Barbarians of the dying sun an alien romance

Barbarians of the Dying Sun: An Alien Romance

1

Alice I wake up naked in a strange bed. Not a stranger’s bed–not like a one-night stand–but a weird bed that changes shape each ime I move.

I roll over, and the bed molds itself around me. Beds don’t do that, so I must be dreaming. I push myself out of the bed, and as if the bed can tell what I’m trying to do, it releases me.

I fall hard onto the ground, right on my ass. Pain shoots through my body as my butt cheeks don’t manage to absorb the full force of the impact. I wince and suck air through my teeth, but then I realize I’m notdreaming.

It all feels too real. The pain is too specific to be a dream. I look around and see that the walls and ceiling are beginning to glow with a dull, pink light. The bed I was on has changed shape to become completely flat, and I see four other beds–one in each corner of the fairly small room. But all the other beds are empty. I’m alone here.

“What the hell,” I whisper, my voice sounds shaky and desperate.

I’m still expecting to magically wake up, to not be wherever it is I am. I bite my lip. It hurts, and I don’t wake up.

I try to remember what happened before this. I was driving. Where was I driving to? To the cabin. I was on that long, winding road that slowly works its way up along the mountain. I was going to meet Elsie and Amber, and we were going to have a girls’ weekend of gossip and lounging around, with some hiking and swimming in the lake.

I vaguely remember seeing something as I drove. Some weird light in the night sky. I remember the light getting bigger and bigger, and the last thing I clearly remember is braking and pulling off the road.

And now I’m here. I sit back down onto the bed, and it morphs into a chair, cradling and cushioning my bruised butt. Technology like this doesn’t exist yet.

“Aliens?” I whisper to myself.

It seems too crazy. Too unreal. But seeing a light in the sky, then blacking out, and waking up in a place like this with holes in my memory? It’s like every cheesy alien abduction story I’ve ever heard.

Either this is the weirdest and most realistic dream I’ve ever had, or I’ve been abducted by aliens. It could be something even weirder than aliens, but thinking about that makes me feel even more queasy and terrified, so I settle on aliens. I keep the possibility in the back of my mind that I am still dreaming. I know it’s probably not true, but telling myself that this is some weird dream or hallucination is the only thing that keeps me sane.

I get up off the bed, gently this time, and it releases me to stand. I trace the walls of the room, looking for a door of any kind. Each wall is about ten paces long. The other beds look like mine, but when I try lying down on them, they stay stiff as a board rather than molding to my body.

How is there no door? What if I am just trapped in this tiny, sealed-off room until I die of thirst?

And as if to answer my question, the purple glowing on the wall furthest from me intensifies. I shield my eyes from the bright glow, but I see a rectangular shadow forming within the center of the wall.

My eyes start to adjust to the brightness, and I realize that the shadow is a door. I can see through into some kind of hallway, but then a huge figure fills the door and blocks my view.

Before I can get a good look at it, it throws a woman down onto one of the beds. The bed forms itself around her body.

“Hey!” I shout, but the figure turns its back to me.

Before the door closes again, I catch sight of teal skin and a muscular back. It’s a back that looks nearly human, save for the teal skin–and I’m pretty sure no man on Earth is quite thatbig.

Just before the door shuts, I see eyes as purple as the bright lights lock onto me from over that broad shoulder. Above his head I see curved horns, and I wonder if he’s wearing some kind of horned helmet, like a Viking warrior. But the door shuts before I can make any real sense of what I saw.

A man. An Alien man. Teal skin and purple eyes. Huge and strong, and…

And is that Elsie?

I rush to the bed and find my friend, who is naked as I am, surrounded by the strange bed.

“Elsie,” I hiss, trying to shake her by the shoulder.

I can’t budge her, the bed stays solid as stone.

“Elsie,” I say, louder, “Wake up!”

I see her eyelids flutter, and the bed moves as if it were soft as clay when Elsie’s body stirs and turns toward me.

“Alice?” she says. “Are we in the cabin already? I don’t remember arriving.”

Jesus. Seeing Elsie here should be a relief. I know I’m not in this alone anymore. But seeing her here and talking about the cabin drives home to me that this is not a dream.

What if we never get out of this room?

Her eyes open slowly, and they dart around wildly as she takes in everything around her.

“It’s not the cabin,” I say, not quite wanting to be the one to break the news to her.

Then I see her leap off the bed, and I manage to catch her enough that she doesn’t fall totally flat on her ass like I did.

“I’m naked,” she whispers. “You’re naked too...Alice, what the hell?”

“What was the last thing you saw?” I ask her. “The last thing you remember?”

“Some purple light, getting brighter,” she says.

“Were you driving?” I ask.

She nods.

“I think we’re inside that purple light, Elsie. I think it’s an alien ship.”

2

Alice We eventually come to terms with everything. As much as two women can come to terms with being prisoners on an alien ship.

“Are you sure he looked human?” Elsie asks me. “How do you even know it was a ‘he?’

Did you see his–” “Shut up,” I say, giggling.

I think it’s the first time I’ve actually laughed since waking up here. It’s a nervous laughter more than anything, but laughter is still laughter.

Elsie smiles and shakes her head. “I have to pee.”

We both look around, and then back at each other. There are four walls. Four beds.

No toilets.

“I’ll...hold it,” Elsie says, biting her lip.

I walk up to the wall that the door opened from, and I start to pound on it. “Hey! We’re thirsty and hungry, and one of us has to pee!”

“Shh!” Elsie says, “What if you make them mad?”

I shrug. “They’ll throw us naked into a prison with no food or water or toilets? Oh wait, they already did that.”

I pound harder and harder, and just when I’m about to give up and curl up into a ball in my weird shape-shifting bed thing, the wall glows bright.

I step back, afraid the alien man might walk right over me if I don’t move out of the way.

The wall seemingly melts away, but it’s not the one from before. It’s a short green thing, with slits for eyes and a big head shaped like an oversized cabbage. Its skin is sickly green rather than teal, and before I can even back away with it, it shoves a rod into me, and a shock jolts through my entire body. I fall limp to the floor, and I hear Elsie scream.

I hear her back into a corner as the shadow of the green thing passes over me, and when I manage to move my head enough to see, Elsie is falling to the ground just as I did.

More figures walk in and start chittering at each other. All are that shade of sickly green, and aside from walking upright on two legs and having two arms, they barely resemble anything human. Unlike the first figure I saw, whose bright violet eyes looked almost more human than any man on Earth–and whose sculpted back would make even the most athletic man jealous–these green things have no visible muscles. Their arms look like limp noodles, and they movements are jerky and quick, like insects more than men.

I realize drool is dripping from the corner of my mouth, but my whole body is numb, and I can barely swallow. When I feel the green things touching me, poking me, and running glowing instruments over my body, I can’t move enough to resist. All I can do is tighten my hands into fists, and cry as they flip me onto my back and probe me all over.

I fear they’ll do more than probe me, but it’s too horrible to think that something so awful looking could have any type of sexual appetite. They are completely naked, and I can see no hint of anything they could use to do the deed with, which is a very small relief considering their four-fingered hands are squeezing me and poking into my torso, seemingly counting how many ribs I have.

“You said they looked human,” Elsie whines, her voice slurred as if she had just come back from the dentist.

“These ones are different,” I say, and I realize I can’t feel my lips. My voice sounds like Elsie’s. “The other one was…”

I trail off, no longer having the strength to speak. The other one, did I imagine him? Did I just see what I wanted to see? I never got a good look at him, but could I really have imagined something like that

Just as I begin to doubt myself, he fills the doorway. This time the light is brighter, and I can see him fully, hoisting another naked woman on his shoulder. I already know it’s Amber, though I’d held onto some hope that they wouldn’t catch her.

The man-like alien throws Amber into one of the beds. His skin really is teal, and he really is larger than any human man. He’s tall and muscular, with an athletic build. His four arms and four legs are all humanlike enough that I find my eyes lingering on his well-sculpted calves and biceps. He’s wearing some type of loin-cloth as his only form of clothing. It hides his ass and dick– assuming he even has a dick–and not much else.

He throws Amber down onto one of the beds like a sack of potatoes, then he turns to the green aliens, which are half his height, and he shouts at them in a language I don’t understand.

The two which are poking my ribs jump back and look up. They jerk and tilt their heads, chittering at the teal alien, who I realize has actual horns. It’s not a helmet, but long, curved horns jutting out from either side of his head. He tilts his head down so those horns press toward the small aliens, and he growls.

They scurry out of the room, their examination of Elsie and me seemingly incomplete.

His eyes are a bright violet, just like I thought I’d seen the first time. Aside from that strange color, they are intensely human, with a black iris and dark lashes, set between impossibly high, chiseled cheekbones. Those eyes flick toward Elsie, but then they lock onto me. His eyes burn with an intensity. With a hunger. I know it’s silly to think I can read anything from an alien’s weird purple eyes, but I know hunger when I see it, and this alien either wants to eat me...or– He licks his lips. He has the face of a Greek statue, or like one of the gods the statues were meant to resemble. I’m too terrified to feel much more than raw fear as he gazes down at me, but I’ve never had a man look at me with such desire, and never a man this attractive.

He’s an alien, Alice, not a man. He has freaking horns on his head, and he’s kidnapped you! And Elsie, and now Amber too.

But my body and my biology can’t separate that from the way my heart is pounding, and the thrill creeping through me even as I’m utterly terrified of what he might do to me.

Though it couldn’t be much worse than what the sickly green ones did to But my body and my biology can’t separate that from the way my heart is pounding, and the thrill creeping through me even as I’m utterly terrified of what he might do to me.

Though it couldn’t be much worse than what the sickly green ones did to me.

“You,” he says, taking a step toward me.

My throat goes dry. He is speaking English, or maybe it’s an alien word that just sounds like “you?”

I bite my lip and find it’s no longer numb. I pull my feet underneath myself and stand shakily up.

“M–me?” I say, pointing at myself.

I become intensely aware of how naked I am, and as his eyes move down my body, I try to cover my breasts with one hand, and my womanhood with the other.

He smirks at that. Who knew an alien could smirk?

“You don’t need to cover yourself,” he says. “You have good breasts.”

I hear Elsie stifle laughter. The alien speaks in a strange accent. It’s rough and clipped, and it’s unlike any accent I’ve ever heard on Earth.

“Excuse me?” I try to ask, but my voice comes out as a dry whisper.

“You have good lines,” he says. “Nice shape.”

He holds his hand out, and as his eyes run across my hips and ass and breasts he extends his index finger and moves it through the air, tracing the shape of my body as if painting on an invisible easel.

“Jesus,” Elsie blurts out.

He looks at her and scowls, and then back at me. “You ask for food, water, these things?”

I nod.

“I will bring you these,” he says.

“Where are we?” I ask.

It feels dangerous to ask. I’m still holding out hope that we are actually somewhere on Earth. That maybe they have some hidden base on Earth, and we’ll be released after some kind of examination. If he says that we’re– “On our ship,” he says. “Many light-years from your planet now.”

Yeah. That. If he says that, then all hope of ever getting my life back is gone. Everything is over.

He takes another step toward me, bringing him well within what I’d consider my personal space. Being naked makes it even worse.

I try to look down to avoid his gaz I try to look down to avoid his gaze, but that just has me looking at his loin cloth, and wondering for some reason what’s under there. So I look up, and I see his cut, teal abdominal muscles. I feel my cheeks burn with embarrassment looking there, so I look up further–past his broad chest–until finally I see that smug grin and those intense purple eyes on me.

“You like my lines too,” he says in a low growl. “I can smell your arousal.”

I look down at the floor now. Not daring to look at him again.

Then I feel his skin touch mine. His hard, calloused hand brushes against my bare shoulder, moving my hair away.

I try to break away, but he squeezes. If I was terrified before, then there are no words for the feeling that overtakes me. It’s a suffocating terror, and I try to curl up into a ball to avoid his gaze.

Then he whispers into my ear. His hand doesn’t stray from my shoulder, he doesn’t violate me. He just whispers into my ear.

“They won’t treat you well,” he whispers. “Once we land. It will be much worse than it was just now. Those green things have no hunger for you, but others will.”

I tremble. My whole body shudders. It’s all too much. I can’t take it all in. Somehow the only thing that feels good now is that warm hand on my shoulder. I’m naked and afraid and alone, and that alien hand on my shoulder feels like the only thing anchoring me to sanity. It’s probably just my body doing whatever it can to feel sane, some kind of desperate psychological defense that makes no logical sense. As if this loin-clothed monster could make me feel safe.

Still, he’s infinitely better than those other things. If I have to choose between him and those insect-like monsters, I’ll choose him.

“They’ll make you a slave,” he whispers.

I look up now. His hard gaze softens as I meet his eyes.

“Your eyes are green, like the sea,” he says.

“A slave?” I ask.

“My clan would treat you better,” he whispers, his brows furrowing.

His expression is pained. Conflicted. “But,” he says. “I couldn’t…”

“I don’t want to be a slave,” I say.

“Nor do I,” he says, “Proximus should never serve others.”

He pulls away from me with a sudden intensity. Proximus? Is that his name? He turns his back to me before I can read his expression. He stands in the doorway, his back facing us. He stands there for a long moment, then says, “You may pee in your beds.”

“Excuse me?” Elsie snaps.

“Food will be sent,” he barks, and the moment he steps into the hallway, the doorway forms back into a solid wall.

Elsie walks toward me on shaky legs. She must have got jolted worse than me. “What did he say to you?” she asks. “He would barely even look at me...but he was like, magnetically drawn to you. Alice, What did he say? Other than that he liked your boobs.”

Slaves. Should I tell her? If it’s true, we’ll find out soon enough. Right now, Elsie might still have some shred of hope. She might think that things could work out. If I tell her what the alien said, then she’ll feel as crushed and defeated as I do. I decide I won’t tell her.

“Just more of what you heard,” I say. “He’s a perv.”

We both look over at Amber, who is completely swallowed up by the bed.

“We should let her sleep,” I say.

Elsie frowns and nods.

3

Alice After we get Amber up to speed, Elsie risks peeing in the bed. As we guessed, it absorbs all the fluids. It’s much more clean and sanitary than a toilet, when I really think about it, but somehow it’s more disgusting. We spend the first years of our childhood learning not to wet the bed. It feels wrong to just let it rip in bed, even if it’s an alien bed.

Amber is sitting with her hands wrapped around her knees, cradled in the bed. She hasn’t spoken much at all since the initial confusion passed.

“It’s kind of like the cabin,” Elsie says.

Amber scowls at her.

“At least we’re together,” Elsie says, shrugging.

The wall glows, and Amber shields her eyes. Elsie and I are used to it by now.

The door opens, and Proximus struts back into the room. I’m not surprised this time when he comes straight for me.

He grabs me by the wrist this time, and he turns me so his body is blocking us from Elsie and Amber.

“Stop it,” I hiss.

“You said you don’t want to be a slave,” he says.

“Of course not,” I say, trying to break his grip, but his grip is hard as stone.

“Neither do I,” he says, his eyes narrowing. “We have to go now. Come.”

He pulls on my wrist, tugging me toward the door.

Elsie tries to stop him, but he just stiff arms her.

“I have only room to take one of you,” he growls. “Her.” He tugs on my arm to emphasize his point. I see Amber crying, and Elsie runs toward us, but the wall forms in front of her as he tugs me through the doorway. I can no longer see them as Proximus tears me further down the hallway “The others are sleeping,” he says, still clutching my wrist.

“I don’t want to go if you leave Elsie and Amber behind,” I say, digging my heels into the ground.

“It’s too late,” he says, and when I refuse to move another step, he scoops me up off the ground and throws me over his shoulder.

I kick and punch, but his one strong hand is enough to hold me pinned as he races down the hallway.

We turn several times, but with my head over his back, I can’t see very well where we’re going–only where we’ve been. The hallways look like those of some ancient temple more than a spaceship. The walls are ornate and carved, but there’s a type of patchwork look to everything. If this were an ancient temple, it looks like a temple that squatters moved in and covered in graffiti and filled with thrift store furniture.

We turn another corner, and there’s a loud shout in an alien language. I feel myself moving down, and the next thing I know I’m on my feet in a low crouch. When I look up, I see Proximus’ muscular body leap forward.

From somewhere in his loincloth he pulls out a small rod, and at the flick of his wrist it expands into a full-sized spear.

As he moves, I catch sight of another teal, horned alien in a loincloth. The second alien’s eyes are wide, and before he can even reach for his own weapon, Proximus throws his spear.

I shield my eyes, but not in time to miss seeing the spear sinking into the alien’s flesh.

The last thing I see before I shut my eyes is a spurt of purple blood erupting from the alien’s skull.

I feel Proximus throw me back over his shoulder, and I keep my eyes shut now, not wanting to see anything else he might do.

I soon feel him putting me down again. I look up and see we’re in a tiny, sphere-shaped room. I see the wall closing up behind us just as my vision snaps back into focus.

“What are you doing?” I ask, panting. I wasn’t the one running and killing and throwing spears, but I feel completely exhausted from the whole ordeal.

“We are escaping,” he says. He looks down at me and shakes his head. “Such good lines and curves, you’d have been a hard-worked slave, but I am sparing you that fate.”

“Do you mean...sex slave?”

“Of course,” he says. “You are a young human woman with a near perfect shape and intoxicating scent. And we...we are what we are.”

He points to himself, as if that is any kind of explanation at all. How am I supposed to know what the hell he is?

Just as I’m about to ask him how we are going to escape, I feel a jolt, and then I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster, my stomach drops 1,000 feet all at once.

“Holy crap!” I shout, bracing for some kind of impact, but then I realize that Proximus and I are floating.

“Here,” he says, flicking a wrist, and suddenly the entire top half of the sphere disappears.

I see the black vastness of space, and I hold my breath in expectation that all the air will be sucked out of my lungs.

“This is a window,” he says, tapping.

I sigh and gasp for air. My body floats up into that window, and when I reach to grab it, some kind of handhold forms out of the wall. I grasp onto it to avoid floating back and forth through the little ship.

“Look,” he says, and he flicks his wrist again.

I feel the weight come back to me for a brief moment, and the stars start to shift. Then I see it. The giant ship behind us. The ship is shaped like a large spear, floating through the black, starry void. It’s not quite pure white, more like the pearl, off-white white of bones. It seems to be spinning, though very slowly. I can’t tell if it’s moving or not, and there is no visible sign of engines or exhaust, or anything that would suggest movement.

“Pay attention,” Proximus says. “You’ll only see this once.” He grabs hold of me, his hand gripping my naked waist with a fierce possessiveness.

I feel his hard, muscular body pressed against mine, and in the insanity of all that is happening, that closeness to him is the only thing that is keeping me anchored. He’s an alien, but he’s still another living person, and in the infinite vastness of space all around us, he’s the only living thing I have.

Then I see what he is telling me to look at. There’s a big, red sun. I feel like I should shield my eyes from it, but it doesn’t hurt my eyes at all to look directly at it.

“The window shields us,” he says. “But this is our dying sun. It’s much weaker than yours.”

“That shadow,” he says, pointing. “Is our world.”

