by Luna Hunter
“What did I tell you?!” Torin growls. “Back off!”
He lets go and the man screams something in his native tongue before swiping at Torin with his unbroken arm.
Mistake.
My turquoise protector dodges, grabs, spins, and breaks the arm right on his knee. With a high-pitched cry that makes me wince the blue alien falls to the floor.
Torin stares the now silent lunchroom down.
“That goes for all of you,” he says, slowly but clearly. “Back. Off.”
Guards pour into the room, and Torin grabs my hand and escorts me out. The human guards take the sobbing blue alien away. To my surprise, they don’t even care about the disturbance. This might be more common than I had hoped…
That thought makes me shudder. I’ve studied prisons before, I must have read a hundred different papers on them, but nothing has prepared me adequately for this. This feeling of being trapped. At least I know I did nothing wrong and that I’ll be out soon. The same can’t be said for all these men.
They are stuck in here for years. Decades. The rest of their life.
I feel guilty. I’ve only experienced a small sliver of what they go through, and already I’m at the end of my rope.
When we’re about the exit the lunchroom, a small hairy man stops us. Well, not quite a man — it’s more like a rodent that’s walking on its hind two legs.
“What did I just say?” Torin growls. “Back off.”
“I just wanna help, see,” the rodent says. He talks fast, like he’s late for a train. “You two look like you could use some help, see.”
Torin glances at me, and I nod.
“You’re right,” he says. “We need to get a message back to Earth. Can you do that?”
The rodent throws his head back and produces a chattering noise. I’m assuming it’s a laugh.
“Can I? Can I? Sherba can do anything! This is nothing for old Sherba.”
“Nothing comes free. What do you want?”
The man’s red eyes fall on me.
“That’s easy, see. Her panties!”
Torin grabs him by the throat and lifts him right off the ground.
“You get one more chance,” he growls, the Zorans voice low and raw. “Use it wisely.”
“Okay, sorry, sorry,” the rat-man squeals. “Let me go! Can’t! Can’t breathe!”
“Don’t hurt him,” I say.
Torin lowers the rodent to the floor, and he gasps for air. “Thank you, miss, oh thank you!”
He tries to grab my hand and I reflexively pull it back. I don’t want to see him choked out, but that doesn’t mean I want to touch him either…
“What do you want?” Torin growls. “And remember—”
“Yes, yes, use it wisely, I remember! Sherba remembers! Just… a piece of the lady’s hair? Just a strand?”
My Zoran protector looks ready to choke him again, but I stop him.
“If that’s all… here.”
I yank out a few hairs. A bit more than I initially planned, but oh well.
“Knock yourself out,” I say as I hand them over. Sherba starts sniffing it immediately, his tail wagging about, and I feel both flattered and grossed out at the same time.
The rodent turns to walk away, but Torin steps right on his tail.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
He turns, his red eyes wide.
“The message!” Torin growls.
Oh, right! I pull the folded-up letter out of my bra, and the rodent man nearly faints when I hand it to him. Torin raises an eyebrow and shakes his head disapprovingly.
“I had no other place!” I say, but Torin is not having it.
I follow the tall Zoran back to our cell. “What do we do now?” I ask him when he plops down on his bed.
“We take it one day a time,” he answers. “One day a time. That’s all we can do.”
“To entertain ourselves, I mean.”
He smirks at me. “Nothing, human. We do nothing.”
“You mean there is no library here? No holovids to watch?”
“Not for us, no.” He stretches out on the bottom bunk. It barely contains his immense frame. “We could talk,” he offers.
“I didn’t take you for a talker,” I answer.
“Why is that?”
“Uhm, because you’re an infamous criminal?”
“Oh yeah, nearly forgot about that,” he chuckles. “I’ve had enough of silence for the rest of my lifetime. Tell me about yourself.”
I kick off my heels and climb my way onto the top bunk. “I don’t really have any interesting to say.”
“You are dead wrong, human,” Torin growls. “You are the most interesting thing that has happened to me since…”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. He doesn’t have to. I know exactly what he’s referring to. We need to talk about the crime, but now doesn’t seem like a good time.
“Alright, where do you want me to start?”
“When were you born?” he asks.
“Asking a woman for her age? Shame on you,” I laugh. “It was about, say, twenty-three years ago.”
“Ah, so you’re a youngling!”
“If you want me to get you out of here you’ll never use that word again,” I say. “I’m an adult, thank you very much.”
“Noted. What about your family?”
“I was raised by my father, “I tell him. “My mom passed away when I was very young. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you. To be honest, I have no memory of her. It’s hard to say, but… wow, I don’t think I’ve ever said this out loud, but… I don’t feel anything, you know? I literally have no memory of her. All I have is photographs of her, and all that my dad has told me of her, and she sounds like a wonderful woman, but… I can’t miss something I’ve never known in the first place. And that just makes me feel awful. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”
“These walls will do that to you,” Torin growls from below. “You can’t escape your own thoughts in here. It’s not strange, and it’s not your fault at all. All can you do is play the cards that you’ve been dealt. What about your old man?”
