by Allison West
Tests? Was he trying to give her a clue? She felt as though he wanted her to know something without telling her. She was shit for reading minds and even worse with charades. If he didn’t just say it, she wouldn’t be able to guess.
He dried the rest of her from head to toe and then walked to the dresser, rummaging through the different drawers until he found a nightgown that looked appropriate for a young girl. A mermaid in the ocean with fish surrounding her covered the gown’s front. The back was a sea of bubbles and coral. Jade would have found it beautiful for a child to wear, even if she wasn’t pretending to be six. That was what Poppa was asking of her, wasn’t it? It didn’t feel such a hard task to achieve as she gradually slipped into the warmth of being young and childlike, carefree without thought or consequence. It was a dangerous position to be in but Jade ignored the warning bells in her mind trying to mentally wake her up, her adult voice. It felt distant and muffled, perhaps the drug had some effect on her already.
Poppa helped Jade into her gown and then provided her panties that were far less hideous than the bloomers Nanny Marie made her wear. Jade felt lucky there weren’t any that fluffed out so wide and bulky, letting anyone get a glimpse under her dress. Tomorrow would be a new day though and hopefully the gown Poppa would make her wear wouldn’t be so short and frilly.
“Is it bedtime?” Jade asked. She already knew the answer. Stalling was a technique she’d been good at as a kid. It seemed her ability returned in an instant.
“Yes. You need to brush your teeth and comb your hair. Do you want my help?” Poppa asked.
Jade didn’t feel it necessary for him to help her. She climbed down from the bed and pattered into the bathroom. A nightlight illuminated the room and Jade made no attempt to flip the light on. She liked the dark, at least when there was a faint glow from a lamp nearby or a small light plugged into the socket. When it was absolutely black, it made her shiver and feel afraid. Jade enjoyed studying the shadows that bounced around the room. The warm amber glow always helped her drift to sleep.
The longer Jade brushed her teeth, the more tired she became as her eyes drooped and her hand paused with the toothbrush against her teeth.
Poppa’s hands came to rest on her shoulders. “It’s time for bed.”
Jade spit the suds from her mouth and rinsed thoroughly before running a comb through her dark tresses and finally she walked back into the nursery.
“I don’t want to be six,” Jade said. She climbed onto the mattress and under the covers as Poppa helped her get situated. Lying her head on the pillow, she shut her eyes, comfort enveloping her as she realized somehow he’d won, putting her to bed hadn’t been as challenging as she’d intended for him. There would always be tomorrow.
“What age do you want to be?” Poppa asked. His hand gently rubbed her back in slow circles as she relaxed under his touch.
“My age,” Jade mumbled, drifting off to sleep. She didn’t want to be little, yet she found herself enjoying the attention and the ease it was to be young again.
Chapter 12
Holden had a hell of a time trying to fall asleep. Just like in Jade’s room, a camera watched his every move. He understood the need in the nursery but this was beyond absurd. He wasn’t wrong in feeling like a prisoner, there was no way Chilton or anyone running this place would let him walk out the front door. He needed to think of a plan of escape.
Thunder rumbled overhead, the storm refusing to cease as he shut his eyes while he lay beneath the covers. Holden felt exhausted. His arms were sore, his hand hurt from constantly being forced to discipline Jade. She was a thought he didn’t want to have right now. His body responded far differently than his mind as his cock twitched beneath the covers.
No. He wouldn’t allow himself the pleasure of her in his fantasies tonight. The priority was getting them far from the training facility.
In the darkness of the room, he couldn’t see the face of the clock on the wall but he could hear it’s insistent ticking with every second. How had it not driven the last poppa to reside here insane?
Holden tossed and turned, forgetting about his first thought: escape. His mind shut off and his body relaxed, drifting finally to sleep. He didn’t know the hour and didn’t care. Whatever time it was, morning would come far too early and he’d be expected to look after Jade. He didn’t mind cuddling her or seeing her dressed in a dress designed for a little one. Even spanking her brought him pleasure. It was the fact she was forced to be here and he was in part responsible, it had been his galactopter after all, that made him feel the weight of such guilt, heavy on his shoulders and heart.
