“What you need?” Something burbled up inside of her, a desperate hysteria, and she laughed. “Women?”
The laughter spilled out, big whooping peals of laughter. This was all surreal, too ridiculous to be true. Bad drugs, bad trip. Really bad trip. She sagged against the table.
Through a film of laugh-induced tears she looked at Taso. He was frowning, almost looked angry. He pushed away from the table, crossing the short space to the bed. Then he was back, standing in front of her.
“Stop…that. Stop.”
For a minute she thought he was going to slap her, and she bit back the next wave of laughter. Something caught in her throat, and she swallowed hard, coughing again.
“Don’t…”
“I’m just laughing. Don’t you like the sound of someone losing her grip on reality?”
He was inches from her, breathing hard. She looked from the scar on his chest, up to his face, into his eyes. For a moment, he looked as though he were actually hurt by her words. Then something dropped over his gaze, and she was staring into cold eyes. She wondered…
“I’m not laughing at you, if that’s what you think.”
For an instant he held her gaze and then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, the guarded look left his eyes. His brow smoothed out, and the corner of his lip turned up in what might pass for a smile. He nodded.
“We laugh like that at our enemies. Laugh when we kill them. Laugh…” He shook his head in obvious confusion. “I think you laugh for a different reason. I didn’t want you to laugh at me, laugh as if I were your enemy.”
She took a ragged breath. “Listen…Taso? Listen, you have to know whatever this is isn’t easy for me. I’ve been taken from my home…” She jerked her thumb at the window. “And if what you say is true, then I’ve really been taken from my home. My home planet.”
He stared at her for a minute, then nodded. “Fine. You may laugh, if it helps you understand.” He made a motion with his hand. “Laugh. Please…”
“I can’t just turn it on and off, you know.” Her knees suddenly felt weak. She pushed past him to sit on the bed. It occurred to her that maybe this was true, this was her reality. She had really been abducted by aliens.
Taso sat beside her, reached out and touched her hand. She jerked her hand away, but he took her hand in his. She let him hold it, simply because fighting with him would probably only complicate things.
“You are the first of your planet—of Earth—that I have talked to this way. You are different than the others.” He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “They bring back women for breeding. I don’t see them, except when they unload the ship, and then at Clan rituals, of course.”
She managed to hold back a little giggle. “If you were looking for breeding stock, you got a bad batch this time.” The image of the skinny models rose up, skinny models who probably had eating disorders. And no periods. “You might just as well take them back.”
Taso shook his head. “They’ll be given homes, mates… they will be celebrated, treated well. We are a virile race.” There was more than a touch of male pride in his voice. “You’ll see.”
“But why? Why take us in the first place?”
He drew a deep breath. “Our world is in a state of constant war. Clans fight against Clans. Our women fight alongside the men. And they die alongside them.”
“Well, there you go. If you didn’t let them fight…”
It was his turn to laugh, a small sound, like he was out of practice. “Try to keep them from fighting. They are the first in battle and the last to leave. They are warriors. Like you. Except I will not allow you to fight. You will become far too important to my Clan’s survival.”
“But I’m not a warrior. I’m just a bike messenger.”
He ignored that. “You have the body of a warrior. The spirit of a fighter. You are like me whether you choose to believe it or not.”
She shook her head. “I’m not. Really. I mean, I fight…”
His face broke into a wide smile. “I was right. You cannot hide the truth. Tell me. Do you kill many enemies?”
She thought back to the morning in the gym. “No. I don’t kill them. I don’t really have enemies. I have…” She thought about Red, about the look in his eyes as he waited for her in the ring. “I have guys who want to take me down a notch before they think they can ask me out.”
“Take down a notch…” She heard the question in his voice.
“Take the fight out of me, I guess. Beat me. You know, in a fight.” She raised her hand, making a fist, throwing a mock punch.
“Yeah, I understand that. But what do you mean when you say… ‘ask you out?’”
She realized he was still holding her hand. And for a startling instant, she realized she really didn’t want to pull hers away. That scared her, more than he did. And how she felt unnerved her further. There was a certain sensation of having an anchor point in all this chaos, holding hand. At least now that he’d stopped trying to fight with her.
“It means to take someone out on a date…” He shook his head at that. She waved her free hand. “Never mind. In my case it usually meant they just wanted to have sex with me.”
The raised eyebrow and the flash of interest in his eyes made her smile. His voice was low when he spoke. “I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing.”
“Which? The fighting or the sex?”
“Both.”
His hand was warm, solid, and right now the only thing that was keeping her moored to her sanity. She squeezed back, despite thinking she was absolutely insane to feel remotely comfortable with her captor. She thought back to all the cheesy paranormal romance stories that she had read, and growled at herself. She was not going to be one of those women who fall head over heels for the asshole, by chapter three. Even if what he said ended up being true – that he really was an alien. A very sexy, possessive alien, for that matter.
She pulled her hand away from his.
“So your world, they fight all the time? That must be hard?”
