Genesis (15 page)

He broke off without finishing the thought, but Bri knew what he’d been about to say. Inside. Warmth filled her, but only part of it was embarrassment.

“Gods help me, I don’t know what to do. The Sheloni are ruthless. They will have what they want and kill anyone that stands in their way. And no matter whether I do what they have demanded or not it seems to me that I will have your death on my hands. They will breed you--with or without me--unless the others are far better at controlling themselves than I am. And, if by chance, that is the case, then they will simply discard you as they did our women and find other females to breed somewhere else.

“I sense … almost a sense of desperation in this latest plot of theirs, perhaps because they have killed the
Hirachi
off until they can not gather up enough to do what they need done. They have been raiding
Ach
for generations now to gather slaves, and we are scattered to the winds since their machinations that destroyed our world, and fewer of us all the time since most will no longer breed for fear of having their children snatched away by the
Sheloni
.”

He fell silent for a time. He’d given Bri a good deal of food for thought, however, and she made no attempt to break it--mostly because she wasn’t at all certain she wanted him to know she could understand him. He thought that he was merely voicing his thoughts aloud, which brought home to her that she’d missed the opportunity of telling him when she should have. He was bound to be angry when he discovered she’d understood everything.

Listening when he thought she didn’t understand was like eavesdropping, she realized guiltily.

And then, too, regardless of what he’d said--which seemed to indicate he was a decent and honorable man, she couldn’t bring herself to completely trust him. What if he knew she could understand and was using that to try to sway her opinion? What if the Hirachi were just as manipulative as they accused the Sheloni of being? What if none of what he’d said was true at all?

He uttered a ragged sigh and captured her face between his palms, tilting her face up as if he could see her in the dark--and quite possibly he could. She saw she hadn’t imagined the eerie glowing eyes. His eyes caught the little light in the room and reflected it back at her--like the eyes of a night predator.

“The worst of this is that I want to believe that doing what I want to do is right,” he murmured.

Startled when she felt his flesh brush hers, Bri flinched all over, but she’d been wrestling with her dilemma for hours, and she saw no alternative. More importantly, the sooner the deed was done, the sooner she would have Cory back.

She could do this. Truth be told, whatever she liked to think, she wasn’t revolted or disgusted--not by Kole, by the idea, yes, and she had a wealth of reservations, but she didn’t expect to merely ‘endure’ if anything she remembered from before hadn’t been distorted by the drug in her system. Because the way she remembered it, it had felt pretty damned good.

She followed his lips even as he began to withdraw again, pressing her lips to his. It wasn’t at all unpleasant to feel his lips against hers. They were firm, almost as hard as the rest of him, but smooth, and his scent and taste as she inhaled his breath into her lungs was like nothing she’d ever experienced. It invaded her body and bloodstream like a strong drug. Maybe it
was
a drug to her, she thought dimly, relishing the pleasure that swirled inside her mind and set her heart to hammering.

When he drew away, studying her, she thought, his arms loosening around her, she shifted and wiggled until she could get her knees on the floor on either side of his hips and rose up, blindly exploring his bare chest and arms and shoulders with her hands. A shudder went through him.

She hoped it was from pleasure.

He banished her doubts when his arms came around her again almost crushingly--definitely crushingly. He squeezed the breath out of her in an inelegant grunt and then released her as if he’d grabbed a hot coal. She didn’t realize what he was about when his hands closed around her waist until he lifted her and plopped her on the floor beside him and then surged to his feet and left.

It took Bri several moments to grasp that she’d been abandoned. Disappointment and disbelief surged through her first, and then anger and embarrassment.

Well! That answered that! She thought, feeling the rejection soul deep, embarrassed that she’d practically thrown herself at him.

She was tempted to see if she could speak his tongue as easily as she could understand it, but she tamped the urge, glad now that she hadn’t let on that she knew what he was saying, damn him!

As soon as the sting of rejection began to subside, anxiety took its place. It didn’t look as if she was going to be able to coax him into trying again, and if that first time hadn’t done the trick she might never get Cory back!

