Pheromone, page 8
part #1 of For the Love of Aliens Series
I’m basically panting, lips parted, eyes wide, body in full, violent rebellion against my rationality. I’m damp with sweat, a feminine emptiness making my thighs clench. As if he knows exactly what sort of thoughts are going through my mind, Big D grins. It’s a wild, toothy expression that breaks his dark face in half.
He offers another growl, flicks his tongue out between his teeth to lick the edge of his lip, and presses some hidden trigger on the leash. The seemingly endless loop breaks apart, and it falls to a useless heap on the faded pink cushion underneath.
“Thanks,” I grumble, pulling my arm back. Only, he doesn’t let me go. With two fingers, he easily encircles my wrist and holds it in a tighter, firmer grip than the leash ever accomplished. Leaning forward, he sniffs my hair, and I go perfectly still all over. If he wanted me, he could have me at any point. There’s literally nothing stopping him but for a pair of ruined lace panties. I swallow back a strange mix of fear and desire.
Seeing him bite the leash earlier made sense. He’s a beast. He’s an alien dragon. He’s wild. But … what he just did? That was oh so very human of him. With a clacking of teeth, he releases me, and I draw back, frowning up at him.
His tail slithers toward the door, snatching up the headset and putting it up against my ear.
“Nest … mine … female … only.” Big D withdraws the translator but, unlike a rational person, chooses not to put it on so that I can respond to him. He just waits, like he’s giving me a choice in … whatever it is that he’s just said.
We stare at each other.
With a pleased huff, he tosses it across the room again like so much trash, seemingly satisfied that my silence is answer enough.
Since I have no goddamn clue what nest mine female only means, I just shrug.
“Whatever.” I turn away from him and snuggle into the furs, thoroughly exhausted. If he won’t take me back to the market in the morning, I’ll follow the trail again. Hopefully with the tusk men dead, I’ll be able to make it back without his help.
Stay safe, Jane. I’m coming for you.
Because a real bad bitch never leaves her bestie behind—especially not on a hostile alien planet.
I wake feeling refreshed, stretching my arms above my head and yawning. When I blink myself fully back into reality, I see that Dragon Dude is already gone. I take my time getting up and frown when I get a whiff of my own armpits.
“A bath would be nice,” I grumble, craving water and thanking the stars that I didn’t die from what I drank yesterday. Didn’t even get a stomachache. However that beetle died, it wasn’t because the water was poisoned. Good to know.
I find my new roommate in the main room, sitting at the edge of the ship with his legs dangling over the edge. Once again, I’m struck by the very human pose. I’m also struck by how much smaller he is today. Again, he’s a giant of a dragon-alien-man, but he’s a foot shorter than he was last night.
I decide to join him, taking a seat on his left. He looks at me like he has no idea what to make of me, as if I’m as alien to him as he is to me.
Then again, he has a face the likes of which I’ve never seen, so maybe I’m reading his expressions all wrong.
“Put the headset on.” I try to hand it over to him, but he doesn’t take it. “Please, Big D. We need to talk.”
“Talk,” he grinds out, his large mouth rippling in a growl that says that maybe it was never designed to speak English. Only, he definitely is. That wasn’t the translator; that was him.
“How much English do you know?” I ask, but I get no response to that and sigh. When I try again to hand the headset over, he takes it and puts it on my head instead. “Me understanding you does us no good; I need to get back to the market.”
“No.” He says that word easily enough. The meaning is clear. He growls something else out that’s definitely not in English, and the translator picks it up. “Dangerous hell.”
Yikes.
“My best friend might still be there!” I snap at him, feeling more and more frustrated by the second. “This isn’t my home; I don’t want to be here.” I stand up then, but he stays where he is. Doesn’t matter. He’s still almost as tall as I am in a seated position. “I need to get back to Earth. Do you know where that is or how to get there? I see spaceships all over the place in these woods; there must be some working one somewhere. I had to get onto this stupid fucking planet in a ship, right?”