I see it only after he points. A small spherical shape near the edge of the big red sun.

“You’re…” I whisper. “You’re touching my waist.”

He turns me toward him, rotating my weightless body so I’m floating in front of him, our eyes just inches apart. He still grips my waist as tightly as before.

“I can touch what I own,” he says.

“Own?” I say, my mouth dropping open. “I thought you were saving me from being a slave.”

“You’re not my slave,” he says. “But I do own you.”

He slides his hand up my waist and toward my breasts, and I slap him as hard as I possibly can. His face doesn’t just look like a perfectly sculpted statue, it’s just as hard too. Pain jolts through my hand and wrist and forearm, and the impact of the slap sends me floating backward and away from him.

He just laughs as I slam into the edge of the ship opposite him.

I barely remember to reach and grab at the wall, creating a new hand hold. I scowl at him, red with fury and anger. “You do not touch me. And you do not own me. Are we clear?”

He shoots me that same insufferable, cocky grin. “The first part,” he says. “I can maybe agree to. Though I smell your arousal when I touch you. But the second thing you ask? I must own you, Alice. If I don’t own you, someone else will. This is the way of our world.”

And that world has moved halfway off the sun and grown larger. We are approaching it, I realize. I look back at the bone-white ship we left, and I see it’s smaller now. So we are moving. The big ship must be stationary, at least in relation to the planet. So they aren’t chasing us, at least not yet.

I turn back to the view of the alien world and the red sun. I never thought I’d see Earth from space, though as a photographer, I’d dreamed of such a chance. Seeing this alien world is almost as good as seeing my own planet from this view, though I have no camera to take a picture of it with.

I suddenly remember that he told me I’d see this “only once.” I start to think about what that means, and the only conclusion I can draw from it is that once we land on this horrible planet, I’ll never leave it again.

I feel stupid for trusting Proximus. The other aliens on the ship did treat me worse, but at least I was together with Elsie and Amber. We were in it together. We were maybe the only three humans in this hellish place, and now I may never see another human being again. All because I trusted this big teal monster?

“I fought against you,” I say. “I didn’t want you to take me out of that room. You pulled me out and slung me over your shoulder.”

He grins as he looks out at the planet, growing larger through the transparent top of our little sphere. Then he turns his full attention to me, as if the incredible view of space and the dying sun and his home world were no longer there.

“Alice, I told you you’d see this view only once. This is my second time, and likely my last.”

Then he raises a hand and moves as if he’s going to touch my cheek, but he stops and furrows his brow. He instead takes my hair in his hands and runs his hands along it. His nostrils flare as he leans forward and takes in my scent.

“I told you not to touch me,” I whisper weakly.

“Hair is dead. I’m not touching your living flesh.”

I jerk my neck just enough to give him the hint, and he finally lets go of my hair. “It’s attached to my body. Anything attached to my body is off limits. Why don’t you go enjoy your view?”

I cross my arms and cover my breasts, but letting go of the handhold makes me float slowly toward him, so I use one hand to grasp it again.

“I am enjoying my view,” he says. “I admire your shape. Even when you cover your best parts.”

I scoff and jab a finger into his chest. In zero gravity it’s enough to push the massive alien back toward the other wall. Once we land on the planet, I know I’ll never be able to so much as make him budge ever again.

He’ll be able to do what he wants with me, I realize. If he decides he wants to touch my hair, or any other part of me, there won’t be a thing I can do to stop him.

He laughs. “And you looked at me the same way,” he says. “You say you didn’t want me to take you, but your eyes say a different thing. Even now.”

“If you’re not going to admire the view,” I say, anger seeping through my voice, “Then I will.”

I force myself not to so much as look at him, and we both stay on opposite ends of the sphere as we take in the view together. There are maybe only three feet of space between us, but after all of Proximus’ advances on me, it feels suddenly like a vast and cold distance.

I don’t want the massive alien to continue manhandling me. Not really. Yes, he’s objectively attractive. His body has the right “lines and shape,” to put it in his terms. But beyond that? He’s arrogant, forward, and knows no boundaries. He thinks he’s rescuing me, but I can never forget that he kidnapped me.

Okay, so I was kidnapped by the other aliens, and then he kidnapped me from the kidnappers, but the point stands. Proximus stole me away against my will. He can try to tell himself that he saw something in my eyes, but just because he caught me checking out his arms or shoulders doesn’t mean I wanted to have him sling me over his shoulder and go on a killing spree to take me as his property.

Maybe the planet won’t be as savage as I’m expecting it to be. Maybe once we land, some kind of authorities will catch him, and I’ll be offered a trip back to Earth. I’d have to try to find Amber and Elsie before I took an offer like that, but I shouldn’t assume everything about these aliens is terrible just from the small glimpse I’ve seen.

“You see the ice,” he says, pointing at the planet, which covers half of our view by now.

I can only see the half of the planet facing me, but ice is threatening to swallow all of the outer edges of what I can see, only the oceans are spared. There’s only one continent visible which isn’t totally swallowed by the ice. The continent is mostly grey and brown, with tiny patches of dull green. The ice swallowing the world looks like the white of an eye, and the dark continent. In the center of the continent–near the equator–is the only sizeable patch of lush green.

“Our planet is not like yours,” he says. “This is the day side. No one can live on the night side.”

So one side always faces the sun.

“Night on Earth must be a convenient thing for you,” I hiss. “Gives you a nice cover to kidnap poor women out of their cars.”

He ignores me. “We will land near the ice.”

“I’m naked,” I say, glaring at him. “Why don’t we land in that nice looking green part.”

He shakes his head. “Far too dangerous. We must meet my clan first. They will be near the ice.”

I imagine flying in toward Earth from a spaceship, seeing all the lush green continents, and deciding to land on freaking Antarctica.

“I will touch you now,” he says, and his strong hand reaches across the space between us and grabs my forearm.

Before I can pull away, he looks at me with those serious purple eyes and says. “This ship is old. We might burn in a great fire before we can land. I will hold you so you do not feel scared.”

He swells with pride as he grips my forearm, as if he read or saw in some movie that women like to be held when they are scared.

“You’d usually hold my hand,” I whisper.

He slides his hand down my forearm, and rather than taking my palm and wrapping his hand around mine, he grabs my knuckles from the outside and squeezes.

“Proximus,” I say, “That’s your name, right? I assumed…”

“Yes,” he says, nodding.

“Okay,” I say. “You hold a hand like this…”

I pry his fingers off me and show him. “Not so tight.”

He lets go some, and it does feel as nice as a brutal alien holding my hand could feel.

“You know,” I say. “If you didn’t want me to feel scared, which I do now–by the way– you could have just not told me about the risk of being burned up in a great fire.”

He grins at me and squeezes my hand ever so slightly tighter.

I can’t figure out if he is just dense and didn’t realize that telling me would make things worse, or if he told me just so he could touch me again.

I sigh. If I am going to burn up in the atmosphere of this horrible planet, I guess I would rather hold someone’s hand while I die.

The ship says something in an alien language, and Proximus takes his free hand and pokes on the window with his index finger. The window highlights a point on the planet–a point near the ice–and I suddenly feel sick to my stomach as the ship moves again.

Proximus holds me tighter, and looks at me with a forced smile. “The likeliness we die is less than half.”

“Likelihood,’ I correct him. “And great, less than half. Just great odds.”

“Yes,” he says, nodding. “In our culture, anything above half is good. Anything less is bad.”

I try not to think too much about what that might mean about his world and his culture. I imagine a big alien like Proximus losing his arm to some giant axe, and laughing and smiling that he’s lucky because he still has 75% of his limbs left.

The sphere talks some more in the alien language, and then I start to feel the vibrations, and our view of the world through the window is swallowed up by flames.

I feel like an idiot doing it, but if my chance of dying is just under 50%, I want to hold onto more than Proximus’ hand. I find my head on his strong shoulder, and my hand grips tight to his muscular torso.

I can imagine the big grin on his face, but my eyes are shut tight. I imagine the sphere giving out, and just how fast we’d burn up if even a fraction of that heat came inside. If

something like that happens, I don’t want to see a hint of it, I just hope it is all is over faster than I can realize.

Proximus pulls me tight against him, and I feel too deathly terrified of imminent death to feel at all embarrassed at just how much of my body–my curves–are pressed up against his bare torso. The warmth of him against me, and the protectiveness with which he holds me tight against himself are the only things keeping me from screaming and crying and breaking down into all-consuming terror.

I don’t realize the vibrations have stopped until Proximus’ voice rumbles proud through the sphere. “We at least will not die from the great flames, though–” “Stop,” I say, my voice shaking. “Don’t tell me anything else that might kill us within the next several minutes. Just tell me we’re okay.”

“We are okay,” he says, in a dead and emotionless monotone.

“Great,” I say, and then I realize that my breasts are smooshed against his body. I tear myself away from him.

“You may touch me,” he says.

“What?” I ask?

“You forbid me to touch you, but it seems you want to touch me sometimes. As your owner, I allow it.”

I ignore him while trying not to blush. I look up through the window and see a giant line cutting across the landscape. One side is white, the other grey. I cross my fingers and pray we will at least land a few hundred miles within the grey. I don’t look forward to the idea of traipsing through the snow while butt-naked.

As we get closer, I notice flecks of green, red, blue and white within the grey. As we get even closer, I can make out the green as trees.

Proximus taps his finger against the window, selecting a wooded area near a river.

“Is that where your clan is?” I ask.

He just grunts, but I don’t know if it’s a “yes” grunt or a “no” grunt.

“We will soon meet the ground,” he says, focusing on the window.

I realize that we should be squashed against the wall since we are falling so fast, but we’re still floating as if there were no gravity. Then I realize we are not falling as fast as we should. The ground should be racing up toward us, but instead the forest and river are growing slowly as we get nearer.

Suddenly I feel a hint of weight to my body, and Proximus and I gently float down toward the window, which is the ground now. The feeling of gravity grows until I can make out the individual trees, and suddenly I see the trees fill our view.

The sphere must be pushing against gravity somehow, but it’s slowly surrendering to it as we descend.

Just before I see us hit the trees, the window disappears, and we are locked within a silver-walled sphere with a dim, pink light.

“The chance was greater than half,” Proximus says in the new silence, “That the ship would just fall so fast we’d be turned into a liquid when we hit the ground. I did not tell you about this, to make you feel safe.”

I look at him with wide eyes and a slack jaw, and I laugh with relief.

“Would you like to know our chances in the forest?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Don’t tell me any chances. Please. Let’s keep it all a surprise.”

He nods. “The ship can make us a few things. I don’t know how many.”

“What do you mean?”

“Make. Things,” he says, drawing out each word, as if I were an idiot.

“Such as…?”

He grunts something in his language, and moments later something melts off the wall and plops down between us. I pick it up and see that it’s what looks like a bright teal wetsuit.

“Clothes,” I whisper, and I jump into the thing with an intense relief at not having to be naked anymore. I’d grown used to being naked in front of Proximus, which cannot be a good thing.

Then I get the “wetsuit” on, and it feels similar to the material the beds on the ship were made of. It tightens against my body, so tight that it looks like I’m just wearing teal body paint. My nipples are clearly visible, just teal rather than pink.

“Good,” he says, nodding. “Very warm.”

“Can it...cover me,” I ask.

“I do not know how much more power the ship has left.”

“I’ll risk it,” I say, glaring at him.

He says something else, and something else drops out of the ceiling. I pick it up, and it looks like some kind of black coat or mantle.

I wrap it around my body, and it clasps almost magnetically in front. It covers everything, hanging down just below my knees.

“Now I can see nothing,” he says, scowling.

He grunts something at the ship, and it chirps back at him in an apologetic tone.

“It cannot create any weapons,” he says. “My skull spear is all we have.”

“Why is it called a skull spear?” I ask.

It holds it up and taps the tip. “The point is very hard, for breaking through skulls.”

I shudder as I remember the spear going into the other teal alien’s skull.

He says something else to the ship, and holds his palm up. A small little teardrop thing drops into his palm.

He hands it to me, “Put it in your ear.”

“What’s it do?”

“For understanding,” he says.

I think I know what he means, and I put it into my ear.

The ship is still talking, and rather than the alien language, I hear clipped and imperfect English.

“It does not know your language well,” he says. “But you should understand.”

“Can other people understand me?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I own you, others are not to speak to you.”

He shouts at the ship, and I hear the translator do its job. “OPEN DOOR!” The side of the ship melts away, and a blast of cold air hits my face, but the mantle and teal skinsuit keep the rest of me warm.

“Very few things in this forest will try to kill us,” he says. “Come.”

He holds out his hand, and I reluctantly take hold of it. I don’t know if he was trying his best to comfort me, or slyly tricking me into touching him again, but I take his hand either way.

He holds his skull spear in the other, though not fully extended. That calms me a little bit. If there really were all kinds of dangerous things here, he’d at least have the spear ready to throw or stab with, right?

“Do not worry,” he says, pulling me forward, “I can make the spear long very quickly if something does try to kill us.”

I look back at the ship, but it’s melting into the ground.

“It is spent,” he says.

The trees around us are as grey as slate, much greyer than trees on the bleakest of winter days on Earth. The leaves, though, are the most vibrant shade of green I’ve ever seen, and they completely blot out the sun, forming an emerald sky above us.

“I don’t really know why I’m asking this,” I say. “But I think the vagueness of ‘something’ killing us has me on edge. Without going into too much detail, what exactly might kill us? Wild animals? People?”

“Yes,” he says.

I tug on his arm and dig my nails into his palm. “Proximus, that is toovague.”

He stops and looks at me, as if considering how much to tell me. “Many people must have seen our ship. People this far out near the ice cannot get such things, and they will come looking to take such things from us.”

“So they will kill us to get our stuff?” I ask. “What do we have? The earpiece, the skullspear, my clothes?”

He nods. “Your clothes and the ear thing are worth fortunes here. Though you are the most valuable prize. But I will protect you. It’s my duty to protect my own property.”

“You really know how to make a girl feel special,” I say, rolling my eyes.

“Thank you,” he says in a serious voice, but he rolls his eyes back at me. He must think it means something else–the complete opposite of what eye rolling actually means.

“Should I tell you more?” he asks, tugging on me and urging me to keep following him.

I squeeze his hand and keep walking. “Okay, just don’t make it too scary. Pretend you’re trying to make this world sound interesting to me, like a tour guide selling me on your planet.”

“Hmm,” he grunts, “Interesting? The sun is dying, and our world has been populated millions of times longer than yours. We can find things in the ground tens of millions of

years old, from people and cities that are long dead. Some of those things crawl up out of the ground, and try to kill us.”

I shudder. “You did really well, up until that very last part.”

“It happens very rarely,” he says. “But it can happen. It’s very interesting. This is what you asked of me.”

“The leaves are nice,” I say. “What is nice about your world? Tell me about the leaves, and the flowers. Are there any flowers?”

“Those,” he points to a tree, seemingly at random. “Those leaves can kill. Do not touch them. There are many deadly flowers here, some we even use as weapons.”

“I said nice,” I say.

“The emperor clan has all the nice things,” he says. “My clan and the other clans along the ice have learned to not need such nice things.”

“Great,” I say. “And if you hadn’t rescued me, would they have taken me into the center, where all the nice things are?”

He nods.

“So you rescued me from that? And now I can live among the flowers you use as weapons, and the leaves that can kill? And not as a free woman, but as your property?”

He frowns at me. “They’d have used you for pleasure. You’d be a nice thing for them.

Your curves and exotic shape would fetch a high price, or you’d be given as a valuable gift. Maybe whoever ended up owning you would treat you with some kindness, or not.

It would be up to chance. Or maybe those pets of the Emperor–the ones that examined you–would run tests on you forever? I do not know what they’d have done to you, only that the likeliness of it being good was much less than half. ” “And you?” I ask. “You’ll...treat me with kindness? Even if we live in this desolate place?”

He looks at me in confusion. “No, Alice, I own you only for now. I will sell you to free my clan from its debt to the Emperor.”

He lets go of my hand and tilts his head at me, and I use the opportunity to run. To run as fast as I can.

I’ll take my chances with the deadly leaves and flower weapons. With the people who come to find me and kill me for my clothes. At least the poisonous plants and bandits will make their intent clear. They won’t pretend to be rescuing me and protecting me, holding my fucking hand, all the while planning to sell me off for money.

I look back over my shoulder, expecting to see Proximus just a few strides behind me. I expect him to close the distance in moments and hoist me back over his shoulder, but I don’t see him at all. It’s as if the forest has swallowed him, and I’m truly alone and running from nothing and no one.

I don’t stop running though. I stay on what seems to be a path cut through the woods, avoiding touching any of the leaves. The teal skin suit covers my feet and legs, so none of my skin is truly exposed, but maybe some of those leaves or flowers have spines that could penetrate through. I stay well within the center of the path as I run, and I keep checking back over my shoulder every twenty or thirty strides, expecting to see Proximus–the horned monster–rushing me down like some teal devil.

I slow down, panting and gasping for air. I keep up a labored jog, but soon I am panting so hard that my lungs burn, and I’m barely managing to walk further down the path.

At some point I stop completely, resting my hands on my knees while doubling over. I always hated running, and I hated people who liked running even more.

When I look up, I see three horned aliens eyeing me. One is holding a crossbow, which is pointed straight at me, the other two have “skull spears,” which are fully extended.

Neither of them have horns half as long as Proximus, but the one with the longer horns seems firmly in the lead.

“What is it,” Crossbow hisses to the leader.

“Shoot it!” Shorthorns shouts to Crossbow.

I should turn around and run, but I can’t move. I’m paralyzed by fear, and I’d be too spent to outrun their long strides. I remember what Proximus said–that I can understand them, but not the other way around. Then I remember how valuable he said my clothes and earpiece would be.

I point to the mantle, and they all stare at me in fascination.

I tug at it some, and hold up an open palm.

“Just shoot it!” Shorthorns squeals. “It might taste good.”

The leader backhands him casually in the face, knocking him back and sending his skullspear flying into the woods. “Shut fucking up. You fuck fuck. Don’t put holes in the nice clothes.”

The earpiece sounds a bit garbled when it says “fuck fuck,” and I get the feeling it doesn’t quite understand how to swear properly in English, almost correctly assuming that swearing in English is just dropping the word “fuck” casually into any part of a sentence.

I hope that my upturned palm is some kind of universal sign for “Do you want this?”

The leader steps forward, holding out his own open palm toward me. Okay, so he does want it, and I’ll give him the mantle if he lets me go.

I reach toward the front and unclasp it, and the moment I pull the mantle off my body, the three go into a complete frenzy.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck!” Crossbow shouts. “I want to fuck it with my spear!”

The leader rushes toward me and slaps the mantle from my hand, and grabs my wrist so hard I feel he’s going to rip the skin off it.

He tugs me and pulls me tight against his body, and even though I fight as hard as I can, I can’t create even an inch of space between us.

My face is buried in his chest, so I open my mouth wide and sink my teeth in.

“She’s so in heat! She’s in heat!” One of them shrieks. “She wants Chief’s seed so much she’s biting him!”

