Beyond the Next Star

by Melody Johnson

  He let her go for the moment, not wanting to provide unnecessary entertainment for his guard by chasing her through the hallway, although Lorien knew they needed something to break the horrible tension. They didn’t want a new commander, they said. They were loyal to him and him alone. They would spit in the eye of the Lore’Lorien herself if she replaced him, and they would spit in the eye of whomever she replaced him with. But the doubt in their expressions said otherwise. Sure, they still saluted him as befitting his rank. They spoke the words he wanted to hear, but their eyes spoke a different truth, and those unspoken words echoed in his own thoughts: maybe Dorai Nikiok Lore’Lorien was right. Maybe he wasn’t fit to lead them anymore.

  Granted, Nikiok hadn’t spoken those words aloud, but he could see the uncertainty in her eyes too. If her most recent command, approving Shemara Kore’Onik’s recommendation that he obtain an animal companion to facilitate his mental recovery, wasn’t undeniable proof of her doubt, he didn’t know what was. He combed his claws though the too-long hair under his chin. He didn’t have the means to prove himself worthy of their continued loyalty yet, but by the strength and pride of his father, his grandfather, and the legacy of their many forefathers, he could prove himself fit to lead one tiny female human to warmth and cleanliness. That he could do today—this very minute, in fact.

  He turned off the teleprojector and stalked calmly from the room. She was still in the hallway, jiggling the lever of a locked door. Her head jerked up sharply at his approach, and she limped farther down the hall, trying and failing to open doors as she went. Torek continued his slow stalk, allowing her to run. All the rooms in this wing south of the washroom were living quarters, the doors of which he knew were locked. Every single one of them. Hopefully, she tired and, in her injured state, lost her resolve, so when the real battle began, she wouldn’t fight him as ardently as he suspected she otherwise would.

  Eventually, Reshna ran out of doors and hope. She stood in front of the linen closet at the far end of the hallway, cornered and shaking. She was cradling her arm against her now blood-smeared yenok and still favoring her left leg.

  “Easy, girl.” He was nearly in arm’s reach of her. “I know you’re hurting, but I won’t hurt you. Just—”

  She ducked under his arm. He feinted left, she jumped to his right, and he snagged her around the waist. She released a truly pitiful, high-pitched moan, but it didn’t matter how she fought or whined, he wasn’t letting go. She was cold and dirty and scared, and since he couldn’t fix any of the problems in his life at the moment, he was damn sure going to fix the problems in hers.

  He clamped her hands to her sides, lifted her onto his hip, and carried her, wriggling and kicking, back up the hallway to the washroom. He shut the door again but locked it this time, careful to block her view, so she wouldn’t see how the mechanism worked and learn to spring herself loose. Not that she was interested in him or the lock at the moment. She began bucking and flailing in earnest as he approached the bath. Her eyes round with terror, they snapped from him to the water and back to him.

  Had he misread her manual? Was she allergic to water too? Or perhaps it wasn’t something that her manual could cover. Perhaps her fear of water was a personal phobia from some traumatic experience.

  “All right, Reshna. Here we go. Let’s just remove this last layer, and then we’ll—argh!”

  Her arms locked around his neck in a stranglehold, and her legs bolted around his waist, much stronger than he’d thought her slender form capable of.

  “Bad girl, Reshna.” He pushed at her waist in an attempt to pry her loose, but she only clung tighter. “Let go.”

  She buried her face in his chest and trembled.

  Since he no longer needed his arms to hold her, he tried removing her yenok as she hung from him midair. He’d only just lifted its hem to her waist when something wet dripped through the fur on his chest. He leaned back and forced her face up to meet his. Her eyes were leaking.

  She was crying. Like a lorok.

  Torek blinked, stunned.

  He shook his head. No, she was crying like a frightened creature in pain.

  He stopped trying to force her. “Where’s my good girl? You’re all right. Everything’s all right.”

  He pursed his lips, glaring at the water, then at Reshna’s clothes, and finally at his own. Whether her fear was personal or a trait of her breed, it was too large to expect her to overcome it alone.