He snarls at me when I say fucking, but at least he doesn’t grab me again.
Instead, he leans over, resting an elbow on a knee, and he stares into the woods like he sees something.
“Are you even listening to me?” I demand, but he’s obviously not. With a snarl of my own, I turn and pace back into the ship, pausing to read what’s on the computer screen.
“The headset you’re talking about, is it pink?! If it is, I can help you. Lay it on the pad to the left of the keyboard.”
I take a look, but there’s no ‘pad’ next to the keyboard, just a bundle of wires.
“Sorry, it’s gone.” I shrug and start to walk away when the screen fills with several more lines of rapid-fire English.
“Check for a universal cord. Any intact one will do. If you can plug the headset in, I can get it working again. Then maybe we can both speak to him.”
It’s a tempting offer, but I don’t see any cords around. If there were, they’re buried under years of forest debris. I decide to ask the alien dragon.
“Hey, you don’t happen to have a treasure chest filled with old cords or anything like that?” He ignores me. “No? Fine. Suit yourself.” I step to the edge of the ship, right over the spot where the chair-shaped tree is growing. My best bet to get out of here uninjured would be to shimmy down that thing. Before I go though, I’m getting my fill of fresh water.
I head to the bathtub, drink as much as I can stand, and then use a leaf to open the seat of the toilet. There’s not much I can do about the musky male scent surrounding it, but I’m able to do my business well enough.
When I return back to the front of the ship and try to climb out, things definitely don’t go as planned.
Dragon Dude grabs me around the waist and draws me back, slamming my much smaller body into his chest. My feet aren’t even touching the ground anymore.
“No.” There’s that word again. It’s seriously pissing me off this time.
“You have no right to tell me what I can or cannot do. Put me down now.” I struggle in his arms, but he won’t let me go. Instead, he carries me back to the bed and tosses me onto it. It bounces just enough that I’m not hurt, but then he’s crawling in and taking up all the available space.
He straddles me on all fours, his eyes blazing, wings raised, the clawed fingers at the apexes curling into tight fists.
“Market … pain … death.” He struggles to get the concept across with this piece-of-shit translator between us. “Me … die. You … sold.” He snaps his teeth at the air near my face and then licks me again before releasing me and moving deeper into the nest area. He kicks his back legs, fluffing pillows and moving furs around.
I roll onto my side and sit up, frowning.
“You can’t go into the market with me? You seemed to have no trouble taking down like, a dozen tusk guys.” Well, maybe no trouble is an inaccurate thing to say. He had some trouble, but surely, if he wanted to go into the market and shop like anyone else, what’s the problem? “Is your type of alien not allowed in or something?”
He ignores me, working up a mound of pillows and then … mounting them.
My mouth drops open as both cocks swell from his groin and he casts a deadly look at me over his shoulder. That massive mouth of his splits into a growl, and he turns away, hips thrusting against the pillows with undulating swells of muscle.
From here, I can see that perky ass of his, taut and clenched as he rocks his pelvis violently into the pillow heap. Shamelessly. Powerfully.
My own thighs clench, and my breath catches as I force myself to look away. What the hell is he doing?! Well, I mean, obviously I know what he’s doing, but why is he doing it in front of me? Maybe because he’s a barely sentient alien beast dragon monster? Ever think of that? Animals don’t feel shame; only people do.
But this? I feel zero shame. Instead, his display is doing surprisingly strange things to my body. My mouth goes dry, and I have to force myself to swallow past a sudden surge of need.
Pretty sure we’re not compatible sexually.
Not only is Dragon Dude way bigger than the average human (although he’s now about half the size he was when I first saw him)—he has two dicks.
I’m freaked out by the fact that I’m even having this discussion with myself. He’s not human, and it’s really not okay to sleep with anything that isn’t human if you are one yourself. Only … I say barely sentient, but it’s just that we have a communication problem. He’s not an animal. He lives in this ship, and he rescued me, and he gave me a translator, and he healed me … He’s a ‘person’, even if he isn’t a human.