Chief throws me down to the ground, and I see a small splotch of purple blood where I bit him, but his eyes are filled with nothing but frenzied lust. Tears fill my eyes and blur my vision, and I feel like such an idiotic little girl for running from Proximus.

Crossbow and Smallhorns shriek, and I hear the thud of the crossbow going off.

Chief crashes down onto the ground in front of me, a skullspear sticking out of his head.

His violet eyes are lifeless and cold.

I turn around in time to see Proximus rushing toward me. I roll out of the way when it looks like he’s going to run me over.

He steps on Chief’s corpse and rips the skullspear out of his head, and he leaps into the air and plunges it down into Crossbow’s head.

I see Smallhorns raise his spear, but he takes one look at Proximus’s raw fury and throws his weapon to the ground. He throws his hands up and shrieks at Proximus, who is now holding his spear pointed toward Smallhorns, his whole body covered in purple blood “I surrender!” Smallhorns says, his whole body trembling. “I’m weak and wouldn’t have got to spear her anyhow! Chief wouldn’t have let me!”

Proximus jams the skullspear into Smallhorns’ shoulder, twists it, then rips it out.

Smallhorns shrieks and falls to the ground, clutching his gaping and bleeding wound.

“What clan are you?” Proximus roars.

“Ice cliff! Ice cliff!” he screeches.

“You are far from the ice cliff,” Proximus says, kicking Smallhorns in the ribs. “Go back there, and tell any of your clan that I will kill them if they so much as step foot off the snow.”

Smallhorns gets his feet under him, scrambles up, and runs away and into the forest.

Proximus has me in his arms within moments, he clutches me against him, his hand possessively dipping into the curve of my waist.

“You are unhurt?” He asks me.

I nod, tears streaming down my face.

He snatches my mantle up off the ground and wraps it around me. “Do not remove this again,” he says. “Under any circumstance.”

I nod, feeling like such an idiot.

“It’s difficult for us to control ourselves,” he says. “I have more discipline than most.

You see now that it’s good I own you?”

My lip trembles and I bite it, but the tears still flow without end. I manage to wail in a blubbering voice. “You are going to sell me!”

“I will make sure your owner will not mistreat you,” he says.

“This is my promise, to which I am now honor bound.”

4

Alice I feel like a hot pile of garbage as Proximus tugs me through the forest. Hours have passed since either of us spoke a word. I feel relieved that I’m “safe” again. One brutal horned alien has the restraint to not go into a raping frenzy at the mere sight of me, and he’ll kill anyone else who tries it.

That is the new definition of “safe” for me, and it makes me just want to curl up into a ball and die.

“Why haven’t we found your clan yet?” I ask, breaking the long silence.

“My clan always moves,” he says.

“You’re nomads?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “We always move. We never stay in one place, always wandering. We are called the Wandering Clan.”

“Nomads,” I whisper, not wanting to bother arguing with him or teaching him the word.

“So how did you decide to land and look for your clan here?”

“It’s a place they would likely be,” he says. “But I’ve been away for many years.”

“Why were you with the guys on the ship?” I ask. “Instead of wherever, with your clan.”

“We owed the Emperor a large debt, I was our strongest warrior, and I agreed to serve them for many cycles.”

“But now…”

“Now I will sell you, to repay this debt more quickly.”

“Aren’t they going to be–I don’t know–mad that you stole me while supposedly working for them?”

“Stole?” He asks.

“Steal,” I say. “They owned me. Now you own me. You took me from them.”

“Yes,” he says. “I own you now. They do not.”

“So you stole me, won’t that make them even more mad with your clan?”

“I took a great risk,” he says, “And I escaped with you without being killed. They will respect this.”

Jesus. Their culture doesn’t even have a concept of stealing.

“Would you have respected those Ice Cliff guys if they managed to take me?”

“They had no chance,” he says, his voice oozing with confidence. “They are weak and would never win respect from me.”

5

Proximus

The desire grows strong within me. The desire to take Alice now, to throw her down onto the forest floor and– No. I can’t touch her like that.

I’m little better than the Ice Cliff men I killed. My spear hardens and swells at the sight of her, and the needto press it inside her is impossible to ignore.

But I must.

Not because she told me not to touch her, but because I know something the Ice Cliff men did not. I know what will happen to me if I bond with her. If I take her as my mate.

I’ve wanted her as my own since the first moment I laid eyes on her. I’ve wanted to own her. And maybe when I first took her from the Emperor Clan, I was only lying to myself that I’d sell her to free my own clan. Maybe I knew only that I wanted her as my own, and I made up whatever reason I could to hide that truth from myself.

But seeing the Ice Cliff men go into a frenzy to take her, to ravish her–I’m reminded of what I know. Of why I cannot truly have her. Why I must sell her as soon as possible.

“Come,” I say, and I gesture for her to follow me.

I do not take her hand. The spear between my legs is as hard as the one in my hand, and touching her now would only make it worse.

I glance at her as she follows, and even though the thick cloth covers her luscious curves, I can still see the fullness of her breasts and the roundness of her backside burned into my eyes. My eyes find themselves on the soft skin of her neck, nearly as white as tree bark, and her green eyes shine like jade leaves.

I’m downwind of her now, at the least, so her overpowering scent of femininity has no effect on me. At least until the wind changes direction.

I soon hear the river flowing, and I hold out my arm to stop her.

“What is it?” she asks.

“The river. We will follow it to Therassus.”

“Therassus?”

“The city downriver,” I say. “Someone there can tell us where my clan is.”

“I don’t see a river,” she says.

Her face scrunches up in a way that makes me want to tear the mantle off her. Her full lips press together, and her eyes widen skeptically. She places a hand on her hip, and I can again imagine the full curves hiding beneath her mantle. I look away, toward the river.

“It’s through the trees,” I say. “But it will be dangerous for us to travel outside of the tree cover. We will follow it through the forest as long as we can.”

She raises both hands high up into the air, and suddenly her mouth opens wide as the river. A strange noise escapes her mouth: a long, drawn-out sound that gets louder as she stretches out her body. Is she...in heat? My erect spear prays she’s in heat, that she’ll throw herself at me and end this torment I’ve felt since I first saw her.

My brain fears it. Fears that I’ll have to fight her off me when I want nothing more than to satisfy her every desire.

“What?” she asks, finally closing her mouth.

“You are…” I start, but I don't want to offend her. I’ve said many normal things to her which offended her. “The sound you made.”

She tilts her head at me. “The yawn?”

I don’t know the word. It tells me nothing. I tilt my head back at her. I’ve learned it indicates confusion.

“You don’t yawn?” she asks me.

A breeze brings her scent across me, and I sniff it in, closing my eyes to savor it. She still smells of desire, but not enough to indicate she’s gone into heat.

“Why do you do this?” I ask. “Why do you yawn?”

“Um,” she says, “I don’t think we ever really figured it out.”

Why would she do something like this if it served no purpose?

“It means I’m tired, Proximus. Will it really never get dark? When do you sleep?”

“When it’s safe,” I say. “It will not get dark unless we walk toward the ice.”

“Aren’t you tired?” she asks.

I shake my head. “It’s too dangerous to sleep here.”

“I’m not sure how much longer I can go,” she says.

“We can sleep long when we reach Therassus. Until then, we walk.”

She makes a sound which signals to me she is displeased, but I force us forward. I soon realize that she truly can’t go on, perhaps the yawn tired her out?

“You will sleep,” I say, “And I will stand guard.”

She bites her lip at me and looks almost guilty.

“I am responsible for you,” I say. “As your owner. This is my duty.”

“Okay,” she says, and she looks around, “But where do I sleep?”

I point to the ground. There are few leaves here, few bugs crawling around, and it’s hardly wet. Still, Alice does her eyebrow raising thing to me again, and she says my name in that strange tone.

“Proximus,” she says. “Remember how the Emperor Clan guys had those beds in our cell? I don’t know what your alien beds look like, but humans don’t just fall onto the bare forest floor and pass out.”

“There is no bed here,” I say, looking around in confusion. How could she expect to find a bed in the forest?

She makes the loud breathing out sound, and says, “Remember how it gets dark on Earth? I know your sun is weak, and it’s dim in the forest, but it’s hard to sleep in the daylight. And I’d want to gather some leaves or moss–or anything soft–to sleep on, but you told me the leaves and flowers and things crawling out of the ground might kill me, so I’m afraid to step off the path at all.”

“I see,” I say. “Leave it to me.”

And then I’m off the path. I keep her in the corner of my vision, for fear that more raiders or other clans might try to take her again, but I harvest various vines, fibers, and leaves that will not kill. I gather as much as I can in a big bundle in my arms, and then I bring everything back to her. “Follow me.”

She does another yawn as she follows, which I worry might exhaust her so much she can no longer walk, but she keeps going despite it.

I finally find a big, dead tree. I drop the bundle of soft, safe things at the great trunk of the tree, and I kick it as hard as I can.

The pale grey bark shatters open, creating an entryway. “In here.”

Without thinking, I take her hand, which re-ignites the horrible hunger and lust deep inside me. I take a moment to close my eyes and steel myself, to fight my spear from raising up beneath my cloth.

“Proximus?” her voice asks, soft and enticing. “Are you okay?”

I pull her into the tree, and she looks up and smiles. “It’s nice in here!”

“The tree is dead and rotted from within,” I say. “It will not mind.”

I don’t see how it’s nice. It’s very dark, only the faint light spilling in from my makeshift entryway allows for any details to be seen. The ground is barren, covered in only sparse and long-dead roots.

I bring the things I gathered inside and arrange them to form a nest. Or bed. Whatever it is she wants to call it. She smiles and lies down, and I’m surprised when I see her take some of the moss and place it on top of a jutting root. She rests her head there and stretches out, yawning once again.

This yawn uses up the last of her energy, and she falls asleep just moments later.

I force myself out of her presence, and I stand guard far enough away that her scent cannot reach my nose.

I slept for over 70 Earth hours before being assigned to act as Alice–and the other women’s’–jailer. I will not need sleep for several more cycles, though I recall vaguely that humans must sleep regularly and are unable to store sleep as we can.

I was surprised at first, when the Emperor Clan entrusted me, an outsider, to look over their most precious of cargo. I quickly understood why I was given this task, as one look at Alice meant I will never again be content with a woman of my own race. Never again will my spear find satisfaction. The mere smell of her ruined me. Only the richest of men could afford to keep one for himself, to spear her each time she grew wet for him. To take a human woman as his mate.

And as bad as the longing I will always feel is, it will not kill me. So long as I do not actually spear Alice, then I can survive, even if I survive alone and celibate until the end of all cycles. Or perhaps the old sun will finally die while I still live, ending my suffering. The stories say it will die in a burst of heat, scorching our frozen world one last time before extinguishing forever. A final kiss goodbye.

Or I could go in there now and spear her. Provided she were wet for me, of course. And then what? I’d be bonded to her, but my clan would be forever indebted, and I’d be alone and penniless, with no way to defend or provide for my mate. The best case then would be that we’d surely both die a short time later. that I’d die defending her, and she’d somehow be killed as well rather

than taken after my own death. More likely I would die fighting for her, and then she would be taken, and I’d have taken her as my bonded mate only to fail her entirely.

I shake my head. So she must be sold then, and I’ll forever have to wonder how my spear would have felt deep inside her.

6

Alice I wake up to the smell of burning meat.

The pale light shining into the hollowed-out tree makes me think it’s morning, but then I remember there is no day, night, or morning here. I realize that without a day and night cycle, I have no real idea how long I slept for. I’m one of those people who always feels tired in the morning, no matter how long I sleep. Now is no exception, and the urge to just roll back onto the moss and pass out again is strong, but I decide to pop out of the tree and figure out how much time has passed.

I duck down and crawl through the hole that Proximus smashed into the tree, and when I exit, I see the smallest of fires–little more than burning embers–with some strange thing spit-roasted above it. It’s impaled on a stick, which is resting atop rocks stacked on top of each other. I don’t see Proximus anywhere.

Then he drops down out of a tree, and though he’s larger than a lion, he hits the ground just as quietly.

“I can stand guard better from above,” he says, hoisting his skullspear over his broad shoulder.

“How long did I sleep?” I ask.

“The river ebbed and flowed four times while you slept,” he says.

“Oh,” I say. “Okay.”

“Surely that is enough sleep for now,” he says. “Now we will eat. This beast is rich in protein.”

He grabs the thing off the flames and holds it up like a charred popsicle. He shoves it into my face. I force a smile and grab it delicately by the stick. I can still see the poor creature’s eyes, and its little mouth is hanging open as if it screamed during its death. It looks like a mix between a hedgehog and a rat.

“Thanks,” I say, rotating the stick around and examining it from all sides.

I have no idea how I’m supposed to eat it, but it does smell good, and I’m starving.

Judging by the overall level of civilization and manners I’ve experienced from Proximus and this world, I assume I should just tear into it with my teeth, letting juices and whatever else stain my lips and cheeks. I was always the kind of girl who was grossed out when people chewed with their mouths open, or slurped soup, or even used the wrong fork for the wrong dish. But I’m hungry. Maybe hungrier than I’ve ever been, and Proximus is watching me with raised brows, waiting for me to bite into his prized catch.

“What about you?” I ask.

“I ate several of these before you woke,” he says.

“The smell woke me up,” I say, “I didn’t smell anything earlier.”

“I prefer them raw,” he says, licking his lips and grinning at me.

I realize then that cooking this for me was probably something he did as an extreme courtesy. It’s something he’d never do for himself, but he learned enough about humans from the Emperor Clan and from serving on the ship as our jailor to know that we don’t eat raw meat.

“Thank you,” I say, and I bite into the animal.

There’s no hint of spice or salt or anything on it, but the smoky flavor from the flames mixes with the fatty juices, and I feel myself drooling even as I chew. I want more. At first I try to eat politely, but I can tell by Proximus’ expression that eating politely actually offends him. I try to woof it down harder, not caring if I get it all over my face, and only then does he smile in satisfaction.

“Good,” he says. “I’ve never cooked this.”

“What is it called in your language?” I ask, realizing he won’t have a word for it in English.

I point to the earpiece, reminding him that I might understand.

He lips a word, and what pops into my ear is: “Ratskunk.”

“Yes,” he says, “Ratskunk is the most delicious and fragrant animal in the forests of this area.”

I stifle a laugh, worried I’ll offend him if I actually laugh. “It really does taste wonderful.

It’s the perfect first meal to have on your planet.”

I work at it more, picking all the little bits of meat off the bones. It tastes less and less good after I eat the best parts, and I draw the line at eating the ratskunk’s balls.

“Saving the best part for later?” Proximus asks me, pointing at the dangling testicles.

“Don’t we need to get moving again?” I ask. “I’m fully rested and ready to walk.”

I sigh relief when he forgets about the testicles, and we begin again down the forest path.

I try to make small talk with him over the next few hours, but he seems distracted. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want to talk to me, but I try to write it off as him being on edge.

I’ve worked out that his senses–especially smell–are much more honed than human senses. For all I know he is hyper focused on all the smells as we walk through the path, and making conversation with me distracts him from noticing something–or someone– that might be coming to kill us. I give up talking to him, and we continue on in silence for at least a full hour.

The silence ends with Proximus stopping and turning toward me. “The forest ends here.

We will be in the city shortly, so you must disguise yourself.”

I pop a hand out of my mantle, which reminds me just how cold the air is, and I gesture toward the mantle. “Isn’t this enough?”

He shakes his head. “Your language was gifted to me by the Emperor. Don’t mistake my mastery of the language for real experience with humans. I know very little about you, but I’ve learned a thing or two now. Your smell is a problem.”

“Excuse me?” I ask. “It’s not like there’s showers or soap around here, and I slept on the dirt floor covered in dead leaves.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Not even a shower would be enough.”

I snort and laugh. “Well sorry that I don’t smell like perfume and roses, I should have prepared myself better for when you abducted me out of my car in the dead of night.”

He cocks his head at me. “No...you do not understand. Your scent is...it’s why the Ice Cliff clansmen lost all control. Have you not wondered why I strive to keep you downwind of me?”

“Humans can barely smell anything, Proximus. I’ve never noticed anything being upwind or downwind of anything. I’m not a dog.”

“We notice,” he says. “And you cannot go into the city without applying the blood of the ratskunk.”

7

Alice

And as if the grime of the forest and however many days of no showering or cleaning wasn’t enough, I exit the forest stinking of ratskunk blood. The smell clues me into why the earpiece decided on the “skunk” part of the translation.

“God,” I say, scrunching up my nose. “I smell awful.”

“Ah,” he says. “So you cansmell.”

“Humans can only smell really good stuff or really bad stuff. Usually bad stuff. Like open pits of garbage, burned food, or...ratskunk.”

“It’s a foul smell to us as well,” he says. “It’s important to drain all the blood before eating. The smell of the blood can ruin the flavor. Normally I drain the blood into the soil, but this time I saved all of it for you, and I have more in my satchel. You’ll need to apply it often.”

“Great,” I say.

When I was trying to sneak a peek under his loincloth earlier, I noticed his satchel.

There’s a bag strapped to his thick thigh, while the folded up skullspear is strapped and holstered to the other. I didn’t quite manage to see what was between his legs, however.

We crest a small hill, and suddenly the forest is over. It’s not a clear border, but the trees thin out so much down the hill that it can no longer be called a forest. The dying sun’s rays break through the thinning canopy of the forest, and they are a pale red rather than the radiant golden rays you’d expect on Earth. I see the actual sky for the first time as we move forward, and the sun.

The sun is red, and twice as large in the sky as our sun on Earth. Still, I barely have to squint when I look at it, and I feel no real warmth on my face as its rays touch my skin.

The sky is a pale violet, which fades to near black at the horizon. Even though it’s permanently daylight, I can see all the stars in the sky. I wonder if one of them is the sun I know from Earth, or if we’re too far away to even see it.

The river cuts across the land in front of us, and there is a large bridge directly in our path. Beyond the bridge, every inch of the landscape is covered by buildings or roads.

The buildings just beyond the bridge are small and run-down, but further into the city they grow taller and taller, until spires taller than anything I’ve ever seen on Earth tower over everything and blot out the violet, star-filled sky.

Under that strange light and daytime stars, the city looks even more alien than its twisted spires would transplanted onto Earth.

“Therassus,” he says, pointing out toward the city, as if I didn’t already realize or see it.

“Do you think the other women could be here?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“They could be though,” I say.

“This city is nothing to the Emperor Clan,” he says. “It’s too poor, small, and dirty for them. They will sell the women to the richest men they can.”

I frown. “So you won’t sell me here then, right?”

He ignores my question, pointing toward the bridge.

I see a line of horned people in loincloths–I’ve stopped thinking of them as aliens– crowded near the entrance to the bridge. Among the horned and teal-skinned people that look like Proximus, there are also things much stranger. I see things with four arms, and legs like goats. There are things covered in fur that barely look like men, but are clearly not animals. I remember the green aliens on the ship, but I see none of those here. It seems other types of aliens visit this planet, or maybe they were all kidnapped and brought here by force, just like I was.