Sleeping through the night had been easy. The flash of bright light from the florescent tubes overhead burned his eyes and woke him. Had Chilton set a timer to wake him? Unlike an alarm clock that he could have gradually awoken to, the lights made him want to bury himself further beneath the covers.
A hard resounding knock answered his pleas for further sleep. “What?” he asked, not so much as getting out of bed.
Rafael’s voice answered through the door. “It’s time for you to get up, shower, and then wake your little one. You have a long day ahead of you.”
“Tell me about it,” Holden muttered under his breath. He pushed the covers down and climbed from the mattress, swaying slightly as he fought the urge to wake fully. He wanted to climb back under the warm covers.
Instead he headed for the closet, grabbed a fresh change of clothes and walked across the hall, quietly into the nursery to check on a sleeping Jade, before slipping into her shower. Why had they insisted on only providing one bathroom? Their customs, including the entire prison system, eluded him.
He closed the bathroom door and flipped on the light. Stripping down he ignored the intrusion of the camera’s watching his every move. Were they waiting for him to slip up? What would happen then? He’d already been kicked out from the prison camp. Though this felt far worse for Jade than him. Turning the shower on, he waited a moment for the water to heat up before stepping under the spray letting it douse him from head to toe. The shower felt refreshing as water coated his skin. For the briefest of moments, he wished Jade would wake up, climb out of bed and join him. Was it such a terrible thought to have?
“Holden,” Chilton’s voice interrupted him through an intercom system that Holden hadn’t realized existed.
He wiped the water from his face, glancing in the corner of the room toward the ceiling where the speaker blended seamlessly into the wall. “Just great,” he muttered. “What?”
At least the camera had been pointed more toward the bath and with the glass stall and steam filling the room, the footage probably wasn’t picking up much of him anymore.
“In twenty minutes Jade needs to be brought in for her exam with Doctor Rainer.”
Was that a hint to hurry the hell up? “Got it.” He shampooed his hair and soaped his skin, cleaning himself thoroughly before rinsing the suds away. Shutting off the spray, he opened the glass door and grabbed a towel, surprised to see Jade standing in the doorway.
“Jade, what are you doing?” He towel-dried himself down and then regretted not bringing any clothes into the bathroom. He’d been too tired to think ahead this morning. Wrapping the towel around his waist he skirted by Jade heading for the door.
“Chilton woke me. His voice,” she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Brush your teeth and get dressed. Unless you need my help?” His hand found the knob to the door. “I’ll be across the hall getting changed. We have to be ready in less than fifteen minutes.”
“I will be,” Jade said, stumbling for the bathroom. She shut the door behind her.
He didn’t have time to ensure she was ready. Maybe he was supposed to be the adult, dressing her and keeping her in line but he felt rushed this morning and wasn’t pleased with the situation in the slightest.
Once across the hall and in his room, he tossed the towel to the floor and grabbed a pair of black slacks and a dress
shirt. It was all that had been provided for him, work attire or pajamas. He missed the comfort of blue denim and a t-shirt. Perhaps when he returned back to Earth he could dress as he desired, at least on weekends.
Within minutes, Holden returned back to Jade’s nursery. She stood with her back to him, pulling a blue dress over her head. It looked like a mix of blue clouds and cotton candy as it shimmered around her small frame. The dress fell down to her knees, far longer than any of the other gowns she’d worn at the prison camp. He’d seen the white panties poking out when she’d put the gown on.
“Are you ready?”
“I need to comb my hair,” Jade said.
“Maybe I should help with that.” Holden was supposed to be helping her get ready and the last thing he wanted was to land himself in more trouble. “Bathroom.”
Jade didn’t say a word as she followed Holden into the bathroom.
He grabbed the brush from the sink. He’d never brushed a woman’s hair let alone a little one’s. How was he supposed to style it? Perhaps no one would care. “Sit on the toilet.”
