by Lisa Lace
I watched Laz gather hair out of his face and tie it up again in his usual bun. Sliding a couple of knives into his belt, he grabbed onto one of the animal's antlers and dragged it toward the entrance. He looked back at me, smoothing his beard with his free hand.
"There's a stream and small waterfall behind the cave. You can take the jug if you get thirsty again. The container will automatically sterilize the water. If you want to wash in the stream, there's a bar of soap somewhere in my bag. Take the mask with you and don't take it off for long. I'll be back soon."
I nodded, waving half-heartedly to his back as he trotted off. After treating myself to two more pieces of meat and finishing the soup before the fire died out, I took Laz up on his offer. My body felt disgusting. I dug out an unscented bar of soap and headed out to find the waterfall.
The waterfall and stream behind the cave weren't as good as the lake by Grandma Molly's house, but they were something. I stretched my arms behind me, attempting to scratch an obnoxious itch hovering in an impossible-to-reach spot. Failing, I groaned. I looked around to see if anyone was watching me. There was absolutely no one around me. I took off the mask, stripped off my clothes, and placed them on a boulder next to the falling water.
I grabbed the soap and braced myself before stepping into the water. It was freezing! I stood shivering in the water until my body adjusted to the temperature. Taking the bar of soap, I whipped my wet hair out of my face and started to scrub myself down. The water instantly relieved the itch on my back.
I thought I might never feel clean again, but I was getting there. I rubbed the soap on my head and started lathering it into my hair.
As I set down the bar of soap, I thought I heard the crackle of a twig. My eyes flew open. I gazed around me, but there was nobody there. Sighing, I cursed under my breath and went back to washing my hair. My fatigue was starting to play tricks on me.
Or was there someone else out here with us?
Chapter Seven
LAZ
One of the heels on Gabriella's shoes had broken off while she was running. I was no shoemaker, but the only other person around wasn't one either. I thought I would be able to rig up something with an animal pelt to piece together a pair of slippers for her. They weren't anything you would see in a fashion show, but I was able to put laces into the opening, so she could adjust them, at least.
Apart from the shoes, I brought along some whittling tools to create any additional hand weapons I would need. I turned the winoa bones into sharp triangles which could function as arrowheads or knives. We would get more than food from the kill.
When I was finished creating weapons of destruction, my hands stunk to the heavens. I laid my tools out on the ground and set out to find a stream and rinse the smell off my fingers. The walk back up the trail felt longer than the climb down.
I knew the wildlife was the same in either direction, but it felt like I was fending off a different species of insect each step of the way. Earlier, I had to catch myself from falling backward when a four-headed magfly the size of my thumb buzzed past my face. The insects were big, but they were slow and lazy. This planet had so many problems even its insects were deformed and diseased. Every moment I was here helped me understand why my Maztek ancestors had decided to leave Xylox and form a new civilization on a different planet.
I reached the top of the trail. As I stuck out my hands to balance myself, I stopped. A mask and a small mountain of women's clothes covered the stone I was about to grab. I squinted at the waterfall and stopped moving when I saw what was under it.
Gabriella stood, water rushing over her body, and she was completely naked. She faced away from me. I imagined her eyes were closed. I watched her fingers weave through her hair as she washed away the bubbles. My eyes dropped down to the smooth curves of her round, squeezable ass. The sight took my cock by surprise, too. It swelled and began poking its tip against my thigh.
A guilty flush covered my cheeks. I moved away from the rock and started walking away from Gabriella. I knew I shouldn't look, but my saluting member wanted me to go into the water with her.
I searched my mind for all the tactics I once used to ward off erections from when I was an adolescent. First, I computed random mathematical equations in my head. That shield turned out to be useless when the side-view image of Gabriella's hot body snuck back into my thoughts. I had caught sight of her puffy, pink nipples for a second. Her breasts weren't gigantic, but they were beautifully shaped. I reached into the waistband of my pants to adjust my throbbing cock.
Cracking my neck, I tried to distract myself again. I attempted to recall the names of the forty-two states on Maztek. Fallgold, Marblemere, Starryedge, Hollowbrook, Zumleigh... I wasn't sure what it was about the thumb-sized heart tattooed on Gabriella's right hip, but it was absurdly sexy. She had a great pair of legs, too. Those muscular thighs and shapely calves looked even better soaking wet. I stopped moving and started to imagine what her legs would look like wrapped around my neck.
I rubbed at my temples, grunting. What was the matter with me? I was a grown male – these lustful thoughts should have been in my past. The last time I felt this uncomfortably aroused was over twenty years ago.
She was technically my wife, and we had both signed off on a TerraMates marriage certificate that finalized our wedding. Even so, there was something inexplicably unethical about watching Gabriella when she was most vulnerable. I suppose my father and his father, my Upa, contributed to my guilt. From an early age, they explained to me in exquisite detail what they would do to me if I were to disrespect a woman.
But more importantly, I was nothing but a stranger to her.
I knew there was a chance that she might have been cleaning, but I assumed she would be washing her feet or arms. The last thing I imagined was her being nude out in the middle of the woods. Why would she think it was a good idea to be naked in enemy territory? My eyes rolled up to the heavens. I had been in the company of Gabriella for less than two days, but her erratic and unpredictable decisions were already starting to drive me up the wall.
