He was staring down at her, she discovered, when she opened her eyes.
“Are you hurt?”
After staring at him wide eyed for a moment, Bri turned her head to look around and discovered that they were in a small room unlike any she’d been in since she’d been taken--nothing like her own habitat.
It
was
a habitat, though.
It was Kole’s, she realized.
It only took a moment for her mind to leap to the most logical conclusion for the change in her circumstances.
They’d given her to him for breeding.
Chapter Nine
Warily, Bri watched as Kole moved away from her after a moment. Snatching his breeches from the floor, he pulled them on in jerky, angry movements, then moved all the way across the room, settled on the floor, and drew his knees up. Dropping his forearms to his knees, he stared frowningly at his dangling hands as if wondering why they were attached to his arms.
When she saw he apparently had no intention of approaching her again, she shoved herself upright and looked for something to cover herself, trying to fight the panic that threatened to engulf her when it sank into her mind that not only had she not been returned to her own habitat, Cory had not been returned to her.
The room was a wreck, not just untidy. It looked as if he’d systematically pounded everything he could to pieces. That thought made her belly knot with uneasiness, especially when she glanced instinctively at his hands and saw that his hands and knuckles were bruised and scraped.
Discovering there was no sign of a coverlet like the one in her habitat, she got to her feet shakily, looked around again, and finally headed toward a door in the wall behind her. There was a fist print in it and streaks of blood, but she saw it opened to the facilities and went inside.
Surprised, at first, to see it looked basically the same as her own bathroom, it dawned on her after a moment that the reason it did was probably because it had been designed for beings that were much the same--only a hell of a lot bigger--and it had a tub that was not only twice as big as her own, but filled with water--by something that looked like a waterfall!
A constant flow of fresh water and she had to bathe in a fucking teacup?
What the hell?
Or maybe there wasn’t any water in her bath because all of it was draining in here? Was it just … broken?
Dismissing her sense of misuse for the moment, she returned her attention to the need for something to cover herself.
There were no towels, not even anything that looked similar.
She didn’t want to go out again naked, but she couldn’t camp in the bathroom either. Covering herself the best she could with her hands and arms, refusing to look in Kole’s direction, she scurried to a corner and wedged herself into a tight ball there.
What had happened here, she wondered? Had Kole fought the bot that had come for him? Or was this only from anger?
She decided she didn’t want to know.
Not that she could ask him anyway.
It dawned on her then that he’d asked her if she was hurt when she’d fallen off the platform that served as a bed. She’d understood him clearly, and, try through she might, she couldn’t recall that it had sounded the least bit stilted or choppy.
When, she wondered, had he learned to speak English so well?
He muttered something then, shoving to his feet. The sound drew Bri’s attention, and she lifted her head again to watch him uneasily as he paced the room like a wounded animal. “Do not look at me like that!” he said harshly. “They would have killed you if I hadn’t taken you.”
Bri’s heart seemed to stand still in her chest at that. She hadn’t considered that they would kill her if they decided she was of no use to them. She’d thought they would take her home!
Why, she wondered, had she nursed such an idiotic thought? Just because it was what she wanted? Because it seemed reasonable to her? And yet she didn’t doubt for a moment the truth of what Kole had said. If the aliens had had any sense of right or wrong their ship’s hold wouldn’t be full of beings from other worlds.
Shying away from the fear that knowledge engendered, her thoughts switched to Kole again. Was he angry and disgusted because of what he’d felt compelled to do to keep them from killing her? Because he hadn’t wanted to do it at all? Or because, unlike the slavers, he knew it was wrong to do that to her without her consent?
Did it matter, she wondered?
She discovered it did. She discovered that it made her feel much worse to think that he hadn’t wanted to because she didn’t appeal to him.
Because she was focused on him, she also made another discovery.
Kole wasn’t speaking English.
He was speaking in his own tongue.
Stunned by that realization, she listened more carefully, thinking maybe the drug was still affecting her mind. If it was, though, it was affecting it very strangely because she realized when she focused on the movement of his lips that she was translating his words. There was just a fractional hesitation each time he used a word and then she
knew
what that word meant in English.
How? She hadn’t even tried to pick up his language--in fact, she had never heard him use more than a word or two in his own tongue. Mostly, he had listened to her and Consuelo, and when he’d spoken at all it had been using a combination of Spanish and English.
There was only one explanation that she could think of. The slavers, for reasons known only to themselves, and using technology that she couldn’t even imagine, had somehow planted the knowledge in her mind. Subliminal teaching, she wondered? Maybe using the probes she dimly recalled that they had put on her head? Maybe, but she didn’t remember them putting anything on her head but the once. Was it even possible to feed it directly into her mind like that and have her brain retain it?
It didn’t seem possible, but it still seemed a lot more plausible than the possibility that she’d just learned it on her own. She’d tried hard to communicate with Consuelo, and she still didn’t know more than a handful of Spanish, and she’d never even heard Kole speak his own language that she could recall.
Why, she wondered? Why would they care whether she could communicate with him or not? If she’d only been taken for breeding purposes, why would it matter what she thought?
Cory, she realized, would only learn English if that was all she could speak and understand. A thrill of hope went through her, but she tamped it with an effort, fearful that she’d only thought of that possibility because she wanted to believe they meant to give him back to her.
She hadn’t panicked this time when they’d taken him from her because they had always given him back to her when they were done with her before. As confused as she’d been by all the things that had happened this time that were different, she’d still thought Kole was returning her to her own habitat, thought Cory would be returned to her then.
They’d said something to Kole, she remembered suddenly, something about impregnating her. She’d still been so out of it that she’d thought that was just her mind wandering, manufacturing things that weren’t real.
They’d said something about him overcoming his distaste to impregnate her. He’d said it wasn’t natural.