All the aliens, most of them like Proximus, shove toward the bridge, while horned men in some type of armor, which I can make out from the gleam of the sun on their plated chests, hold them back.

“Will they let us cross?” I ask.

“We will see,” he says, and he takes hold of my upper arm through the mantle. “Do not speak. Do not make eye contact. Do not become aroused, or even the ratskunk blood will not mask your potent scent.”

He tugs me forward before I can make any comment. Not that I’d know how to respond to that, exactly. As if I can choose when I become aroused. There’s probably little risk of it anyway, as I don’t expect that trying to sneak past scary guards in armor is going to get me dripping wet and horny.

As we reach the throngs of people crowding to try to cross the bridge, I notice a large space clearing for us. At first I think it’s because of Proximus’ imposing figure and presence, but then I see everyone is scrunching their noses up at me. The ratskunk blood.

Proximus shoves everyone away who doesn’t move, and we are soon in front of the guards. They have helmets on, with holes for their horns. They look like a mix of roman centurion and Viking, though with teal skin and violet eyes glaring down at me as if I were a stinking heap of garbage.

“You want to bring this into Therassus?” One of the guards shouts at Proximus. “That will be expensive.”

“I have no money,” Proximus says.

One of the guard raises what looks almost like a gun. He presses something, and the barrel glows crimson. “Then step away!”

Proximus doesn’t back down. He even takes a step forward, until the glowing barrel of the weapon is just inches from his chest. As he steps closer to the guard, it becomes clear that he’s taller, and then he leans his head forward, knocking his horns against the guard’s. Proximus’ horns are larger too, and the fact that he’s pressing his horns against the guard’s makes me think that the longer horns must mean something.

The guard’s pistol wavers, and two of the other guards look nervously up at Proximus.

Proximus and the guards speak to each other in their own language, so Proximus voice comes to me through the earpiece, sounding different than I am used to. His accent is gone, but the speech and word choice seems more artificial to me.

“I’m on the business of the Emperor Clan,” Proximus says, jerking his head and slamming his horns against the guard’s. The guard presses his horns back, adding an intense and physical tension between the two of them. Their eyes meet, and the guard clenches his square jaw.

“The signal house will confirm it,” the guard says “And how long will that take?” Proximus says. “My overseer is in space. I’m to bring this barbarian to the city for sale, to fund the next voyage.”

The guards eye each other.

Did he just call me a barbarian? I’m not the one with a skullspear and freaking loincloth!

Though I amcovered in ratskunk blood. I remember what Proximus told me, and I look down, not wanting to risk meeting either of the guards’ eyes.

People push in from behind, and the moment one bumps into me, Proximus slams his elbow into them, forcing them backward. He clutches me protectively against his body, growling back at the crowd of people.

The head guard looks us over for a long moment. I can tell he really doesn’t know what to do. If he checks with the “signal house,” he may get in trouble for wasting everyone’s time, but if he lets Proximus in and he causes trouble, he’s also screwed. His jaw clenches tight, and he finally sighs.

“I’ll let you through,” he says. “Just sell off the barbarian and be on your way. Quickly.”

Proximus grunts and pulls me along behind him and onto the bridge.

No one else is heading into the city, but I see a six-legged thing that looks like a horned horse pulling a wagon heading toward us. We have to step off to the side to avoid it

running us over, and as I get a closer look at the wagon, I see it’s made of some kind of metal. I catch a glimpse of violet eyes through the window, but an ornately carved cover slams shut as soon as it nears us.

“They smelled you,” Proximus says.

“Great,” I say. “Now I know what it was like for the smelly girl in second grade.”

Proximus shoots me a serious look. “You saw the alternative in the forest. Better to stink and to be safe.”

“Why did you call me a barbarian?” I ask.

“What?” he says.

“The earpiece translated what you said, and you called me a barbarian.”

“I don’t know what that is,” he says. “I called you an alien.”

“Barbarian is what you are,” I say.

“We are both aliens to each other,” he says. “What is the difference?”

We keep walking, with his strong arm still around me, as if he’s worried someone might grab me and snatch me away at any moment.

I think of telling him that a barbarian is brute, crass, savage. Then I worry it might sound rude, and I hold my tongue. I vaguely remember that the original meaning of the word was just “foreigner,” it’s what the Romans called anyone who wasn’t Roman. Or maybe it was the Greeks? Either way, the earpiece probably honed in on that definition, resulting in me being called a barbarian, which seems absurd in this world filled with actual barbarians, who butt horns with each other to assert dominance.

I look out over the bridge as we reach its peak. The river looks like a dirty green-brown, not something I’d ever want to swim in, and I’m pretty sure I can even smell it. It smells almost as bad as I do. The buildings of the city press against the shore on the other side of the bridge, and no two look like they were designed in the same era. I see what looks like a mud hut from some kind of South American tribe next to something made of a gleaming and pulsing metal which vibrates in the sun.

As we descend the bridge into the city, I lose the forest for the trees, and we are swallowed up into a large main road of the city.

It’s suddenly very crowded again, and I become incredibly disoriented as Proximus drags and pulls me from road to road. I find myself clinging to his forearm for fear of losing him. There are so many people around us that I might never find him again if we were separated.

As if reading my mind, he says, “If I lose you, I can smell you from leagues away.

Though as soon as we find time, you need to drench yourself in more blood.”

“Do you think,” I say, “There is another way?”

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“Something that can mask my scent,” I say, “That doesn’t smell like raw sewage?”

“We don’t have time for that,” he grunts.

When we finally stop, I see Proximus eyeing a narrow, but very tall, building made of sheets of metal bolted together. Some of the sheets are new and shiny, while others are covered in rust and full of holes.

“We will stay here,” he says.

And then he’s pulling me toward the door. I notice that the doors are much higher than I’m used to, probably because most people on this planet are much taller, and because their horns add to their height. Still, Proximus has to tilt his head slightly to get his horns through the door frame.

We enter what looks like a mix between a bar and a restaurant, though many people are simply sprawled out and sleeping on the floor. The floor is some kind of tile, but it’s chipped and dirty, and the occasional missing tile reveals a packed dirt floor.

Proximus takes hold of me, gripping me protectively as he leads us through the room.

Many men look up and stare at me, but I can tell from their reactions exactly when my smell hits them. I hear a few people shout to “get that thing out of here,” but Proximus’ steely gaze silences them.

We work our way through the room until we reach a man far in back. He’s sitting at a large table with his feet up on the bench, and his body is resting against the wall. He has a drink in front of him, but he’s not touching it. He’s instead scrawling on paper with some kind of inked quill, in a writing style that looks like total chaos–barely writing at all. It’s the same scrawls I’ve seen plastered on buildings and signs as Proximus whisked me through the city. I hadn’t realized it was writing at the time, and only now that I see it being written with what looks like a pen do I make the connection at all.

“Can’t even properly bleed a ratskunk?” the man asks, in a voice higher-pitched than I’d expect for so large a man.

“This is a barbarian,” Proximus says in his language, the earpiece translating for me.

“I’ve just returned from the stars.”

“Fancy,” the man says. “But if it’s going to stink up my common room, you need to get it out.”

“I need a room,” Proximus says.

The man shrugs. “You’ll pay extra to keep that thing with you.”

I glower a bit. I’m tired of being called a thing. Or just “that.” I’m tired of smelling so bad that even these savages can’t take it.

“I’ll pay nothing,” Proximus says. “I am Proximus of the Wandering Clan, and you owe us a debt.”

“Do I now?” He asks. I assume at this point that he’s the innkeeper.

“You insufferable woman,” Proximus growls. “Don’t slip out of what you owe us. If you have a room available, you owe it to me.”

Woman? This muscular, wide-shouldered innkeeper is a woman?

I look him–her–over again. The horns are much smaller even than those of the Icecliff bandit who I thought of as “Smallhorns,” but everything else about her body is...masculine? There are no breasts visible at all, and her muscles are larger and more defined than any man on Earth. Her shoulders and chest are wide, and nothing of her facial features give me any hint of femininity.

She glares at me, and I look down at once when I realize I’ve been staring.

“I have free rooms,” she snaps. “You may have a small one. If paying customers show up and need a room, I’ll kick you right out.”

“Good,” Proximus says, pressing his hands onto the table and leaning further into her.

“Now, tell me. Have you heard tell of where my clan is? Have you seen any of us?”

She shakes her head and looks away. “No idea. Not in at least a cycle.”

Proximus clenches his jaw. “A whole cycle and you’ve not had to help one of us, and still you’re this reluctant to give me what is owed?”

She reaches into a bag and pulls out a jumble of metal discs. She sorts through them and finally slides one to Proximus. “I give you a room. Which is what is owed. Now go in there, and keep the door shut if you insist on keeping that stinking thing in there with you.”

8

Alice

I watch Proximus press the coin into a recess on the door, which opens it. I nearly jump in excitement at the prospect of a bed, but then the door opens and I see nothing but a hard floor of grey wood. There is some kind of stone basin in one of the corners, and a table with a bench, but no bed. Maybe this is the living room, and…

I look around, but quickly realize there is no other room or door. This is it.

“Where’s the bathroom?” I ask.

“Outside,” Proximus says. “You will smell it when you approach. I will store some sleep here, but not too much. I don’t trust that woman.”

“Was that really a woman?” I ask.

Then I realize, even at the bridge and on the crowded streets of Therassus, I never saw anything resembling an actual woman. My first thought was that the innkeeper had changed her gender at some point, and that maybe the technology wasn’t high enough to do anything about her appearance. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it made no sense that I’d seen no females anywhere in the city.

I must have seen them and simply not realized that they weren’t males.

“Yes,” he says. “Perhaps now you can understand why the Icecliff men wanted you so badly.”

“Wouldn’t you have evolved to prefer females who look like the innkeeper? She may not look feminine to me, but I’m a human.”

He looks at me in a way that makes me think he’s trying to imagine the shape of me through my mantle. There’s a pain in his eyes, and he finally just looks away without speaking.

I think about it more. I’m human, yet Proximus looks more masculine to me than any human man. If there is some physical ideal of how a man should look, Proximus is closer to it than anything I’d ever seen on Earth. The first time I saw him, I was stunned and in disbelief that someone so physically striking could exist. Even through my fear of him I knew that my body–or my hormones–liked what they saw.

And so it must be for Proximus and males of his race. Though it must be much worse for him than it is for me.

Human men are shaped quite differently from women. Even a man who isn’t in shape at all and doesn’t take care of himself is still larger. His arms are still bigger. His chest is wider, and he has facial hair and a completely different bone structure. Because I’m attracted to men and not women, even the most average of men will still be more physically appealing to me than a beautiful woman. My body is just wired that way.

What is it like now for Proximus? Now that he’s seen human women–and I know from the way he talks and looks at my body that he is wired to like the human version of femininity–how must females of his own species look to him?

“I took a risk,” Proximus says, ending the silence–and changing the subject. “I need to signal my clan, to let them know I am here in Therassus. To do so, I have to announce that I am here. Now we have to hope that my clan finds me before the Emperor Clan does.”

“You’re sure they’ll look for you?” I ask.

He gives me a look that makes me feel stupid. “They are looking for you. Finding me is how they find you. Or, unless you re-apply that ratskunk blood, maybe they smell you from the street.”

I get the blood, and Proximus steps outside so that I can re-apply it to my skin in private.

9

Alice Ididn’t know what Proximus meant by “store sleep,” but it looks a lot like the way I sleep. The main difference is that he doesn’t seem to care at all about his level of comfort. He simply collapses onto the wooden floor, stretches out, and closes his eyes.

I wait until his eyes are completely closed and he’s clearly sleeping to remove my mantle. I lay it down like a bedsheet, and I lie on it, thankful for the tiny amount of cushioning it provides me.

I keep thinking about the look in Proximus’ eye when I mentioned the female innkeeper.

As much as he must like “my shape,” I have started feeling that it actually physically pains him. I wonder if the ratskunk blood isn’t for him as much as it is to keep me safe from others.

I still don’t know how long I actually slept in the forest, I just know that I’m still tired.

The dim red sun constantly shining creates one long, weird, and dream-like day which never ends. As soon as I curl up on my mantle, I find myself drifting into sleep.

A knock jolts me awake. I leap up off my mantle, and when I see Proximus’ solid figure standing just next to me, I find myself clutching tightly to him.

There’s another knock. It’s the way police would knock before using a battering ram to break the door down.

“Do all of you knock like that?” I ask.

“Proximus!” A voice shouts through the door.

Proximus looks down at me, at the skin-tight teal suit hugging my curves, and his whole body shudders. His eyes roll back into his head, and his eyelids shut for a moment. He reaches down for the mantle and throws it at me. “Put it on,” he whispers.

I wrap it around myself, and only then does he open his eyes again.

Another booming knock.

Proximus opens the door, putting himself between the visitor and me. I can barely see who it is through Proximus’ body. Whoever it is would have to fight through Proximus to so much as touch me.

“Scipius,” Proximus says, his voice becoming not quite happy, but at least relieved.

“Come in.”

Proximus moves aside to let Scipius through, but Scipius glares at me and doesn’t step through the door. “I’m here for one reason, Proximus.”

“Where is our clan?” Proximus asks.

Scipius’ face bulges with anger, and I almost expect him to pull out his skull spear and attack Proximus with it. “Ourclan?”

Proximus tilts his head in confusion.

“I left in disgrace when you were chosen as our best fighter,” Scipius says, and he spits right onto the floor in front of Proximus. “I’ll only rejoin once I’ve proven that a lie.”

Before Proximus can speak again, Scipius lunges forward.

I jump backward, terrified that Scipius is going to attack and kill Proximus before he can even react, but instead Proximus lunges forward in response, and their horns clash and lock together.

Scipius says in a voice frothing with rage. “Do you accept?”

“I accept!” Proximus roars back.

They hold their horns locked long enough to glare daggers into each other’s eyes, and they both huff and growl loudly before finally pulling their horns apart. Scipius snarls one last time, turns his back, and stomps away.

Once he’s gone, Proximus can’t even look at me, even with my mantle on and a fresh coat of ratskunk blood applied.

“We have to go,” he says. “To the colosseum. The terms will be agreed upon there, and then the duel begins.”

“The duel?” I ask. “You seriously just accepted a duel?”

He nods.

“Why not just...I don’t know...refuse? You have a lot of shit on your plate right now, Proximus, do you really have time for this?”

“What is a plate?” he asks me.

“Never mind,” I say. “The point is, you just told me we can’t stay here long, that the Emperor Clan is looking for me. Now you’re going to go to a colosseum and duel, won’t that give you away?”

“This is for honor,” he says. “You can’t understand.”

“You think I don’t understand bullheaded male behavior?”

Proximus puts a hand to his horns and looks at me with a confused expression.

“It’s just a phrase,” I say. “Human men can be bullheaded even though they have no horns. It means you are doing something really stupid because of pride or ego.”

“Yes,” he says. “Pride is very important. I must defend it.”

I sigh.

“I will win this duel, Alice,” he says. “And I will strike favorable terms. This will help us on our way, while also defending my reputation as strongest warrior.”

“What happens if you defend your reputation so well that the guys from the ship find you?” I ask.

“This is not your planet,” he says. “News travels slowly here.”

They travelled light years to abduct me and my friends. They travelled the stars and brought us back in a matter of days. Yet somehow news–simple information–travels slowly across Proximus’ planet. I try to imagine this area near the ice as some kind of backwoods. Maybe it’s simply that no one really cares what happens out here? The guards at the bridge made it sound like it would take a long time to use the broadcasting tower to check on Proximus’ story, maybe there’s only one in the whole city, and maybe there’s a long line to use it? Reporting who won a little duel is probably not worth broadcasting at all.

Either way, I can’t see this duel thing going well. I’ve seen Proximus fight, and I know he’s good at it. Scipius looks larger and more imposing than the bandits from the Ice Cliff, and from what I overheard, it sounds like Scipius is the second strongest fighter in Proximus’ clan. Does that mean Proximus has something like a 60% chance to win? If he loses, what happens to me? I know he’s intending to just sell me off, but I do believe his promise that he’ll sell me to someone who will treat me well. Also, in the back of my mind, I hope that in the time it takes him to find a buyer for me, I’ll find a way to locate Elsie and Amber. Maybe we could somehow find a way back to Earth together.

If Proximus loses this duel, that’s all over. As far as I can tell, I have no ability to function in this society. I can’t talk to anyone, and I have to cover myself in stinking blood just to stop the men from going into a complete sexual frenzy. How long would I last on my own? A few hours?

“I can read your face now,” Proximus says. “You are worried.”

I nod to him and sigh.

“Scipius cannot defeat me,” Proximus says. “He simply thinks that dying in this way will give him back the honor he lost.”

“How can he enjoy the honor if he’s dead?” I ask. “That makes no sense.”

“Honor is the only thing that can live beyond death,” Proximus says, narrowing his eyes at me and speaking in a tone that makes me feel like an idiot for not already knowing his weird perception of honor and death.

“Great,” I say. “So then if you die, you’ll have lots of honor too?”

He shakes his head. “There is no honor in losing to our second strongest warrior. You have much to learn, Alice.”

Alice Iadd on a fresh coat of ratskunk blood, and follow Proximus toward the arena. I find it impossible to persuade him of anything. Each time I try to bring up an argument for why he shouldn't fight, he seems to create a justification that only strengthens his will to duel.

I soon give up, realizing that Proximus will do whatever he wants, and no alien woman is going to sway his opinion.

We step outside into several inches of snow, with more still falling in thick flurries. My mantle protects me as always from the chill, though I wish I had a hat. I see horned men with crude shovels clearing their storefronts, and on the main road horse-driven plows scrape across the roads to clear a path. The smaller roads are left buried, and as a result the traffic on the main roads intensifies. I can barely keep up with Proximus, and even clutching his arm, I nearly lose him several times.

I lose my grip on him when someone shoves in between us, and Proximus spins around at once. He shoves the man–or maybe it’s a woman, I can barely tell them apart–aside and growls at me. “Do I need to carry you, woman? You walk so slow.”

I look down at my legs, half the length of his, then back up at him. “What do you expect? If you really want me to move at your insane pace, then yeah, you’d have to carry me, but–” There’s no “but,” because Proximus sweeps me off my feet in an instant, and he slings me over his shoulder. I try to protest, but he’s already moving and doesn’t seem to care that I don’t want to be manhandled.

I give up fighting. I feel too exhausted, and as soon as I go slack, I realize that we really are moving faster. There’s no longer any risk of us being separated either. His hand stays firmly planted on the small of my back, and his massive shoulder and frame carries my weight.

I look around at all the strange horned people, and other types of aliens, as he carries me through the city. Some of the weirder aliens are covered in thick layers of clothes or furs, but all of the teal horned people are in nothing but loin cloths. Where my hands touch Proximus’ body as he carries me, he’s hot as a furnace. He must have evolved to thrive in this cold with little to no clothing.

Because I’m hanging over his back, I don’t see the colosseum until he places me down onto my feet and points up at it. It actually reminds me of the colosseum in Rome, because it’s equally in ruins and falling apart. There’s a massive crowd of teal people pressing against some guards, which reminds me of being at the bridge once again.