  Torek embraced her and, still fully dressed, stepped into and sat in the tub, submerging them both to their chests in steaming water.

  He gritted his teeth against a bark of pain—being cooked alive hadn’t been on today’s agenda—but eyed Reshna critically. She’d frozen at first, stunned silent and unmoving in his arms except for the wide, rapid blinking of her eyes.

  Then she relaxed back and dipped herself neck-deep.

  “That feels better, does it?” Her shivering had subsided somewhat, and satisfaction swelled through his chest. “Let’s make it even better, shall we?”

  He picked up a bottle of liquid soap. Her eyes darted to his hands, and she stilled.

  “You’re going to be so clean and warm. Squeaky clean.” He squirted a drop of soap onto the top of her head and massaged it through her hair, into her scalp. She closed her eyes. She remained stiff, but she didn’t struggle away from him either. Progress. “That’s a good girl. Good Reshna.”

  Maybe he’d be a better animal owner than he’d first given himself credit for.

  He activated the water to rinse out her hair, and a fall of ice doused Reshna’s back before it had the chance to heat. She screamed, leapt from the tub, and flooded the washroom floor with water and suds. Her injured ankle, now swollen and a rich shade of purple, slipped in the slosh of her making. He just barely caught her shoulders before she smacked her head on the tub’s angled lip. As it was, her rump hit the tile floor, and she released an indelicate oof followed by a small whimper.

  He sighed heartily. Then again, maybe not.

  Four

  Delaney stared up at the horned Sasquatch who had just saved her from smashing her head, if not her ass, on the slippery, unforgiving bathroom tile floor and reminded herself for the umpteenth time that he was not trying to hurt her. He was not Kane Todd. She was his pet, and caring, considerate owners cleaned their pets. This did not need to be an issue, but every time he moved to undress her, it didn’t matter that her mind knew he wasn’t a threat, her body reacted otherwise.

  Her heart rate had spiked. Her stomach had cramped. Her reason had collapsed, and then he’d undermined all that healthy panic by submerging her neck-deep in that colossal, elephant-sized tub of blessedly warm water. But the bedsheet covering her body was now translucent and uncomfortably suctioned to, well, everything. She would have been outraged, and might even have blown her cover on the spot entirely, except for the outlandish and endearing fact that he had submerged himself fully dressed in the tub with her.

  Because he was not Kane Todd, and he was not trying to hurt her.

  He was trying to warm and clean her. Squeaky clean. Jesus.

  His expression remained constant whether he was coaxing her, scolding her, massaging her scalp, or gazing down at her ankle, as he was doing now. He bore an impressive frown—as did all the lorienok, with their high-boned foreheads and downturned lips at the corners of their blunt muzzles—but his eyes, once again, revealed the nuances of his feelings. He seemed concerned and frustrated and exhausted, and his hands—those massive, claw-tipped hands that looked capable of disembowelment—had thus far only held her gently on his hip, rubbed her back comfortingly, massaged shampoo into her hair, and saved her from eating bathroom tile.

  Delaney took a deep breath, struggling to calm, and, giving up on that, struggling to stand. Her swollen foot slipped out from under her. Pain spiked up her leg, and suddenly, she was being gripped beneath her underarms and lifted up by two firm hands. Her owner leveraged himself to his feet and her into his arm
s.

  “Now, let’s try this again. The water has heated, see?”

  He filled his palm with water and poured it on her arm. As promised, it was now much warmer than before. Hot, even. Deliciously, beautifully, miraculously hot.

  He hunkered down into the water with a pained hiss, dipping her as well as himself up to their necks again. She met his gaze and steeled herself against the inevitability of being undressed. As if it even mattered at this point, but panic didn’t understand logic. Her heart throbbed up to clog her throat.

  “And now to wash out the soap.” He filled his palm again and dumped the little water it contained over her hair. As if that method wouldn’t take all night to rinse the mop on her head.

  When he leaned forward for more water, she leaned back and dunked her head directly under the faucet.

  The water was divine. It rushed over her, burning the tip of her numb nose like penance. She made a noise, a low, aching moan that might have been “Oh God,” but she couldn’t be sure, because all she knew was the desperate need for warmth. She pushed away from her owner, and he let her this time as she submerged herself under the spray. She closed her eyes, hugged her knees, and let the heat cocoon her.

