by Poppy Rhys
My stomach grumbled in the silence. Loudly.
All sets of eyes were back on me.
I laced my hands together in my lap. “Dinner?”
When they didn’t move I scooped air toward my mouth and pretended to chew. “Eat,” I mimed. “Food. Dinner.”
Understanding lit their features and Trouble snatched the second fish from Kid’s hand and brought it to me. I leaned away when he offered it.
“Uh...” I scratched my covered chest for the millionth time. “Do you have a stove?”
He tilted his head.
“It needs cooked. Heat.” I mimicked throwing up. “You really don’t want me to eat that raw.”
Sushi had never been my friend.
That only seemed to confuse them further, and Rezz was ignoring me in favor of eyeballing the fish. I was too hungry to let my fish go to the lion-bird.
I leaned forward, gesturing for Trouble to set the fish on the stone coffee table. When he did, I pointed to my palm and made a buzzing sound before waving it over the dead fish. Its lifeless eyes stared at me.
I was never good at charades, so imagine my surprise when Trouble’s arm lit with a blue current and he hovered it above the fish.
“Yes!” I nodded, encouraging him. His eyes narrowed in concentration, and then a bright flash lit the space as he zapped the fish, burning it to a crisp.
My mouth fell open, curls of smoke rising from the blackened corpse.
“Um...” To say it was overcooked was an understatement. Even Rezz groaned and laid his big gray head on his matching paws.
Trouble scowled, leaning up to snatch Stick’s fish out of his hands.
He growled something, clearly shocked that his dinner was stolen. Before I could tell Trouble to give it back, he was already trying again.
The current raced along his arm, creating a glow that I stayed far away from after seeing what it did to the poor dead fish.
After a few seconds, I could feel the heat pulsing from him, and hear the slight sizzle of cooking skin.
“Yessss,” I encouraged, my mouth watering when the smell hit me straight in the gut. “Wait!”
Trouble’s eyes darted to me, as if he didn’t want to take his concentration off his task.
“Turn it over so it can cook the other side.” I gestured, flipping my hand over. I didn’t even care that I looked like an idiot, because I was starving, and I didn’t want this fish to go to waste.
With his free hand, he gripped the tail and flipped the fish over, using his hand like a mini oven.
Saliva pooled in my mouth and I gulped it down. When it looked done, I patted his shoulder, nodding enthusiastically. Slipping to the space on the floor, I sat on my knees and gingerly touched the fish.
It was hot, but I hurriedly peeled pieces of the skin and scales away, shaking out my hands to cool my sore fingertips. The white, perfectly cooked flesh revealed itself and I quickly picked around the cooked guts and fine bones, popping chunks into my mouth.
“Mmmm,” I moaned around each bite. “You don’t even understand,” I told them, all too aware of their stares. Around another mouthful, I confessed, “I haven’t eaten real food in so long.”
Why I felt the need to explain myself, I didn’t know. The human in me, I suppose. They couldn’t understand me, so it really didn’t matter, but I said it anyway.
I licked my fingers clean, and leaned back, my exhaustion resurfacing with a vengeance now that my stomach was full.
“I’m just going to...” I crawled onto the couch cushions, curling up, “lay right here...”
The cushions curved to my body. It felt like the luxurious mattresses I was used to sleeping on back home instead of the thin prison mat I’d been forced to use, and sleep pulled me under before I could even say goodnight.
TEN
I CUDDLED CLOSER TO my body pillow, one of those feel-good spasms running through my muscles and relaxing me further.
“Mmmm,” my pillow groaned, and my lips spread into a sleepy grin.
I froze.
A pillow wouldn’t groan, or feel warm, or have a heartbeat that thundered in my ear.
I opened my eyes.
My immediate sight was a dusky gray-blue chest and matching arms caging me. I peeled my cheek away from the rippling muscle and blinked repeatedly, seconds ticking by as I tried to understand what was going on.
Kidnapper!
