Alien Dragon's Mate: Braxan (Science Fiction Alien/BBW Romance) (7 page)

“Well, maybe. At least I have clothes on. But you ...” She looked him over in the same way he had looked at her. “... you don't.”

He glanced down himself and shrugged. “It doesn't impede me.”

“Okay. But it kind of impedes me. In the best possible way, of course. But still.” The utility suit could easily be split in half at the waist, and she pulled the lower part off her, revealing her jeans underneath. She handed the blue-orange pants to the man. “See if you can get this on you.”

He accepted the pants with hesitation. They didn't look like they'd fit a man half his size, but the memory fibers would adjust themselves to his measurements. All the utility suits at the base were one size fits all.

The man pulled the pants on, and the fabric creaked with strain when he pulled them up over his powerful thighs. “Remarkable garment,” he said and moved around, testing the pants. It was tight, but they fit.

“Uh-huh ... um yeah, let me help you with that ...” Amelia gingerly reached out and fastened the quick-zip at the fly. Then she couldn't help staring at the man. He looked so spectacular she had trouble believing it. He was not from the base, she was sure of it. “So where do you come from, anyway?”

He looked past her, out into the desert crater. “We can't stay here,” he said calmly, ignoring her question.

She turned around and immediately felt her skin crawl. “Damn!” she exclaimed at the sight of hundreds of Pirgks closing in. “Where the heck did those come from?”

“They are too many for me to fight.” He placed his arm around her back and turned her, pushing her in the direction of the mountains with an urgency that scared her.

She stumbled over a loose rock. “Do they know we're here?”

“Can you see them? Yes? Then they can see you. They will follow into the mountains, but beyond is a forest. We can hide there.”

The man went in front, and he moved with an agility as if he weighed very little, effortlessly jumping around on the big rocks. Amelia struggled to keep up, and soon she was sweating and panting. She had been pretty exhausted already, but the sight of the encroaching mass of Pirgks had given her a shot of frightened energy. But she knew it would burn out soon, and then she was afraid she might collapse. The outer rim of the crater got steeper and steeper, and now Amelia was pretty much rock climbing. She released a little avalanche of pebbles and sand from the loose scree.

“I wasn't built for this,” she muttered, and the man looked at her over his shoulder. Then he came back down the slope, not releasing a single pebble.

“They are gaining on us. We had a fiftieth head start, but now they'll be here in a hundredth of a day. Can you go any faster?”

Amelia was both scared and frustrated. “Oh sure,” she seethed, “let me just activate my hoverboots and fucking
fly
over these damn rocks.”

The man glanced down at her feet and scratched his chin, nodding. “Yes? That would not be a bad idea.”

Amelia frowned
. Seriously?
“No, just kidding. I can't do that. Those are just ordinary boots.”

“Ah,” he said, and suddenly he looked her right in the eye and his gaze pierced her soul so hard she had to look down. “Sarcasm. Not, perhaps, the most fruitful of approaches in this context. Or any context.”

“Well maybe,” Amelia said, taking deep breaths in a sore throat, “but it's all I got right now.”

His eyes had burned themselves into her consciousness. They weren't green. The irises were alternately sky blue and clear yellow, arranged in sectors with thin, black borders separating them. They reminded her of something. Heck, the whole guy reminded her of something. She got the feeling she'd met him before. But it was impossible. She would have remembered. She would
definitely
have remembered.

A sudden noise from further down the slope made her whip around. There were two Pirgks only a couple of hundred feet away, looking up at her with their misshapen faces. “Shit. Do we start throwing rocks or what?”

“There's only one thing we can do,” the man said. And then he moved one step closer, got a good grip around her waist and hoisted her onto his shoulder, caveman style.