The thought triggered the memory of Marshall Hathaway. He was the only other human I had ever known. Up until this point, I presumed the majority of Earthlings were level-headed and pragmatic by nature, as he was. Apart from Upa and my father, Marshall was the only other man who ever gave a damn about me.
As for my mother, I never knew the lady and didn't care to learn more about her. She had disappeared soon after I was born and never returned. I was raised by Upa and my father until they were both killed in the Fallgold incident twenty-five years ago.
Marshall was part of a small community of humans stationed on Maztek. The man was intelligent and sincere, which garnered the respect of Upa and my father. The three had met a couple of years before I was born. The way I heard it, they became instant friends.
Even though Marshall was not a fighter, he always accompanied them when they went out on the field. He risked his life numerous times in different Xylo war zones tending to injured warriors. When the frequency of the Xylo attacks decreased, he dedicated his time to helping Maztek in impoverished villages afflicted with mysterious and debilitating diseases.
When my blood family perished in the Fallgold battle, Marshall made sure to check on me when he could. He never tried to refill the hole Upa and my father left in my life, but he acknowledged it existed. That was all I needed. The visits were brief, but they remained some of the most pleasant memories I had.
In a cruel twist of fate, Marshall died a horrible death under the hand of Synic. Synic had taken command in place of his father, Dyron, who perished in Fallgold. Thirsting for blood and having something to prove, Synic executed Marshall when he refused to give up information he knew about the Maztek forces.
The deaths of all three males in my life had a long-lasting effect on me. I knew I needed to be the one to take down those Xylo sons of bitches. I joined a military academy funded by Maztek royalty and began training at the age
of fifteen.
I made a left turn, heading back to camp. Now that I was thinking about Marshall, I remembered one time I had seen his composure challenged. The man had a reputation for a consistently chipper mood and the ability to keep calm under pressure, making him respected by most Maztek. His exterior remained stoic and calm through Upa and my father's death, but it was finally put to the test two months after Fallgold.
Treating thousands of dying Maztek civilians had preoccupied him, making him miss the birth of his daughter. At the time, he hadn't seen me, but I was lurking in the back of the stock room when he burst inside on one of his breaks. Not knowing what to do, I hid behind one of the massive containers.
Without warning, I saw the person I knew as an unbreakable, happy-go-lucky man collapse on the ground. He sobbed more than I had ever seen any grown man cry. The sound of helpless emotion in his voice was unforgettable.
I suppose even he had a breaking point.
Maybe I needed to rethink my strategy with Gabriella. At this stage, I hoped an open-minded approach would work. It would be in both of our best interests if I put in the effort to make her journey to a foreign, war-torn planet a little more pleasant.
It was an uncomfortable feeling. I had been looking for my naima for many years. Now that I had the chance for companionship, I realized I was unprepared. It was like being a rookie all over again. I could only rely on what I knew – to improvise, conquer, and overcome whatever situation came my way.
I wasn't sure what to do, but I knew I didn't want to scare her away forever.
As I inched closer to the cave, something made me halt in my tracks. I moved into a crouch and concealed myself behind the trunk of a tree. The pungent odor of rotting fruit drifted down from above, penetrating the rag on my face and burning in my nose. I fixed the rag's knot behind my head and put my hands on the tree trunk as I looked at our camp from a distance.
A pair of Xylo hitchhikers hobbled out of the cave on their hands and feet. One carried winoa meat in his pockets and under his arms. The other had his hands full with a pot of bone stock.
One Xylo had a green eye and a brown one. He barked to his companion in a high-pitched local dialect. The other screeched in agreement. The pair moved east toward an inclined path.
They were headed straight for the waterfall and Gabriella.
Chapter Eight
GABRIELLA
"Crap!" I caught the square of soap just before it slipped through my fingers. My lips broke out into a grin at my small victory, but I embraced it. It was the first genuine smile that had crossed my face since my arrival on this godforsaken planet. I rubbed the wrinkled tips of my fingers with my other hand. My quick shower had taken much longer than had intended.
I set the soap down on a rock and moved into the path of falling water to rinse off one final time. A soft pop sounded from my back as I bent forward to wash the lather off my legs.
What occurred next happened so fast, it caught me completely off-guard.
The noise of sudden, rushed movement filled my ears. My fingertips were moved from my calves in one swift motion. A pair of sweaty, hulking arms closed in over me and tackled me to the ground.
To a bystander, it all happened within a few seconds, but it felt like the moment lasted forever. I flopped around like a struggling fish out of water, trying to get a look at my attacker.
"Laz? I was just relaxing! And I'm naked!"
He rolled me on top of him and hooked his feet over my ankles to prevent any movement. He used his arms to prevent my limbs from flailing.
"Be quiet," he whispered. "We're not alone."
He had his hand over my mouth, so it wasn't like I could say anything. His fingers stunk. No matter how much he washed, he wouldn't be able to clean himself from the stench of the winoa kill. Was he trying to have his way with me?
"Damn it, Gabriella. Stop struggling. And try not to make any noise!"
