After several turns and a long straightaway, a series of identical buildings came into view. They were all cabin-style, constructed of logs and some sort of caulk or filling material, but they were enormous. I could have easily pictured them as features in a magazine for outdoorsmen, perhaps next to a lake with a retired fisherman in the forefront. Unlike the craftsman buildings nearer the Headquarters, these were abundant with windows, and there seemed to be a door on every side. The closer we got, the taller they seemed until we were finally next to one and I realized it was easily three stories tall. To perfect the vision, the same snow-capped mountains in the Headquarters backdrop spanned the horizon in every direction.
“You are to remain inside,” he said suddenly, twisting on his heels to look at me. There wasn’t an ounce of humor to be seen on his features. “Feel free to roam about the common areas if it suits you, but you are not to leave. You have not had a chance to visit the market, so I will have meals delivered to you today.”
My head was spinning with this unexpected turn of events, and I wasn’t sure how to interpret it. “Am I in trouble?” I asked anxiously. “Did I do something wrong?”
His harsh face softened slightly, and he shook his head with sincerity. “No,” he murmured. “You did nothing wrong.”
“Then why am I being put on lockdown?” I demanded.
Lokos studied me for a brief moment. I couldn’t tell if he intended to offer an explanation or if it was something else, but I waited patiently. When he spoke again, his voice had tightened with hints of distaste.
“I am not at liberty to say.”
I gaped at him. “Really?” My temper started pounding in my temples, and the influx of blood to my head made my burn sear. “You can’t tell me why I’m being confined to my dorm?”
“No.”
The day had already been a long one. I’d been released from the infirmary, sat through, God knew how long an orientation, found out the things that attacked my ship were contacting the A’li-uud, and had more than my fair share of desire for this alien coursing through me at any given moment. To now learn I was going to be stuck in my dormitory, seemingly indefinitely, was too much. I wanted to cry and scream at the same time.
“Well, that’s great,” I snarled, crossing my arms over my chest like a petulant teen. “So, I left my planet to come here and be a prisoner, and I don’t even get to know why. Awesome.”
Again, Lokos looked as if he wanted to say something further. “You will know when it is time for everyone to know,” he said firmly. “I cannot treat you differently simply because—”
“Because I belong to you,” I finished, interrupting him for once.
“Yes,” he affirmed.
“So, everyone is being shut up in their dorms, then?”
“At sundown, yes.”
I raised a brow. “It’s not sundown yet. Why do I have to go in now?”
The frustration boiling inside him was becoming more and more evident as he stared at me. His gaze hardened with each question I asked, and his fingers started curling and uncurling by his sides. Tersely, he answered, “I think it is best.”
“You’re avoiding the question,” I shot.
“Enough of this.” He swooped low and caught me by the knees. I buckled, but, before I hit the ground, his arm darted beneath my back. Swift wind flushed across my cheeks as I was whipped upward, and he pulled me against his chest in a standard fireman’s carry.
“What is your fascination with carrying me?” I grumbled, tilting my head toward him to avoid hitting it on the door as he reached for the handle.
It swung open, and he carried me in before kicking it closed with his foot. “You are determined to make everything so difficult when I leave you to your own devices.”
“You don’t even know me,” I snapped.
He crossed the room, which I was pleased to see had a warm, mountain getaway feel to it, and came to a halt in front of a couch. As he bent to deposit me onto it, I felt foreign fabric against my skin, plush and contradictorily smooth. “I know enough,” he murmured, hovering over me.
My loins ignited, relishing the proximity of his body to mine. Again, we were a mere breath apart, but there was no emergency calling him away this time. He smelled of heady forest and crisp snow, an intoxicating blend all too suited for the winter comforts of the dormitory. I wanted to taste him. I wanted to know if he was as delicious to the tongue as he was to the nose.
“Will you tell me soon?” I whispered. I couldn’t tear my eyes from his, and I felt like I was drowning in ether. “Why I’m stuck here?”