She was cold, too, damn it! She’d just begun to feel warm, and she could feel the cool air leaching the warmth out of her again. She shouldn’t have pushed, she realized. She should have just enjoyed the warmth and let it go at that. Maybe if he got used to the way she looked, he’d be able to get it up for her.

Sighing irritably, she curled into as tight a ball as she could and struggled to go back to sleep. It seemed she’d barely achieved unconsciousness when she was roused again. He scooped her up and moved to the sleeping platform. Settling next to her, he tucked her against his chest and belly and then carefully looped one arm and leg over her. Grateful for the warmth, she snuggled as tightly against him as she could get, plastering her cheek against one hard pec and lifting her hand after a moment to slide it around his waist and pull herself closer still.

He caught her hand as it snaked around his chest. “No,” he said firmly, placing her palm back on her own chest.

Miffed, Bri tried to wiggle away. He wasn’t having that either, though. His arms tightened, caging her.

She stewed over it a while, but lying next to him was like curling up to a fireplace and the warmth seeping into her finally lulled her back to sleep. She was cold again when she woke to discover the room had lightened. Kole was pacing the room again like a caged beast she saw when she cracked an eyelid enough to survey the room.

Embarrassment immediately flooded her when he glanced at her and memories from the night before surged into her mind. She rolled over and put her back to him, refusing even to give him a look of reproach--as if she cared, damn it! She couldn’t go back to sleep, though, and finally got off the sleeping platform and went into the bathroom. She’d already thoroughly doused herself with water before she thought about the fact that she didn’t have a damned thing to dry off with. She glared at the ceiling, knowing the Sheloni was watching, but with no idea where the camera was that they used to spy. “I need a towel, damn it! And clothes, you stupid alien bastards,” she snarled. “I’m going to freeze to death at this rate.”

She’d barely gotten the complaint out when warm air began to rush into the room.

As grateful as she was to have it, it occurred to her fairly quickly that now there wasn’t even any reason for Kole to cuddle her.

“Fuck!” she muttered under her breath, thoroughly enjoying expressing herself in the foulest language she could think of, feeling almost a sense of release.

Her mother would’ve slapped her into the middle of next week to hear her talk like that--if she’d been able to. Her mother was gone, though, and so was everybody she’d ever known--gone to her. What difference did any of the things matter that had meant something before? There was nobody to shock. There was nobody to condemn her for her language or her behavior--just aliens, and she doubted it meant anything to them.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Shit! Damn! Hell!”

She couldn’t think of anything else, so she repeated what she’d already said as she stalked out of the bathroom. Kole, she saw, was staring at her, a surprised look on his face. She thought for a moment he might have understood, but she realized fairly quickly that the reaction was to the temper, not the words.

Food had appeared--some for her, some for him, she surmised, because it didn’t look at all familiar. Feeling empty, she moved to the food. It tasted like saw dust, but it killed the churning emptiness in her stomach.

It was a damned shame she hadn’t discovered this diet while she was on Earth. She could’ve been rich, because there was absolutely no incentive to eat more than it took to appease her hunger, and she could tell just from looking at her body that she’d lost that fifteen pounds she’d never been able to shake before. If she could’ve marketed it, she could’ve helped fat people everywhere achieve their weight goal and gotten rich in the process.

But she wasn’t on Earth, and she was never going to see home again! She had to face that. As hard as she’d tried not to face it before, as hard as she’d worked to convince herself that, any day, the aliens were going to get done tormenting her and set her down on that country road, she knew that wasn’t going to happen. If anything Kole had said the night before was true, the bastards had been stealing people all over the universe for years and years--like they were dogs or something, not people.

And now she’d been thrown in with a Great Dane who looked upon her with the distain of a pure breed for an undersized mongrel!

Except male dogs didn’t seem to care what they stuck their dick into.

Tossing the food onto the tray abruptly, she looked at the ceiling again. “I want Cory! Please! He needs me. He’s scared and crying for me! I know he is!”