“Shit.” I shove up to my feet and take off into the main area of the ship, giving the computer screen a sympathetic look as I pass. “Does he do this often?” I ask, assuming that he probably does.
“No, not really.” That’s what it says to me. I flip the screen the bird and then pace around a little, trying to ignore the grunts and snarls emanating from the nest. Now seems like a really good time for me to make my great escape, but I need something to help me get down the tree. A bit of fabric torn off one of the cushions would probably help. I could loop it around the tree and sort of shimmy my way down.
My gaze shifts in the direction of the nest.
Do I dare go back in there? What if I try to escape and fail? Will he lock me up? Eat me? Force himself on me?
“Is there an easy way for me to get out of this ship?” I ask, turning back to the computer again. It needs a name, stat. Or … it doesn’t because I’m not staying here. I’m not.
“I will tell you if you take me with you,” it explains in bold, italicized text. “The vessel you would need to carry is quite small; I can even get you transport and help you find some items of value in the woods. We can barter and sell our way off of this planet.”
“I’m going to need something worth more than I am, apparently,” I whisper, but I bet Big D can hear me anyway. He’s probably got super alien dragon senses or something. “Some clothes would be nice, too.”
“I may be able to assist you with both things. Don’t rush our escape. Take it slow, so we can plan accordingly. First things first: I need that universal cord.”
“Well, if he has a stash—and he must because he gave me the headset in the first place—I don’t think it’s on this ship. There’s nowhere left to go, right?”
“Not true. There are several passages that are currently blocked by locked doors. I can’t sense them anymore, but based on the floor plan of the ship before the crash, I could guide you in the right direction so you might see if they’re accessible somehow.”
“Where’s the first one?” I ask, pausing to look over as Big D appears in the nest’s doorway. He glares at me before padding back into the bathroom. I hear the lapping sound of water as I turn back to … “Hey, do you have a name perchance?”
“Oh. A name. It’s been so long since anyone’s asked me. Yes. Before the accident, I was a Cartian female, and my name was 01010010—” She continues to type out a massive string of binary code that means nothing to me. I think it’s about forty-digits long, not including spaces. Mm.
“Zero, it is then.” I keep things simple.
Also, how do you pronounce Cartian? Car-shin? Close enough. I don’t even know what sort of alien that is, but good to know.
Dragon Dude comes back into the main area, but I don’t worry too much about our conversation. Not only can’t he read what’s on the screen, but he doesn’t understand ninety-percent of what I’m saying anyway.
“Have a pleasant jerk-off session?” I ask sarcastically. He claws across the ground until he’s looming over me from behind, wings spread, bioluminescent parts throbbing with that deadly purple glow. He’s got those shadows around him again, hooking one horn on the right side of my face and putting his cheek up near my left.
“Yes.” In English, mind you. He stalks away from me, tail thrashing, and I turn after him, briefly forgetting all about my plan with Zero (still partially convinced she might be a murderous AI bot or something).
“How much of what I’m saying do you actually understand?” I ask, pausing next to him as he stares out into the woods. I wave my hand up near his face, and while he looks at me, he doesn’t respond to the question.
“Stay.” The headset burbles his translated growl into my ear, and he hops down, stalking into the woods with the bunching of strong muscles. Only a truly delusional woman would not appreciate this guy’s back and shoulders. Or his chest. Or his ass.
Or his double dicks.
I turn away with a sigh, looking back at the computer and wishing she had a face.
“Do you know where we are? What planet, I mean?”
“It’s known as Jungryuk to most, but its name on my people’s map is”—she types up another mass of binary code, making me wonder if something just isn’t translating correctly—“after one of our minor gods.”
Huh.
That’s all surprisingly unhelpful.
Jungryuk? I can only see it as it’s typed, but … I decide joong-ree-yook is how I’ll pronounce it.
