reading her thoughts. Likely, he’d just been speaking of the mess.
“Need name…” she whispered to the dog. “You boy? You girl?”
She held the dog up in front of her face, but she couldn’t make out anything between its legs, and she certainly wasn’t about to feel for private parts.
Owen paused near the kitchen, tracked a hand through his hair again, and sighed. “Your lunch is in that basket by the door, and the dog is a boy.”
“Boy.” She settled the pup back into her lap.
The little boy dog rolled onto his back, his body still, but his tail thrashing side to side too fast for her to see, but not too fast for her to feel.
“I call you… Hmm…” She rubbed his chin some more, thinking. The name needed to be right if she were going to bother at all.
“Did you hear me about the food?” Owen asked.
She gave the puppy a decisive nod. “Will think.”
“Jesus Christ.” Owen stormed to the door, snatched up what must have been the lunch basket, and carried it to Ais. “There you go.”
The dog’s belly was white, though the rest of his fur was mottled brown and tan. Resting on his back the way he was, his belly looked like a little pillow.
She tickled him.
His tail beat faster.
“Are you going to eat, or are you going to pitch a fit the moment I turn my back?”
“I keep you,” she said to the dog.
Courtney would let her have him. Courtney had enough things to take care of already. She had two men, a baby, another on the way, and so many duties on the farm. Also, Jerry. She wouldn’t care about Ais keeping one little puppy, but Ais would ask anyway. It was always nice to be asked.
She reached behind her and pulled the tablet down from the bench. Her vision didn’t need to be perfect to send a message. Mostly, she relied on muscle memory and hitting the right places on the screen. She’d made out all the symbols and buttons earlier in the day. Her spoken English wasn’t good, and her written English was worse, but she typed anyway: I KEEP DOG?
The tablet asked for a password to send the message. Ais grumbled quietly and looked toward Owen.
He thinks I’m a child.
He did a bit of grumbling of his own as he typed in the password. “I packed the lunch,” he said, standing. “There’s some chicken and some rice left over from last night. Should be filling.”
Courtney’s face appeared on the screen in a video chat a moment later. Ais can tell her identity by the hair. No one else had long, dark, curly hair like Courtney’s. “The puppy?” Courtney asked. “You really want him?”
Ais held him up to her cheek and snuggled him. “You want?”
“If you want to make him your baby, feel free. Gotta warn you, though. If he’s anything like Jerry, he’s going to be nosy as hell and getting into all your things.”
“Have none.”
She just had the dog, really, and a dress or two and a nightgown.
“Keep him, then,” Cour
tney said. “You okay out there at the cottage? You didn’t have to give up your room. We could have—”
Owen snatched the tablet from Ais and strolled across the room. “I’m about to fix the shower.”
Ais harrumphed and set her new charge back into the dip of her skirt. The thought occurred to her that she could shout for Courtney’s attention—to let her know that Ais wasn’t at the cottage by her own choice, but by the time she opened her mouth again to convey the thought, Owen had closed the connection.
She watched him tread heavily across the cottage. He set the tablet onto a high shelf, and then turned to face her.
She assumed he was looking at her, anyway. His body was pivoted in her general direction, but she couldn’t tell where those pale eyes of his were pointed.
Didn’t matter. The staring contest, such as it was, didn’t last long. He yanked a bag from the floor, muttering viciously under his breath all the while, and walked to the bathroom.
“If you need to go, I suggest you go now,” he yelled out. “This is going to take a while.”
“I go?”
She scooped up the dog, grabbed her cloak, shoved her feet into her shoes, and waited by the cottage door.
Owen came out a moment later, looking toward the bench she was no longer at, and then swinging his focus next to the door. “No. Not go. Go.”
She pointed to the doorknob. She wanted very much to go.
A hand obscured what little she could make out of his face, and he slid it downward before sighing. “I meant use the bathroom. I’m about to take the shower apart. If you want to get in here, I suggest you come in now before I have parts and tools scattered about.”
She slumped. Her bladder didn’t need attention. She hadn’t drunk anything beyond a single cup of tea with breakfast.
Sighing, she put her cloak back on the hook, slipped off her shoes, and returned to the bench.
“Suit yourself.” He closed the door softly behind him.
She stared into the nothingness that was the room.
There had to be some way out. Having not been raised on Jekh, she didn’t know anything about the people’s architecture. She didn’t even know much about Tyneali architecture. The lab had been on a space station, and the interior certainly couldn’t have been typical of everyday structures. Everything was metal and blinding white—sterile, impersonal, cold.
Almost as cold as Owen.
She forced out a quiet laugh, closed her eyes, rocked a bit, and hummed.
Always a captive.
First the lab, then Reg. She’d hoped the farm would be different, but she may have been expecting too much.
At the sound of insistent snuffling near her feet, Ais looked down. The pup had found the lunch basket and had its nose pressed to the base, curiously scenting the components.
Her stomach gave a beseeching growl, and she passed a hand to her belly.
By refusing her meal, she was punishing herself more than she was punishing Owen. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her shrivel away.
Easing down to the floor, she tucked her skirt beneath her rump and crossed her legs. She pulled the basket close, settled the pup onto her lap, and dug inside the container.
She’d decided to eat quickly so Owen didn’t get to witness her obedience. If she had her druthers, he’d make sure he was utterly dissatisfied for as long as he kept her in the cottage. Maybe he’d stay away for a long time like Reg had.
And maybe, if she were lucky, someone else would rescue her.
Or maybe…I’ll rescue myself?