“When I am able,” he replied quietly. He was near enough now that our noses touched, and a sensual stroke of his breath caressed my lips. We were so close…
BANG.
13
Lokos
I leaped up, shielding Celine’s body with my own in a protective stance and whipping my head from side to side to locate the source of the sound. Nothing was visibly out of place, and I had not felt the floor or walls shake, but the noise had been loud enough to jar the warrior inside me, and I was unprepared to drop my defenses without ensuring security.
“What was that?” Celine gasped, her fingers closing around my wrist.
I shook her free for fear I would need full use of my hands and waited, ears pricked and eyes darting. Then, I heard a voice unfamiliar to me from above.
“Damn it!”
Without hesitation, I barked, “Show yourself!”
There was a clatter from the ceiling and the sounds of scuffling feet. Celine scrambled up into a sitting position, staring overhead as if expecting someone to materialize from the rafters. I, however, kept my focus pinned on the staircase across the room, waiting for the intruder to appear. Several scuffles later, a shoe came into view, followed by a leg, a torso, and then a head. It was a human male I had never seen before.
He descended the stairs clumsily, nearly tripping over his shoes and slipping down the last steps. The man was taller than average, and he had a mess of mousy hair that fluttered around his forehead. A pair of black-rimmed glasses balanced precariously on the end of his nose, which he pushed up with a long, skinny finger. He was lanky and lacking in muscle definition, but the sheer length of his legs hinted at an untapped skill for running.
“Sorry,” he said automatically before he even laid eyes on us. “I dropped my trunk, and I didn’t know anyone was…here…”
His voice drifted off as he finally took in the sight of Celine on the couch with her legs slightly spread and her cheeks flushed, crouching behind me. Something like horrified realization dawned in his eyes, and he quickly averted his gaze to the floor in front of him.
“Oh, God, I’m really sorry,” he mumbled.
“What are you doing?” I hissed. “This is a female dormitory.”
The young man looked at me again with confusion on his rather pubescent face. “Uh…yeah, well, there are not enough females to fill the dorm, so they said they were putting some of the guys in here to free up some of the space in the male dorms.”
I had not heard this before, and I was far from pleased. If it was true, it meant Celine would be sharing living quarters with men, and an unexpected surge of jealousy burst through me at the thought.
“Who said that?”
“The guy in charge,” he replied at once. “General, uh, Morgan, I think.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Celine. She had relaxed considerably, though there was now a coat of sheepishness on her enchanting features. When I turned back to the male, he was shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably.
“There is more than enough space in the male dormitories,” I growled.
He shrugged. “I guess they think this will give everyone more room. I don’t know.”
While I intellectually knew the decision was out of his hands and he had likely been merely following orders, I still felt adrenaline-spiked blood pumping in my temples as I glared at him. Finally lowering my stance, I said harshly to
him, “Get back upstairs. A curfew has been instated for sundown until you are told otherwise. You attended orientation, I presume?”
“Yes,” he said with an energetic nod. “You’re Lokos, right?”
I chose not to answer, and he waited only a beat before the expression on my face sent him trotting back to his room.
“So,” Celine said casually as I turned back to her. “Apparently, I’m living with guys. Donna will be thrilled.”
“She will be the only one,” I retorted dryly.
A smile slid slowly across Celine’s perfect lips, the lips I had been so close to touching with my own before we were interrupted by the ineptitude of improperly placed men. “Are you jealous?” she asked, sounding much more thrilled than I would have cared for.
“No,” I said through gritted teeth. “It is improper.”
“Maybe in your culture,” she commented. “It’s pretty common on Earth for men and women to live together. It’s kind of a staple of marriage, actually.”
I lifted a brow as I felt a churning below my waistline. The sass of this woman would be the death of me. “I was not referring to marital life, though I am quite certain you already knew that.”