My breath quickened, and I shoved—hard—at the warm chest I’d just been cuddling. Kid’s eyes popped open. His arms grasped for me as he tumbled off the other side, nearly dragging me with him before I quickly untangled my legs from his body.
Thud.
I hastily pushed my mess of curls away from my face and peered over the edge, glaring. “What are you doing?” I squawked loudly. My eyes darted around, and realized I was on a bed instead of the couch. “Why am I here?”
Across the room, in one of the other beds, Trouble shot straight up, his thick, unruly silver hair pointing in all directions and his eyes a stormy white. Already his arms were blazing with blue currents of electricity.
His sheets caught on fire.
I scrambled backward to the head of the bed. Trouble leapt from the burning sheets...
Naked. Naked as a newborn.
I looked down at Kid on the floor.
Also naked.
I’d been snuggled up to a naked alien.
“A little help, Dason!” Trouble growled over his shoulder.
Kid pulled himself off the floor with an exasperated sigh, his lean muscles moving beneath his skin. I tried not to look.
He disappeared through a doorway off to the side of the room and a few seconds later, water gushed across the floor like a dam had broken.
“Uh...” I sat up on my knees, brow wrinkling when I realized it was moving with a purpose. Kid reappeared, the water parting around his feet, and his hands rubbed at his eyes as he stood there, yawning.
Like it was sentient and obeying silent commands, the water rushed across the floor and climbed up Trouble’s bed, drenching the burning sheets and extinguishing the fire.
“What the...” I stared, slack jawed, clenching the sheets underneath me while Kid scrubbed his face like he was still trying to wake up. The water retreated, disappearing back into the room again, and I could detect the gurgling of a drain.
Trouble tore the ruined sheets from his bed, and my gaze dipped to his bare ass. More of those translucent scales made patterns on the backs of his thighs.
“Second set in as many days,” Kid said, nonchalantly making his way toward me, his impressive cock swaying back and forth.
I croaked, unused to such blatant nudity back on Earth.
Trouble threw a pillow, hitting Kid in the back of the head just as he grinned, catching me staring at his junk. He crouched next to the bed, popping open a set of imbedded drawers and snagging a pair of bottoms.
“Don’t worry,” Kid drifted his fingers over my hand before I could pull away. “I won’t let Kahn hurt you.”
Kahn?
My eyes found Trouble as he stalked across the room with his half-burnt sheets, his muscled flesh jolting with every powerful step he took. Thankfully, I was able to avoid staring at his genitals, and only noticed them in my peripheral.
“Wait.” I paused, and saw Trouble halt in his tracks. “I can understand you! Both of you! And you can understand me. How?”
“You talk in your sleep,” Trouble grumbled, tossing the sheets into a pile by the archway to the front room. “A lot.” His sculpted ass cheeks flexed as he turned for the room the water had disappeared into.
I’d never talked in my sleep. Not before my stay on the Concord. The drugs were the only change. They were probably working themselves out of my system.
Kid leaned in, whispering, “You screamed last sunrise, the first time Kahn burned his sheets.”
“Dason!” Trouble—Kahn—barked. “I can hear you.”
Last sunrise? “How long did I sleep? What t
ime is it?”
“Time?” Kid tilted his head curiously and I wondered if only humans cared about the hour.
“A day and a half,” Trouble answered my first question.
They both stared at me when I shrieked, “What?”
MY LIFE HADN’T BEEN going so well. Especially when I’d been informed I’d been out for an entire day and a half, nearly two. Waking up snuggled to an alien chest had only made things worse.
My body was tired. To be truthful, I could go back to sleep now.
I shifted in my chair at the table. It was mid-morning according to Kid—whose real name was Dason—which meant Kid and Trouble were late sleepers.
Kid—Dason—stared at me now, a sleepy grin kicking up his boyish alien features, and it only irked me more that I’d been wrapped around him. My leg hiked over his hip, my arms around his middle, and my face smooshed up against his lean body.
An annoyed sigh deflated my chest. It had been a while—a long while—since I’d slept beside another person. So long I’d forgotten what it felt like.
