by Marie Dry
He straightened. “We are going to stake Morgan?” He seemed quite happy with that idea.
She smiled and shook her head. “No, it’s a human expression. It means we watch him all the time.”
“I like my meaning better.”
“I bet you do.”
Two hours later Morgan at last emerged. He looked around him and then started walking. They followed him and it was excruciatingly slow following someone walking while they were on a hover machine.
He went to a small shop and bought something, and then went back to his apartment to drop it off. They followed him, wandering all over the place. “He’s just walking. We’re wasting our time,” she said in Zanr’s ear.
“No, he is trying to make sure no one is following him.”
His prediction proved true. Morgan eventually went to a neighborhood with small houses and knocked on the door. A tall, thin man with a shock of red hair opened it. Rose bounced on the seat. “He looks familiar. I think he worked in the building for a short time. In the lab.”
“We will stake him out in the human manner,” Zanr said. He pressed a button and suddenly she could hear every word Morgan and the other man said.
“You shouldn’t have led her here. The fewer people who know about the boat, the better.”
Rose nearly jumped out of her skin. He could only be talking about the submarine.
“She’s harmless and gullible. We might be able to use her to deliver the bomb.”
“Why, that horrible little toad. I’ll tell him a thing or two when I see him again.”
Zanr just grunted.
“When will you take me to the submarine?” Morgan asked. It might be a question, but it sounded more like an order.
“Soon, I will let you know when he is ready to meet you.”
He?
Morgan left, but she and Zanr stayed at the little house. Hours passed and no one else came to talk to the scientist. At last they went back to the tent.
The next morning after the mandatory hour of hot and heavy morning sex, that left her thoroughly satisfied, they sat at the table, drinking coffee.
Zanr checked the information the probe had sent him. “It has found no trace of a submarine. I will widen the search.”
“That’s weird. We’ve had reports of a submarine from two different sources.” She frowned. “Wait a minute. How do you know about submarines? Do you have them on your planet?”
“Our oceans are small; we do not use submarines or boats.” A possible weakness? She couldn’t think how their lack of boats could be exploited. But better minds than hers might. He got up and came to stand behind her. He touched her hair and Rose relaxed. She’d known he was going to do this and she had done nothing more than give her hair a cursory comb.
“I suppose with your shuttles it’s unnecessary. So how did you know about our submarines? You knew immediately what that odd man talked about.” It’s not as if any of them were still around. In working condition anyway.
“I studied human weapons of the last three centuries to be prepared for this assignment.” He carefully combed her hair.
“I see.” How much did he and the others know about humans? All their weaknesses, all their defences?
He made those grunting noises and his fingers glided through her hair, separating sections. “It is a good sign that the probe cannot find it. It means the person blocking our searches is probably hiding in cloaked areas that might show up as blind spots. I have widened the search.”
Her TC rang and she accepted the call, her eyes widening. “It’s my father.” Excitement mixed with the deadly nanos in her blood.
Chapter Seventeen
“Father, this is a surprise.” Her heart beat faster, a rhythm of hope. Maybe he missed her, wanted to see her.
“I can’t find Parnell. Let him know I want to talk to him.” Her cheeks heated. What did she expect—that he’d call her by name, ask how she was?
Rose exchanged a glance with Zanr. What was she supposed to say? Zanr shook his head no. So they didn’t want anyone to know what they did with Parnell. For a moment she was tempted to tell her father that Parnell had been captured by the aliens. To rally everyone in protest. But she quickly changed her mind. It would serve no purpose. Except to get a lot of people captured.
Zanr left the tent and she relaxed slightly. The last thing she wanted was for him to see how her family treated her. He was contemptuous enough of humans.
All the calls she’d never exchanged with her father over the years haunted her. No calls to wish her Happy Birthday, to ask how she was, or if she needed anything. Or even to tell her she was allowed to return home. “Why do you never call me just to talk? Do you care for me at all?” She didn’t mean to ask him that, but the words were torn out of her without her volition.
His handsome, angular face showed every inch of his disapproval. “Control yourself. You killed your mother with your hysterics. When will you learn your lesson?
“I was eight years old. I panicked, that’s all. I didn’t mean to kill her.”
“That is no excuse and your actions led to her death. You have to learn to take responsibility for your actions.”
Rose stared at the image of her father hovering over the TC. Did her father always sound this cagey, this self-important? He didn’t love her, would never love her. Maybe it was time to accept that he’d never love her. What kind of father could stop loving his child? Her mind shied away from that thought. He had to love her. It was just that he missed her mother. In all these years, he’d never married again. Nothing she’d done that day had been on purpose. She’d been a frightened eight-year-old. All those years ago, she remembered her parents fighting. About money? And she knew, suddenly just knew.
“You refused to pay the ransom. That’s why Mom came.” She’d never thought to question that before. But why else would her mother have come and not him?
He stiffened and red colored his cheekbones. “I didn’t have that kind of money.”
Now he didn’t look her in the eye.
“All those years I thought I had to prove myself. Needed redemption. Had to earn your forgiveness. And you weren’t going to pay the ransom. What kind of father does that?”
