by Lydia Hope
His cracked lips split in a parody of a smile revealing blackened teeth. “What a tasty morsel you are.”
Morsel? He must be mad. “I have no money. I have nothing. If you plan to rob me, you’re wasting your time.”
His eyes bored into her, the maniacal gleam in them giving Gemma chills that had nothing to do with the cold.
“Morsel,” he repeated slowly.
She shrugged and started walking, the odd man’s steps following her. Morsel, what a croak. But some instinct, a part of human DNA integral to survival, forced her to veer off her beaten path and head away from the grotto. She didn’t know why and didn’t think about it.
Her steps quickened, a weak spurt of adrenaline pushing her forward. She threw a furtive glance over her shoulder and saw him walking after her at a close distance. With her body’s energy levels in the red zone, Gemma pushed on down a familiar street, turning at an abandoned plaza. The junkyard lay to her right, and the solid bulk of the prison loomed in the distance. Surprised to find herself in this part of town, she stopped and turned again to face the man.
“Stop following me! Go away!”
He withdrew a huge knife.
“Morsel.”
She understood then. Her eyes peeled wide as a flash of sheer terror heated her frozen bones. “You want to eat me?”
He displayed his decaying teeth, and his eyes squinted in anticipation. “Tasty girl. Tender meat.”
He fully intended to kill her and eat her flesh. Maybe not even in this order. Gemma had known for some time she was soon going to die, had resigned herself to her fate, but not in her worst nightmare had she imagined it to be like this. God, please, not like this.
She pivoted and broke into a run. Immediately, her lungs seized up, and she started panting from exhaustion. Her legs were laden, and running felt like wading in molasses. But she ran, and ran, and ran, and he ran after her. She had no chance, yet stopping was out of the question.
Her familiarity with the surroundings was her only advantage, and she feared not a significant one. There was the old church where she used to take Simon to feed him his yogurt. It seemed like eons ago. As if drawn to it by a magnet, Gemma awkwardly scaled the waist-high wall and fell inside. Scrambling off the floor, she stumbled deeper into the ruin, past the vast expanse of the nave. She scurried like a frightened rodent looking for a hiding place, adept at wedging into holes in walls.
Dropping on all fours, she crawled behind a heap of crumbled bricks.
The horrendous man had fallen behind, but not far. His footsteps crunched on frozen gravel as he rounded the building. He was no longer running when he walked in.
“Here, little kitty. I know you’re here. Come,” he sounded so terrifyingly cheery.
Gemma tried to make herself one with the bricks. Her heart fluttered inside her chest, the beats frequent and weak. Her vision was wonky. Her ears rang. From her vantage point at the floor level, all she could see was his feet shod in worn-out dirty boots. A good distance away at first, they came nearer as he crossed the nave.
“Come out, sweet thing. Come…”
She stared fixedly at his feet as they rounded the pile of bricks behind which she lay in a curled position and stopped. She knew he could see her plain as day.
“My sweet,” he laughed, a merry sound. She saw the tip of the large knife pointing down as he held it at his side.
Suddenly, there was a movement behind him, and another pair of boots came into view. Those steps were silent; the feet were larger. The boots’ surefooted wearer approached in a measured gait, the toes turned ever so slightly inward as he walked. Gemma stopped breathing.
The man with the knife continued laughing, anticipation making him giddy and lax. He never heard the other one come from behind. A whoosh, and the laughter turned into an aborted gurgle. The knife fell from his hand… and his head rolled off his shoulders, cracking as it hit the floor. The body followed the head and tumbled down. A clean slice of the cut neck came to rest inches from Gemma’s face, blood coming out in spurts as the dying heart continued its spasmodic pumps. She would have gagged, but weakened as her body had become, it wouldn’t rise to the occasion.
One booted foot impatiently pushed the body aside clearing the way for Gemma to get out. He lowered himself into a crouch in front of her. A bloodied hunting knife hung from his loose fingers.