The lid was closed and Jade sat down. “There’s two ribbons on the counter,” she said pointing to the bows that she’d picked out. “If you part my hair all the way down the center, you can put it in pigtails.”
Holden wasn’t an idiot at least. He knew what pigtails were, even on Adair young girls wore their hair separated with ribbons. Yes, he could do that. A braid not so much but she wasn’t asking for anything too fancy.
He didn’t so much as glance at the clock in Jade’s room on the wall. Without his watch, he didn’t know how much time they had left, so he worked quickly to brush and separate her hair into two parts before tying the sections off and adding the ribbons.
“You look beautiful,” Holden said. She also looked twenty years younger with a girlish appearance. He wouldn’t have thought she was six but perhaps sixteen she could have passed for.
“Thank you.” Jade stood and admired her reflection in the mirror while Holden put the brush on the counter and tossed her laundry in the nearby hamper.
“It’s time to go.”
“Why do I have to see a doctor?” Jade asked. “I’m not sick.”
Holden sighed. It was a conversation he didn’t want with Jade whether she was mentally six or thirty-six. “Sometimes we do things to follow the rules,” he said, lacking a better explanation for the moment. He didn’t want to hear her whine or cry and for some reason she seemed much younger than she had at the prison camp. Had that jagged little black pill worked? She had no golden halo but perhaps her biology was different enough that she lacked the same side effects as Adairans. It still didn’t explain her lucid moments of being an adult. He saw them, though they were fleeting, she was still in her head. Perhaps she caught on to what he wanted from her. Pretend to be little and they wouldn’t be forced to administer any additional drugs. Who knew what the lasting side effects were? Besides the dosages they gave her had to be far more potent than they dished out at the prison camp. She was a lab specimen to them and he couldn’t stop it, not without help.
Jade reached for his hand and walked with him through the kitchen and down another hall which led to two more doors. Chilton stood outside the door, waiting for her to arrive.
“Why don’t you head on inside the room while I talk with your poppa,” Chilton said to Jade.
She glanced back at Holden, squeezing his hand tight.
“Go on inside,” Holden said. He disentangled his hand from hers and gently nudged her forward. She may not have wanted to go in alone but he’d join her as soon as he could. Besides if he was keeping Chilton busy, at least that meant Chilton wasn’t in the room at the moment for the exam.
Jade didn’t seem happy but she puttered into the room and sat down in the nearest chair.
Chilton reached for the handle, shutting the door to give the two gentleman privacy.
“What do you wish to say that can’t be said in front of Jade?” Holden asked.
“We’ve been watching her and we’re pleased with the results already.”
“Good,” Holden said and nodded. What did that mean for her? If she behaved too quickly, would they grow suspicious? Or perhaps they’d be ready to dissect her like a science experiment? “What’s the problem?”
“We’re unsure if the result of her lack of a golden halo is because she’s from Earth or there’s something else we’re missing.”
Holden shrugged. “I can’t help you, Chilton. Even if I wanted to return back to Earth, I can’t.” Boy did he ever want to leave. Chilton couldn’t have been an idiot, could he? He knew that the man didn’t possess the technology that would allow them to travel between worlds, let alone time. If he did, Chilton wouldn’t be running the little’s training facility, he’d probably be doing something far worse. Though what was worse than the invasion that happened as they spoke?
“I know. That stupid device was ejected into space. Damien explained to me his reasons for destroying it, mainly to keep you from escaping, and I respect that but I want to experiment on another human girl.”
“Can’t you bring one back during the invasion?” Holden even hated to suggest the idea, but there was a doorway open between universes right now and as Adairans depleted Earth’s resources and fought an atrocious battle, it seemed easy to take a hostage or at the very least soldier for his own experiments.
“I’ve tried. Believe me I’ve tried. The rat bastard general hates me and for no reason other than I slept with his daughter. Stupid politics.” He shook his head. “Help me and I’ll let your girl free. You can even send her through the portal home.”