“Hey, what-” Amelia yelled, but then she shut up as he started moving up the rocky slope with her hanging over one shoulder. She contemplated protesting, but then she realized that as undignified as that position was, it was effective. Because he moved
fast
. Even with her slung over his shoulder, and she wasn't the lightest waif in the world. She felt his muscles working and she felt how he almost bounced from rock to rock and scrambled fast up slopes of pebbles and sand. He held her gently, but she still felt completely safe.

She was just about able to lift her head from her ridiculous position to check what was going on behind them, further down the side of the crater. The Pirgks were definitely further away now, so, humiliating as it was, this
was
working.

She couldn't really make out how far they were from the top of the rim, where they could go downwards again and maybe she didn't have to hang on this guy like some kind of newly clubbed cavewoman being taken to a cave for ... for whatever this guy had in mind. She decided not to pursue that line of thinking just yet.

She knew nothing about him, only that he was helping her escape the Pirgks. That made him a good guy in her book, at least for now. But there was no way she would ever tell anyone about how she was being carried right now, and if he ever spilled the beans about that to people she knew, he would be talking himself right into the 'bad guy' category. He would always be in her 'hot as shit' category, though.

Still he went on up the steep slope, but Amelia could hear his fast breathing and she could feel his skin starting to feel slick.

He smelled great. Spicy and dry and fresh, healthy and male. And there was a note in there that she knew she had never felt before, but which gave her a feeling of time passing. Not old and musty, just... ancient. And alien.

Who was he?

They must have been running up the hill for a good twenty minutes when he slowed down and stopped, then gently helped her get down on her feet. “From here on it's downhill. How's your leg?”

She moved it around a little and winced. “It's been better. How's your chest?” She pointed to his injury, which was looking very red and sore.

“It has also been better,” he said and shielded his eyes again. “Our pursuers are further away now. A twentieth of a day before they'll catch up with us.”

Amelia looked around. Yep, this was the edge of the giant crater that contained both Belzon Base and the Pirgks. On the outside of the crater it was dark red and yellow and green as far as the eye could see. Belzon Forest, as it was called on the base, was largely unexplored. The first priority for any base was to ensure its own future and stabilize, so that it could support itself. Only when that was complete, which could take years, would the colonists explore the planet in detail. Bases were always built in deserts or on rocky ground if possible, because the last thing the human colonists and explorers wanted to do was disturb the sensitive biotopes in forests and jungles.

But the forest seemed warmer than the cold desert, and there was definitely steam rising from several spots among the dense woods.

Amelia turned around and looked into the crater. The horizon was hazy, and she couldn't see Belzon Base. She checked her comms unit. No signal at all. Just zero.

She looked up at the young man. The golden lines on his skin reminded her of thin veins of gold in rock, before it was mined. “Before we go any longer, I'd like to know who you are and where you come from. I'm Amelia, and I come from Belzon Base.”

He looked her in the eyes, and there was a little smile playing on his lips. “I'm Braxan. And I
don't
come from Belzon Base. Have you caught your breath? We can't wait here too much longer.”

Amelia felt the old defiance spark. “So you're not from Belzon Base. You know, that was the one thing I knew. But you speak English, and there are some parts of you that don't look human. So who are you exactly?”

He didn't smile. “I'm sure those things will become clear in time. Now we have to go.”

She had an impulse to place her hands on her hip. He was hot as hell, and he probably had saved her life both by breaking up the gang rape party and by taking her up here. “And if I don't come, you'll just lift me up again and carry me like before?”

He locked eyes with her for three heartbeats, and again she had to look down. His gaze was just too piercing.

“Not if you don't want to.”

Then he turned around without another word and walked down the other side of crater's rim.

- B
raxan -

She didn't have a chance here alone. The Pirgks could be tenacious, and with his eyesight he could tell that there weren't just hundreds coming – there were thousands approaching across the plain like an army of ants, coming straight for them.

For
her
. They had no interest in him.

He had to suppress an impulse to stop and look at her again. But if he started that, he would have trouble taking his eyes off her. Flame, that shape, so feminine and so alluring.