This time, everyone is let inside, but the entranceway is narrow, and though it could fit a line three or four humans wide, it’s only really enough to hold two aliens standing shoulder to shoulder. When we reach the guards, Proximus identifies himself as a combatant, and one of the guards leads us toward a side door, which spares us from having to shove through the narrow corridor.

He escorts us through winding halls and chambers, until we find ourselves in a room which has arches that open into the main space of the arena. The ground is just packed dirt, and the roaring crowd is all standing, as there are no seats in the stands.

The guard gives a stiff bow to Proximus, then shuts the door behind him, heading back toward the entrance.

“We wait here,” Proximus says.

The roar of the crowd picks up, and Proximus turns toward the arch. It’s large enough for him to walk through without crouching, but we don’t step through. We walk just

underneath it to get a full view of the arena, while still feeling mostly safe in our own little space.

In the center of the arena, I see two aliens staring each other down, horns locked. It looks like their mouths are moving, but I can’t be sure from this distance.

“They agree to terms before battle,” Proximus says.

“Is that what you and Scipius will do?” I ask.

Proximus nods, then points. “They are fighting with ancient weapons.”

I squint, expecting to see some kind of club with a spike on it, but instead I see glowing violet pulse in each fighter’s hand. They break their horns from each other, turn around, and press their backs together. They raise their weapons, until the glowing barrels are just between their eyes, looking like a third purple eye from this distance.

The crowd roars as they begin to take wide, slow steps away from each other.

“Guns?” I ask. “You’re going to duel like this?”

Proximus shakes his head. “Skullspear or bare hands for Scipius and me. We are not cowards.”

He sneers at the two men. I find it hard to think of anyone willing to fight to the death a “coward,” but Proximus doesn’t seem to agree with me.

I count their steps to myself, and my heart beings to pound as they take the 8th and 9th step. I hold my breath, but they keep going after ten. Just as I relax, they both spin to face each other on the 12th step. A purple bolt of energy explodes forward from one gun, piercing through the dim darkness and casting a violet light over the snow.

Before I can track the bolt, another shoots out from the other fighter.

I squint from the intense brightness, and when I open my eyes fully again, I see the man on the right on the ground. His purple blood is staining the snow, but he’s still moving.

Another bolt fires up from his gun, and it hits the man on the left square in the chest. He falls to the ground, but does not move at all once he’s down in the snow.

The first man who was hit writhes around, his blood expanding outward. Soon, he stops moving entirely.

“They both died?” I ask.

“Yes,” Proximus says. He points to the one who died last, “But he won. He’ll die with greater honor, while the other dies in shame.”

The fact that they are teal aliens shooting plasma pistols doesn’t soften the impact for me. I just saw–and not for the first time since landing here–men die before my eyes. In brutal ways, and fighting for nothing. I feel intense frustration, and I grab Proximus by the arm, digging my nails into his arm.

“You can’t do this,” I hiss. “It’s insane. You could both die, how stupid would that be?”

“This outcome is unlikely,” He says, “As we will be fighting with more honorable weapons.”

Reason doesn’t get through to him. Logic is useless. I think of one thing that will get through to him.

I step through the arch until my feet touch the snow, and I bend down to grab a handful of it. I rub it onto my neck, and as it melts into water, it sends a horrible shiver down my spine. I ignore it and rub that icy water all over my neck and chin. I pull the stretchy teal off my body enough to get some water down and rub my upper chest, trying my best to get enough ratskunk blood off to let me real scent through.

I think it's not working, but then I see Proximus’ pupil noticeably dilate.

“Stop,” he grunts, and he grabs me by the wrist, “Not here!”

I look up at him defiantly, and then I lick my lips. “You like it too much, huh?”

He jerks my arm and pulls me in toward him, until my face is just inches from his. My heart pounds, and despite the ice-cold water which is now dripping down between my breasts, I feel like I’m on fire as those cold violet eyes stare me down. His jaw clenches, and he buries his face into my neck. He inhales deeply, and his hand grabs me by the small of the back, pulling me against his body. Even through the mantle I can feel his intense warmth.

Giving him a whiff of my scent started as a ploy to get him to listen to me, but now it feels like neither of us is in the mood to listen to anything. I find my hand on his muscular back, and I run it over his rippling muscles. I remember what’s about to happen, and I try to not lose myself completely in him, even as his lips move up my neck, dangerously close to kissing me.

“Proximus,” I whisper, “If you lose, if–” And that breaks the spell. He pulls off me and pushes me off him. “I will notlose!”

He jabs a finger at me, then steps two or three paces back. “Keep your scent away from me. Or do you want me to be distracted and lose the duel?”

He reaches into his loincloth and throws me the leather thermos filled with the ratskunk blood.

“Proximus,” I say in a pleading voice.

He shakes his head and takes another two steps back, as if I were a dangerous animal ready to strike. “Put it on.”

11

Proximus But it’s too late. Scipius walks in, and from the way his nostrils flare and his eyes widen, I know he’s smelled her.

He puts himself back under control within a moment, which almost makes me doubt that he smelled Alice.

“We are next,” he says. “Once they’ve cleared the field.”

In the distance, I’m only vaguely aware that they are dragging the two corpses through the snow, leaving behind a trail of blood-soaked, exposed dirt.

Scipius pulls out his skullspear, though it’s not extended, and he points it toward me.

I take out mine, and I cross my skullspear against his.

“Good,” he says. “It should be with skullspears.”

He steps through the arch and out onto the snow, looking back over his shoulder at me to tell me to follow.

I nod to him, and he walks out toward the center of the colosseum. I hear the crowd begin to roar again, but I look instead to Alice.

“Did he smell me,” she whispers.

I nod. “He must have.”

“But he didn’t…”

“He is a good man,” I say. “Though not as good as me.”

Alice does the rolling eye thing, which I’m beginning to suspect means she disapproves of me.

“So you’re saying,” she says. “That if you lost, it’d be good if he takes me?”

“I will not lose,” I say, and I stalk off into the snow.

The crowd roars louder as I step into view of them. Scipius is already standing in the center, his spear still not extended, but in plain view.

Some spectators prefer the ancient weapons, with their pulsing glows or large explosions, but fights with sword or spear are always more popular. At least in Therassus.

I reach the center, pull out my spear, and butt horns with Scipius. My horns are larger and more massive, and Scipius butts harder against me to compensate. I can feel the rage and desire to win in his movements. And I feel something more troubling beyond that, the same unquenchable desire for Alice that I myself feel.

He looks at me with wild eyes, and growls. “Your terms!”

As the one being challenged, it’s my right to first state my terms. In the short time since Scipius challenged me, I’ve learned that he’s become a merchant in the city, running a company of some three dozen employees that imports dream leaves from the frozen forests deep in the ice to the inner-most cities.

“I want your money,” I snarl. “And I will destroy your company. I will sell it all for coin, leaving everything you’ve built in ruins. And it will be said that you failed as a warrior and as a merchant. No one will remember your name with even a shred of honor.”

I remember what I told Alice, that Scipius was a good man. That is only true if he–by some miracle–manages to defeat me. Only a good man could defeat me. But If I kill him here, there will be no honor left for him.

“When I kill you,” Scipius says. “I claim my rightful place as the Wandering Clan’s greatest spear.”

I clash my horns harder against his, making a sound loud enough to be heard over the roaring crowds.

“And,” he says. “I want her. The one who smells like the young sun must have smelled.

I want to do things to her I’d never imagined possible. Wonderful things, though she likely will not enjoy them.”

I growl at him in intense fury. He will not lay a hand on her. Not so much as a fingertip.

There’s no way I can actually debate this or question his right to claim her if I lose. Alice is the only thing of value I own. The only thing I can do is win. Kill Scipius, spit on his corpse, and take his wealth. I will notlose.

The scent of Alice is still in my nose. My spear is still twitching and hard from nearly giving into her. I’ve never wanted anything more than I want her, and I refuse to let Scipius take her from me.

I break away and raise my spear. I extend it to its full length and hold it out. Scipius meets my spear, and he lock eyes one last time.

The arbiter, who has been standing by and heard each of our terms, nods to us and backs away. It will be his job to see that I am given Scipius’ wealth when I win.

We both leap backward at the same time, raising our spears and signaling the start of combat.

We circle each other, our eyes intense and focused. There are two main aspects to a skullspear duel–two points of tension.

The first is obvious: that the other man is trying to stab you with his spear. You must always watch his body and the slight tell of his eyes and muscles to know from which angle he will strike. You must be aware of the reach of his arms, and the distance he can strike with a lunge. Stabbing with your own spear and missing leaves you exposed to a counter-stab. This is melee combat, and it is the primary focus of the duel.

The second point of tension is less obvious: the possibility of a thrown spear. While it rarely happens, the fear of it must be ever-present. It’s why Scipius and I are circling each other rather than standing still or moving forward and back. It’s why one of us changes direction clockwise or counter-clockwise at strange intervals, to make ourselves poor targets for a thrown spear. So while we each try to stab each other with a powerful thrust, each movement we make must keep in mind the risk of a thrown weapon.

If I think I see a chance to throw my own spear, I have to decide if it’s worth the risk. If I miss, it’s all but over. I have decided I will not throw my spear, I’ll use Scipius’ fear of a thrown spear to keep him off guard, to get a good thrust in. Knowing he is a weaker fighter, I expect him to throw his spear when he realizes he can’t win otherwise.

He makes a lazy jab, the kind of poke that is made more to test an opponent than one that actually hopes to connect. He misses, but his lack of commitment to the attack does not leave him open to any real counterattack. I feign an attack instead, and grin when I see him flinch.

We circle back and forth, until we’ve made three or four complete rotations. The crowd, even though it’s so far from us, is deafening. It’s rare for these duels to last more than mere moments. Scipius must have trained since we last fought, as I cannot find an easy opening.

Normally I’d have gotten a read by now, caught him in some kind of misstep, and that would have been it. This time I don’t see easy openings.

A few times I think I might be able to hit him if I threw my spear, but it’s never guaranteed, and I think if I just wait longer, I will get a guaranteed attack as soon as Scipius lets up.

I’m so focused on Scipius’ spear, his eyes, the way his arms flex, that I don’t notice the snow turning to rain. I don’t notice the snow melting underfoot, and I’m caught completely off guard when my foot slides wildly across the snow without warning.

It’s the opening Scipius needed, and before I can regain balance, he lunges.

I spin my spear around, slamming against Scipius’ attack and deflecting it just enough to avoid the sharp tip of his weapon sinking into my skull.

I grab hold of his spear before he can pull it back, though my grip my own spear is weak.

I tug on his weapon as I regain balance, and I drag him by his spear through the snow, though his feet are planted and his stance is wide.

I move to stab him with a one-handed thrust, but he kicks my arm before I can attack.

The kick sends us apart, and I lose my grip on his spear. We both fall back into the snow, which has become a mush of slurry and sweat.

We both get up at near the same moment, but we’re much too far away for either of us to attack. I consider rushing him. Using my larger size and speed to overwhelm him with a sudden burst of aggression, but I don’t trust my footing, and even if I did, the snow would slow me too much.

I take slow steps toward him, and the moment I look down at his feet, I see his whole body tense.

I leap sideways by pure instinct, just as his thrown spear hits. I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder, and I look down expecting to see it jutting out of my body. Instead I see only a line of blood, and a feeling of hot searing pain across my shoulder.

I look up at Scipius, who is no longer armed. There’s a brief flash of fear in his eyes, but then he lowers his head, points his horns toward me, and charges.

I sigh and raise my spear. I’ll give him an honorable death, though he must know there is little honor left. If I were in his place, I still would charge, I suppose. Better to die in a charge than to be hunted down like prey while hopelessly trying to get his spear back off the ground.

If my instincts hadn’t been so razor sharp–even a blink’s hesitation more–his thrown spear would have found my skull. It was a truly well-timed attack, just not good enough to defeat me.

I jam my spear into his skull just as he comes in range of me, and I feel a brief twitch and shudder before he goes limp.

12

Alice I look away before the spear connects.

Though I felt intense relief when the thrown spear missed Proximus, I don’t want to see him kill another man with his spear.

From the roar of the crowd that erupts, I know exactly when Scipius dies, even with my eyes closed shut.

When I look back up I see Proximus raising his blood-stained spear skyward, basking in the roar of the crowd.

I feel detached from everything. Culture shock can’t even begin to describe the experience of being suddenly thrown into an alien world. Should I really be proud of Proximus now? Should I really feel relieved that he can go on to find a buyer for me?

Should I drench myself in more stinking blood and feel happy for Proximus’ restored honor? Should I make a bunch of alien girlfriends and brag to them about my boyfriend’s great honor and strength in skullspear duels?

I don’t know what I actually want, just that I likely won’t get it. It makes everything feel hopeless, and I know that even though the problem of the duel is resolved, another problem will present itself almost immediately.

Proximus soon comes back to me, and he’s beaming. There’s blood on his shoulder, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Now no one can doubt I am the greatest warrior,” he says.

I sigh.

“Scipius wanted you,” he says. “I fought to keep you. It’s why I truly couldn’t lose.”

“So it’s about me then?” I ask.

I pick up the thermos of ratskunk blood, remembering that I should put it back on.

“No,” Proximus growls, knocking it out of my hand.

He grabs my wrist and pins me to the wall.

“What are you doing?” I ask breathlessly.

“Taking my prize,” he growls.

I didn’t think he would. I thought he’d decided I was off limits, so I’d put the idea out of my mind. Nearly kissing me just before the duel was further than I thought he’d go, and I wrote it off to me wiping off the scent combined with his possible fear of death.

“What if,” I say, my voice heavy, “What if I don’t want you to?”

He takes my chin in his hand, tilting my head back and exposing the softness of my neck. I hear him breath in deeply. “You want me to,” he says. “You want it just as bad as I do.”

“Don’t you need to sell me?” I ask meekly, wishing he’d get it over with and kiss me, ending all possible protests.

“I’m a rich man now,” he says. “Scipius had more than I thought. I can afford to keep you.”

“I can afford to keep you,” I say back to him, mocking his gruff voice and accent.

“Saying that isn’t exactly the way to a woman’s heart.”

He presses me with his forearm against the wall, but pulls his face back from mine. “You want me to touch your heart?”

He runs a finger down my body, still over my mantle. I wish the damn thing were off already.

He stops just above my breasts and glares at me.

“My heart is on the other side,” I whisper to him.

I start to wonder–and fear–that there might be some other anatomical differences. I’ve decided that I will give myself to him. It’s not a rational decision, but I can’t resist him now. Not in this moment. I want him to have me, and I want to surrender to him. If he’s going to own me, then he may as well truly stake his claim.

But what if...what if he lifts up that loin cloth and…

“I see you looking,” he says.

He tears my mantle away then, throwing it to the stone ground of our chamber. The rain and roar of the crowd is audible in the background. Our chamber is dark and unlit, and despite the open window leading into the arena, no one could see us unless they came right up to the arch and peered in. The only people down on the floor are the judge and the fighters themselves, and they are much too busy to come peep in on us.

When he peels off my teal suit, a cold chill hits me and sucks the breath from me.

Proximus pulls me into him and wraps his strong arms around me. His warmth envelopes me and protects me from the cold. I lay my head against his chest, and my flushed cheek burns against his impossibly broad chest.

He throws me down onto the ground, and I feel the cloth of the mantle meet my back rather than the cold stone.

He presses both of his hands onto the stone on either side of my head, supporting the weight of his glorious teal body above me. His eyes shine down on me like purple jewels, and the chiseled planes of his face favor me with a smile.

“You said you couldn’t do this,” I whisper. “Are you sure?”

He nods, and his eyes drink in my curves as they scan across my naked body. “And you said I’m not to touch you.”

“Can we?” I ask. “Do it?”

He seems confused at the question, and I decide to settle the question once and for all. I reach toward his loincloth, and I dip my hand beneath that cloth. I reach, nearly terrified of what I may or may not find. Then I feel it. It’s first just a warmth radiating onto my palm, and then I touch the soft skin. But only the skin is soft, he’s rock-hard beneath, and I can feel the veiny contour of his manhood as I run my hand up and down his length.

Without seeing it, and just feeling it, it feels distinctly human. The only thing alien about the thing between Proximus’ legs is its immense size. I wrap my fingers around it, and I can’t even press my index finger to my thumb.

“Jesus,” I whisper. “So it’s true what they say about guys with big horns.”

His violet eyes are rolled back into his head as I run my hand up and down his generous length while squeezing his impossible girth. But he meets my eyes once again and tilts his head. “How did you hear this?”

I laugh. “We say it on Earth too.”

“Men on Earth have no horns,” he says.

I reach down his shaft and find his balls. I’m relieved to find just two of them.

“Let me see it,” I whisper.

He tears his loincloth off and throws it to the side. His cock is teal, as I’d expected, and were it tan or brown or black, I’d think of it as the greatest cock on Earth. But it’s beyond Earth and human anatomy. Just as the rest of Proximus body is like a more ideal version of the male form, so too is his manhood.

My only fear is whether it will even fit.

I grip him again, not wanting to let go. The sight of my tiny hand on that massive and wondrous thing makes me even more soaking wet than I already was. The roar of the crowd erupts, and I can almost imagine they are cheering that I’m finally doing what my body knew it wanted to do ever since I first laid eyes on Proximus.

I feel Proximus pulling away from me, and I feel a sudden fear that he’s going to change his mind, but then he reaches and tugs at my teal suit. It barely moves off my body, but then when I reach up to touch it, as if the suit knows that I want to remove it, it goes entirely slack. Proximus peels me out of it and he kisses hungrily down my bare belly.

He cups my breasts as he kisses down my body, and I squirm and writhe with impatience, praying he’s moving toward where I think he is.

His fingers reach my nipples just as his mouth touches my outer lips. My hips buck up, and Proximus sinks his fingers into the flesh of my thighs, then pulls me back down. His lips lock onto my pussy, and his tongue runs across my wet folds.

I pull my shoulders back and curl upward, my breasts heaving back. My hips move uncontrollably, desperate to feel his tongue and lips against my most sensitive parts.

He finds my clit just when I need him to. Just when the desire and pressure becomes uncontrollable. For a brief moment he presses his tongue with too much pressure, but as soon as I twitch, he pulls back and licks me gently and tenderly, until the warmth building up within me makes me forget I’m on a planet slowly freezing beneath a dying sun.

He moves exactly how I want him to. It’s nothing like any human man has ever done to me. Human men always focus on the wrong spot, or press too hard, or hit the right spot for a moment only to lose it an instant later. Proximus worships my pussy as if he were born to do it. He hits me in all the right places, and he growls with desire as he drinks up my wetness.

It doesn’t take long. It’s the only downside of him being so skilled: I cum too soon. The orgasm hits me like a runaway truck, and it’s just as hard to slow down. My body jolts upward, and Proximus is barely able to move in rhythm with me to keep his mouth locked onto my wetness. I writhe and moan and squeal. I scream his name so loud that I fear the roaring crowds will hear me and stop. I fear that two men fighting to the death will drop their weapons and come together to see what could be making such a loud noise.