She hadn’t expected a response, but her chin wobbled with distress when she didn’t get one. “I’m probably pregnant already! If it didn’t take you can try again later and I can take care of Cory while you’re waiting on the results. Give him back to me! Please, please, please! Just give him back!”

“No give Cory.”

Bri jerked her attention from the ceiling to Kole, feeling fury surge through her. “You just stay out of this, damn it--you … you … yellow hulk! It’s none of your damned business! He’s mine! My baby now, fucking, alien, piece of shit asshole!
You
don’t care! I care. I love him, and he loves me, too, and he’s going to make himself sick crying for me if they don’t give him back to me.”

She could see from his face that he was growing angry, but she didn’t care. She’d been trying to stay calm and beat back her fear ever since she’d woken on the alien ship. She could do it for herself, but she couldn’t hold in the fear for Cory. It was eating away at her composure until she felt like she would just start screaming if they didn’t let her at least see that he was alright.

“Stop!”

“No!” she screamed at him and grabbed up a piece of the hard bread that was supposed to be toast, hurling it at his head.

He ducked the missile, his jaw going slack with surprise.

The fact that she’d missed her mark only angered Bri more, though. Glancing down at the tray, she grabbed a block-looking something off his tray and threw that at him. It smacked him in the chest, crumbs flying in every direction as it shattered. He surged toward her. She bolted, bounding around the room like a startled deer.

He was surprisingly fast considering his size, but she was faster because she had to take two bounds to his one, and she still managed to outdistance him. His fingers grazed her shoulder, but before he could tighten his grip, she dropped, launching herself into a dive and roll she hadn’t even tried since gym class forever ago.

As beautifully as she executed the maneuver, however, it cost her. Even as she tried to scramble away on her hands and knees, he dropped down and caught her ankle. Bri jerked to break his grip. When that didn’t work, she rolled onto her back and aimed for his chin with her heel, catching him completely off guard.

Chapter Ten

Kole’s head snapped back on his neck at the blow, his grip on her ankle loosened, and he sat back on his ass, hard. Pain flickered across his face, and then stunned surprise, and then anger.

Bri gaped at him, almost as stunned by what she’d done as he was. “Sor….”

She didn’t get the rest of it out. He clamped two ham sized hands on her upper arms and snatched her toward him.

“Stop,” he snarled, almost nose to nose with her.

Dangling from his grip, Bri uttered a snarl and compounded stupidity with idiocy, making a grab for his genitals. She missed, but his eyes widened when he realized she’d tried to go for his weak spot.

She set her chin belligerently.

“This will not help you get Cory back.”

Her anger deserted her abruptly. She knew he was right. Her temper could well have cost her if it came to that. Why, oh why hadn’t she thought about that before she’d acted like she was insane?

Because she was
going
to go insane wondering and worrying about him, imagining all sorts of horrible scenarios, from them dropping him on his head, to him crying until he choked, or refusing to eat and slowly starving to death or dehydrating.

She sniffed when he set her away from him, rubbing her bruised shoulders absently and studying him warily.

It was hard to read his expression, but he looked more puzzled than angry. Lifting a hand, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully and then, slowly, smiled. And then he chuckled.

Bri had just felt the beginnings of a smile welling in her in response when he spoke, and the words seemed to freeze her blood in her veins. “Sheloni think Bri like ...,” he paused, obviously searching for a word, “Cory.”

Bri stared at him blankly while that slowly sank in. Gentle, weak, helpless--all the things Kole thought about her, she knew--probably why he despised her. It was impossible, given that insight, to ignore the likelihood that that was why the Sheloni had thought it would be a great idea to cross breed them--docile, small, weak mother plus big, ferocious father equaled tamer slaves that were still strong.

Oh god! She hadn’t just got ‘things’ off her chest by blowing up and showing her ass! She’d worked hard to give the impression that she was no threat at all--which she wasn’t, of course--but to convince the
Sheloni
that she didn’t need pain to keep her in line like they used with the Hirachi.