OUTCAST

by Cheryl Brooks

  “Pretty woman like you shouldn’t have any trouble doing that,” Drummond remarked with a grin.

  “Just in case you haven’t noticed, Drummond, I have a really rotten track record when it comes to men,” Bonnie said ruefully. “I might be able to grow anything that has seeds, but I don’t seem to be capable of finding a good man.”

  “Well, if what I’ve heard about Zetithians is true,” Drummond said, “I’m surprised you don’t have him purring all over you by now.”

  This was more information than she’d gotten from Zuannis, and Bonnie's eyes widened with interest. “They can purr?”

  “Oh, yeah! Never heard one of them do it myself, but Jack says they can—she also said that if other women ever got wind of what else they could do, she’d have to keep Cat locked up on her ship so he wouldn’t get stolen.”

  Judging from Drummond's expression, the “what else” had to be something sexual, which supported what Zuannis had been hinting at.

  “Yeah, well, maybe they aren’t all alike in that respect,” Bonnie said dismissively. She had a feeling that if there was anything sexual about Lynx, she’d certainly never have any firsthand experience with it and hoped that Drummond would stop before he gave her any more clues as to what she might be missing. She decided she wouldn’t ever want to compare notes with Jack or Tisana, either—it would be much too depressing! Perhaps Zuannis was right not to tell her. Changing the subject, she said, “So, did you want anything besides eggs?”

  Drummond chuckled. “Don’t want to talk about it, eh, Bon-bon?” Noting her grimace at his use of her nickname, he added, “I know you don’t like the name, but believe it or not, it did refer to a type of candy at one time—means you’re really sweet, doncha know.” Abandoning the effort and giving her crates a cursory glance, he asked, “Got any avocados yet?”

  Bonnie shook her head, grateful that Drummond had dropped the issue of her name. “Not yet,” she replied cheerfully, despite the fact that she’d already answered that question about fifty times. “The trees are blooming, but they’re still pretty small. I don’t know if they’ll bear fruit this year or not.”

  He nodded. “Well, I want the first crop when you get any,” he said. “Pay you anything you want for them.” Grumbling, he added, “Haven’t had decent guacamole since I left Texas.”

  Bonnie couldn’t help but smile. “If you liked guaca-mole that much, what’d you leave for?”

  “I needed some space!” he replied. “Not enough room left there to breathe! Now I got plenty of space, but no avocados—except what Jack brings once in a blue moon, and they always taste like crap. How was I to know?”

  Due to the planetary regulation against importing live plants, Bonnie had had to grow her plants from seed, and since most of the avocado trees on Earth had been grafted, she knew there was no guarantee that hers would taste decent either. She’d learned that avocado trees didn’t like wind or frost, and though frost was unheard of in the region, they did have a fair amount of wind. With that in mind, she’d planted them on the leeward side of the equipment shed and hoped it would be enough of a windbreak for them to tolerate it, but she also knew that Drummond didn’t want to hear the details; he just wanted his avocados. “You just keep your britches on,” she advised. “When I have any, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Well, just make sure that Zetithian boy doesn’t eat them all,” he said. “He looked pretty hungry to me.”

  “I’ll keep him fed,” she promised. And she silently vowed that she always would—but what she didn’t realize was that he wouldn’t feed himself.

  By the time she returned home, it was late evening, and if there was any food missing out of her pantry, Bonnie certainly couldn’t tell. She was bewildered, and also a little put out with Lynx, because she knew she had made it perfectly clear that he could eat all he wanted while she was gone. Thinking that there might have been some sort of Zetithian taboo about entering someone's home without them being there, whether you had permission or not, she went looking for him.

  The lights were on in the shed, and she found him in there working on the speeder.

  “I’m home,” she announced unnecessarily. “Everything go okay today?”

  “Yes,” he replied, not even looking up.

  “Did you get anything to eat after I left?” she asked.

  “No,” he replied. “I have not… had time.”