The ecstatic wave that blasts across me pushes away all fears and doubts, and I collapse down onto the mantle, I realize warm tears are streaming down my face.

“What’s wrong?” Proximus asks, pulling me into him.

His warmth is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt. The afterglow feels like the whole planet is vibrating within me, and his warmth protects it and intensifies it. I smile and laugh even as he looks at me in confusion.

“It was incredible,” I finally manage to whisper. “You must have done that so many times to be so good, I mean–” “I’ve never done this,” he says. “Our females do not have this.”

He touches my wetness, and I writhe in pleasure. My eyes roll back into my head.

Then I realize what he said. “What do you mean they don’t have this? How do you have babies?”

“I did not know what I was doing,” Proximus says. “I was worried I was hurting you, but I couldn’t stop.”

I look up at him in total astonishment. “There’s no way you’ve never done that.”

I should be more shocked that females of his race somehow don’t have vaginas, but the idea that he could eat me out so good on his very first try is too much. If he’s this good on his first try, how good will he get with practice?

“I simply realized it was the source of your scent,” he says. “I wanted to taste you, and so I did.”

“But,” I say. “You touched me exactly how I wanted, in every way just right, and–” “Yes,” he says. “I realized touching you in certain ways made you taste better, and so I did, until you tasted sweeter than anything I’ve ever eaten. It’s why I could not stop even when I feared I’d hurt you.”

I laugh. “You didn’t hurt me. You made me feel...I can’t even describe it.”

Then I realize I should show him. I should do as best I can to make him feel the same way. I consider going down on him, but if he’s seriously never been inside a woman, I need to fix that as fast as I can. And my soaking wetness still craves him.

He presses his lips to mine, and our tongues meet. We kiss hungrily. Though my sense of smell is nothing compared to his, his masculine scent fills me as we kiss. I sense his power and strength, his resolve to protect me. Even his bullheaded insistence

on owning me feels right in this moment, and I want nothing more than to fully submit to him. To be his.

He’s on top of me, and I grab his thick cock and press its head against my opening.

“It will hurt you,” he says.

“It might,” I whisper. “But I’m so wet, and I need you inside me. It hurts more not to.”

A low growl rumbles deep in his throat, and I see an animal frenzy fill his eyes. Without warning he flips me over. My face is pressed into the cloth of the mantle, and he rips my hips up into the air. I hear a wet slap as his swings his thick teal cock against my outer lips.

I yelp in surprise. If he’s never done this, he sure fucking knows how to take charge. All kinds of theories about alien anatomy and the origins of humanity form vague and unfinished in my mind, and I push them all away in expectation of him filling me up.

He presses in, and I yelp once again, this time in pain. His cock splits me seemingly in two, and tears of pain fill my eyes.

His fingers dig possessively into my flesh as he presses deeper in. My wet inner walls envelope him as the pain intensifies, and just when I think I’m going to pass out from the agony, it all melts away. Intense warmth and pleasure washes across my body as the pain becomes a distant memory. I feel his beautiful cock sliding inch by inch deeper and deeper inside me. I’m stretched to my limits, but the tightness and warm embrace of our union feels like the most right and perfect thing in the universe. He growls as he presses deeper in, and his hands slide up and squeeze my breasts.

“I want to always be inside you, Alice,” he growls.

“Yes,” I say, my tears streaming no longer from pain. “Always.”

And then he pulls further back, letting what feels good guide him. He rides me like the barbarian he is, and his balls slap against me with each powerful thrust. My body really can’t process what’s happening to it. This size of his cock is one thing, but the way he moves–and just knowing how good he looks–is like nothing else I’ve experienced. I almost jokingly called him a barbarian before, but having him fuck me has solidified that word in my mind. He truly is a barbarian.

He rides me like a man not tied down by any of the things that trouble a modern man.

Even the most primal and masculine of men–a woodsman, a cowboy, a soldier–still go home at night and sleep in their beds. Proximus wears a loincloth, fights with a skullspear, and sleeps on the hard floor. And he fucks exactly like a man who does all those things. With total abandon, with a wild intensity, with the most primal of desires.

And God, it feels good to be fucked like that. To be desired like that. His cock swells within me as he fucks. My wetness is so great I can hear each thrust, and I can hear his balls slap against me with each movement.

My ass cheeks jiggle back and forth as he slams into me, and I drool onto my mantle as I dig my elbows into it, doing all I can to keep my ass up for his entry.

I can’t even consider another position, because Proximus is so firmly in control. It feels too good just like this, and unless Proximus decides to throw me onto my back or to pull me on top of him, I’ll not move from this position.

I lose track of time, but the fact that I came just minutes before he entered me helps me to last longer, despite the incredible feeling of him sliding in and out of my impossibly tight and wet hole. For a man whose cock has never been inside a woman, I have no idea how he lasts as long as he does.

When the orgasm finally hits me, it hits hard. My walls clench him tight, and he thrusts so hard that the mantle scrunches up beneath me.

I press my face down into it and scream. I laugh and cry as the explosive orgasm blasts everything but the intense pleasure of him inside me from my mind. And only after I hit the absolute apex of that feeling do I feel his cock twitch and begin to fill me.

His release is as massive as his cock. The pressure of his cum hitting my deepest insides is intense, and my throat closes up and stifles a moan in response. I feel his warm cum flooding through me, and then overflowing. His cock pulses and pulses, filling me with a seemingly unlimited supply of hot alien cum.

I finally collapse, and I find my belly on cold stone. He’s fucked me so hard the mantle has bunched up into a ball beneath my elbows. I feel the cum dripping out of me, and I imagine it flowing through the cracks in the stone tiles like a river after a flood.

My body twitches in aftershocks of orgasm as Proximus pulls out of me and falls down beside me. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me on top of him. I rest on his warm body, while his back presses into the cold stones.

My eyes are heavy as I begin to drift into sleep.

13

Proximus The bond.

I can feel it already. That bond that means I will forever be outside my own kind. The bond that means I will never be a father. It’s a bond that will kill me if I ever am away from her for too long And yet, I can’t stop smiling. I can’t stop the feeling of my heart trying to rush from my chest. My spear is soaked in her glorious juices, and my seed is swimming within her.

How incredible a species. Woman with a tight and warm place to insert the spear.

Perfectly designed for a man’s pleasure.

There must have been some horrible error in the evolution or design of our species to not have something so brilliant.

And yet it’s more than that. Alice is mine. She’s more than that warm wetness that grips my spear. She’s those cheeks which turn red when she’s shamed. She’s the soft soul who can’t bear to watch a man being slain. She’s perfect, and she’s bonded to me. Now I must protect her above all else. Now I will take her as my lifemate, even though it is impossible that she can bear children, for no man of my species has ever impregnated a human woman. I heard the Emperor himself say these words.

I look down at her, sleeping softly. I wrapped her in the mantle, which thankfully was not covered with my thick and potent seed.

The smell of her fills the chamber, and I look through the window to see women dancing. It’s the break between killings, when the woman flaunt their bodies. I shake my head and sigh, not knowing how such a masculine form could ever have enticed me.

Small horns as a sign of femininity? What could be more feminine than a hornless head like Alice’s?

There’s a knock at the door, but Alice does not wake.

I crack the door open just enough to slide through, and I shut it behind me before even checking to see who it is. I can’t risk that her scent will reach his nose.

I look up and see a man I do not recognize. He’s nearly as tall as me, but his horns are half my size. He has shrewd eyes, and he meets mine defiantly.

“Yes?” “I am Kannakus,” he says. “I was Scipius’ second in the company.”

“I see,” I say.

I swore I’d fire all of his employees and sell the company off. I want to extract as much money from this company as fast as possible, and telling Kannakus of my intentions might give him cause to betray me.

So I decide to lie.

“Good,” I say. “So you will act as my second.”

He nods. “I’ll have to bring you up to speed, explain our venture, our finances, and introduce you to everyone you’ll be master of.”

“I’ll meet you at the river’s next waning,” I say. “At your storehouse.”

Kannakus nods, and I wait until he is long out of view before opening the door once again.

14

Alice We must go,” he says, his hand on my shoulder.

I look up and smile. “Is there anywhere in this city with a bed? I know you don’t need one, but–” “I will build you a bed,” he says. “Once we have a house. But we must hurry. Come!”

He lifts me to my feet, and I pull the tight teal suit back onto my skin. I wrap the mantle around my body, and I follow Proximus through the winding corridors that eventually take us out of the colosseum and back onto the streets of Therassus.

I usually have a good sense of direction, but it feels that no matter how long I might stay in this city, I’d never be familiar with its seemingly infinite number of winding roads and narrow alleys.

I hold Proximus by the hand as we walk this time, and I stroke the sinewy back of his palm with my thumb as we make our way toward wherever we are going. Each time I move my skin across his, it feels electric. I keep thinking of how good he felt inside me, and then the feeling of his protective arms wrapped around me as the warm afterglow overtook me.

“Where are we going now?” I ask.

“To the company storehouse,” he says. “I will liquefy all the company asses as fast as possible, then we will leave the city rich.”

“Do you mean liquidate assets?” I ask.

He furrows his brow. “I do not know.”

I remember his explanation of how he learned English. An Emperor Clan member hooked him up to some type of machine, he felt a shock, and suddenly he could speak English. Either the original program built into that machine had errors in it, or maybe the connection between machine and brain had some kind of error transferring the information across to Proximus’ brain.

“So you’re going to just raid the vault,” I say. “Fire all the employees?”

He nods.

“Wouldn’t it be smarter to keep it going?” I ask. “Make long-term profit? What do they do anyway?”

“You do not know the ways of this world, Alice,” he says. “And I am not a businessman.”

I look at him, wondering if he realizes the super obvious contradiction he just made.

“You know,” I say. “I am a businesswoman, back on Earth. I run–well, ran–a photography studio. I mostly did baby photos, but the point is I knew how to turn my skills into money. To run the business effectively and make money doing it.”

“You like babies?” he asks.

I shrug, suddenly very aware of just how much of his cum was pumped into me. Could I get pregnant? From an alien?

He looks away from me. “Women cannot run businesses here, so I will ignore your advice, Alice.”

Is he forgetting the innkeeper? Or was she not really in charge?

I dig my nails into my hand and pull on his arm. “Proximus.”

He stops and turns to face me. People are jostling and shoving, but Proximus’ wide frame keeps most of the people off me.

“What do you know of dream leaves?” He asks me, seemingly impatient and annoyed.

“You know I don’t know,” I snap, “But–” “Exactly,” he grunts, “Yet you think you should advise me on how to sell them?”

“Why don’t you teach me?” I ask. “And before you burn down this whole profitable business you’ve just been handed on a whim, we should take some time to figure out if you–if we–can live off of it long-term?”

Someone shoves him hard, and he stiff arms them away. They growl at each other, and he looks back at me even more angry than before. I clutch the mantle tight. There’s an icy wind blowing in from between the buildings, and sleet is beginning to fall from the sky.

He takes hold of me by the shoulders and looks me seriously in the eyes. “Because of our bond, and because I cannot forget the feel of your soaking wet and tight embrace of my spear, which I hope to feel again soon, I will take your suggestion under consideration. I will not completely ignore you. Is this sufficient?”

I think of slapping him, but I know it won’t hurt him at all. Instead I just shove his hands off me, make an annoyed grunt, and hiss to him that we should be on our way.

He talks to me as we walk, in a fairly upbeat voice, meaning he’s completely oblivious to how annoyed he made me, and how upset I am with him.

“Dream leaves are valuable, but it’s forbidden among our clan to eat them. Though we have been known to barter with them, should they come into our possession. Still, we must never chew them or brew them into a tea. Scipius must have realized the potential profit in selling them after seeing how valuable they were to trade with.”

I ignore him. I assume he’s not going to listen to any of my suggestions anyway, and if he’s just going to sell everything off and fire everyone, then I no longer need to know anything about dream leaves.

“You said I was just handed this company,” he says.

“Oh,” I say, my voice sounding much more bitter than I expect. “So you actually listened to something I said?”

“Yes, and you are wrong.” He pulls me into an alley, and I think at first he’s pulled me there to talk. Maybe to apologize, but instead he keeps pulling me along through the alley. He talks as we walk. “I was handed nothing. I had to kill my clan brother in a duel to the death.”

“Fair point,” I mutter, quiet enough that I don’t even know if he hears me.

“Here,” he says, pulling me out of the alley.

We approach a large stone building with no windows. The doors are huge and made of some kind of metal. It looks old, but not rusted or worn at all.

Proximus pulls out his spear, and he knocks on the door by slamming the butt of his spear into the door over and over, until the door finally rumbles open.

“Kannakus,” Proximus says.

Kannakus bows. He’s a tall man, but I’ve seen enough of Proximus’ race now to know his horns are medium length at best. By the way Proximus shoves past him and enters without waiting to be invited or given any real sign, I get the feeling Proximus thinks he is far superior to Kannakus–or maybe he just thinks he owns the place. To be fair, he does own the place.

We step into a large space the size of a hotel lobby, but with only minimalistic wooden desks with no chairs. The desks are manned by horned aliens scrawling onto paper with huge purple feathers.

“Shall I give you a tour?” Kannakus asks.

Proximus grunts. “How much money do you have on hand?”

Kannakus bites his lip and frowns. I want to hit Proximus, to yell at him. To tell him he’s an idiot, but I worry I could make his position even weaker by causing any kind of scene.

“I can give you a full breakdown during a tour…” Kannakus says, trailing off.

“Money. How much?” Proximus barks.

“Well,” Kannakus says, “The answer to that is somewhat complicated…”

Proximus grabs Kannakus by the neck and shoves his back into the inside of the big metal door. The people with the purple feathers all stop writing and stare. I hold my breath, afraid of what Proximus might do.

“How. Much.” Proximus growls.

“Almost nothing,” Kannakus says. “Scipius just re-invested everything into a huge expedition, new infrastructure–” Proximus squeezes his throat, and he gasps for air.

I pull on Proximus’ arm. “Please, let him finish.”

Proximus’ bicep bulges, and the veins on his forearm pop out, but he finally lets go.

Kannakus gasps for air. “It will pay off ten times over, but for now there are no liquid asses.”

I sigh. It seems my earpiece is translating using the same flawed software that Proximus’ implant used.

“How long until we make money again?” Proximus asks. He’s let go of Kannakus’ neck, but he’s still just inches from the man, blocking him from moving his back off the door.

Kannakus shakes his head. “A month or two? We’ve hired a team of mercenaries–the best from the inner regions–to eradicate the Clan Who Dreams. Once they are gone, we will control the leaves.”

Proximus shoves him into the door.

“I mean you,” Kannakus says. “You will control the leaves, my lord!”

Proximus stares him down, but before either man can speak or make another move, there’s a loud thumping at the door.

“Who is that?” Proximus asks.

Kannakus shakes his head. “We were expecting no one but yourself, lord Proximus.”

I look around and see the men with purple feathers have all pulled out long, curved knives. If the company’s scribes all need knives, I’m not so sure this is the most stable or safe business to invest into. Maybe it is better if Proximus just sells everything off. Or maybe everyone on this planet has a weapon of some kind.

Proximus pulls Kannakus away from the door and raises his spear. He grabs me by the arm and hisses to Kannakus. “Hide us!”

Kannakus motions toward one of the scribes, who leads us through a side door. We’re taken into a hallway, and then into the first room, which is full of curled up scrolls stacked on chaotically organized shelf. The scribe slides open a window on the wall, and he points to show us that the window is covered in a lattice of metal bars, like the window of a prison cell. It gives us a view into the main lobby.

“Good,” Proximus grunts, leaning in and pressing his face just inches from the metal grating.

The scribe stands near the door with his knife in hand, and I lean in toward Proximus to take a look. “Who do you think it is?”

“I fear the worst,” he says.

Kannakus opens the door, and men in shiny armor storm inside, with guns drawn.

“Weapons down!” One of them shouts.

The scribes eye each other and clutch their knives. Not one lowers his knife.

“We’ve paid you our protection fee for this cycle,” Kannakus says, holding his empty palms up and smiling wide.

“Where is your lord?” a guard barks, and his gun whines in a flash of bright violet.

“He’s…” Kannakus says, not looking in our direction. “He’s due to arrive any minute now. He was delayed at the colosseum.”

“Then we’ll wait here for him,” one of the guards says.

He gestures with his horns, and the second guard moves around the lobby, searching.

“Give him a tour,” the first guard barks to Kannakus.

Proximus turns back toward me and the scribe. “There are only two of them,” Proximus says. “We kill the one who comes in here, take his gun, and kill the second.”

The plan has a bit too much “kill” for my tastes, but I don’t see any other way out. It seems that the guards either received orders from the broadcasting tower, or that some part of the Emperor Clan is in Therassus and looking for us. If killing two more men is what it takes to get us out, I’ll take it.

Proximus stands near the door and extends his spear. He gestures underneath the shelf of scrolls, signaling me to get down.

I crouch down and hide behind one of the thick wooden legs.

“Stand in front of her,” Proximus says to the scribe. “If she is hurt, I will rip out your throat.”

The scribe nods and crouches in front of me, like a tiger ready to strike, his knife a long and vicious tooth. I can barely see the door with the scribe’s muscular frame in front of me, but the moment the door opens, Proximus leaps like a lion.

His spear finds the opening between the guard’s breastplate and helmet, and there’s only a wheezing sound as the guard goes down. His armor striking the stone floor is louder than his gurgling death cry.

Then a purple light blinds me, and I squint as I see Proximus shoving the barrel of the gun through the metal grate. I hear the whine of the gun going off–much louder indoors than it was in the open air of the colosseum–and then there’s a brief silence followed by loud shouts.

Proximus grabs me and hoists me over his shoulder. He pushes Kannakus–who led the first guard into the room to die–forward toward the lobby, and the scribe trails behind us, knife still in hand.

When we enter the lobby, it smells like someone is cooking barbeque, but then I realize it’s the smell of the guard Proximus shot. There’s a scent of burning plastic or metal on

top of the other awful smell, and I figure that must be his burned armor letting out some foul chemical into the air.

“We don’t have much time,” Proximus barks, not bothering to put me back onto my feet.

“I need some dried leaves, a horse and wagon, and all the liquefied asses you have on hand.”

15

Alice We’re soon on the road. Proximus drives the horses while I am to “stay with the leaves.”

There are a lot of leaves. The horses on this planet aren’t really horses, and they seem able to carry much more weight than even oxen on Earth could. The wagon reminds me of a covered wagon from the 1800s, though it has spikes of bone jutting out from its frame. When I asked Proximus about those, he told me I “probably didn’t want to know.”

So I ride on top of the leaves, which are all wrapped and bound in a type of canvas. Even though the leaves are wrapped and dried, I can still smell them. It’s a dense and herbal smell, as strong at least as something like fresh mint or allspice, though smelling nothing like either of those–or like any other herb from Earth.

I peek my head through the opening and see Proximus’ broad shoulders before me. I keep expecting it to be night, and I have to remind myself that it never will be. Instead I see the dull sun in the distance, casting its feint light onto his muscular contours.