"Mmmphhh!" Every instinct I had told me to move away and hide. I didn't know what to do, but I didn't want to be here. Maybe I hadn't recovered from the crash landing. My mind was aflutter, and I couldn't think straight.
All I knew was that I needed to get myself out of this situation. I wanted to survive. I was not going to let myself be captured again.
I bared my teeth frantically and positioned them over the flesh between his thumb and his index finger. I had my mouth open, ready to bite down and run when two figures crept into the side of my view. I turned to look at the new sight.
It was two Xylo. I guess we weren't alone after all.
One was female. Her thinning and unwashed hair hung in loose clumps over the back of her enlarged head. The male Xylo's left eye nearly made my meal of winoa meat come back up my throat. His eye had yellow gunk and was half-eaten by chubby maggots that appeared to have set up a permanent residence in his skull. They looked malnourished, and their oversized clothing made them look bony as well. Dirt covered the backs of their necks and their faces were marked with multiple scabs.
I felt muscles start to relax slowly. Laz had loosened his grip over my mouth the moment I finally stopped resisting. What was more, this whole time, he didn't have an erection. I guess he wasn't trying to rape me after all.
All the pieces quickly fell into place. The thumping of my irregular heartbeat began to slow down to its normal pace.
I turned my attention back to the Xylo intruders. My eyes fell on the familiar pot and sacks of raw pink meat they carried. Behind Laz's hand, my jaw opened. I watched bitterly as the Xylos discarded the delicious soup onto the ground and filled the pot with water. They tipped the rims of the pot toward their faces and caught the water messily with wagging purple tongues. Freeloading seemed to be universal. Why hadn't Laz done anything to stop or scare off these good-for-nothing scavengers?
A tingling sensation arising from my gut disrupted my thoughts. With my nerves finally settling, I abruptly realized I was completely naked. Laz's sweaty chest was pressed up against me. I could feel his heart beating against my back.
Now that I wasn't actively moving away from him, he had switched his hold around my arms. He held my wrists together with his closed fists, but his arms were raised slightly above my heaving breasts. He didn't have a hard-on, but I could still feel the length of his cock through his pants. As he shifted underneath me, my thighs clenched involuntarily. I could feel the solid ridges of his washboard stomach muscles gently brushing against the flesh of my lower back.
I felt the walls of my pussy contracting. Now I was losing control of my body. A dribble of my pussy juices oozed out against my will, lubricating my sex. I couldn't explain the conflicted feelings of arousal pulsing through my body.
The sensation triggered a buzz in my left ear once again, and I could feel my cheeks heating up as they turned pink. Part of me liked how everything felt, but a smarter part of me knew this was neither the place nor time for intimacy.
As luck would have it, an insufferable itch appeared on my ankle.
In my position, all I could do was nudge one ankle against the other and try to rub them together. But as I adjusted my hips, his cock fell into my butt crack. My hips ground against him as I maneuvered to scratch myself. I started to feel his stiffening length swell in the cushion of my cheeks.
"The coast is clear. You can get off me now."
I wonder if you were getting off already, I thought to myself. I rolled off of Laz right away. Glancing to my right between two mossy boulders, I saw the little backs of the retreating aliens. Laz reached for my clothes, turning away as he handed them to me. I grabbed my clothes and dressed with lightning speed before he turned around.
"Are you going to let them get away with our stuff?" I asked him curiously. My forehead wrinkled.
"Affirmative," grunted Laz. He took the bar of soap and started to scrub off the smell from his fingers under the waterfall.
"But why?"
"They're not our enemy," Laz replied without skipping a beat. His eyes remained focused
on his hands, but I thought I could hear a hint of emotion in his tone. "They were just hungry."
The raw honesty in his words made me ashamed I had asked about their future.
"That's a good point. I guess I'm paranoid from my only other Xylo encounter."
"Next time you want to prance around naked in the middle of enemy territory, I suggest you let me know ahead of time. It will be easier for me to take care of you if I know you're going to do something stupid before anything happens."
"Excuse me? I can look after myself, thank you very much. Wait, where are you going?"
"Back to the cave. Where else?"
"There you go. Walking away from me again in the middle of a conversation. No surprise there." I sighed at the sight of Laz's back growing smaller in the distance.
"Thirty-eight...thirty-nine...forty."
The moment my body touched the ground, I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I didn't even move my arms. They were still crossed against my chest as I slowly caught my breath. My calf muscles were starting to get tired. They had been propped up against the wall for over thirty minutes. I placed my fingers into the slight hollows of my abs and examined the work-in-progress.
Satisfied, I swung my legs off the wall and sat up. I reached for my water jug to replenish the sweat I had lost from my workout. With Laz doing his own thing for most of the day, I was left to find ways to entertain myself.
I set the jug down next to me. This boredom was enough to drive anyone to tears. What was I supposed to do around here all day?
I poked around in the open box of supplies Laz left laying around and found a couple of thick, multipurpose bands. Holding the bands between my hands, I pulled them apart to test their durability. I leaned back against the wall and gathered the front part of my hair. As I settled into the silence, I began to braid my hair lazily.