She grinned, rouge lips spreading over pearlescent teeth. I was struck yet again with the powerful desire to take her by the hair and fill her until there was no room left for saucy remarks, but I restrained myself and instead satisfied my urge by saying, “There are things better suited for that mouth than cheek.”
Color flooded her face, blossoming like ripe petals, and her grin melted into a sensuous pout. The tension between us was thick enough to suffocate me. She was beautiful, of course, and undeniably witty. I knew little as of yet about her career and nothing of her pastimes or childhood, but I was eager to learn. She fascinated me. She enchanted me. She aroused feelings within me, physical and otherwise, that I had never imagined as a part of my fate. In the space of several hours, I had developed an interest powerful enough to attract the attention of my Elder and intense enough to stir up jealousy at the mere thought of her in close quarters with another male.
Dane’s words flowed back to me like the wafts of lavender clouds in the sky, infiltrating the span of my mind and prodding me with my duty. I cleared my throat and brushed my hair free from my face, which had become wild in my sudden leap of defensiveness.
“Stay in the dorm,” I told her again. “It is for your own good.”
Celine’s pout became less sensual and more displeased, but she did not protest this time. She merely nodded.
As I exited into the streets of the Ward, Silah rounded the corner from the neighboring dormitory. “It seems I am not to be free of you today,” he said with mild amusement.
“Have you been sent to fetch me again?” I asked.
He shook his head, ivory strands flowing in waves over his shoulders. “Elder De’inde has requested you join him at Council later tonight, but there is no task for you at the moment.”
“Good.” I was feeling particularly grumpy after the interruption with Celine.
Silah fell into step beside me, jolting me back to the day the ship had crashed and I saved the umber-headed spitfire from the flames. He remained silent for several strides before intimating, “I believe our beloved planet is in danger, Chief.”
“Yes,” I replied gruffly, intentionally scuffing the cobblestone with the toe of my boot. “For all we know, they may be watching us at this very moment.”
14
Celine
I had always been the kind of girl who preferred to spend my two weeks of allotted vacation time holed up in my apartment with a stack of movies as my only companions. The club scene or bar-hopping wasn’t my thing the way Donna enjoyed it, and you’d be hard-pressed to find me hiking early on a Sunday morning or learning the proper way to power-walk. Generally speaking, I was content to remain in my own space for extended periods of time, wrapped up in the comfort of home.
Being confined to the dormitory was a different story.
It had been eight days since Lokos had commanded me to stay in the dorm, venturing nowhere and having everything brought to me. Four long, dragging, mind-numbingly boring days. I knew because I’d counted—over and over and over again. The others in the building were free to roam in and out as they pleased as long as they returned by nightfall, but not me. I was doomed to spend the rest of my days in the gorgeous but suffocating confines of the log walls. At least, that’s what it felt like.
Donna was a trooper for the first two days. She was my roommate, which pleased me, so we killed a good chunk of time deciding how we wanted our layout and which of our personal decorations would make the cut to adorn the walls or dress the furniture. We spent another few hours just talking. She told me about what she’d learned about Albaterra and the Fifth Ward while I was recuperating in the infirmary, and we mused over what was to come for us and when we would begin our jobs. I even acted as her wing-woman while she hit on the male dormmates, though I had no interest in any myself. It wasn’t until the third day broke that she looked at me with apologetic eyes and begged me to forgive her for wandering around the Ward for some fresh air.
“Of course!” I told her, sounding a little too enthusiastic. “There’s nothing to forgive you for. I’m the one who can’t go anywhere, not you. Go, walk around. Bring back a good story for me.”
She practically flew out of there before the words even left my mouth. I couldn’t blame her.
When a full week had passed without word from Lokos lifting my imprisonment, Donna jammed a hand on her hip irritably. “Why don’t you just come out?” she demanded. “Seriously, it’s inhumane to just leave someone to rot.”
“Thanks, Donna,” I remarked sardonically.
“No, I mean it!” she insisted. “How is he going to find out? And what is he going to do if he does, anyway?”