“Do not confuse the issue. You are responsible for your mother’s death. If you didn’t start running, she would still be alive.” Grief in his voice, flashed across his features before he smoothed them out. “There is no redemption for you.”
“I won’t have this conversation with you anymore. Tell Parnell I need him to back off the superman crack case,” he instructed. He cut the connection.
Rose stared at where her father’s image had been a moment ago. Why would her father be interested in the case? How did he even know about it?
Needing to talk to someone who actually wanted her, even an alien who thought humans should know their place, she went in search of Zanr. She found him in the shuttle, working on a slim piece of silver. She couldn’t see any buttons or even an image on it. So how on earth did he work on it, intently pressing buttons and grunting? He stopped and looked up at her.
“Your father is not the man you thought he was?” So he’d listened to their conversation. All the way over here. Something to remember for future furtive endeavors.
“No.” She shook and clenched her hands. It was too much. Parnell’s betrayal. Morgan and his nasty digs at her, little killer robots in her blood, and now her father treating her with his usual disdain. He might not admit it, but she knew he refused to pay the ransom. Even before the kidnapping, he’d never liked her around. “I want angry sex.”
Zanr did a double-take. “There is angry sex?” Before she had a chance to blink, he’d picked her up and carried her back to the tent, where he set her down on her feet.
Rose didn’t waste any time. “Take off your clothes, alien. Now.” She stripped off her own clothes, enjoying the way red bled into his red arises. Zanr took off his clothes with an eagerness that was balm to her battered soul.
She’d never tire of seeing the clothes just melt away from him. Stepping out of the boots he’d given her was normally the highlight of her day.
“Lie down,” she ordered him.
He froze and stared at her. She’d never thought she’d see a superior Zyrgin warrior with a deer-in-the-headlights look.
“Why do you wish me to lie down first?” He sounded suspicious, as if he thought she planned to murder him.
“Angry sex, remember. Now lie down on the bed so I can fall on top of you and kiss you and take you until I forget that—”
Zanr lifted her up and laid her down on the large bed. He’d moved so fast, she was lying down with him looming over her before she could blink. “You will do angry sex at the bottom,” he insisted. He laid down half over her. “You keep forgetting you are my breeder and I am your warrior.”
“I’m the one that’s angry; I should be on top.” She wanted a fight. A dropping-the-gloves knockout fight that would let her blow off steam. Or sex. Hot and heavy sex that would let her forget. She tried to push him over so that she could get on top but he didn’t budge. She growled at him and then blinked. She never thought she could make such a sound.
“A warrior is never at the bottom in his sleeping place.” He leaned down and spoke right in her face. “You again forget the order of things. Show me angry sex.” Red sparks flared in his eyes.
Rose didn’t think; she just reached for him. She needed to forget about the kidnapping and what she suspected about her father. About the terrible things she feared he’d done. She kissed Zanr and bit down on his lower lip. He lifted his head and gazed down at her and his eyes looked like they could explode like a lava bomb. “Angry sex is biting?”
She laughed helplessly. “Gentle biting, but it’s hot and passionate and no holds barred. Because when you want angry sex, you want to forget.”
He kissed her, a deep, passionate but also curiously tender kiss. He moved down and kissed and sucked and bit on her neck, and she moaned with pleasure. But she wanted her pound of flesh and she bit down on his shoulder. His erection, already large, grew even bigger against her inner thigh. She licked the area she’d bitten and rubbed against the hot, hard flesh branding her inner thigh. He moaned and quickly turned it into a groan. Rose smiled against his delicious flesh. She could just imagine how he felt at making such a weak sounding noise. Like a human male.
“Why do your kisses always make me tingle?” she asked when she came up for air, not expecting an answer.
“Superior Zyrgin genetic engineering,” he told her seriously.
Rose stared at him, waiting for a teasing laugh or smile, but of course she was anthropomorphising him. He was an alien and a literal one at that. One who really knew how to kiss.
He moved lower again and took her nipple into his mouth and swirled his tongue around each one.
Pleasure shot from her nipples to every nerve ending in her body until she was one big ball of pleasure. Her body stretched and went taut. She kissed and sucked and stroked wherever she could reach him. The taste and smell of him was fast becoming an addiction. “Zanr?”
“Yes, my breeder?”
She cupped his face, pulled him up, and stared into those strange eyes that now seemed to be made of red fire. “Will you call me by my name? As if I matter. As if I really exist.” She sounded needy and she didn’t care. One thing she knew was that Zanr would kill himself trying to meet all her needs.
He stilled and looked up from where he’d been biting the underside of her breasts. Little aftershocks of pleasure still shot out from that spot in her body. They stared at each other, the silence pulsing with everything they didn’t say.
“I enjoy doing angry sex with you, Rose.” He went back to working the underside of her breasts with his sharp teeth, nipping her alternately with his teeth and lips. She moaned and shifted restlessly. Who knew that could feel so good?
“I like your body, Rose. The perfect body for me.” He lifted his head and stared at her hair. If he tried to do her hair right now, she’d kill him. “I like your body almost as much as your hair.”
“Thank you, Zanr, I am glad I please you.”