I watch him for a few minutes in silence. Even though he’s been driving the horses for hours, he doesn’t so much as slouch.

I finally whisper his name.

He turns to me with a scowl. “Keep out of sight.”

I scowl back. The scent of the leaves is so strong that I don’t have to keep the stinking ratskunk blood on me, but now I’m not allowed to so much poke my head out of the wagon.

“How much further?” I ask.

He tries to shove me back in, but I dodge his hand, and he just growls and gives up.

The buildings in front of me seem to only go a block or two deep. I’m used to seeing the city look almost infinite. We must be nearing the river. The part where it wraps around the far end of the city–we’re not going back the way we came, but rather deeper in

toward the inner regions. Which are supposed to be warmer and brighter. Though more dangerous.

“Aren’t the bridges going to be guarded like before?” I ask.

He nods. “We will ford the river.”

Ford the river? I only know the verb “ford” from playing The Oregon Trail as a kid. I strain to remember what happens when you ford the river. As I recall, you lose a lot of bullets, meat, spare parts...oh, and usually two or three people die.

“That sounds bad,” I whisper.

“Go back inside,” he says. “I am in charge.”

“Why don’t we bribe the guards?” I ask. “With some dream leaves.”

“They are on duty, they cannot conceal giant bags of smelly leaves,” he says. “And if the emperor clan is looking for us, they’ll know the reward for finding us is better than anything I can provide. We ford the river. It’s only as deep as four men here.”

Four alien men. So at least 30 feet deep. I doubt that 30 feet or 100 feet would make much difference at all in this situation.

“I don’t like it,” I whisper.

“Once we are out of the city,” he says. “You can come out. We will make camp somewhere, and I will spear you again. This will appease you, and I will also enjoy it immensely.”

I laugh. “Wow, that is so romantic, Proximus.”

“Yes,” he says, smiling with satisfaction.

It’s hard to stay mad at him sometimes. If a man from Earth said something like this, I’d probably slap him. Proximus doesn’t know that this isn’t the way you talk to a woman, and his simple and matter-of-fact stating what will happen...and his immense enjoyment brings a big smile to my face, which is burning red.

“Can these horses swim?” I ask.

“They must,” he answers.

In the chaos of leaving the company storehouse, I only partially managed to overhear what the overall plan was. Proximus didn’t order everyone fired or destroy the company, and he ordered the expensive expedition to kill the Clan Who Dreams and steal the

dream leaf supply to continue as planned. I heard some mention of him planning to return once the source of leaves was secured.

The more obvious part of the plan was that we sell the leaves we have closer toward the inner regions. Kannakus said that the leaves were worth a fraction of their true value so far out in Therassus, and the further in we traveled, the more we could sell the leaves for.

This is why we are risking going into more dangerous territory–for greater profit.

Proximus still wanted to sell them in Therassus for a fraction of their true value, but he knew he couldn’t risk staying in that city any longer after killing two of the city guard.

We reach the end of the buildings, and then I see a ramp in front of us. It dips down until it disappears in the green water.

“Small fishing ships enter the river here,” he says.

He urges the horses forward, but they stop a few feet short of the water, letting out a weird grunting noise and jerking backward.

Proximus leaps off the front of the wagon, pulls his spear out, and slaps each horse on the ass with the blunt butt of his spear. They move forward, and he jumps back up onto the wagon as the horses go down neck-deep into the river.

Soon the wagon dips into the water, and I find myself crossing my fingers that it will actually float. Water sloshes up and covers Proximus up to his thighs. I can tell by the look on his face that it’s too deep, that he expected the wagon to float more than this.

He acts at once, grabbing two bags of leaves–one in each hand–and throwing them into the river.

I muster all of my strength to grab one single bag and hoist it up. I toss it into the water.

In time it takes me to toss that one bag overboard, Proximus throws out six or seven.

Water starts to seep into the wagon, hitting the bottom of my feet. The skin-tight teal suit protects me from the cold of the water more than I’d have expected. The fabric must be well beyond anything we have on Earth.

Proximus throws more bags overboard, and I notice the water isn’t getting any deeper.

“I think we’ve stabilized,” he says.

We both sigh as the sound of sloshing water dies down. I can hear my panting breath again, and I feel so thankful that, for once, something is going to go as planned.

I hear a loud snap, and just as I begin processing what that sound could mean, I feel icy water rush up all around me. At first I’m amazed at how fast the water flooded into the wagon, but then I realize it didn’t flood in, we just went all the way under. The small

area above my head that isn’t submerged is just a bubble of air, and it’s quickly shrinking. I tread water to keep my head in that bubble, and through I feel my suit tighten to prevent ice-cold water from leaking in, it sloshes up along my neck and chin, sending a frosty chill deep into my bones. I know I should swim out now and escape the wagon, but I find myself too afraid to do anything beyond keep myself in that bubble of air, which will soon be gone.

Proximus breaks through the water and appears in front of me. His teal shoulders glisten with droplets of water as he breaks above the surface and into the bubble of air. He grabs hold of me with one strong arm.

“I will count to four,” he says, “And then we are going under. Get a good breath.”

On three I suck in all the air I can manage, and on four he pulls us under. I feel us shoving through wet sacks of canvas, and I soon lose all sense of direction. I focus on holding my breath as Proximus pulls me through the water. Just when my lungs start to hurt and scream out for air, we break through the surface, and I take in a deep breath.

Some water gets in, and I start to cough, but Proximus sets me down on the shore. He grips me and pulls me tight against his body, then pats my back with enough force that I cough up water.

I look up and see that a few floating boards are all that remain of our wagon. There’s a handful of canvas bundles floating among the wreckage, and before I can even suggest it, Proximus dives back into the river to retrieve them.

He manages to save four or five packs of leaves, but the rest go under. One of our horses is standing a few dozen feet from us and huffing, but the others are nowhere to be seen.

Proximus takes my soaking mantle off my body and wrings it out as best he can. He gets the horse to come back toward us, and after he calms it, he puts the wet mantle over its back.

“You must be cold,” he says. “Humans cannot retain heat. Especially human women.”

“I’m okay,” I say. “The suit protected me.”

I really am cold though. My hair is soaked, and the frigid air feels like it’s seeping all the heat from my body out through my scalp.

Proximus pulls me against him and wraps his arms around me. His warmth covers me, and I start to feel better immediately.

“I said I’m fine,” I lie. I know we need to keep moving.

“You’re not,” he says. “Let me warm you.”

And so I do. He warms me as I use a torn piece of canvas to dry my hair.

“Are the leaves still good?” I ask.

Proximus slashes open one of the bags with the tip of his spear. He holds up a handful of leaves and squeezes. Water drips out in thick droplets. He growls and throws the whole bag into the river.

“Can’t we dry them?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “It will be taken by mushrooms.”

“You mean mold?”

“No,” he says. “Mushrooms. Fungus.”

Another word he didn’t get.

He checks the rest of the bags, and finds two bags that didn’t get soaked. He ties them to the horse. I’m afraid to ask how little money two bags will get us.

We ride the single horse together, though it has no saddle. I wrap my hands around Proximus and try to sleep as we ride. I wake up a few times to realize that I’m in front of Proximus, and that he’s holding me secure with one hand while he drives the horse by its neck with the other.

At some point I feel myself being lowered onto the ground, with the now dried out mantle wrapped around me.

16

Proximus Idecide to keep us off the roads. While the small amount of leaves I’ve saved are not nearly enough to repay my clan’s debt to the Emperor Clan, they are still worth a fortune to desperate bandits. If I were traveling alone, I might be able to fend off anyone who would try to attack me, but there’s a reason Kannakus normally uses a whole band of mercenaries to transport his leaves.

More valuable than the leaves are Alice. There are no ratskunks this far in, and we’ve run out of blood. More than anything I must stay off the roads, because the simple act of passing another traveler could give them a whiff of her scent. Smelling her, even the most upstanding citizen could be sent into a frenzy, and be driven to do something he normally never would.

I lie Alice down beneath a tree. Her body feels limp, and it seems no matter how I moved or shook her, she would not wake. I wrap her in her mantle and make her as comfortable as I can, using strips of torn canvas to keep the wet grass from her body.

I lean against the tree and close my eyes, resolving to store as much sleep as I can.

I awake with Alice’s head resting on my thigh, her feminine scent hitting my nose and rousing every part of me awake and to full attention. Especially my spear. I can feel it pulsing with life as I reach up beneath Alice’s mantle and grip the warmth of her hips.

Her mouth opens, and a heavy breath escapes her.

I throw her down onto the bed of canvas, and I bury my face in her supple neck. I inhale her scent, and it washes over me like a drug. Her moans tell me she is awake, even if her eyes are still closed. I kiss her all up her neck, and I bite her ear gently, until her back arches up.

She pulls at her mantle, and I help it off her.

“It’s cold,” she whispers, and she pulls the mantle over my shoulders as I lie on top of her.

“I will warm you,” I whisper in a low growl.

I peel her suit off, until only the exotic whiteness of her skin shines in the faint bit of red sunlight that penetrates the cover of the mantle.

I press my body against her, pulling my loincloth and skullspear off and throwing them aside. Her full breasts press into my torso, and I can feel her hard nipples press into me. I reach up and grab one of her breasts, while my other hand squeezes the full flesh of her backside. My thumb rubs across her nipple, and as she squeals, her feminine scent intensifies. I focus on that nipple with fingers and tongue. Each time the smell of the wetness between her legs hits my nose stronger, I know I’m touching her in the right way. Soon the scent becomes too much, and touching her breasts isn’t enough to make it any stronger, so I work down past her belly and between her legs.

My body escapes the mantle as I kiss down between her legs, but I reach up and make sure she is still wrapped tight and warm, and then–keeping to my promise–I lick across her swollen and wet lips to make her warm as can be. Her body shudders as I touch her most sensitive place, and the taste of it makes my spear hard as the most ancient of metals.

As good as it would feel to spear into her right now, I crave her scent. Only if I worship her femininity with my tongue will her scent reach its full bloom. And so I lick her, until that small point hardens and swells, and then I lick it with the utmost care, barely touching it at first. New smells emerge, as do wonderful sounds of ecstasy.

I growl in contentment as I lick her harder and with greater pressure. She starts to squeal and whine and writhe. Knowing that I alone can make my bonded female feel this good fills me with complete pride and satisfaction. I grip her body with burning possessiveness–as if anyone could dare to take her from me in this moment.

Her hips shoot skyward, and I pull her back down with my hands. I suck on her swollen nub, and press my tongue up against her as she seems to all but vibrate against me. I squeeze her ass so hard–as pure instinct and reflex–that I worry I’ve hurt her. Just as I’m about to let go in shame at having hurt her, she grunts, and the smell of 1,000 flowers in bloom fills me. She likes the pain, I realize, and I squeeze her even harder.

She starts to climax, and I drink down all of her juices as she cums for me and me alone.

I squeeze her nipples harder than I thought I should, and the pain sends her even further over the edge.

Even as she cums and thrashes and screams, my mind races for new ways to hurt her–if only to make her feel good. I pull away from her. What could hurt more than denying her pleasure?

“Proximus,” she says, panting for air. “I was...how can you stop now?”

I can’t help but grin as I look up at her. Her breasts are heaving as she gasps for air, and she’s covered in beads of sweat from her exertions. Her eyes are gleaming wet like freshly formed amber, and every part of her body language says she wants me more than anything. Her scent begs me above all else, begs me to finish what I’ve started.

Her hand moves between her legs, but I grab her wrist and stop her from touching herself.

“Proximus,” she whines, “please.”

“Please what?” I say.

Among my race, sex is no time for words. We simply feel an animalistic need to spill our seed, and then we do it in the way it is done between males and females of our kind. I feel revulsion at the image of it, of being with a female of my own people. I push the image away so as not to lose the hardness of my spear.

Never would I have thought that the simple act of talking, of communicating wants and desires could do to my spear what it is now doing. Hearing her voice aloud what she wants is all I want right now. I want to hear her desire almost more than I want to do what I know she will ask of me.

“I wanted you to finish,” she says, still breathless, “With your tongue...but it’s too late for that now.”

She reaches for my spear, which is pressed hard against my abs. The veins are popped out and throbbing, and it’s hard as it’s ever been.

“No,” I say, grabbing her wrist and holding it hard enough to hurt her.

Her eyes widen, but the smell tells me she likes it. She likes being hurt in this way.

“Tell me,” I say. “Do not show me.”

Her eyes go down to my spear, and she licks her lips. “I want that inside me.”

“What?” I ask.

“Your big spear,” she whispers. “You’re a master of both kinds of spear, Proximus. The skullspear, and the…”

“This is simply the spear,” I say. “The most primal spear we wield.”

“Yes,” she says. “Primal. But Proximus, I want you to look me in the eyes this time. I want you to see your violet eyes as you cum inside me.”

Inside. It’s something I never could have thought of. Something that only a God could have invented. To cum inside.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I whisper, so thankful I must never again cum without my spear deep inside of her.

And then I pull her legs back, and I press my spear deep into her wetness. I feel that impossible warmth wrap around me, and my eyes roll back into my head, but then I remember what Alice wanted. I look down at her, into her deep green eyes.

I buck my hips and slide out, then back in, and I watch her eyes as I do so. Tears form at the corners of her eyes, and I know from the way she winces that they are tears of pain.

“You like pain sometimes,” I whisper. “You’re stronger than I thought.”

“Pain can be good,” she whispers as I move slowly in and out of her tight channel.

But I can tell the pain all but fades away. Her wetness becomes more than the river that nearly swallowed us, and I move faster and faster within her. Her legs wrap around me, and her heels dig into my back. Her body moves in rhythm with my thrusts.

I look into her eyes, and even when they close or roll back, I do not look away. Seeing her joy painted on her face makes me want to bring it out even more, and I soon find the perfect angle to do so. My thrusts bring my swollen spear across a special place inside her, which makes her more wet and in more fragrant bloom than any other spot within her. I do all I can to stimulate her here, and soon her eyes stay closed through the sheer ecstasy of our union.

I struggle to keep my own eyes open, but I want to meet her gaze when she reaches climax, and I keep my eyes fixed on her eyelids as they flutter and tremble beneath my raw force and power.

I feel her walls clench around my spear, and only then does my own need to release begin to grow. Her eyes open, and their brilliant deep green brings me in toward her. I press my face against her until our foreheads touch, and all I can see is the perfect depth of her eyes, her pupils fully dilated as if she had ingested a whole bundle of dream leaves.

Then they close again, and I too close my eyes. My balls clench against my spear, and I explode with fury deep within her. I feel my seed filling her to the brim, and her body shudders beautifully as I pump her so full she can hold no more.

Only when her body fully falls limp do I stop my in-and-out movements. I pull out of her and fall down beside her. She throws the mantle away, her body now soaked in sweat.

She wraps her arms around me, and I do the same to her. We entangle together, her legs pulling back around me, and I hold her like that until the cold begins to set in again, and she reaches for her mantle.

17

Alice I wake up to see Proximus crouched down in a pile of strange fruits and vegetables. I realize that they all look alien enough that I’m not quite sure which is a fruit or which is a vegetable. Or maybe you can’t even use those terms to classify alien food.

“Where did you get all this?” I ask, my stomach rumbling with ravenous hunger.

“We are on a farm,” he says.

I look around at the rolling grasslands and fields. There are no perfectly straight rows of crops or evenly spaced fruit trees, but there are tall stalks of things growing everywhere, just less organized that it would be on Earth. I can kind of see how it could be a farm.

“Won’t the farmer get mad?” I ask.

I’m already reaching for a piece of fruit that looks like an apple. The farmer can get mad all he wants, but I need to eat.

“This is the Emperor’s land,” Proximus says. “It’s not the farmer I worry about.”

I bite into the fruit. It doesn’t taste at all like an apple, but like a pomegranate. There are no tiny little seeds, just pure and sweet flavor. I suck up the juices and devour the thing hungrily. Proximus hands me something else shaped like a banana, and I try to peel it, but can’t find anywhere to pull.

“You suck on this one,” he says. “Just like you sucked on my spear the first time we bonded.”

I give him a wicked smile, and I wonder if he’s messing with me, but I suck on the thing anyway. A burst of flavor hits my tongue, and I nearly choke on the juices as they go down my throat.

“If you bite it,” he says. “You’ll lose too many of the juices.”

I notice him watching me with a half smirk as I suck on the penis-shaped fruit, but he chews on one of the pomegranate apples as I suck down the juices.

Soon we’re both full, and there’s even enough left over that we can carry it along with us.

Proximus wraps the fruit into a bundle of canvas, and ties it to the bundled dream leaves which hang from the horse.

“We’re still very far,” he says. “We must keep moving. I don’t know this land well, but I fear we must sell these leaves in the first city we come across. Without the wagon and many horses, we can’t go as far as I’d planned. Kannakus said my clan is further inland, though I do not know how far. With money to get us by, and time in a city, I should be able to find them.”

I just nod. I don’t want to throw in my two cents as a businesswoman for fear he’d dismiss me again, or do the complete opposite just to prove some kind of point to me. I don’t feel any danger right now on this tranquil rolling hill. The air feels noticeably warmer as a breeze hits my cheeks. I almost wish we could just stay on this farm for the whole day. Though I trust Proximus’ judgement of the situation. I believe him that we are in danger as we travel, and I know that having actual money rather than dried leaves will keep us safer. Being able to disappear into a larger city might also offer us some protection. After running across Scipius, I’m not sure how thrilled I am to meet his clan, though he seems to think it will give us safety.

I suddenly see movement from the corner of my eye, and I look over to see a dark shadow moving toward us from the hill above. The sun is higher in the sky, and it’s just behind the figure, making him seem like a pure black silhouette rather than a man, though he’s walking on two legs.

I worry it’s the farmer, who must have seen Proximus raiding the farm and orchards.

I point toward him, and Proximus leaps to his feet, his skullspear extending fully.

Then I see two shadowy arms burst out of the ground and pull itself up in front of us. It’s close enough I should be able to see what it is, but it appears still as a dark shadow, even though the sun is not directly behind it.

“Did that thing just crawl out of the ground?” I ask.

“Yes,” Proximus says, pulling me up to my feet and putting himself in front of me. “I told you things can come up out of the ground to kill us. These are ordered to defend the Emperor’s farms.”

I eye the horse. “We can run, right?”

“They’ll never stop following,” Proximus says, shaking his head. “They won’t tire like our horse.”

The two figures meet each other, and I see their eyes glow violet as they turn to face each other. They move like nothing human–or alien–they move with the jerky and erratic movements of insects rather than men, and I hear loud chirping like cicadas in summer, and then those violet eyes turn back to face us again.

“Golems,” Proximus says. “I should be able to defeat two of them.”

Before I can tell him not to, he’s charging forward.

The golems split up, then move in toward Proximus on both sides. As they get closer, I realize that they were not black because of the way the sun was behind them, but their bodies are simply the darkest black I’ve ever seen. It might be metal, or it could be some bug-like carapace, but it’s so dark it reflects no light at all. Aside from those glowing violet eyes, they are pure shadow. They look almost two dimensional, like paper cut-outs on the hill.