“Hello, Gemma.” The obsidian eyes that took up almost half of his face betrayed no emotion.
“Hi,” she said, hoarse and low, not sure if she were dreaming.
He put out his hand and she took it, letting him pull her to her feet. She stood up, barely. The church swam before her eyes.
“It took me weeks to find you,” he sounded reproachful.
“I didn’t know you were looking. I thought you were long gone.”
He ignored her remark. “What happened to you?”
“Oh, this and that. I got fired from the prison.”
“Because of my escape?”
“Because of not sleeping with OO.”
He made a strange sound, but Gemma was too far gone to pay close attention. Standing upright took all the concentration she had.
“And then my relatives threw me out of the house - that was Dr. Delano’s fault. He stopped by to say hi. He was crushed at not finding you with me. So disappointed that he refused to treat Uncle Drexel.”
Simon said something in his strange language.
“Yes, he is a bastard. I think so too. And then I was looking for work but got robbed, and it kind of went downhill from there. And this one here,” Gemma motioned at the decapitated body, “wanted to eat me. Protein.”
She stopped to catch her breath. Talking exhausted her. “So, how have you been?”
Simon’s upper lip curled in a smile that revealed his teeth. How they had grown! Huge and sharp, they could snap her arm in half. Each the size of her little finger, his teeth were not white but clear amber.
Good thing he didn’t want to eat her.
“I’ve been busy.”
She tried to smile back at him, but her facial muscles wouldn't obey. The world receded and she swayed. Simon caught her and swung her into his arms, cradling her close to his chest. His onyx eyes swirled with emotion.
“You weigh nothing, Gemma. It isn’t right.”
Her head spun. She was feeling so faint. Feebly, she clutched at him, but her fingers wouldn't form grips.
“I can’t walk.”
He adjusted his hold on her body. “You don’t have to. I’ve got it from here.”
Chapter 25
Gemma woke up to a feeling of long-forgotten warmth, heat even. Yes, she was hot, swaddled in covers. Where was she?
She turned her head blinking to clear her vision of sleep that clung to her senses. She lay on a low platform bed, on top of a mattress of relative thickness. It was comfortable, much softer than the sorry excuse for a pad at the McKinleys. For a few moments, Gemma absorbed the sensations. How good life could be!
He, her alien, was sitting on the backs of his heels on the floor in the middle of a small room. He was tinkering with a piece of equipment the size of an engine block. Multiple electronic chips decorated the contraption’s surface, with shiny coiled wires and hair-thin tubes circling it and sticking out. All of it looked complicated, but Simon’s long sharp-nailed fingers proficiently handled the minuscule components, arranging them into a format he clearly knew about.
She feasted on the sight of him. The threadbare shirt with pulled-up sleeves molded to his body and outlined the sizable slant of his shoulders and taut flesh of his arms. He looked thicker than she remembered.
“Are you ready for another can of food?” he asked without turning. She hadn’t realized he knew she was awake.
“What fruit?”
He turned then to give her a very pointed look. “You called them pears.” He raised one arm and pointed to the corner of the room.
Gemma’s eyes followed. There, on a small counter, se
veral opened cans were lined up in a row like little soldiers that had served their duty with honor.
“Pears?” She counted nine cans. “I ate them?”
Slowly, Simon lowered his pointing hand and rose to his feet. He approached carefully so as not to startle her and stood over her bed.
“You don’t remember?”
She swished her head on the pillow in a negative shake looking up at him. At the same time, she realized it must be true, for the all-familiar gnaw of hunger no longer tormented her stomach. And she realized something else: she badly needed to use the bathroom.
“How long have I been here?”
“Four days.”
“Four days?” Gemma tried to sit up too fast and paid for it with a darkening vision and spinning brain.
“Easy.” His arms reached under her back in support, holding her steady as she recovered. “Do you want more pears?”
“Yes, please.”