“You please me much, my beautiful Rose.” If anyone else had said that to her it, would’ve sounded fulsome. The sincerity in Zanr made it a compliment she treasured. He flashed his teeth in that way that she suspected was supposed to be a wicked grin, but was all teeth and danger. “I wish to do angry sex on your most intimate female part. Your most secret flesh that throbs for me.”
Rose stared down at the alien working his way down her body. Her intimate female part? Most secret flesh that throbs? What on earth had he been watching and reading?
He parted her thighs, got comfortable between them, and she squeaked when he raked his teeth over her most sensitive flesh.
The next day they parked in front of the little house that Morgan had visited the day before, and they got lucky. The tall, thin man left his house and got into an old car. He kept looking over his shoulder.
“He’s going to the submarine, I know it,” she told Zanr.
It was a good thing she didn’t make a bet on it because the scientist drove to another small house not far from his and got out of the car. A man in a white lab coat opened the door. Zanr grunted and she heard the satisfaction in the sound.
He got off the hover machine and helped her down. “We will go inside and interrogate them.”
Rose should feel sorry for them, but they deserved to have a Zyrgin warrior go torture their evil bomb-planting asses. She smiled a thin-lipped smile up at him. “I will play bad cop.”
He stopped and cocked his head. “Bad cop?”
“Yes, it is an old interrogation technique. One of us acts tough and the other sympathetic, and then they talk to the sympathetic one.”
He nodded. “I know this technique. I will be the bad alien.”
“You’re no fun. I’d make a much meaner bad guy.”
He flashed a lot of teeth at her. “I am much fun, and a warrior will be much better bad guy.” He walked up to the door, not bothering to change his appearance, and knocked on the door so hard, it crumbled inward.
“You lack imagination,” she muttered.
“You, my breeder, lack height and teeth and claws.” Zanr ran inside the house, so fast, he was only a blur. She’d known he was faster than a human, but this she didn’t expect. No wonder the other warriors thought her so-called escape was a big joke.
She followed and before she even reached the living room of the small house, Zanr had three men secured. They were clichéscientists. Two of them rail thin and the third short with a thick middle. All three of them wore glasses, an old-fashioned affectation that had become popular among academia lately.
“I recognise him. He worked in the lab at different times.” She pointed to the tallest of the two thin men.
Zanr didn’t waste any time. “Tell me where on the river the others are, or I will hurt you.”
The tall, thin scientist looked ready to lose his lunch. “We don’t know anything about a submarine.”
Zanr leaned over him, all cold-reptilian threat. He even spoke with a slight hiss. “I didn’t say anything about a submarine.”
All three of the scientists whimpered. They looked as if they were going to start crying. How could they be like this but plan to detonate a bomb?
Rose stepped forward, gave a slight smile. “Please tell him what he wants to know.” She made a show out of biting her lip and keeping out of Zanr’s reach. “Did you see those teeth of his—he bites.”
“I do not need your help making them talk,” Zanr snarled at her.
Even knowing he was only playing bad cop, it wasn’t too difficult to squeal and skitter away from him. ”I’m sorry,” she moaned.
“We don’t know anything,” the man she’d recognized moaned.
“You are working to create bombs from data dating back to your Golden Age,” Zanr said.
The three exchanged nervous glance
s.
Rose again made a show of staying out of Zanr’s reach and tried to look concerned for them. “You should tell him what you know. These Zyrgins become difficult if you bomb the cities they are determined to restore.”
“Fuck off, collaborator.”
The blood drained from his face when Zanr leaned over him. Without signalling his intention, he slapped the man until he fell on the floor.
“You are the collaborator, human.” He sneered the word human. “You are working with a foreign agent to plant bombs that will kill humans.”
Zanr materialized a long dagger with a forked tip in that magical way he had. Rose swallowed. He’d promised her he wouldn’t kill or seriously hurt them. She’d have to trust him.
She turned to Zanr. “I am going to wait outside while you get the information from them.” She made sure to sound a little teary.
“Stay—”
She held up a hand. “I know, I know, I’m only little and someone can steal me. Don’t worry, I will be right outside the door,” she said, too soft for the three men to hear. Zanr nodded and Rose walked to the door. She paused and said without turning, “Promise me you won’t cut off their fingers.” She made sure to make her voice all trembly and afraid again.
He grunted something and she smiled when she smelled the acrid smell of urine. She stepped outside, but turned so she could see what was happening inside. “I cannot promise their fingers will be intact,” he said solemnly. “I will try and take as little as possible.”
The three scientists put their hands behind their backs and one of them moaned. A yellow puddle formed on the floor next to the shoe of the one in the middle. Rose couldn’t blame him. If Zanr came at her like he did with the scientists, she’d pee herself, too.
What did it make her, that she was so desperate for information that could shut down the nanos in her blood, that she’d leave these men alone with a vengeful Zyrgin? This morning, she’d noticed that she had very little feeling at the bottom of her feet. What if she lost a little bit of her body every day? What if they found the code in two weeks and deactivating the probes didn’t heal the damage done so far? She prayed with everything in her that the submarine was a secret lab, that they’d have the codes to deactivate the nanos.