  This was completely ridiculous, because Bonnie had worked the farm all by herself for the past three months, and she had always found time to eat. She started to fuss at him, but decided it was pointless. “Well, I’m hungry as a snarkle myself,” she said, “so I’ll fix something real quick and bring it out to you.”

  Lynx didn’t say anything or even nod. Bonnie tried not to see this as being impolite, but it was difficult.

  “Think you can get that thing running again?” she asked doubtfully. “I’ve tried, but I couldn’t fix it the last time it broke down.”

  Lynx pointed to a pile of engine parts on the floor beside him. “Those need to be replaced.”

  “All of those?” she exclaimed incredulously. “Why so many?”

  “The parts are worn out,” he said shortly. “They last much longer if you keep them lubricated.”

  Something in the way he said it led Bonnie to suspect that he didn’t think much of her ability to maintain machinery. This was true, he didn’t, but the repairs had given him something to do while she was gone.

  “I did,” she said defensively. “But I don’t think the previous owner bothered with it. We got it real cheap when we first came here.”

  What he thought of that, Lynx never said, and having stood there for a moment trying in vain to come up with something else to say, Bonnie finally gave up trying to talk to him and went in to fix dinner.

  Lynx hadn’t been fibbing when he’d said he was busy, but that he had been too busy to eat was a blatant lie. His stomach was growling so loudly, he was surprised she hadn’t heard it. The truth was that he’d approached the house more than once with every intention of entering and getting something to eat, but the feeling that Bonnie had been lying when she told him to help himself to her food prevented him. He’d been trapped into doing stupid things before and had been punished. Severely. He had to have permission to eat and only after the women he served were finished. Sometimes they forgot to tell him, but subsequent days of starvation had taught him to know his place, and he hadn’t forgotten. He reminded himself that his situation was different now, and that he was not Bonnie's slave, but old habits often die hard, and there are some wounds that never heal.

  Chapter 5

  IT WAS COMPLETELY DARK BY THE TIME DINNER WAS ready, so instead of yelling for Lynx, Bonnie took a plate out to the shed. He was still working on the speeder, so she just set his food on the table, knowing he wouldn’t eat it until she was gone anyway.

  “Thank you for doing that,” she said with a gesture toward the speeder. “You didn’t have to. I gave up on it a long time ago.”

  Lynx nodded curtly, and Bonnie couldn’t decide whether to burst into tears or kick him in the ass. In the end, deciding that she was too tired and hungry to do either one, she went back to the house to her own lonely meal.

  Waiting until the door closed behind her, Lynx wiped his hands on a rag and approached the table. He didn’t know what it was, but it certainly smelled good. He’d had nothing to eat since breakfast, and he was as hungry as he’d ever been—perhaps even more so, because he knew that what he would be eating would be better than most meals he’d ever had.

  He was right. It was delicious. The vegetables had been cooked in a creamy sauce that was so orgasmic in nature that if his testicles still worked, he was sure he would have ejaculated. But, as it was, the experience was purely mental.

  Lynx felt a sudden wave of shame pass over him. How Bonnie would mock him if she ever knew of his impotence! His skin crawled at the mere thought of it, and he vowed that she would never get close enoug
h to him to discover his secret. Never. And he would never let himself become indebted to her in any way. He would work as hard as he could and take the pay she owed him and the food she gave him, but he would accept nothing else and would owe her no favors—no matter how beautiful she was. She will not control me. I am a free man. With that litany running through his mind, he went back to work on the speeder.

  He might have told himself he was free, but that night his sleep was troubled with dreams of his past, and he awoke wondering when, or if, they would ever cease. The huge shed was dark and silent, but his sharp eyes would have been able to see anyone who entered, just as Bonnie had walked in on him that first day. He tried to put it out of his mind, but couldn’t shake the idea that if he had beckoned to her—just smiled at her—she would have helped him make his bed—might even have lain down beside him and… And what? Mated with him? There was a time when he would have given anything to be loved by so beautiful and kind a woman. But that time had passed. There was no going back.