Holden’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.” There would be another way off this base. He’d find it without making a deal with the devil.
“Consider my proposal. That’s all I’m asking.”
It seemed Chilton didn’t know the galactopter worked on two components of both time and space for interdimensional travel. It didn’t just take you to another galaxy but also had the ability to move an object or person through time. Perhaps no one had known of his true intentions when he’d left Adair. That would be to his advantage. He’d thought he’d been a wanted man and maybe he still was for using a galactopter which was highly illegal, but had no one been privy to where he’d been or what he’d been trying to accomplish? Nothing had changed yet, clear by the fact the invasion was still happening. They needed to return back to the past, or rather Jade’s present, in order to stop the invasion from ever occurring. There was only one way to change the course of events. Earth needed to create a displacement device that would disrupt the signal for travel between universes. When the Adairans turned on their portal to come through to Earth and invade, the device would reject the address for Earth and not provide a connection. It would create a bad signal, like a cell phone that would drop the call before it ever rang.
Holden walked past Chilton, ignoring him as he headed into the exam room, shutting the door behind him. He hoped Chilton wouldn’t follow inside, for Jade’s sake. Besides, he didn’t want her to admit that the invasion hadn’t happened yet in her world. It was a valuable piece of information because if someone could create a galactopter, then someone could recreate one.
Stepping into the room, he saw Jade was strapped down to a metal examination table. Holden didn’t even spend a second introducing himself. Appalled by the way she was being treated he stalked over to the doctor. “Is that absolutely necessary?” Holden asked, gesturing toward the restraints.
“It was after she bit me.” The doctor lifted his sleeve to reveal a small mark, barely visible. It could have been a bug bite.
Holden shook his head, snorting under his breath. “She won’t bite you again with me in here.”
“He touched me inappropriately!” Jade said.
“I was only doing a proper thorough exam.”
Holden didn’t know whether Jade exaggerated and Doctor Rainer was doing his job or whether he’d done someth
ing completely inappropriate. Holden felt relieved that he’d left Chilton to come into the exam room and be there for Jade.
She’d changed out of her pretty blue dress into a not so pleasant blue and white paper gown. It crunched as she shifted, trying to break free from the restraints.
“Release her,” Holden demanded. “She’ll do the exam under my instruction. I’m her poppa.” He wasn’t going to let this four-eyed doctor be the one in control.
Doctor Rainer pushed the silver bridge of his spectacles further up his nose. “Fine.” Slowly he walked around, working her ankles free first before unbinding both of her hands.
Jade snarled every time the doctor came closer.
“Jade,” Holden said, his tone calm yet firm, trying to remind her that she needed to do her part or he couldn’t help her. If she wanted to be kept out of restraints, she needed to behave.
“No more biting,” Jade said, seeming to understand the arrangement.
“Good.” He breathed a sigh of relief as the doctor affixed his gloves back onto his hands.
The doctor reached for a small flashlight, shining the light into Jade’s eyes as he checked to see if there was any reaction and if the halo had emerged. No halo as far as Holden could tell.
“I’m going to need to examine your breasts,” the doctor said, sounding clinical and detached though his eyes were on her nipples and round peaks the entire time.
Holden hated that another man looked at Jade. How dare he! So what if he was her doctor. What qualifications did he have to be fondling her breasts?
The doctor’s fingers moved over each mound, paying careful attention to the tissue and then her nipple, rolling it between his finger as her nipple hardened under his touch. “The specimen’s reaction is similar to a human,” he said, as if he dictated into a microphone.
“Of course it’s the same, Jade is human!” Were they idiots? Just because she wasn’t from Adair didn’t mean she didn’t have the same blood coursing through her body that made her human. Life on other planets wasn’t all that different in many parts of the galaxy. Like a seed that had spread in the wind, Earth had been outside of Adair’s galaxy and yet life flourished in much the same way. Adairans weren’t that different from Jade’s people.
