It was strange to think of an alien teasing. For that matter, it was strange to think he might be making fun of her. Weren’t those exclusively human traits?
How conceited!
It still seemed peculiar, and she couldn’t entirely credit it. Maybe she was attributing human traits to him only because it was what she was used to?
Not that she was
used
to being teased, but she’d observed that sort of exchange between other people. “No, I can’t,” she said finally.
“Just face?”
This time the blush wasn’t as pronounced. She hoped. She gave him a look and then pointedly ignored him.
“What mean this?”
He sounded curious this time, but she refused to look directly at him, merely glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.
Ignoring her refusal to acknowledge him, he gestured toward the tree. “Climb tree.” He made a falling motion with his hand. “Face color. Look at Kole, face color. Look at woman, no color,” he ended, jabbing a finger in the direction of the Amazon enclosure.
Bri couldn’t stand it anymore. She turned to glare at him. “You
are
observant!” she said testily.
He looked confused.
She pointed to her eyes and then made a sweeping gesture. “You see everything.”
He nodded. “Observant,” he said seriously and then a slow grin dawned. “See
tup
when Bri climb tree,” he agreed good humouredly, staring pointedly at her crotch. “Eyes good.”
Bri didn’t have any trouble at all understanding what he was getting at. Her jaw dropped with indignation. “You
looked
?” she demanded angrily, knowing he had because she’d seen him looking at her.
His eyes still gleamed with amusement, but his expression changed subtly, became almost predatory and rife with carnal hunger. “Like look Bri.”
Liked looking at
her
? Or her--
tup
?
His expression said both.
A distinctly sensual warmth washed over her, but so, too, did uneasiness. She looked away from him. Consuelo, she saw, was dividing a knowing look between them. Irritation flooded her. She could see Consuelo thought she was flirting with the big, dumb brute.
As
if
!
She frowned. Was he flirting with her, she wondered, sending a sideways glance in his direction? Remembering what had started the conversation, she wondered about that, too. He seemed … fascinated with the way her color changed with her emotions. Did they not blush? Or turn pale with fear? She didn’t remember noticing his color fluctuating, now that she thought about it. Even when he seemed angry, she didn’t remember his skin darkening.
Lucky them!
It dawned on her that, despite the broken English and the Spanish words he’d thrown in and even some words from his own language--at least one--she hadn’t had any real trouble following what he was saying.
Assuming she actually
had
and hadn’t misinterpreted anything, but she didn’t think she had.
She realized she couldn’t delude herself anymore with the comforting thought that she was better ‘armed’ intellectually than the yellow race, at least. Kole wasn’t dumb. He might be a big brute, but he wasn’t a big,
dumb
brute--even if he did have that ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ sort of lingo going on. At least he could communicate his meaning, and some fairly complex meanings, at that. She and Consuelo were still struggling with one and two word sentences, damn it all!
That sucked a big hairy one! She didn’t
want
to talk to Kole, didn’t want to encourage him in any way. He still scared the shit out of her--not as much as he had, but that was only because she’d grown used to his size, a little, and she knew he couldn’t reach her. As long as she was careful to stay out of range, he couldn’t grab her and snatch her across the boundary.
The thought that he seemed to want to pretty badly was unnerving to say the very least. She didn’t think she’d misinterpreted
that
! She didn’t want anything
that
big trying to hump her! For all she knew, he could be hiding
anything
in those breeches! She’d been very careful not to look in that direction for fear she might give him the idea that she was interested in finding out.
She was afraid, though, that there was a real possibility that that wasn’t something that weighed heavily upon him--whether or not she was willing, eager, or completely opposed to the idea.
It seemed inescapable that he hailed from an intelligent species, a tribe at least as smart, and maybe smarter than her own, or at least her, but it seemed equally indisputable, given what she’d seen of the behavior of their women, that they were, indeed, violent, war-like, barbaric compared to her own kind--be humans ever so prone to violence themselves.
A shiver skated down her spine. “I think I’ll go back,” she muttered to no one in particular. “It must be about time anyway.”
The material landed in her lap even as she made to rise. She aborted the movement and picked it up to examine it, flicking a glance at Kole as she did so. She saw when she returned her attention to the piece that he’d fashioned something far more likely to work than the sling she’d tried. A rectangular piece formed a pocket of sorts with two holes at the bottom that she realized were for Cory’s legs. He’d torn the remainder into narrow strips and tied them to form straps. After studying it for several moments, she got to her knees and slipped the baby into the pouch and then sat back on her knees with him clutched against her chest, trying to adjust the straps.
It took some trial and error, but Cory seemed to feel safe and comfortable when she’d finished, and most of his weight was supported by her shoulders and back. It would take some adjusting, she decided, before she could actually carry him that way leaving her arms free, but it was close.
Reluctantly, she lifted her gaze to meet Kole’s. “Thank you,” she said uncomfortably, looking away almost at once. She hesitated, trying to think of something else to say and finally turned away with a sense of relief when the buzzer sounded, hurrying back to her habitat.
She paused at the door, though, and turned to look back.
Kole was still standing at the edge of his yard, watching her.
* * * *
The women, Bri decided, must have been housed in that one habitat the entire time she’d been on the alien ship. There was no sense of movement in the ship, like there would’ve been in a car, plane, or train, so she wasn’t certain if they were still where they had been when they had taken her or not, but it seemed reasonable that they would’ve had all the people of the yellow tribe when they’d come for her. She didn’t know how old Cory was, but it seemed to her that it must be several months, at least, which suggested as much--maybe he’d even been conceived after they’d taken the yellow tribesmen?
So why had they decided to let the women out that day when they had been keeping them confined when everyone else was out? And since they hadn’t done it before, nor any time in the week since, did that mean they’d decided it wasn’t a good idea? Did that mean she was safe from them?