“He’s a tinkerer,” I say. “A builder. He’s got a knack for it. Drones, artificial intelligence — he’s good at all of it. Every time I’d come home from school he would have something new to show me.”
“Sounds like a good childhood.”
“It was. Looking back, we didn’t have much, but at the time it felt like we had the whole world.”
“So how come you didn’t become an engineer?”
I take a deep breath. Just thinking about it makes my blood boil.
“My father got screwed by the Federation, that’s why.”
“What? The Federation screwing someone over? Well, I never,” he says, his low voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Yeah, who knew, right?” I laugh.
Torin is far from the stoic, silent tough guy I feared he’d be. He’s actually incredibly easy to talk to, and I find myself spilling all of my guts to him.
“He invented a levitating lamp, using magnets and stuff. I’m still not quite sure how it worked to be honest but work it did. He showed it to a Federation clerk, and the man laughed at him, told him nobody wanted crap like that. And next year, well… next year floating lamps were all the rage. And my father never saw a single penny. It wasn’t just about the money. It was about the recognition to him. Ever since, he just lost his desire to invent. He became withdrawn, anxious. To me, it feels like they took something from my father. Something that made him whole. That put me on my path. I wanted to protect people who had no time or credits to protect themselves.
“So, you’re a rebel?” Torin asks.
“I thought I was,” I answer. “But walking around in high heels and black dresses in expensive law firms doesn’t exactly makes you a rebel — it makes you part of the establishment.”
“You then decided to slum i
t here for a while, hm?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Something like that. My boss and I, we didn’t get along so well, so he stuck me with this case, expecting me to screw it up. To be honest, this… this is my first case. And I did screw it up. I’m sorry, Torin. I… I failed you.”
The Zoran warrior gets up. “Look at me, Nora Baker. You are no screw-up. You have a fire inside of you. Never let them extinguish that.”
As I stare into his amethyst eyes, I do feel a fire burning inside of me… but it’s not the type he’s thinking about.
It’s the type of raging inferno that can only be extinguished by that magnificent alien rod of his.
I roll over and stare at the wall, afraid that if I gaze into his eyes a moment longer he’ll be able to read my entire soul. There’s something about him that just makes me lower all of my defenses. I’ve never been this open, this vulnerable before. What’s going on?
What are you waiting for? It’s not like there’s anything else to do in here but him. Enjoy it while you can.
No, I think to myself. I’m his lawyer. Having relations with a client is a quick-way to get fired.
You’ll get fired anyway. You got yourself locked up. You haven’t even begun to help him. You’re a liability more than a help to him!
No, this is not my fault! It’s the warden! And once that message reaches Earth, they’ll get me out of here and we’ll get to the bottom of this.
I can’t believe myself. I’ve only been in here a day and already I’m talking to myself. Go make yourself useful!
I hop out of bed and grab the papers out of my suitcase. I’ve read the details of Torin’s case over and over again, but perhaps I missed something. Anything.
The hours pass slowly in our cell as I read. After we eat dinner (more goop), I ask Torin about himself.
“What do you want to know?” he asks. “You know all about me, judging by that stack of paper. At least, I hope you do by now.”
“I know some things, sure, but I want to hear your side of the story for once.”
“Tou want me to talk about Pazar? Is that it?”
“Well,” I shrug, “it’s not completely inconsequential, no. So, if you want to talk about it… go ahead.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he says briskly. “I was convinced I was innocent, but…”
Now this is interesting. I sit down on the side of his bed. “But what?”
His voice is suddenly trembling. “I don’t know anymore, Nora. I really don’t. I have dreams. Horrible dreams, of blood, of violence, of death. I’m starting to doubt all that I’ve ever believed. If I did it, and I’m saying if, it certainly wasn’t on purpose. I would never hurt an innocent person.
“I believe you,” I say softly.
He looks up at me, his gorgeous eyes filled with hurt. “Before you came to Blackgate, I was done. I was nearly broken, ready to give up, but you… you’ve given me strength, Nora. You’ve given me a purpose.”
“Me?” I say. “I’m just a failed lawyer. You’re the badass warrior. Without you I’d be toast in here.”
“You’re much tougher than you give yourself credit for,” he says. “I wish I… remembered more. I have no idea why we were even on Pazar, my fellow soldiers and me. My memories are so fuzzy, so filled with holes…”
“I believe you,” I say, firmly this time. I mean it with all my heart and soul. I can tell he’s innocent, can see it in his eyes and feel it in my heart. I’m not sure what really happened on that space station, and I might never know, but that Torin is an honest, good man — that I know for sure.
He looks up at me and I can’t help but lean in closer. His manly scent surrounds me, and my heart is racing. My lips part slightly — is this the moment? Is this…
“Lights off!”
A human voice in the distance ruins the moment. The next moment the lights shut off and we’re coating in darkness.
“Goodnight,” I mumble, as I climb onto the top bunk again, my heart still racing.
Chicken, I think to myself. You chicken!
Chapter Six
Nora
This is what I’ve been dreading since I woke up here in prison.