He helped her sit up and went to the counter to get a new can. Slicing through the lid with a sharp nail like it was the most natural thing in the world, he gave the can to Gemma and watched as she carefully drank the bland syrup with small chunks of something that could be pears. His onyx eyes stayed firmly on her, exciting and unnerving.
Licking her lips, Gemma lowered her legs to the floor.
“Is there a bathroom I can use?”
He pointed to the corner where a small partition acted as a door. Making her way there on her own, Gemma peeked inside.
A rusty old pot sat on the floor, its bottom hollowed out. That was it.
“It drains to a ditch outside,” Simon informed her from the room. “There’s a spigot in the wall if you want to wash.”
He was right, there was a makeshift faucet protruding over another hollowed-out pan that served as a tub. Gemma went inside and moved the partition to block the doorway. She didn’t dream of complaining about the rudimentary amenities. After so many weeks of answering the calls of nature under the elements, the conditions of this place seemed godsend.
She used the “toilet” she turned on the spigot to test if the water was available. It was. And there was soap.
She began frantically scrubbing her hands and face.
It suddenly hit home that she could shower, and she paused, water dripping down her nose. And then she went crazy.
Ripping out buttons, Gemma threw away the hated coat, mindless of needing it again later. She tore off her filthy garments, clawed at the shoelaces that held together her soiled boots, shoved down her disgusting, sticky underwear. Finally naked, she stuck her head under the weak trickle of lukewarm water and rubbed soap into her hair with such force that her scalp hurt. She washed, and she cried, humbled and reveling in the experience she had thought she’d never undergo again before she died.
She lost track of how long she spent in the bathroom cleaning her hair and body over and over again, wasting so much soap, rinsing, and rinsing, and rinsing the grime away, splashing around, trying to fit her entire frame under the weak spray. This was how Simon found her when he moved the partition aside - wet and shivering, wild-eyed, squeezing water out of her hair with trembling hands.
“You’re done,” he declared in his calm, accented voice and turned the water off.
It took him two strides to go back to the bed and yank the sheet off. He carefully wrapped Gemma in the sheet and carried her to bed.
She didn’t resist, but her wild eyes must have told him she was on the verge of a major breakdown. He sat down with her in his lap and said something she failed to understand, so close was she to falling completely to pieces. But the sound of his deep voice calmed her down. Pressing one ear to his chest, she listened to the vibrations of his words and the strong, harmonized beating of two of his hearts. This closeness, the sound of his steady breathing, his solid body against hers, all of it came into sharp focus.
“I can’t believe you’re here.” She gripped him as hard as she could, irrationally afraid he’d disappear out of her arms.
“Why?” he sounded puzzled.
“I thought you were long gone. That you left Earth.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Why would I think differently?”
“Because I told you differently,” he sounded exasperated.
She smiled and nestled deeper into his embrace, suddenly sleepy, and tired, and ridiculously, childishly happy.
“You make it sound so simple,” her voice was hoarse.
“It is that simple.” A special brilliance briefly appeared in his eyes, betraying strong emotion.
“Much as I’m happy to have you here with me, I wish you found your way home.”
“Alone?” he asked gravely.
“If that’s how it must be. Alone.”
“And what will you do when I go home alone?”
She shrugged. “What I’ve always done. Stay here and try to survive.”
He regarded her thoughtfully. “If Dr. Delano showed me a fraction of your empathy, I would have willingly submitted to his inane experiments.”
She raised her heavy head and looked at him, pouring the strength of her human emotions into her gaze. Their faces were mere inches apart. They stayed as they were, and the silence around them became charged.
She could see his black-on-black pupils, could discern individual hairs of his delicate brows. His peculiar slanted nostrils flared, and he slowly leaned forward, closing the short distance between their mouths, his breath gently fanning her face, his sharply bowed, blue-ringed upper lip the focus of Gemma’s world. Her lips parted in anticipation, her head tilting back in greedy anticipation of his touch, and finally, finally, he lowered his lips to hers in a merest of kisses.