Or how embarrassingly clingy I could be while unconscious.
Again, my career didn’t leave time for meaningful intimate relationships. My old career, anyway. I had to remember that life was over, even if I made it back to Earth.
“Where are Brick and Stick?”
I probably should have apologized for shoving Dason onto the floor this morning, since it was his bed, but I wasn’t happy that my wishes had been ignored.
I mean, technically I didn’t tell them they couldn’t move me—I just figured it was obvious when I took the couch. I hadn’t been rude and demanded a bed. Even the floor would’ve been fine. Knowing one of these aliens carried my unconscious body to their bed and snuggled me up put me in a sour mood.
First kidnapping, then unsolicited canoodling.
Maybe I was being unreasonable, but I didn’t want to cuddle with the people who abducted me no matter how many muscles they had.
My eyes strayed to Kid’s torso just as his pectoral twitched.
I wished he’d put on a fucking shirt.
“Brick and Stick?” Dason chewed slowly, his dark hair curling over his left eye that squinted suspiciously.
“The other two guys...” I probably should’ve asked their names.
“Working,” he answered after a pause.
I grabbed my bowl of seaweed and moved the contents around with a finger, brooding. I refused to admit yesterday was the best sleep I’d had in a good month. It was only because I’d been in prison, and on the edge of knowing I’d soon be in prison, before that.
It wasn’t because he was surprisingly warm for a... fish-man-alien or that it felt good to have some form of contact that didn’t involve a lab or a perverted guard.
No. It wasn’t that.
“Sleep good?” Trouble—Kahn—asked, ruffling his messy hair, which only seemed to make it worse and better at the same time. He grabbed a green oyster-thing from the platter he’d brought to the table and slurped it up.
My frown flattened. I wouldn’t let these aliens make me commit murder in their own home.
“Why am I getting seaweed and you guys aren’t?” Somehow, I didn’t think my bowl of soggy greens would get me to the next meal—whenever that would be.
I’d kill for a fat cheeseburger. Wouldn’t even care if it was beef-flavored soy, I’d still devour that baby.
Trouble slid the plate of green, slimy-looking oysters my way and—not gonna lie—I could feel my empty stomach do a summersault. When I just stared at it, Trouble—I mean Kahn—stood.
“Need o’kton cooked too?”
My eyes lifted as he strode around to my side, almost eagerly, and hovered a hand over the plate. The offer was... sweet, in a way.
I nodded. “Please.” If he cooked it, then maybe I wouldn’t want to vomit into my bowl of seaweed.
In a matter of seconds, I could feel the heat emanating from his hand as his palm essentially broiled the oyster-things in their shells. The scent made my stomach gurgle. The good kind of gurgle.
“Thanks.” I forced a tight-lipped smile and leaned forward to blow on one of the oysters. It needed to cool, else I’d burn every layer of skin inside my mouth, and I wasn’t ready to undergo that torture for something that looked like a glob of snot a few seconds ago.
“Why Brick and Stick?” Dason asked, leaning back in his chair so the expanse of his naked chest curved in a relaxed, photo-worthy pose.
His black eyes watched me, a playful curve to one corner of his mouth. I was starting to think Dason didn’t have a serious bone in his body.
“I don’t know their names,” I shrugged. “So, the big guy is Brick House, and the other one is Alien Sex on a Stick.”
Dason and Kahn shared a look.
“We aren’t aliens.” Dason smirked, leaning forward. Kahn took the chair on the other side of me, and I suddenly felt like I was under interrogation—my least favorite part of my old career. They could try me. If the Russians and the psychotic scientists on Concord couldn’t break me, I had my doubts about these two.
Kahn slid the cooled plate closer to me. “You’re the alien.”
I set my bowl of seaweed on the table. “I suppose that’s fair,” I admitted. “I’ll gladly get out of your hair if one of you takes me back to the surface.”
“Can’t.” Kahn stretched.
“Why not?”
“Ero’ha.”
“E-what?”