___
Owen had fixed the shower, the best he could tell. He needed to test the drain seal once the adhesive cured, and also clean up the mess on the bathroom floor. Before that, he needed a break. He needed to get upright and stretch his back. He was feeling his age more and more often.
Crawling toward the door, minding the tools and bits of tiles scattered about, he gave his wrist COM a double-tap. “Time?”
“Twenty-two hundred hours.”
“Shit.”
With Jekh’s twenty-six-hour days, twenty-two hundred meant dinnertime had come and gone, and that folks at the farmhouse were probably starting the slow wind down before bed. He needed to get over there and confer with the Ciprianis. They had to devise a game plan for attacking Luke’s stolen reports, and Owen wanted a head start on having a look at the code before any other parties were brought into the huddle. He’d never been good at solving problems by committee.
He gripped the doorframe and, groaning, pulled himself upright. His abused muscles tugged and ached, not as forgiving and flexible as they’d been even five years prior. He’d never been especially athletic like Ian, but Owen had always been active. In Montana, he’d had no choice but to chop wood to feed his stove, and a walk to his mailbox was a half-mile trip. However, beyond chasing the occasional trespasser off the farm and following the little fool into thorny situations, life on Jekh had been stunningly sedentary.
“I’ll run over to the house and get dinner,” he told Ais as he rubbed his eyes. “Probably cold by now, but that’s okay. We can reheat.”
When the indignant quip he’d expected from her didn’t meet his ears, he dropped his hands and scanned the cottage.
Dim.
She hadn’t put the light on, and when his gaze settled on the small, slouched form in front of the bench, he discovered why.
She was asleep. The side of her head pressed against the bed mattress, and curled in her fingers was a bit of chicken the puppy was sniffing curiously at.
He tracked a hand through his hair, and cringed. “Shit.”
He was going to have to wake her, and she was going to turn that look of disappointment on him again, and he’d snap at her because she didn’t understand that he was helping her.
The day had been long, and he was running out of fortitude. He wasn’t used to having people in his space for so long. Solitude had been his preferred condition since Michael died.
Once more, he raked through his curls, formulating a strategy as he meditated on the coarse feel of the strands.
While she slept, he could put fresh linens on the bed. She could choose to sleep in the bed or not, but he didn’t plan to sit in the cottage and watch her sulk. He’d sleep in the barn with the chickens if he had to. They might have clucked incessantly, but at least they did so without accusation.
Once the bed was made, he’d fetch dinner and possibly some odds and ends for breakfast.
Then he’d take his leave for the evening and leave her to his cottage—his disrupted sanctuary.
He dropped his hand and got to work. The spare linens smelled faintly of lemon and violets, a cloying scent for sure, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. In a fit of insomnia Erin had laundered the spare linens when Owen had been otherwise engaged.
Carefully, he tipped Ais’s head away from the bed so he could install the sheets, but his hands lingered against her cheeks as if adhered by some tacky substance. Or maybe she was just soft and he liked the way she felt. Her skin was smooth and pliant. Hard to let go of.
Perhaps he’d spent too much effort in the past five years avoiding touch when he needed some.
Perhaps he should have kept the dog for himself.
He scoffed softly and moved away from her.
She stirred momentarily, not enough to wake, but just enough to shift the position of her head against the bench. She muttered something in her sleep, in that guttural, grating Tyneali that seemed more like percussion than language, and her pink lips parted, then pressed.
They looked soft, too. Full. Kissable.
Like a woman’s, not a child’s.
When her eyes were open, and so wide with awe or fright, his brain pushed her into the “child” end of the age spectrum. Her insignificant size compared to Jekhan women like Amy, Cet, and Fastida continually fooled his reckoning. She wasn’t the same as Amy and Fastida. She wasn’t going to develop like them. In fact, she was likely
as physically mature as she was ever going to be.
Studying the slight wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and the creases of her laugh lines, he wondered if she’d been that way for years. He hadn’t asked her how old she was—hadn’t cared. Suddenly, he craved context.
He would never have treated a grown woman the way he’d been treating her, but he hadn’t been seeing her as a woman. She’d been just one more project for him.
He stepped over the puppy, got the bed as tidy as it was ever going to be by his hands, and then stooped to pluck the chicken from Ais’s fingers.
She didn’t stir until he’d slid an arm under her thighs to lift her, at which point she screamed and thrashed her legs and arms about wildly.
“Hey, hey, hey.” He leaned his face away from her thrashing arm. “Calm down. Just moving you.”
He dropped her onto the bed.
“No no no! No touch Ais!” She crumbled into the corner of the bed, pulled her limbs in tight and covered her head as if she thought the roof were going to cave in on her.
“What are you doing? I was just getting you off the floor.”
“Please,” she whispered, and then the word became a chant, spoken again and again as if he’d tried to assault her in some way. “Don’t.”
She rocked, and hummed, and as the dog sniffed around his ankles, Owen was angry.
Angry until he remembered that when Eileen had found her, Ais had been locked in a cage in Reg Devin’s freighter cabin, and she hadn’t been there just for decoration.
She’d been there to be used.
Fuck.
Putting his hands up where she could—hopefully—see them, he moved back slowly, his heart pounding with trepidation, with…regret.
He was as bad as Reg. He hadn’t asked to touch her. Her accusation hadn’t been completely baseless.
Swallowing, he searched his brain for words that were neutral enough—genuine enough. He’d never been particularly eloquent. None of the McGarry men were, so he opted for simplicity. Truth was always easier to tell in simpler words. “Ais, it’s just…Owen. I’m Owen.”