Barbarian Alien (6 page)

Still blaming the cootie.

I push at his stomach, trying to get him to take a few steps back. “Go away. Ever heard of personal space?”

He stares at me, and his dick is seriously right at eye level. It gives me a good look at the ‘extras’ in his anatomy. I mean, he’s an alien so I don’t expect him to be like the guys at the clubs back at home, but I’m a little pissy that Georgie never mentioned anything like this when she mentioned these guys were looking for wives. He’s got a fricking horn of some kind above his dick. It’s not pointed like the horns on his head, but it looks almost like another thumb sticking out above his junk, and I have no idea what the hell that’s for. Worse than that, his dick – not that I’m scrutinizing, mind you – has the same ridges along the top of it that his arms and chest have.

It’s so
weird
.

I am so not turned on by it.

Not at all. Nope.

The cootie in my chest thrums, and I smack it to silence it. Fucking cootie. I grab at the furs under Raahosh’s feet. “Can I have these please?” To my relief, he steps aside and I grab the blankets and tuck them close around my body, grumbling as I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep. The cootie in my breast just keeps purring away like an asshole, and I’m cranky and not at all feeling an afterglow.

It’s like the masturbating made things worse rather than better. Which…really sucks.

I’m still utterly exhausted, though. My body’s telling me it needs more sleep. Well, actually, it’s telling me it needs sex and then sleep. But I can give it sleep. I close my eyes and try to ignore Raahosh moving around at the far end of the cave. I don’t think he’ll try anything; if he wanted to, he could have already. So even though I’m alone in a cave with a crazy alien and we just mutually had an angry masturbation fest, I drift off to sleep.

• • • 

When I wake up in the morning, I’m not entirely surprised to feel a big warm body pressing up against mine. Raahosh isn’t exactly Mr. Boundaries, but if all he’s doing is sleeping, I can live with that. I yawn and sit up, scooting away from him.

His big arm automatically goes around my waist. He grunts and pulls me back against him, then nestles further down in the blankets.

Typical man. I pry his arm off of me. “Some of us have to pee.” I slide out of his grip and wobble to my feet. My legs feel shaky, but I feel strong. I wiggle my toes, and they’re dandy, too. Huh. Maybe the cootie isn’t the world’s worst. Then again, it has terrible taste in men.

The floor of the cave has been swept clean, and the fire has low, warm coals on it, which tells me that Raahosh hasn’t been sleeping for long. I yawn and look around for shoes, but the only thing I see are his boots. I shrug and stick my feet in them, then clomp out into the snow to do my business.

I don’t go far, because I’m not stupid. This place is alien and completely foreign and could be full of all kinds of dangerous things. I don’t stray far from the mouth of the cave, and I’m not surprised when I turn around to see Raahosh there, a sleepy look on his face, spear in his hands, ready to protect me.

Or, you know, hunt me down.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him. “Not unless there’s a Starbucks around the corner.” He gestures at the cave mouth and I roll my eyes, heading back inside. “Seriously, where do you think I’m going to go? I have no idea where I am and no clue what direction everyone else is in. Do you think I’m just going to pick a direction and decide to wing it? After all I’ve been through?”

When he just stares, I sigh. “Never mind. I’m clearly talking to a brick wall here. Thanks for kidnapping me, by the way. Props for making a shitty situation even worse. I sincerely appreciate that.”

He glares and gestures at the cave mouth again.

“Right. I was heading in that direction.”

I move inside the cave and plop down near the fire. It takes me a moment before I realize that I’m not…shivering anymore? Either I’m completely numb to the cold in this place or the cootie is doing its magic. I mean, it’s brisk and I could use a nice warm jacket, but it no longer feels as if my feet are going to turn into blocks of ice. I sit down on the furs and pull his boots off, offering them to him again.

He takes them with a narrow-eyed look. Then, he examines them carefully, as if I’ve somehow booby-trapped them in the three seconds that have passed as I removed them from my feet. I snort. “Make me some shoes and I won’t steal yours.” I push a lock of hair out of the way. It’s still clean and shiny and smells good, but it’s also a wavy mess from drying in tangles. I need to braid it and get it out of the way. I try to sit cross-legged and my long leather skirt hinders my legs. Pants, too. I need pants. Pants, shoes and something to pull my hair back. “I don’t suppose there’s any coffee in this joint?” I ask him, knowing very well he can’t answer. “If you plan on keeping me captive, I’m going to be the most demanding, bitch-ass captive you have ever dealt with, so just be ready, barbarian dickhead.”