Or were they all bound for the same place?
They wouldn’t have collected so many, she didn’t think, just for study. They must have plans for them, a destination in mind, and that meant she was probably going to find herself face to face with those women--and the men--at some point.
She liked the idea that, maybe, they had something else in mind for her and Consuelo, or at least better than the idea that they were all going to be dumped off together, but she couldn’t convince herself of it.
It
had
occurred to her that the women might have been furious because she and Consuelo had their babies. She would’ve empathized more with a mother’s fury, though, if not for the condition of the babies when she and Consuelo had gotten them--which might be the fault of the aliens, not the women, except for the suggestion that Kole had made that it would be better off dead than a slave.
Broken English or not, she knew she’d understood that much.
There was always a chance that she’d been wrong to believe he meant the baby harm, that he’d merely been trying to tell her that what the aliens had in mind would be far worse, but she wasn’t about to chance it.
She couldn’t hand Cory over to them, not if there was any chance at all that they believed strongly enough in ‘death before slavery’ to take it upon themselves to end it for him.
How could she protect him, she worried? How?
She was no match for even one of those women let alone the men! And she had a bad feeling that she wouldn’t get the chance of one-on-one even if that hadn’t been the case. They had
all
seemed pretty stirred up, and there was no doubt in her mind at the time that, if they could’ve breached the barrier, they would all have come after her.
Fear might have lent her enough speed to outrun them on her own--which she doubted--but she certainly couldn’t if she was carrying the baby.
It would be unthinkable to abandon him, even if they were his people when she didn’t trust them not to harm him, and even so, she doubted it would satisfy them. They’d seemed pretty intent on having her blood.
Strength training seemed like a woefully inadequate defense, but Bri decided it couldn’t hurt even if she was fairly certain the possibility of developing enough strength to actually hold her own against any of the yellow tribe members was zilch. She’d had no idea just how weak she was because she’d never needed to concern herself about it before. Except for the short period before her mother’s death when she had grown too weak to get around without help, her natural born strength had been enough to do the things she needed to do--and she had
not
wanted to look like the women body builders she’d seen in magazines.
She knew though, that although everyone was not created equal, anyone who worked at it could increase their strength. She’d read that, and as she was, she was too weak even to have a chance to flee or to climb out of harm’s way.
She might be able to outwit them and she might not. She couldn’t do anything about that, though, unless it was utilizing her time to try to formulate a plan that she could put into motion without having to think at the moment of truth--like the idea about the tree.
Try though she might to come up with anything better, she couldn’t. If she couldn’t hope to outrun them, or to overpower them, she would need an advantage like that, something that would not only make it impossible for them to gang up on her but would also give her the advantage of superior position. However strong they might be, and well trained in fighting, she didn’t think they’d be able to withstand being beat on the head.
It occurred to her that she might be able to move faster--at least for short spurts, like dodging. Her height, or lack thereof, could give her some advantage over them if she used it to evade them. For that matter, her smaller size would make it possible for her to get into a space too small for them.
That could be a disadvantage, too, though, as in she could be trapped.
And a tree could be cut down, or pushed down, or they could just shake her loose.
None of those thoughts comforted her. They did, in point of fact, undermine her morale until it was difficult even to consider possibilities.
The only alternative to figuring out a way to take care of herself that occurred to her, though, was the possibility of picking the biggest, badest mother fucker of the lot and convincing him to beat the others off of her.
She wasn’t at all certain she could do that first off because she hadn’t even had that much experience with men of her own kind, and none of her handful of experiences had led to a guy falling madly in love with her. Or, in fact, becoming fond enough of her to let go of their freedom, or even much of their hard earned cash for her pleasure or entertainment--certainly not enough for them to consider protecting her at risk to themselves.
She thought Kole wouldn’t mind fucking her senseless if he could get hold of her, but that didn’t mean he’d be willing to fight his own kind to protect her. The only thing that
might
convince him to try to do that would be an emotional attachment to her, and she not only didn’t know how to go about getting him to develop an attachment, she wasn’t sure he was capable of it.
Maybe she didn’t understand the yellow tribe as well as she thought she did--there was a hell of a lot of room for error since all she could really do was watch them--but she had the distinct feeling that they weren’t really all that emotionally attached to each other, and that didn’t bode well for theoretical attachments to beings that were different.
Beyond that, she couldn’t even try without being way more intimate with one than she wanted to be. Even if she’d been a natural borne flirt, even if she’d had enough experience with Earth men to know how to dangle the carrot to get them to dance without actually
giving
them the carrot, she had a feeling it wouldn’t work with one of them. If she waved coochie in their face to use as an enticement, she thought it probable they’d just throw her down and fuck her to death.
It wasn’t something she wanted to try. She knew that.
She would have to try to keep her distance from Kole, she decided--not talk to him--not encourage him at all. She had a feeling he wasn’t struggling to communicate with her just because he was bored and needed human contact--or the contact of another being--as badly as she did. She was certainly of no use to him beyond a female body he could expend himself on.
It seemed to follow, then, that he was trying to ‘gentle’ her, trying to convince her he wasn’t dangerous so she’d let her guard down and he could get hold of her.
Once she’d decided on a course of action, Bri felt better in spite of the nagging doubts that continued to plague her. It was comforting to at least feel like she was doing something that might make a difference.
She couldn’t move the chair. She finally decided that it must be bolted down. After surveying the room, she tried the ‘TV’, but it, too, was immovable. Either the slaver aliens had done it to keep her from moving anything or, possibly, to keep everything from flying around when they hit turbulence--which would mean the ship
did
take off and land on land since she didn’t think there was any sort of turbulence in space.