  A sound of suction, and suddenly, the water level dropped down to her chest. Delaney craned her head out from under the spray and wiped her eyes. Her owner had left the tub.

  He lifted a hand, palm out, toward her. “Stay.”

  As if she would leave the water’s newfound warmth. She fought against the overwhelming urge to roll her eyes.

  He watched her watching him for a long moment. Eventually, he must have realized that she had no intention of following him from the tub, because his lips parted, revealing the tips of his pointed fangs.

  “Good girl.”

  Her eyes did roll at that, but luckily, he’d already looked away, unzipping and unsnapping the layers of his own clothing. He peeled the soaked, clinging jumpsuit from his body, and Delaney held her breath, transfixed. Her owner wasn’t the first lor she’d seen naked. Keil had deliberately given her anatomy lessons complete with life-size, 3D anatomical views to prepare her for this very moment, so when she did come face-to-fur with a naked lor or lorok, as he predicted she would, she could let her uncomprehending gaze slide by without reaction.

  Golden retrievers didn’t mind their nakedness, she thought, reminding herself of her own personal Golden Rule. In fact, golden retrievers minded being clothed, and they certainly didn’t blink twice at anyone else, lorienok or otherwise, being naked. Because naked was natural.

  Delaney blinked once, then twice, and then kept on blinking as she stared.

  The anatomical hologram Keil had shown her hadn’t depicted a lor with thick, powerful pectoral muscles. The abdomen hadn’t been visibly defined and hadn’t tapered down in a dramatic V from the broad expanse of his shoulders. The hologram had had smooth, silky fur, unmarred by a long keloid scar down the side of his abdomen, and it certainly hadn’t boasted bulging, rippling biceps only marginally smaller than the circumference of her head.

  The only thing her owner’s body had in common with the nonthreatening anatomical hologram was, ironically enough, the part of his anatomy that was most threatening. The space between his legs was nothing but smooth fur, his penis still hidden inside him within its inner sheath.

  She closed her gaping mouth and forced her eyes to wander away from the stunning sight of her owner’s battle-hardened body before he noticed that her stare had thoughts and fears and curiosity behind it.

  He dropped his clothes into a wet heap on the floor and stepped into a shower stall, but when he pressed a button, a whirlwind of freezing air, not water, swept through the chamber, fluttering and drying his fur.

  Delaney huddled back down into the steaming bath, attempting to watch without staring as his fur dried. By the time he stepped out of the dryer, she was a little flushed and very pruned, and finally, mercifully, truly warm for the first time since Keil had been murdered. She’d thought nothing could be worse than living in the same house as Kane Todd, with his eyes that could penetrate her as deeply as his knife. And then she’d been abducted by aliens, witnessed the cold-blooded murder of her last friend in the whole universe, and been jailed in a kennel for six months.

  She took a deep, steadying breath. Her owner knelt to dry the bathroom floor. If she was being honest instead of self-pitying, she could admit that living in the kennel had been less stressful than living with Kane. She’d been caged either way, but in the kennel, at least her body had remained her own.

  Huddled half-dressed in a bathtub with her naked owner mopping up the water-slicked tile floor, she didn’t even have that.

  He stood, the floor apparently sufficiently dried, and draped a fresh towel over the closed toilet lid. He glanced at her, and then turned with the painfully slow, incremental movements of someone trying to coax a deer to eat from his hand. He inched closer, leaned over her, and turned off the faucet.

  Before she could stifle the reaction, she lifted her eyebrows.

  “All right, little Reshna. Good girl.” His hands reached for her, his movements still slow and careful as he lifted her from the bath and sat her sopping wet on the towel-spread toilet lid. “Now. Let’s take a look at that ankle, hmm?”

  He squatted before her on his haunches and lifted the offending foot. While the hot water had soothed all her other limbs, it had only worsened her ankle. The bruise had darkened to a lovely shade of purple over the entire baseball-sized swelling where the sharp angle of her outer ankle used to be.