Raahosh moves into the cave and crouches near the fire, oblivious to my insults. He takes one of his bone knives and drags the point through the coals, stirring up the fire and making it higher, the flames flickering to life. Then, he moves to the back of the cave and grabs a few bricks of what I hope is peat and not poop. He adds them to the fire and stirs it again with his knife. All the while I watch him. I’m trying not to notice that when he walks, he’s got this graceful sort of movement, almost like a dancer. Or that his leggings are made out of some weird leather rigged together as if it’s attached to to a loin cloth, and it delineates some rather interesting equipment that I saw up close and personal yesterday. His leg muscles flex with inhuman beauty as he squats near the fire again, and his tail thumps on the ground, flicking like an annoyed cat. Is he annoyed with me? Or does that mean something else?

“You are kind of like a cat, now that I think about it,” I tell him. “You’ve got a pissy tail, and I bet if I pet you, you purr. Ha. Now if I could only get you to go chase a mousie and leave me alone.”

His eyes narrow at me again.

“I’m talking about food,” I lie, keeping my expression bright. I pantomime eating. “How about some yum yums for my tum tum, Whiskers?”

He grunts and stands, and I swear I’m not creeping on him or those big, rock-hard thighs. I’m not. I’m
not
. He moves to the far side of the cave again, where he has a small pack of his belongings stored, and pulls out a waterskin. I’ve seen the type before. My dad used to love to go old school when he went hunting, and he had one very similar to this one. I reach out for it.

Raahosh gives it a little shake, letting the water slosh around the bottom. Then, he lifts it toward his mouth.

“You dick!” I say, outraged. “Are you fucking with me?”

Just before he’s about to take a swig, he looks down at me, and a devilish grin crosses his face.

I immediately start to purr, and my pulse begins to pound between my legs. Dammit, cootie, now is not the time.

“You are totally fucking with me,” I grumble, but he hands me the skin and then caresses my cheek, indicating that it’s all mine. I’m not amused by his playful side. I’m not. So not. I’m totally not smiling, either. My lips are jerks because they’re not listening very well, though.

I drink down the water, a little disappointed that it’s not coffee, and save him some because I’m not a jerk. He sips it, then returns to the mouth of the cave, packs the now empty skin with snow and ties it shut, then hangs it off of a small ledge on the wall.

As I watch, he puts his boots on.

“Oooh, are we going hunting?” I say, excited. I straighten my clothing and get to my feet. “I used to help my dad with the hunting. I’m a great shot with a bow. Of course, I don’t have a bow right now but I’ve got good aim. If you can lead me to some wood, I can probably make one. I made one in shop class in high school you know.”

He says nothing, simply pulls on one boot, tightens the laces right under the knee so his entire lower leg is covered, and then repeats the motion. He grabs his spear, and then without a look back to me, heads outside.

I gape. That dick. He just totally ignored me and went hunting without me. Furious, I storm after him, barefoot….for about three feet. Then I give up because even the cootie can’t keep my toes warm. I shiver and head back into the cave, irritated with my captor.

If he thinks this is the way to woo me, his head is as broken as this so-called relationship.

I stomp my way back into the cave to sit by the fire and wait for my jerk of a captor to come back.

RAAHOSH

She’s a talker, my Liz. Even when she thinks I don’t understand her, she rambles and speaks, carrying on a one-sided conversation. It’s strange to me, as I’ve always been a silent one. Even my tribe jokes that I like silence the best.

But…I don’t know that I do.

She mentioned hunting as I left the cave and seemed disappointed when I didn’t take her with me. Does my woman hunt? The thought is unusual to me. It’s not that our women are not capable, but they are so few and precious that we dare not risk them on a dangerous hunting trip. Perhaps when she has given in to the khui-bond between us, we will go on hunting trips together. We will track kills together, and bunk down in caves and make love during the long winter nights…

And Liz will yammer the entire time and scare off all the game.