When he had first spotted her on the battlefield, his view of her had been filtered through the dragon's mind. Now that he had seen her without the dragon in the way, his knees had almost buckled at her beauty. As a pure human, she didn't have the scales or the other marks of dragons or Ultracos. That meant that she couldn't defend herself easily against predators like the Pirgks.

He sighed as he walked down the slope towards the colorful forest below. She didn't seem to realize the danger she was in. Could she be so innocent that she didn't understand even that? When she had been kidnapped and manhandled by the Pirgks? Did she still not grasp the implications?

He hadn't taken much of an interest in the Pirgks. His Emperor had commanded him to assist them with their conquests, and in exchange they would pay gold and gemstones to the Emperor. And Braxan and his flight would get the traditional four eleventh's share. It hadn't concerned him at the time.

They had been allied with many alien species before. But none had been as unpleasant as the Pirgks. They didn't even seem alive, not really. More like a horrific genetic experiment gone badly wrong. There was something very wrong about them.

They were all so different from her. He'd had little trouble understanding her. In their dragon form, Ultracos could speak directly into the mind of others. At the same time, the other person's language would permeate the other way. So they learned languages fast, and he didn't have to think much about it.

He threw a glance over his shoulder, then smiled to himself in relief. She was following down the hill, walking carefully over pebbles and jagged rocks and trying to catch up with him. So she had some sense after all. She didn't seem to have much trouble walking down the slope.

He smiled again.
Hover boots
. She had a defiant streak, and it warmed his heart. It was dragon-like. As long as she didn't defy him too much, he could live with it. Because he was sure he had to protect her in the forest. He had no idea what to expect. But somehow he had gathered that the Pirgks avoided that jungle as much as they could. That was not a good sign.

- A
melia -

“Think we'll lose them down there?”

She caught up with his broad back. He walked easily down the outer edge of the crater, and the forest in red and green and yellow and even white got closer. Maybe that was where he came from. It was a strange forest, oblong and symmetrical in shape and clearly separated from the rocks and sand around it. From what little the satellites had been able to tell them about that forest, it was teeming with life like an Earth rain forest on steroids. And she knew that rain forests had some inhabitants that it was better to avoid.

“I think there's a good chance of that,” he said, not looking at her.

She gingerly lowered herself from a large rock to the gravel below. The air was already warmer than inside the crater. And much more humid. The edge of the forest was still a good hundred yards below them. “Fine. I just want to get back to my base. I guess I can walk around the outside of the crater and then climb back over the edge of it from another direction that they're not expecting. It's going to be a long walk. Is that jungle dense?”

“It appears somewhat dense,” he said.

“'Appears'? Have you never been there?”

“Never.”

She looked at his determined face. He didn't look worried. “So you're not from this planet?”

“I come from far away.”

Amelia cocked her head to one side. “Yeah, so, is that a 'no'? Because you know, I'm not from this planet either. And if none of us know what we might find in that jungle, then we should probably be careful.”

He turned his head and looked behind them, like he seemed to do every thirty seconds, then walked on. “There are dangers everywhere,” he agreed.

“Uh-huh.”
I don't even know
you
that well.

The side of the crater was getting very steep, and she had to concentrate on keeping her balance. Going down the slope was less tiresome than going up it, but with all the rocks in the way, and loose, slippery gravel everywhere else, even her high-tech boots didn't give her the footholds she wanted.

There was a hoarse cry from behind them, and Braxan's head whipped around. “They see us.”

Amelia turned around to see the Pirgks he had to be referring to, but then she lost her foothold on the gravel and slid down the slope uncontrollably in an avalanche of gravel and sand.

She yelped, and she saw Braxan reach his hand out to grab her, but she was too far away and she continued sliding, faster and faster. She started clawing at the ground with her hands, trying to stop the wild ride, but the loose material had been barely stable in the first place, and everything she tried to use to hang on to came loose in her hand and was added to the avalanche.