“Where is Earth?” I ask, praying that she has some idea as to where my home is. “The place where I came from.”
“I’m not familiar with the planet ‘Earth’; I only know English because market traders use it. I’m sorry.”
“Fantastic. Okay then, where is the first of these doors?”
Zero shows me a map, sending me out to see what parts of the ship I can access, and if there are any doors left to break into. We find three of them. What I should say is: we find three of them that I have no hope of breaking into. They’re solid metal with very obvious edges, big enough to dig my fingers into. They go absolutely nowhere when I try to drag them open.
The computer guides me to a hatch next, one that’s embedded in the ceiling of a low-roofed niche branching off from the main area. I have to drag some debris over to reach it, but when I hang my full body weight from the edge of it, the whole thing comes loose.
I’m sent flying across the floor as a set of steps—much like attic steps—unfolds from the dark space, hitting the ground just shy of crushing my toes. My eyes are wide as I scramble to my feet and start up the first few stairs, trying to peer into the gloom beyond. Who knows what might be up here? I’m afraid of my parents’ attic back home. Got a black widow in my hair once by going up there. Never happening again. I glance suspiciously back at the computer screen.
“I suggest you hurry so that we can be finished before he comes back.”
“Does it matter?” I ask, staring down at the metal steps beneath my feet. “I’m not going to be able to close this thing up by myself.” I take the last few steps and then stick my entire head into the attic space. It’s vast, stretching well past my field of vision into the shadows. I can hear critters scurrying up here, tiny, frantic feet like mice. Alien mice, no thanks. I reach out for the only item I can see: a small metal box with a lock.
It's not heavy when I draw it out of the hole, turning it over in my hands a few times to see if I can’t get a read on what it is or how to open it. I look questioningly at Zero’s screen, brow raised.
“What’s going on? I can’t see anything, remember? I can’t even talk. You have to keep me filled in.”
“It’s a small, silver box,” I say, peering at the lock on the front. It looks like a relatively crude fingerprint scanner. Just to test it out, I press my thumb against it and it beeps red at me. Ah. Nice. Biometrics protected luggage. I look up at the metal wall across from me, and then I chuck the box as hard as I can at it.
The lock part hits the wall and little bits of plastic scatter everywhere as the scanner breaks. The entire thing falls to the floor and the top swings open like a broken music box.
Crude, but effective.
I hop down and move over to the box, squatting down beside it to see what was so important it needed to be protected by a fingerprint scanner. There’s a pink something in there—whoever lived in this ship really loved the color—that I pick up and unfold.
It’s some sort of … outfit?
“Huh.” I move the fabric aside to find white boots, long gloves, and—oh my God, yes!—underwear. There are clean panties in this box, and that’s a miracle not to be underestimated. But what if … what if they’re used panties? I pick them up, and they look clean, but … Fuck it. They’ve probably been on this ship for a hundred years. Whoever wore them is long dead. “There are clothes in the box—pink clothes.”
“Ah. My clothing then. It was put in storage when my body died. There should be quite a few boxes like that up there.”
“Only one that I can see, and I’m not climbing through the creepy alien-mice-filled attic to find more.” I stand up, taking the clothes with me. Hopefully, they fit. Ugly as they might be, any clothing is preferable to running around in lace lingerie. And now that I have two pairs of panties, I can wash one and hang it to dry.
I change into the outfit first, frustrated to find that it barely fits. I can get it on, and I can zip it up to my navel, but that’s where the zipper refuses to budge. I end up looking like an actress in an adult film about aliens and not like an actual kidnapped human being that was spirited away by two Chad-like alien twins to a meat market.
“Fuck.” I end up taking my old underwear and washing them in a giant leaf that I fill with water because I don’t want to contaminate the bathtub drinking water. Zero guides me to a particular flower that’s growing from the wall of vines, and I’m able to crush that for some sort of sweet-smelling sap that lathers like soap. I hang them to dry.