The memory sent a wave of hurt through her, but she thrust it away, focusing instead on trying to remember more of the conversation.
She couldn’t remember that they’d said anything about Cory, though.
But the slavers had taken him from the yellow tribe--the Hirachi. She remembered that Kole had called them that--They had not given him back to her, she knew, because they didn’t trust him not to hurt the baby anymore than she did.
As long as she was with him, she wouldn’t see Cory.
And she was going to be stuck with him until he got her pregnant.
She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to be pregnant at all! She certainly didn’t want to be pregnant by him! She didn’t give a shit if he didn’t like her looks. She wasn’t too taken with him, if it came to that.
She covered her face with her hands, wishing she was anywhere but where she was. As boring as her life had seemed before, and lonely, even if that was something she rarely admitted even to herself, it seemed like heaven compared to this nightmare.
Why the hell couldn’t they at least have given her the damned gown again? She thought, abruptly angry.
She supposed she should be grateful the bastards hadn’t chained her to the bed with the manacles they’d left on her wrists and ankles!
“No mean hurt,” Kole said in halting English, interrupting her thoughts.
Bri lifted her head in surprise, staring at him while it slowly sank into her that he had no idea she could understand his native tongue. She was so stunned by that knowledge that it took several moments for what he’d said to sink into her mind.
He looked as if he sincerely regretted it, but she wasn’t sure if that meant he really was sorry if he’d hurt her or if he was just sorry about the whole thing.
Maybe the truth was both. That did nothing to help the situation they were in, however--except that it made her feel a little less uneasy about being penned up with him. Which was the only bright spot she’d been able to detect, because she couldn’t get Cory back until they were satisfied Kole had impregnated her and that could mean a
lot
of fucking with a man she not only barely knew, but who wasn’t human. A man who disliked her--for good reason, she supposed, since it was her fault he’d taken the beating--and who she didn’t seem to actually appeal to.
She supposed she could see that, too. Earth men hadn’t exactly been falling over themselves to get her. She’d never really understood why. She had a good figure. She wasn’t ugly. But then she’d never really had time to date. Maybe they didn’t notice her because she didn’t try to get them to notice, rarely noticed them?
And, even if that was true, she was on a whole new playing field. She hadn’t seen their women well, but she’d seen enough to get the idea that she probably wasn’t his concept of beauty anymore than he was hers. The skin color probably had a lot to do with it. She’d gotten used to it because of Cory and because it wasn’t that radically different from some of the Earth races--more yellow than the people that tended to turn golden brown in the sun--but
they
all seemed the same, and she had a feeling he hadn’t seen anything that looked quite like her.
And he could have other reasons for not wanting to, like strict taboos and customs she knew nothing about. Or he could just not want to because he hated being a slave to these slavers and didn’t want to bring a child into a world of slavery. He’d seemed to indicate that when he’d told her Cory would be better off dead.
She didn’t want to bring a child of her own into this, for that matter, but she found she couldn’t identify with some hypothetical, as yet unconceived child when she was worried about Cory.
In any case, she doubted they had a choice.
He might think they did, but she didn’t.
So what to do? Close their eyes and do it anyway?
She
could do that, but could he?
She couldn’t bring herself to simply assume the position, though, and she sure as hell had no clue of how to entice him to make the first move so she didn’t have to.
Worn down from her anxieties, she finally drifted to sleep. She didn’t sleep well, however. She dreamed alternately of being in the room, the slaver aliens probing and studying her, Kole touching her intimately and then driving into her until she felt hot and restless, and Cory, crying in the distance while she searched for him, growing more and more frantic. She woke finally with a jerk, her chest tight with fear and distress, struggling to call out to Cory.
A huge dark shadow loomed in front of her, eyes glowing an eerie silver in the darkness. When the specter touched her she nearly leapt out of her skin, uttering a frightened squeak.
Kole withdrew his hand abruptly. “No hurt Bri. No hurt Cory,” he murmured in a low, soothing rumble.
Still groggy with sleep, Bri stared at him a long moment until it clicked in her mind that he was offering comfort. She did something then that she’d never done in her life--possibly because no one had offered her comfort since she was a child. She reached for it with both hands, launching herself at the warm, strong, broad chest offered.
The move rocked him on his heels, seemed to totally stun him for many moments. Finally, he shifted onto his knees, wrapped his arms around her tightly, and drew her closer, stroking a hand soothingly down her back and the back of her head as she had often soothed Cory when he was distressed. She wondered if he was merely mimicking what he had seen her do or if his people were more like Earth people than she’d thought. “The
Sheloni
will not hurt Cory. They want him to grow into a strong slave for them,” he said bitterly in his own tongue. “They will give him back to you when they take you from me. They don’t trust me not to hurt him because the women killed the others.”
She wanted to ask him if they were right, but she wanted the comforting more. He was so big and strong it was impossible not to think of him as invincible, and she felt safe for the first time since she’d been taken. She knew it was just an illusion, that he couldn’t protect her from the ones he called the
Sheloni
, but she wanted the illusion for just a little while.
It comforted her, too, that he seemed to believe what she’d already thought of, that they were only holding Cory until they sent her back to her habitat. It was thin comfort, but some reassurance--thin because even awake now, she felt like she could hear him crying for her. Closing her eyes, she burrowed closer to his warmth, wishing she could burrow inside of him and simply disappear.
“You are cold as ice,” he muttered after a moment, and she sensed his head move as if he was looking around the room for something to cover her with. “And nothing to wrap you in to hold your warmth,” he added after a moment on a sigh of irritation. “They are manipulative bastards. No doubt they thought it would be harder for me to control myself if they left you naked--no thought given to the fact that you might freeze without anything to keep you warm. Or are you aliens always this cold? Somehow I don’t think so. You are hot ….”