“The migration,” Dason supplied. “Too dangerous to leave.”
The giant barracuda-sharks. I rubbed my face, smoothing my hair back and breathing deeply so I wouldn’t sound harsh when I asked, “How long?”
“At least a few sunrises.” Kahn nudged the plate again. I got the hint the first time, but I suddenly wasn’t hungry.
A few days more and Preta could be dead. She could be dead now. I worried my bottom lip.
No, I’d nearly given up hope once before I found her, and I couldn’t do it again. She was resilient, and capable. That much was obvious. Most people would’ve been husks of their previous selves after months on the Concord.
Not Preta.
“Why are you smiling?” Dason peered at me.
I hadn’t realized I was smiling, but I wiped it away and forced myself to grab a shell.
“Bottoms up!” I raised it, tilted my head back and dumped the cooked oyster into my mouth. I prepared for the worst, but as I chewed, it wasn’t so bad.
Tasted a little salty and creamy. I’d never had oysters back on Earth. That ‘delicacy’ was reserved for level thirty residents and up. More money than I cared to dish out for something that looked like a giant booger.
I caught Kahn’s gaze raking down my body, and an uncomfortable chill had my skin tightening along my arms beneath my prison jumper.
“Good?” Dason prodded, still shirtless, and looking as comfortable as ever in that chair.
I’d really love it if I weren’t surrounded by half-naked aliens right now.
The front door opened, and Stick entered, adding another half-naked body to the room.
Well, fuck me.
“She’s awake,” he stated, his veined arm curled around folded fabric. His foot nudged the door closed.
“I am.”
He hesitated, like he wasn’t expecting me to be the one who answered.
When I got back to Earth, I planned to donate a nice chunk of funds to the tech company that developed my translator. In less than two days, it had learned the alien language, mostly while I was sleeping.
That gave me pause. “Do you guys have translators?”
They stared at me.
“Is that how you can understand me right now?”
Dason looked at Stick, who shook his head and stated, “You talk in your sleep.”
“What does that matter?” I discarded my shell back onto the plate. It didn’t escape my notice that neither Kahn nor Dason touched the oysters once they were cooked.
&
nbsp; “It allowed us to learn your language,” Kahn said, nudging another oyster into my hand. I ate it, my forehead wrinkling at his words.
“You learned English?”
“Is that what you speak?” Kahn’s smirk made me want to slap him and... twist my fingers in his thick hair.
“Yes.”
“Then we learned English.”
“Why aren’t you speaking it, then?”
In English, Dason said, “Better now?”
I set my second empty shell down and decided I didn’t like the flutter that flew through my abdomen. Dason’s rich voice was both playful and sincere and hearing it in my native tongue gave it a different weight in my mind.
“No, go back to your language.” I shook my head, quickly deciding it was unsafe to hear them talk in English.
Stick ran a hand through his shoulder-length, silver locks, his demeanor shifting when he saw the burnt sheets heaped in a pile at the archway where Trouble—Kahn!—left them.
“Again?”
Kahn twitched, still staring at me. “She screamed.”
Stick appeared perplexed as he shifted, looking at the sheets. A few shakes passed, and he exhaled, like he was giving in to some internal battle. He set down the fabric he was carrying, and went to scoop up the sheets.
He stopped on his way back to the door, black gaze flickering over my body. I looked down, seeing my orange prison suit.
“I brought you clothes,” he finally said, chin pointing toward the fabric resting on the couch. “I’ll be back for you.” The door closed behind him.
“What did he mean by that?” I asked, my questioning gaze darting between Kahn and Dason.
“We have stuff to do,” Kahn shrugged.
“Lonan will watch over you while we can’t,” Dason grinned, his fingers drifting over my hand again before I could pull away.
Lonan. That must be Stick’s name. I said it a few more times in my head.
“Wait, why can’t I just stay here?”
Kahn got up, his muscles shivering as he stretched much too close to my face. “Alone?”
“Too dangerous.” Dason shook his head. “Riv and the others are too suspicious about who you really are.”