  He pressed on the bruise with his thumb.

  Pain zinged up her leg. Delaney flinched, but he kept hold of her foot in his gentle yet firm grip.

  “Okay. Okay.” He stroked the side of her calf with the rough padding of his paw-like palm, then sighed. “Looks like I’ll be adding a veterinarian appointment to my schedule tomorrow.”

  It took every ounce of self-restraint that Delaney possessed not to shake her head.

  “But in the meantime, let’s see to that arm, shall we?”

  The bright, almost manic tone of her owner’s voice offset by his stern expression was so distracting that by the time Delaney had translated his words, he already had a bottle of something and an ointment of who knew what in one hand, and was approaching her with what looked like—but couldn’t be—a cotton ball in the other hand. The climate was too cold on this planet to grow cotton. Nevertheless, he’d soaked the liquid from said mystery bottle into that absorbent white fluff, which was now hovering an inch from her bleeding arm.

  Keil had educated her on standard household first-aid items—Lorien’s equivalent to Earth’s ibuprofen, antiseptic, and adhesive bandages—but Delaney couldn’t read the labels in her owner’s hand to reassure herself that he wasn’t about to pour battery acid on her skin. Not that lorienok typically kept battery acid in their bathrooms, according to Keil, but sitting half-naked on an alien toilet on an alien planet with said alien about to treat her wound, she didn’t feel particularly rational at the moment.

  Based on his hitherto gentle demeanor, she didn’t think her owner would melt her arm on purpose, but they were different species with different strengths and tolerances. He could accidentally kill her, thinking he was saving her. But she couldn’t very well snatch the bottle out of his hand and read the label herself without revealing that she could read, and golden retrievers didn’t have the intellectual capacity to read, and therefore, neither did she.

  Shit!

  By the time her panic had shaped into thought, the soaked cotton ball had already swiped over the cut and was stinging her arm.

  Delaney yanked her arm back, but her owner, having anticipated her reaction, clamped her arm in the crook of that massive bicep. He made a few perfunctory shushing noises and continued his torture via cotton ball.

  Let that be hydrogen peroxide, Delaney prayed. Please, let that be nothing more than the equivalent of hydrogen peroxide.

  She wiggle
d her fingers just to prove that she could. Her arm hadn’t melted off or become paralyzed or grown fur—not that the lorienok had medications that specifically induced those side effects. But the one thing Keil had unwittingly taught her during nearly five years of space travel from Earth to Lorien was that the human body was the most fragile of all the animal bodies Keil had ever encountered. He’d marveled at her body’s inabilities, one of which was its inferior ability to fend off infection.

  Christ, here comes the ointment.

  It was probably a topical antibiotic. Considering her body’s many inferiorities, Keil had emphasized the importance of cleanliness and wound care in her manual. So it made sense that her owner wanted to clean her wound, assuming he’d already read the chapter on first aid.

  But she couldn’t base the fate of her arm on assumptions. She continued struggling, fruitlessly at first, but she managed to knock the ointment from his hand.

  “Bad girl,” he muttered, but his words weren’t heated. He didn’t even glance at her—just bent to pick up the ointment. As he leaned over, Delaney craned her neck to read the label.

  It was indeed mild topical antibiotic, the exact brand that Keil had recommended in her care manual. Her owner flipped open the cap, squeezed a dollop of ointment onto the pad of his forefinger, and smeared the ointment over her cut. She jumped at the contact, and he murmured nonsense and assurances.

  Delaney stared at that ointment tube, so delicately cradled in her owner’s meaty hand, and then at her owner himself, through his impressive frown to the man she didn’t dare hope he’d be: someone who cared, someone who would strive to keep her healthy and safe, someone who could see her too, even if he did think she possessed a pea-sized brain. Someone like Keil.

  Having dressed her wound, he set down the ointment and reached to lift her bedsheet tunic. This time, she clenched her teeth and let it happen without a struggle.

  He lifted the sheet, exposing her thighs, then her privates and belly. He gathered the sopping fabric into a wad as he lifted it, and just as he was maneuvering the fabric in preparation for stretching it over her head, his knuckles grazed her nipple.