“I don’t know what he’d do. That’s the part that scares me,” I admitted. Imagining the fury on his face, his diamond-white eyes shadowed with rage and his fingers furling with barely-restrained anger, terrified me to no end, but it also turned me on. A lot. In fact, it was the arousal prodding me in the back of the head, urging me to relent to Donna’s pleas, but I couldn’t.
On the eighth day, however, as I pressed my nose longingly against the common room window and peered out at the gorgeous morning that bloomed over our little corner of Montemba, I didn’t have a choice. Donna grabbed me by the sleeve of my loose white tee and pulled until it bunched up into my underarm and burrowed into my skin. I yelped, shoving my fingers beneath the fabric for some kind of relief, but she refused to release me.
“You’re going out,” she said bossily. When I opened my mouth to protest, she yanked on the sleeve again. “No, I’m not joking. I don’t care what Mr. Bigshot has to say about it. If he’s got a problem, he can come talk to me. It’s not natural for someone to stay cooped up like this. You know, that’s how people get depressed?”
“I think if I go out I’ll understand the true meaning of depressed the minute Lokos finds out,” I said, finally tugging my shirt free from her grip and smoothing it back over my arm.
“What are you, brainwashed?” she cried in frustration. “Everyone else in the Ward is allowed out until dark! There’s no reason you should be deprived of that. Did you piss him off or something?”
“No, he just said it was to keep me safe.”
“Yeah, well, if you don’t come out with me and stop moping around, the only thing he’s going to have to protect you from is me,” she avowed. She slid her arm through mine, which had been absent of its sling for a number of days now, and started walking without waiting for me to join her. I tried to unloop my arm from hers, but she tightened her hold and kept strolling. Giving up, I groaned and trotted forward to set a pace with her.
The sun cascaded onto my face the second I crossed the threshold, and I was immediately filled with so much joy I could’ve burst into song. It hadn’t been long since daybreak, but the air
was already ripe and springy, perfumed by alien pine trees and something earthy. The snow had a scent, too, sharp and prickly, but I breathed in deep and admired the way it made my throat burn. I had never been so happy to be outside.
“Thank you,” I said to Donna in one large, whooshing breath.
She laughed and tossed her head. “What else was a friend to do?”
We trudged through a small bank of snow that had drifted from the grass to the path with our arms still linked, chattering away as if we hadn’t seen each other for years. There were a handful of people milling about in the immediate area, some loitering outside their dorms and others strolling peacefully down the street toward the center of the Ward like us. Most were men, though I spotted a woman coming from the opposite direction with a handful of strange magenta fruit. I watched her as she passed.
“It’s sluvikt,” Donna told me when the woman was out of earshot.
“Bless you,” I said.
She giggled. “No, dork. The fruit. They call it sluvikt. I haven’t had it yet, but one of the merchants told me about it when I was wandering around waiting for you to get out of the infirmary.”
I was fascinated by this. Even the smallest differences in culture between A’li-uud and human intrigued me, and, after such a long bout with barely any mental stimulation, I absorbed the information like a sponge.
“Can we go to the market?” I asked excitedly, eager to see more.
“Sure,” she agreed. “We should probably get some ingredients to cook with anyway. I know Lokos has your meals delivered, but I’m kind of overeating leftover dehydrated veal.”
We rounded the corner to another block. This one boasted no dormitories, but it had many of the squat, castle-like structures I’d seen when I’d been released from the hospital. Most had their doors wide open, inviting passersby to view the interior or enter at will. I peered into each as we walked. One seemed like a normal house with a couch and several armchairs surrounding a coffee table. Another reminded me of a gift shop, things hanging from the walls and stacked on shelves with a freestanding counter on one side. There was a handful whose insides were too dimly lit to see more than furniture silhouettes, and at least two were arranged like a clothing store.
Lokos: A Scifi Alien Romance: Albaterra Mates Book 4 Page 6