His shrug was non-committal. “It is the way it’s been for as long as anyone remembers. No one knows a different life.” His fingers tensed against hers. “I would like for life to be different. I would like for the Clans to stop fighting…for there to be one rule, one Clan…or many little Clans, but one leader.” He was fidgeting now, uneasy. “No one believes it can happen.”
“But you do?”
“I do.”
“Is that what you fight for? Back on your planet?”
“It is.” He lifted his hand to hers once again, and for a minute she thought he was going to kiss her knuckles. He held her hand, looking at it as if he wasn’t quite sure whether to be so close. Then he turned and looked directly into her eyes.
“And I fight with you because you…how you would say. You make me want to ask you out.”
She did laugh then, and it wasn’t from hysteria or panic. “That’s not how it’s supposed to…oh, never mind. I get what you mean. Do you always fight with your women before you have sex with them?”
“We fight because we’re strong, and we like that in our mates. I like women who are strong…warriors. And I like someone who is my equal, who will stand by my side through life’s tribulations.” Then he did kiss her hand, teeth hard against her knuckles. It was anything but gentle, and she was certain she’d have a bruise on her hand tomorrow.
Tomorrow…
“How long does it take to get wherever we’re going?”
“It takes several days. Normally you’d be asleep. We put the…women in a light hyper-sleep so they don’t…worry.”
“If you were any more careful in choosing your words I’d think you were a politician.”
He made a non-committal noise, ignoring her words. “I could offer you that, have you take the drugs and sleep until we land.” She saw something in his eyes that told her he’d much prefer her to be awake.
She thought about that for a minute. Sleep, drugged, waking grog
gy and disoriented in a strange new world. Maybe without Taso there. Being awake with him seemed somehow less dangerous than being out for the count…helpless and even more vulnerable.
“No. That’s okay. I think I’d rather stay awake for whatever is going to happen. I’m not a fan of checking out of situations, especially ones where I’m being taken away on a space ship by aliens.”
Abruptly Taso let go of her hand and stood. He crossed to the little window, looked out for a minute, then slid the metal back over the opening. For a long minute he stood with his back to her. Without turning, he spoke.
“I came along on this mission for one reason only. To find a mate. A woman with warrior spirit, but who won’t insist on being on the battlefield…” She heard him breath out a sigh. “I want a woman to fight through the path of life with me, but not on the battlefield. A strong warrior who will bear my children, and help ensure the survival of my Clan. I want strength of mind, body, and of spirit.”
When he turned, his eyes had darkened, looking almost black as he gazed at her. Her breath went shallow and fast, and she swallowed hard. Somewhere along the line, she’d started noticing little details, the scars, the dark eyes and black brows. But she’d never put all those details together. She did now: the black hair shot with silver in the front. Obviously the scars…there were others on his back that ran in cross-crosses over his skin. The width of his shoulders, the narrowness of his hips. She swallowed again. This was crazy. Admiring a man who’d kidnapped her was wrong. It was easier to chalk all that up to the drugs in her system.
“And you have that, Max. You have the strength I’m looking for. For a mate, and for my Clan.” One brow twitched up. “You are a pleasure to look at. And I would imagine back on your Planet, you were a formidable opponent to fight.”
She wasn’t really sure how to answer that. She was still certain he was crazy, and that all of this was some really huge mistake, or misunderstanding. Or a really elaborate practical joke. Or she’d wake up and discover it really was a bad dream.
“Clan.” She wasn’t why that word surfaced, but she didn’t understand what he was talking about.
He looked at her, then nodded. She went on.
“You keep saying Clan. Like what kind of Clan? Native American or…a religious sect, or something?”
“My Clan…the Lethian Clan?”
It was her turn to nod, still confused. He went on.
“We’re not Native Americans…whatever those are. Nor are our Clans based in religion. We are shifters, all of us, every Clan. Ours is ursine. I think you humans call them…bears.”
Chapter Five
A wave of dizziness made everything in the room spin. This was too much; she’d maybe, just maybe, gotten it through her head that she’d been abducted by aliens. Now, Taso was trying to tell her he was a… she thought he’d said…bears?
“A what? The thing with the bear…tell me that again?”
“A shifter.” The tone of his voice told her that this was common knowledge, that everyone knew who and what shifters were. “We shift from this form into another.”
“You shift.” That made no sense, grammatically, functionally, in any way. “I have no idea what that even means. And when you add a bear into that, you’ve lost me. Completely.”
He hesitated, then sat back down beside her. Clearly he was intrigued, if not a little bemused. “You have nothing like that in your world?”
She shook her head. “Not in the least. I mean, yes, we have bears, but not… shifters. Unless you count sci-fi movies and books. But it’s all fiction. It is fiction, right?”
“In your world, maybe. In mine, it is normal.”
“And by shift…you mean you change into something else? A bear?” The man was seriously telling her he could change into a bear.
“Yes.” It was said matter-of-factly. “My Clan is a bear Clan.”
“So, if you’re a bear Clan, then what are the other Clans? The ones you fight with.” Saying the words felt a little strange, but she went on. “Are they also bear Clans?”