It was electrifying. She shifted in his lap, and the sheet slid off her torso.
She froze, self-consciousness flooding her, shyness shattering her desire.
She knew he was looking, checking her out. She dropped her arms and forced herself to sit still to let him inspect her body in all its unaltered human glory. After all, she’d had opportunities to see all of him at the prison. If was only fair to let him look now.
A long minute went by, and Gemma couldn’t bear the silence any longer.
“Do you find me strange?”
He sighed and tilted her face up, letting her feel his regard full-on. “I don’t.”
“Are Rix females built the same?”
“A little different.”
Gemma wilted and let her fingers edge closer to the fallen sheet to tug it up. “Different, then.”
“How you look was never a factor.”
“Gee, thanks. I think.”
“Does it matter to you that I’m different?”
Gemma’s cocked her head, pondering the question. Was she aware of the differences? You bet. His huge eyes that looked nowhere and everywhere at once, his six-fingered clawed hands, the smooth carpet of silky short hairs that covered his entire body - she would be lying to herself if she pretended not to notice. And some, ahem, things that his physique was deficient of, she was very aware of.
But he had a point, none of it mattered in the grand scheme of things. She loved him the way he was. She couldn't imagine being with anyone other than Simon.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“How we look to each other is irrelevant. It happened. Our lives are intertwined. We’ll have to work with what we got.” And then he smiled, a freakshow of amber teeth and bluish gums. “I happen to like what you’ve got.”
“Oh.” Warm relief spread through Gemma, surprising her. She hadn’t realized his approval of her body meant so much.
In one fluid move, he pulled the sheet completely off her, leaving her bare in his lap. “You fret about the silliest of things. Stop worrying. There isn’t a problem.”
Twisting, he took off his shirt. Unabashed, Gemma looked her fill. In another marked difference, he lacked the sharp muscle definition of human males. His strength was poured rubber, smooth and taught, the flesh
so firm that when Gemma reached for his upper arm and gently squeezed, her fingers left no indentations. It was unbelievable, the power that she felt under her fingertips.
“You’re strong,” she whispered in awe.
“Someone has to be.” His tone wasn’t boastful. He simply stated the fact.
“I am not strong at all.”
“Your strength is on the inside.” Their chests almost touched where her nipples pebbled from the damp air.
Gemma shook her head in denial. “I’m afraid I’m a burden to you.”
“Never.”
“Simon,” shaken, Gemma grasped his shoulders. She could smell his skin from this close, and the aroma, unique and slightly cloying, intoxicated her like a potent wine. She became lightheaded and breathless. “There’s so much of you… You’re too close… I think I need space.”
“It isn’t the space that you need,” he murmured in her hair.
With a moan she gave in to her temptation, leaning into him. She rubbed against him like a cat, her breasts tingling wildly from the friction. His arms came around her, hesitant at first as if she were a flighty butterfly he was trying to catch. Once they closed around her, once he got her in his possession, they turned to iron. He let them both fall on the narrow bed.
She could scarcely follow what they were doing, her brain a ball of sensual fuzz. They kissed, deeply, the scrape of his teeth sharp and erotic against her tongue, and a little scary. She ended up with her breasts pushed up to his face, and he hungrily licked around her nipples, the sandpapery texture of his tongue eliciting mewling noises from her throat. When he finally suckled her, she thought she’d burst into a million tiny bubbles of pleasure.
He wrestled the rest of his clothes off, and she was suddenly free to revel in the plushness of his bare body, the unyielding smooth muscle covered in a decadent velvet of the tawny skin. Gemma writhed against him, under him, letting her hands explore and kneading his back, instinctively rubbing her pelvis against the front of his. She was soaking wet, aching for release, the desire to have him enter her almost overwhelming. Breathing hard and flushed from the dark pleasure, she forced her body to be still. He couldn't give her what her human female nature desired, and it wasn’t fair of her to place demands on Simon that she knew he couldn't physically fulfill.