Shower time.
“Are there any female showers by any chance?”
Torin shakes his head. “No. And we can only go once a week. We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. I like to start and end the day with a long, hot shower — I don’t know if I can go a whole week without. At the same time, I’ve seen enough vids to know that prison showers are not the type of place a woman wants to be on her own.
Luckily, I’m not on my own.
I have Torin.
But that still means stripping naked in front of the tall, Zoran warrior…
“Let’s do it,” I say, my heart beating in my throat. Fuck it.
My nerves are an absolute mess as we head towards the showers. I keep my eyes on the ground, avoiding the stares of all the aliens. Once we reach the communal showers I see alien nudity all around me — well, from the corners of my eyes, of course.
I’m not interested in alien dicks, thank you very much.
Except for one. Maybe.
Torin places our towels on an empty bench and turns around. “Listen up,” he says. His low voice reaches everyone, and all the conversations fall silent. “Today, shower time ends ten minutes early, understood? That means you have… five minutes left.”
There is a collective groan.
“Understood?” Torin growls again.
No one responds. They know better than to question a Zoran warrior.
He stands in front of me, his arms crossed, waiting as one-by-one the other inmates leave. The rat-man named Sherba shuttles over, and Torin narrows his eyes at him.
“No, no,” he stammers. “No looking, no touching, Sherba swears!”
“What do you want?” the Zoran growls.
He hands him a piece of paper. “A message.” He then scuttles off quickly. Torin unwraps the paper, takes a quick peek and hands it to me.
Hold on. I’m coming. Signed Simon Calloway.
A message! Help is on the way. I’m so happy I could scream. All we need to do is survive, and so far, so good.
Several minutes later, we’re the only two souls left in the changing room. Right, being naked. That’s why I came here for.
“Go ahead,” Torin says. “I won’t look.”
I slip my clothes off, feeling vulnerable, anxious and scared. I’m glad Torin is not looking, but at the same time, I kinda want him to? I have no idea what I want anymore…
I dreamed about him. I wondered what it would be like to sleep in his arms, to hear the beat of his heart. It’s so cold in our cell that I shivered all night long, but the Zoran always seems to emanate heat. He could be my personal heater!
I regret not kissing him last night. I need to stop being so hard on myself — I’m locked in a maximum-security prison for heaven’s sake. If there’s something I can enjoy, something that can give me a bit of happiness… I ought to embrace it.
While I still can.
He’s an excellent protector, but our lives are not our own in here. The warden could have me relocated at any moment. I don’t expect him to, but if he’s crazy enough to lock me up in here, then he might just be crazy enough to do that as well.
I slip my underwear off and tip-toe towards the showers. I turn the handle and am relieved to find the water is warm. My stress washes away just a little bit as I allow myself a few moments of relaxation.
“Want me to wash your hair?”
A low, deep voice from behind startles me. I whirl around to find Torin standing in front of me — totally naked. My hands move to cover up my breasts while I cross my legs.
“Y-you,” I stammer. “A-are here.”
“Correct.”
He grabs my hands and gently yet firmly moves them to my sides, exposing my breasts to him. His amethyst eyes scan
my frame, and my cheeks burn red hot.
I can’t help but notice his erection growing harder and harder, and I bite my bottom lip. Is all of that for me? His body is every bit as beautiful as I remember it. So many muscles, so big, so strong…
“You’ve seen all of me before,” he says. “I think it’s only fair if you return the favor.”
“That’s not how it works, I think,” though I make no effort to cover myself up. “Are we safe in here?”
“No one will disturb us,” he says confidently.
I swallow the lump in my throat. “What about the guards?”
He glances at the clock. “We have ten minutes.”
The Zoran warrior turns me around and his hands move to my neck.
“Relax,” he says. “This is the only break we’ll get. Enjoy it.”
I instantly melt. I have no fight left in me, no resistance. All I can do is enjoy the moment. I lean back and feel his hardness press against my lower back.
My heart skips a beat. I simply cannot resist.
I reach behind me and grab his hardness. His throbbing, giant, purple Zoran cock is now in my hands. Finally. I’ve already committed every detail of it to memory, but now, I finally know how it feels.
Hard. Warm. Glorious.
My fingers trail down his length, feeling the veins, feeling the power as it throbs, and instantly I am wetter than I’ve ever been, and not just because of the hot water raining down on me.
No, I want that big cock inside of me.
I need him inside of me.
It’s no longer a question. It’s not a desire, not anymore. It’s a need.
I stroke his cock as he massages my shoulders. As good as this feels, I need more. I whirl around and gaze into his purple eyes. They are filled with lust and desire. I step on the tips of my toes and kiss him.
He responds like a hungry wolf, kissing me back hard, his tongue entering my mouth. It feels amazing to be finally claimed, to be taken, to have this powerful alien completely in control. I forget all about where we are, what dire straits we are in, and just focus on the wonderful feeling of having his tongue meet mine. He grabs my hips and lifts me up as if I’m weightless, and I slide my arms around his neck.
He aligns the bright golden head of his purple cock up with my opening.