“Not all. There are tigers, lions, bears, wolves…”
“Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my…” She breathed the words in a whisper. Another wave of giggles threatened to erupt, but this was beyond laughter. Her mind was coming unhinged, her emotions frayed. Maybe his offer of drugs wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
“I can’t really handle much more of what you have to tell me. I was almost ready to accept alien abduction by someone who was relatively human. Taking me as a mate…well, that’s the least crazy thing you’ve said so far. But this shifter stuff…” She waved her hand. “I’m not sure I can hear what else you have to say.”
“When we land, you’ll see, and then you’ll understand. It’s difficult to shift here, in this small space. Or I would show you that I am telling the truth. I have these…” He put a hand over the scars on his chest. “We have the ability to heal rapidly, but sometimes we end up with really deep sounds and they don’t heal the same. These are from a battle a long time ago.”
She’d lost the train of his conversation. He’d said landing.
Landing. That meant on his planet. None of this was making sense. There weren’t any planets close to Earth. Spaceships didn’t just appear out of the blue, and abduct women and then vanish. That would have been all over the internet, trending on Facebook, everyone posting pictures or selfies with a spaceship in the background.
“How exactly do you keep taking women without anyone seeing you? Someone must have seen you?”
This made him smile. “I’d explain it to you, but I’m not sure you’d understand. We have the ability to travel great distances, from our planet to yours, very quickly. To other planets. And we have the ability to take those we want without being noticed.” At this, he smiled. “You were the one I wanted…the rest were taken rather accidentally. That happens, unfortunately.”
“I was…targeted? What do you mean?”
“Yes, when we decided the proximity in which to land, I saw you… and I wanted you more than anything.”
Veronica gasped, her eyes darting to her feet, as though she had any hope of making a run for it. She shrugged. This was all insane.
“Your planet is close, and…” His smile widened. “You have a large number of people, and many of them are women, but when we landed, all I could see is you.”
She thought of the crowded streets in New York, the sheer amount of humanity she had to deal with every day. Three models and a bike messenger wasn’t going to make much of a dent. Taso and his ship could show up once a week, and it was likely that no one would notice. Chalk it up to muggings, non-alien kidnappings, someone just running away, moving away…all of them gone missing could be explained in some way.
Then she thought about Gus, and her job, wondered if anybody had missed her. Her job, obviously, because she hadn’t checked in, still had packages in her messenger bag. But they wouldn’t worry about her. Gus would worry, and that made her eyes fill with tears.
Taso touched her hand. She hardly ever cried, never in front of anyone if she could help it, and this was a stranger, one who had abducted her. A man who believed he was an alien shifter, out to bolster the reproductive health of his war-torn planet.
The lunatic actually thinks he’s an alien…a shifter.
The last of her reserves were gone, played out, and she gave in to exhaustion, and fear, and the crash from the adrenaline she’d been running on for the last however long she’d been awake. Tears fell, and she dropped her head into her hands. The fleeting thought that Taso would view crying as being weak passed through her mind, but she didn’t really give a damn what he thought.
His arm against her shoulders startled her, and she stiffened, pulling away, but his pull was stronger than her resistance, and she found herself pressed against his chest. She didn’t want to be here, in this little room, in the arms of this…whatever he was. An alien shifter. It was absolutely crazy. She wanted to push aw
ay, fight…she choked out a little laugh through her tears. Fighting for him, wasn’t fighting for her. Or maybe it was.
It was too hard to think about it. None of it made sense, but the warmth of his body, the pressure of his arm around her shoulders. That did make sense. It was simple, familiar. At least he hugged like a human.
They sat for a long time, and eventually her tears came to an end. She sniffed, thinking she should sit up, move away. She was going to give him the wrong impression, but it was easier to sit here, easier to keep her head against his chest—eyes closed—than to move away.
“You are brave, Max. And strong. You will understand after a time.”
“I’m not really sure that’s ever going to happen.” She lifted her head. “You have to know this is really hard for me to understand, first being abducted, then being told my captor is an alien shifter. Then that part about being your mate…” She managed a small laugh. “That’s probably the only thing that makes any sense. That a guy would want to kidnap a woman for…for sex…for companionship.”
He laughed, a soft sound. “I can see that some of this may be hard.” Then the laughter stopped. “You are the first woman to challenge me, either by fighting, or by questioning what I have done. And what I say. The women…” He made a movement with his hand. “They submit, they are docile, even though they are healthy women with real bodies. Curves and muscles and flesh on their bones. They give us children, new shifters to continue to fight and, sadly, to die. But they do not fight themselves. They do not have the spirit I see in you.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted…women to give you more children, not women who fight.”
“The men on my planet want that. They need that. But I…well, I want something more. I want…” He set his fingers under her chin, turning her face to his. “I want a woman who will be fierce and passionate, who will give me children, and who will be by my side when night falls, in my arms. I want an equal.”
He kissed her, and for all the world, she knew she should pull away. She did not want to be kissed by this man…this crazy shifter person.
Dark Side Of The Moon (BBW Paranormal Were-Bear Shifter Sci-Fi Romance) Page 4