  A few days later, Bonnie was already heading out to feed the animals before she remembered that she had Lynx to do that for her now. So instead of feeding the enocks, she dragged out her sewing machine and the fabric her mother had sent with her—five years ago, now—and looked at some of the patterns she’d thrown in along with the machine.

  Most of the patterns were for women's clothing, but there were some that had been intended for Sylor. Bonnie examined them thoughtfully. Lynx was taller and thinner than Sylor, but she figured she could adapt the pattern easily enough. She worked on it for a couple of hours, and then did some weeding in the herb beds around the house before going out to check on the fruit trees.

  Her fruit trees had done well thus far, though she was pretty sure this was due to the fact that the native soil didn’t harbor the same microbes as Earth's soil did— either that, or they just hadn’t found her trees yet. She had apples, pears, plums, and peaches in addition to Drummond's avocados. The berries were blooming, too, and if all went well, she would have a good crop to make jam. Few people were willing to take the time to make jam anymore, but they certainly enjoyed eating it, so Bonnie had never had any trouble making money from her fruit. She hadn’t branched out beyond the standard types that were grown on Earth, but was well aware that there was a whole galaxy full of exotic fruits just waiting for her to plant. Unfortunately, planetary regulations prohibited anything that might take over and become a weed. Bonnie always chuckled whenever she thought of those misinformed officials, because if they’d truly known their fruit, they would never have let her plant blackberries!

  After checking on the fruit, Bonnie tilled up a new spot in the garden and planted radishes, broccoli, and basil. The best part about the climate on Terra Minor was that the growing season lasted year-round, and you could pretty much plant anything anytime you liked. There were a few plants that didn’t grow well in the rainy season, but others thrived, and Bonnie had an irrigation system to tide them over during the dry spells. She and Sylor had dug a pond next to the equipment shed so that the gutters could divert the rain that fell on the roof into the pond to be conserved, and there was also a pump and hose system to water the garden. It was primitive, and though the grain fields had their own irrigation system, the idea of catching the water when it was plentiful seemed more natural and environmentally friendly to her than drilling into the ground for it.

  Lynx had been working on the harvester droid that morning and hadn’t mentioned anything about engine lubrication, so Bonnie concluded that her maintenance of it must have met with his approval. After lunch, she asked him to help her in the garden and showed him what plants were weeds and what were not, before leaving him to work by himself while she went back to her sewing.

  Sometime during the afternoon it occurred to her that, while he might never use her bathroom to take a shower, he might want a towel, so she took him a toothbrush, a towel, some soap, and a cup, and put everything in a spare crate. While she was there, she couldn’t help but notice his pack sitting on the table. What would a man like that carry with him? She knew he didn’t have any other clothes, but what else would he have? Pictures of friends and family? A knife and a fork? Bonnie had no idea, but knew that his belongings were private and to search through them would have been intrusive. She left his pack untouched, but her thoughts still lingered on him.

  What did he do out there all alone each night? Was he so exhausted that he fell asleep immediately, or did he lie awake thinking about happier times? She looked down at his pallet in the corner of the floor and was instantly assailed with the mental image of Lynx sprawled on the blankets, his naked body uncovered and his rock-hard cock glistening as he slid his fist up and down the shaft. She could almost see the slick, engorged head, imagine the tightening of his balls as he came, and the spurt of semen splattering across his chest. Bonnie's breath caught in her throat as she felt a tingling ache between her thighs. It's just because I’m pregnant, she told herself firmly. I’m not really attracted to him… I can’t be! This is nothing but the effect of raging hormones… isn’t it?

  Shaking off the vision, Bonnie left the shed, promising herself that she would never again let herself fall victim to such disturbing thoughts, but they persisted, triggering other memories—what Drummond had said about the Zetithians, Zuannis's strangely evasive manner, how much Jack and Tisana adored their husbands, and why she was so determined to be kind to Lynx, regardless of his surly behavior. There was a reason for that… something about Zetithians. Lynx was different in many ways, but still…

  Returning to the house, Bonnie noticed Lynx out by the enock pen, standing a little too close to them for safety and actually feeding them by hand. She considered chastising him for taking such a risk when she saw what he was doing. He was feeding them a dead rat.