The idea still fills me with joy. To think I can have a companion after so long. I have my tribe, but I have always felt…alone. On the outside. Perhaps it was because I never had a mate, or a lover. I assumed no one wanted me.

Then my spirits sink. No one wants me still. Liz does not. Angry with myself, I stab the butt of my spear into the snow and use it as a walking stick. She will change her mind. She must. I…don’t know what I will do if my own mate spurns me despite the khui in her breast.

The thought makes my very soul ache with loneliness.

The game is scarce near the sheet of ice, and it takes me a little time to find a meal that will be large enough for both of us. I sneak up on my prey and stab it in the throat before it can run. Then, I bleed the carcass and slit it from rump to throat because I don’t want the blood to clot before I can make it back to my mate. I take out the offal and use it as bait for a snare trap that I will check tomorrow. The rest of the tasty organs, I snack on as I jog back to the cave, since Vektal said the humans are picky and won’t eat the best parts of the kill.

When I return to the cave, the human’s hair is wet as if she’s bathed herself again. The waterskin is full of snow once more, and she’s sitting on the furs without her skirt on. I pause at the sight of one delicate bare flank, the curve of her buttock making my khui thrum mercilessly in my chest.

She shifts and delicately pulls the furs over her loins, hiding them from my view, and her face turns an interesting shade of pink.

“So nice of you to return,” she says.

My heart thumps. Does she mean that? My cock is stiff and aching with the need to claim her, but her expression doesn’t say she is happy to see me. It’s confusing. Is this more of the human mating rituals I don’t understand?

Why did Vektal not tell us more about human courting? I’m at a loss.

I watch as my female uses a bone knife to punch a hole in her skirt. Actually, it’s not a skirt any longer – it looks as if she’s making leggings. That’s clever. Her hair is woven into a crown atop her head and I’m impressed at her ingenuity.

I’m also a little worried – I’m deliberately keeping her without shoes because I suspect she’ll leave the moment she has them. I’ll have to watch her closely.

A growl fills the cave, and for a moment I think it’s her khui…then I realize it’s her stomach. She’s hungry.

I move toward the fire and use a few twigs to create a spit. The humans like their meat burned, so I’ll do this for Liz. I skin the creature and notice that Liz is watching with interest. She’s not revolted like I thought she would be.

“Is that a porcupine?” She asks as I toss aside the skin of the quillbeast. “It looks like it mated with a cat and a platypus.”

I don’t know most of those words. I work on cutting long strips of the juiciest flesh off of the creature’s flanks and spear them on twigs so they can cook in the fire. She watches with interest, commenting occasionally.

“I can’t smell the food as much as I thought I’d be able to,” she says. “It’s weird. It’s like my nose is stuffed up but it’s not. I just can’t seem to smell things like I used to.” She lifts one arm and sniffs under it. “Even my own BO is practically non-existent. Is it the cootie? Or a physiological sort of thing? Does a girl in the forest stink if there’s no one around to smell her?”

Her incoherent talk continues and I eventually take one of the strips off the fire, sniffing it. It looks awful…which probably means that it’s done. I hold it out to her, wanting to feed my mate.

She reaches for it, and before she can take it, I pull it away.

Liz frowns at me. “Really? Are we playing this game again?” She gives me a disgruntled look and puts her hand out.

Fine. I can just as easily examine my mate when her hands are full. I give it to her, and when she takes it, her hands are occupied. I lean in and put my fingers on her face, examining the blue of her eyes. Even though she tries to bat me away, I’m pleased with what I see – there’s a strong blue shining from her eyes, which tells me her khui is healthy. The resonance that starts in her chest at my touch tells me our bond is bothering her as much as it is me.

Good.

I sit back on my heels and watch her nibble a piece of meat. She has a look of frustration on her face as she chews. “It doesn’t taste like anything.”

I eat another piece of raw meat and watch her. Her small, flat features screw up and she grabs another piece from one of the skewers, and takes it. “Why can’t I taste it?” She watches me as I take a raw piece of meat and pop it into my mouth. She licks her lips, and my cock responds as if she were licking it. My khui resonates fiercely, and hers responds. She ignores it and focuses on my food. “Can I try some of yours?”