  Bonnie had known there were rats and mice living in the shed, the other side of which housed the grain she kept from the last harvest to feed to the chickens and enocks, but she’d never managed to eradicate them. Apparently Lynx had had better luck.

  As Bonnie approached, Lynx looked up warily, as though expecting a reprimand, or at the very least, a heated argument.

  “Sure they won’t bite you?” she remarked casually.

  “No,” he replied, “they have not tried to harm me.”

  Lulling him into a false sense of security, Bonnie decided. Then they would strike. “Well, just be careful,” she cautioned him, not wanting to imagine what horrible gashes she might have to seal up if one of them were to tear into Lynx the way they were tearing into the rats he’d dropped over the fence. “Where’d you get the rats?”

  “They have been eating the grain,” he replied. “I am catching them.”

  “Enocks like them, huh?”

  “The birds are carnivores,” he said bluntly. “They like meat better than grain.”

  “Omnivores, actually,” she corrected him. “They were researched pretty well before anyone settled here.”

  “Their beaks are made for tearing meat,” Lynx insisted, obviously not believing that the biologists who’d studied them knew what they were talking about.

  “But they do like fruit,” Bonnie pointed out. “When Sylor and I were trying to catch them, seemed like they were always under a rabasha tree eating the fruit.”

  “They will eat fruit if there is nothing else,” Lynx said, his tone still curt, “but they prefer meat.”

  Bonnie wondered if Lynx felt the same way. The food she’d given him had been primarily plant-based; perhaps he was trying to tell her something. The enocks certainly seemed happy, and Bonnie had about decided to trade her eggs for beef next time, rather than the usual butter and cheese, when she noticed an odd sound. At first she thought it was coming from the birds. Listening more closely, she realized that it wasn’t the birds, but Lynx, and he was purring. Apparently, Drummond hadn’t been kidding about that.

  “Well, feed them all the rats you like,” she said, trying not to display her fascination w
ith the way he purred. It was a very soothing sound, and obviously the enocks liked it, too. “How are you catching them?”

  “They are easily trapped,” he replied, and said no more.

  Obviously he wasn’t going to let her in on his secret. Bonnie had tried to trap them herself, but for a species that hadn’t been around humans for eons like the rats of Earth, they were still pretty cagey. They were supposedly an indigenous variety, but they looked pretty much like any other rat Bonnie had ever seen, and they acted like them too. Maybe Lynx was catching them in self-defense—yet another reason she’d have preferred that he not live in the shed—and ought to have been enough to make him want to sleep somewhere else as well. In case he was regretting his original decision, Bonnie suggested carelessly, “Well, if you decide you can’t sleep with them running around in there, you can always sleep in the house.”

  “No,” he said. Which was just what she expected him to say. She thought that perhaps he was like Drummond and needed the space. There was certainly plenty of that in the shed; the harvester droid was huge, dwarfing the rest of her equipment, and it took a large building to house it.

  “Suit yourself,” she said with a shrug. “I wouldn’t want to sleep out there, but that's up to you.”

  Shaking her head, Bonnie turned and went back to the house to finish making his pants. The length was a guess, because if the way he avoided any kind of contact with her—physical or otherwise—was any indication, she knew he would never let her measure his inseam! In fact, since that first day when he had carried her into the house and bound up her arm, they hadn’t even been close enough to shake hands.

  While she worked, the purring sound he’d made stole into Bonnie's thoughts. What would it feel like to kiss him while he was purring? Her mind made the leap, and she could feel his soft, wet lips as he delved inside her mouth with his hot tongue, the sensuous vibrations driving her wild. It was only one tiny step further to imagine him caressing her nipples with his lips and tongue while he purred—or his tongue on her tingling clitoris, teasing and driving her to new heights of rapturous delight.