I forget that Proximus stole the guns from the guard in Therassus, but then I see the blinding purple light blasting out from his hand. The violet blast of energy slams into one of the golems, and for a moment it looks as if that perfect shadow absorbs every bit of light. The golem stumbles, and its chest starts to burn violet, until it’s so bright I have to squint. Just as the violet brightens to near pure white, the golem explodes open and crumbles in pieces to the ground.

Our horse screeches and tries to bolt away, but it’s tied to the tree. It strains against the rope until it chokes itself, desperate to escape the chaos.

Proximus swings around without even looking to make sure the first golem is truly dead, but the second golem lunges forward and swings its huge arm. The gun lets loose another blast of violet just as it’s knocked from Proximus’ grip, but the shot goes wide and misses the golem entirely. I can’t even see where the gun land, or if it was simply destroyed by the golem’s massive fist.

Proximus rolls away and dodges the golem’s huge foot, which crushes the earth beneath where he’d just stood, creating a huge crater.

The golem turns its back to Proximus, and its glowing eyes face me. It leaps from the hole in the Earth it created, jumping straight for me.

I see Proximus charging toward its back, his head tucked down and his horns forward.

His arm is cocked and ready to attack with his skullspear, but I have a hard time imagining a spear made to penetrate human bone piercing through ancient metal that absorbs all light.

I try to run, and I slip and fall in the grass. The horse’s wild eyes bulge, and it seems it’s either going to uproot the tree, or more likely that it’s going to snap its own neck. I just need to pull myself to my feet, get to the horse, and– The cold metal wraps around my body, and I feel myself ripped up off the ground and into the air. I expect the hand to crush me, but it just holds me. I look down and see Proximus. The golem is twice the size of him, and it’s holding me well above its head.

As tall as Proximus is, he can’t reach me.

The huge obsidian fingers start to squeeze around my waist, and just as I fear it will crush my ribs, it stops squeezing.

I look down just in time to see the glow of its eyes fading. A second later the golem is nothing but pure darkness. An absence of light on the field, a blacker than black statue.

Proximus leaps onto it, climbing its back until he stands on its shoulder, and he walks with catlike balance toward me. I struggle against the fingers, but they are as solid as a statue.

Proximus holsters his skullspear and slides down onto his knees, meeting me at eye level, as half of my body is sunk into the golem’s fist.

“Can you breathe?” he asks, putting a hand on my cheek.

“I can,” I say. “I’m not hurt. I just...can’t move.”

He crawls out onto the edge of the fist, reaches down toward one of the fingertips. His muscles bulge and flex as he pulls with his whole body, but the thing doesn’t move an inch even under Proximus’ full strength.

The horse is huffing, its nostrils flaring, but it’s no longer choking itself trying to escape.

As far as it can tell, the golem is gone, replaced by this still shadow.

Proximus pulls his skullspear back out, extends it, and stabs in between the fingers. I can tell immediately he won’t be able to wedge them open. The places where the fingers touch together look like they are carved from solid stone–as if they had never moved or been able to separate.

“The gun,” I say.

He jumps off the fist and lands almost silently, then he stalks across the grass toward where he lost the gun. I notice then that the first golem he destroyed is gone. There are no shattered pieces or debris, and the only sign it was ever there at all is a large spot of burned grass.

Proximus crouches down and shakes his head, then returns empty handed. “It was destroyed.”

I see Proximus look up, and his brows furrow. I try to turn and look at what he sees, but I can’t turn my head back far enough with the fist wrapped around my waist. “What is it?”

“A flying machine,” he says, and from the way he grips his spear tighter, I fear the worst.

I’ve started to piece together what is probably happening. These farms are owned by the emperor, and the golems are likely controlled by the Emperor, or at least by the Emperor Clan. We thought they were trying to kill us for trespassing, but it seems they recognized me, and now they’ve succeeding in capturing me.

“You should run,” I whisper.

My voice goes dry. I don’t really want him to run, but I know it’s the smart thing for him to do. I don’t want him to be captured for my sake, not when he has no chance of rescuing me anyway.

“I will not abandon you,” he growls.

The flying machine comes into my view now. It rockets across the sky like a black needle, and just as it reaches directly overhead, it stops on a dime. I see its triangular shape begin to grow as it lowers down toward us.

“If you run,” I say, talking more quickly now, “You can find a way to save me. You can get your clan to help, and–”

He shakes his head and clutches his spear. “I will never be able to get to you again if I leave now. I will notabandon you, Alice.”

I’m both relieved that I won’t be taken alone, but annoyed at his stubbornness. What is his single spear going to do against all the technology they have? He was only able to steal me away the first time because they trusted him. They’ll never trust him again.

The black machine touches ground, and it’s made of the same absence of light as the golems, at least until a door opens, and two horned men in gleaming armor step outside, revealing the purple light from within the aircraft.

The armored men are holding guns much larger than the one Proximus had. They aim them at Proximus, and he cocks his spear as if to throw it.

A third figure emerges behind the armored fighters. He wears only a violet cloak wrapped around his huge frame, and I see a strange glow from his horns when the dim sun hits them just right.

“Proximus,” the caped figure roars, and the armored men raise their guns as they flare with bright purple energy..

“I’ll kill you,” Proximus rasps. “A spear through the eye and you’re dead. Then I’ll kill the other two with my teeth and horns.”

At least ten more men stream out of the craft. These are not armored. They’re wearing loincloths and holding skullspears. They fan out and form a line in front of the three armored men.

“You might be able to kill one of us,” the man who spoke earlier says. He’s closer now, and I realize his horns are covered in gold.

“At least my name would live on,” Proximus says. “As the man who killed the emperor.”

The emperor? The golden-horned one is the actual emperor?

The emperor laughs, and Proximus throws the spear.

There’s an explosion of purple light, and the spear bursts into flames in mid-air. It burns so hot it disintegrates before it comes within 10 feet of the emperor.

True to his promise, Proximus leaps down and charges the spearmen with his head down and horns up.

Just as he reaches the ground, I feel movement for the first time in many minutes, and I see the black fist of the golem’s free hand reach down with blinding speed and snatch Proximus up. The golem becomes a

statue the moment it secures Proximus in its grasp, and he roars and thrashes his one free arm, but he’s as unable to free himself, just as he was unable to free me.

“I’d have been disappointed if you didn’t at least try,” the Emperor says.

He snaps his fingers, and the doors to the airship open back up. The emperor and his guards all disappear inside. The ship lifts silently off the ground. It doesn’t so much as disturb a single blade of grass as it hovers a foot or so off the ground. It floats silently up until it’s around ten feet high, and I wonder for a moment if it’s just going to leave us here to die in the golem’s fists.

Just as I fear we’ll be left alone to die of thirst, a line of blackness emerges from the airship and touches the golem. I can’t see any detail on that pure blackness, but I imagine the staff melting into the golem. The last thing I see is the golem expanding outward, coating the world in pure black ink, until that blackness moves up and covers my eyes.

The last thing I remember seeing before the darkness blinds me is the ground moving away from us, as if we had been lifted up by the airship.

I shout for Proximus, but he either doesn’t answer–or more likely–he can’t hear me. The blackness has swallowed us both, and it’s blocking our voices from reaching each other.

*** I passin and out of sleep as I float in that pure blackness. I can’t move, and I can’t see or feel or smell anything. It’s hard to separate sleep from that darkness.

The first light that hits me blinds me. I don’t know if it’s been a few hours or more than a day. To my horror, the first thing I see are those sickly green aliens from when I was first taken. They pin me down to a table. There’s a sound of a mechanic whirring, and then pressure pushes down all over my body. The green aliens tear the clothes from my body, and when I try to fight them, I realize there is some invisible force holding me down.

These aliens are nothing like Proximus. They have big, bulb-like heads with no hair.

Their eyes are large and without any features. I can see my own reflection in those dark eyes. They have little slits for nostrils, and no mouths. They make little clicking sounds at each other, then walk away, leaving me naked and alone.

18

Proximus She can’t see us,” the Emperor says to me. “She thinks she’s alone now. Let’s see how she reacts.”

I’m held back by the same invisible thing that is pinning Alice to the table.

The green aliens come back in and chitter something to the Emperor. He seems to understand them, perhaps he has an earpiece like Alice.

We’re in a huge room, and there are dozens of our race outnumbering the three green aliens. Across all of those horned faces, I see lust in their eyes. They must have smelled her on the farm, and looking through the strange window at her naked body, they want to smell her once again, but from much closer. Much more intimately.

“She’s my property,” the Emperor says. “You were stupid enough to bond with her. I thought you were more strong-willed than that, Proximus.”

I growl at him.

I’ve only seen the man once, with his ridiculous golden horns. He spoke to me for a minute or two when I was first recruited by the Emperor Clan, when he used the machine to give me the language that Alice speaks. He told me then that he could see in my eyes I’d be loyal to him. That I was a man of honor.

“I smelled her,” the Emperor says. “But I made myself immune before we traveled to Earth. Still, immune or not, I can appreciate that scent. I do have a spear between my legs, after all.”

“I’d wondered,” I rasp. “You hide behind ancient machines. You and your clan are not really strong. You’re not even smart–you didn’t create these ships or these golems or guns–you just use them, like a savage ape who finds a skullspear might.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever read a book, Proximus,” the Emperor says.

Some of his guards laugh, but others eye me with pity.

The Emperor gets in my face, almost butting his horns against mine. “A philosopher from one of our golden ages, eons ago, once said that the ability to control others is the only true strength. It doesn’t matter if I hold you down with this force shield, or with my bare hands. All that matters is that you are held down. That you are under my power.”

“Butt horns with me! That’s the only true test of strength!” I growl. “Or would that ruin your precious golden glitter?"

There is stifled laughter, but by the time the Emperor turns to see who laughed, whoever it was is now silent and stone faced as all the others.

He slams his fist into my gut, and it knocks the air out of me. I try to laugh from empty lungs, and he hits me again.

I laugh even after he hits me in the face, sending blood dripping down my face.

“Fine,” he says. “Let’s see if you laugh when I hurt her.”

He snaps his fingers, and the green aliens rush back in toward Alice “They are not attracted to humans,” he says. “So I use them to run tests for me.”

“You made me her jail keeper,” I say. “Knowing it would ruin me.”

“Of course,” he says. “You’re of the Wandering clan. I’ll not tempt my own men.”

“They smelled her on the farm,” I growl. “Look in their eyes.”

“Oh,” he says. “I know. “These are not my clansmen. They are all of lesser clans, like yours. But I think I’ll reward them rather than torture them. They’ve had her scent, and once I confirm she’s nothing special, I’ll let them loose on her. She’s bound to you already, so they’ll not be ruined for life.”

My blood burns with fire. I fight with every last inch of my strength against the invisible shield. My muscles burn and bulge, until finally they cramp and give out. Still, I try again. I roar and curse everyone in the room as I struggle, and now it’s the Emperor’s turn to laugh.

“I’ll have you watch,” the Emperor says. “Then once she’s been spent, filled with more thick spears than she could ever dream of, I’ll put you in some backwater. You’ll fight as a gladiator–I saw your duel–and the bond will eat away at you.”

“I’ll die,” I say. “It won’t take long if I’m away from her.”

“Oh,” the Emperor says. “If all hope were lost, yes, but for every ten fights you win. I’ll let you have a few moments with her. That will give you just enough fuel to stay alive, in constant agony and longing. You dared to betray me, now you pay the price ten times over.”

The green aliens hold glowing machines out over Alice’s body, and everyone present stares with wide-eyed anticipation. They heard what the Emperor said they’d get to do to her.

I catch a few of them giving me looks of understanding, or pity. As soon as I catch them looking though, they break eye contact with me. Likely none of them will be able to resist the urge, even if they don’t want to inflict such an insult and agony onto me.

I realize I’m still roaring. Still thrashing. Even if I know there is no hope, I will never stop fighting for Alice.

Then something flashes on the screen. In huge writing.

SUBJECT IS PREGNANT.

The Emperor’s eyes bulge, and he shouts, “Impossible. Pull up the records from when we took her!”

One of the green aliens shrugs, and flicks its hand. More writing fills the window. I don’t read very well, and I don’t have time to see what it says before a buzzing chatter fills the room.

I realize everyone is looking at me now.

“It must be a mistake,” The emperor snaps, “End the tests! Open the door! Spear her and fill her!”

“She’s pregnant,” one whispers.

“We can’t spear a pregnant female,” another says, shaking his head.

“Open the door!” The emperor shouts.

The door slides open, and the scent that hits me confirms it. Alice is pregnant. It must have only become noticeable in the short time we travelled within the airship. The blackness that trapped her kept the smell from everyone, even from me.

Everyone sniffs it in now though, and the Emperor realizes it too, I can see it in his eyes.

I swell with pride at the realization. My seed was strong, and it filled Alice with a child.

This is supposed to be impossible. It shouldn’t ever happen.

None of the guards move to enter the room. The lust is wiped from their faces. No one but the bonded mate will be attracted to Alice’s scent now, and I know from the way my spear hardens, and from the adrenaline in my veins that I am the father.

We have only legends and the oldest of books that talk of bonding. It’s something that we lost eons ago. It was erased from our species. I didn’t quite believe it was possible until I smelled Alice, and even then I still doubted. Only after I coupled with her and felt it did I realize it was possible. We can never bond with females of our own kind, but something of that ancient memory lives within us still, and human females bring it back.

I want her now more than anything, even though I’ll likely be killed in mere moments.

“Kill him,” the Emperor shouts, thrusting a finger at me.

“You have to let the child live,” I say.

I’m done fighting. I can’t break free, but there’s something more important now than my own survival–more important even than being there for Alice. Our child must survive.

Letting the child live also means letting Alice live. I’d give my own life ten times over for that.

“It’s all I ask,” I say. “You know it must be. It’s a miracle, and you can’t kill a miracle.”

Everyone starts muttering to each other, but the Emperor just shrieks: “I said kill him!”

Blood spurts across my body, hitting me in the eyes and blinding me, but I don’t feel any sharp pain. My body is on fire from struggling against the force shield, but no skullspear impaled me, so how am I bleeding?

I blink several times, and when the blood clears from my vision, I see the Emperor dead on the ground, several bloodied spears still poking out from his mangled body.

The green aliens fall to the ground and beg for mercy, like the cowards they are. Two teal warriors fiddle with the control panel, until finally I feel the shield collapse around me. I step forward, suddenly free.

19

Alice Tears fill my eyes when the door opens and I hear Proximus’ pained roars. It sounds like they are torturing him.

The green aliens look up in surprise, and then I hear even more commotion over Proximus’ shouts.

Proximus finally stops making sounds, and I fear they’ve killed him. I hold out hope, but the excited cheering sounds from through the door make me fear the worst.

Then I see a golden horn enter the door, and my heart sinks. Proximus is dead. The emperor is going to gloat to me, and– The golden horn is dripping in blood, and it’s in Proximus’ hand. Proximus struts into the room, clutching the severed horn like a weapon. The spearmen fall in line behind him, and they all look up at me with awe.

“Proximus?” I say, “What is going on?”

I’m afraid to get my hopes up, but then Proximus kicks one of the green aliens and shouts at it to free me.

They hit some buttons, and I feel the pressure melt off me. I jump off the table, and Proximus snaps his fingers. Suddenly a spearman grabs a cloth and throws it forward.

Proximus snatches it and wraps it around

my bare shoulders.

He leans forward and kisses me. My tongue dances with his, and I close my eyes, still not really sure what’s happened, just happy that we’re both somehow free enough to be able to kiss.

I pull away from him, unable to bear not knowing what has happened. I look up at him, my eyes begging him for an explanation. “You killed the emperor?”

“I am the emperor,” Proximus shouts.

He holds the severed golden horn up into the air, and then he throws it down onto the ground. It bounces a few times and slides into a corner.

“I need no golden horns,” he roars. “No machines, just my own strength. And the strength of my seed!”

The spearmen look around at each other, nodding enthusiastically.

One falls to his knees, placing his face down onto the floor low enough that his horns scrape the ground.

Another falls down and bows to his new emperor.

“Your seed?” I say. “What are you talking about?”

He reaches down toward my belly with a strong, protective grip. He rubs it gently, then he bows down to, to me. He presses his lips against my belly, and laughs.

“Your seed...you mean I’m...didn’t you say we couldn’t?”

He looks up at me with the widest smile I’ve ever seen on him. “It should be impossible, but it’s true. All here can smell it.”

“Smell…” I say, feeling suddenly uneasy that they can smell whatever hormonal change may or may not have happened.

“Are you sure,” I whisper.

I regret asking it. Maybe they have crowned Proximus their new emperor because I’m pregnant. If he’s somehow tricked them into believing it, I should just play along. But if I have to know if I really am pregnant or not.

Proximus waves a hand toward the mirror. “The machines said it as well. The technology which you trust more than my nose.”

I pinch his nose. “I trust your nose. Proximus, we’re going to have a baby.”

The spearmen are all still bowed down. Proximus turns and faces them. “Stand! As the first clans to swear allegiance to me, you will all be greatly rewarded. Go and spread the word that I am your new emperor, and that the Wandering clan has been elevated to Emperor clan!”

I tug on Proximus arm. “And get my friends back here, safe and sound.”

He gives the order to find Elsie and Amber to the green aliens.

“Ew,” I whisper. “They are so creepy.”

“They are spearless,” Proximus says. “And will not be tempted to touch your friends once they find them.”

I nod understanding.

20

Epilogue Abed,” Proximus says, scrunching his nose up at the huge, canopied bed. “He was truly weak.”

“A bed,” I say, running toward it.

I leap onto it, and laugh with elation as I bounce up and down on it.

Proximus sighs. “I will use this thing to spear you, but I will not weaken myself and sleep on it.”

“Just try it,” I say. “You’re already emperor now, you don’t have to prove how badass you are anymore.”

“I’m not truly emperor until each clan has sworn its allegiance to me,” he says.

“They will though,” I say.

His face tightens, but I take him by the wrist and put his hand onto my belly.

“They will.”

“Proximus,” I whisper. “To help me understand the importance of this, you have to tell me about the alien birds and the alien bees.”

“This is a strange time for such questions,” he says. “But if you must know, our birds are rare, yet very large. They can pluck an eyeball from a man’s head if he is not ready, and our bees’ stings can paralyze even a man of my size–”

“No,” I say. “It’s an expression. It means...look–everyone is willing to kill their old emperor and obey you, simply because you got me pregnant. What is so bad about the way you mate among your own kind? Why is everyone looking at me the way they do.”

“I can read books,” he says. “I am not such a barbarian like you think.”

I tilt my head at him in confusion.

“While you slept, I read,” he says. “The emperor’s library, which contains more history than anywhere else on this world. Though maybe somewhere on the frozen side of the planet, there could be–” “Focus, Proximus, I say. The birds and the bees.”

He nods. “It seems in our distant past, we were like you. Men had spears, while women had holes.”

I shudder. “Please don’t call it a hole.”

“They had sensual blossoms which bloomed and–” “Okay,” I interrupt again, “Let’s figure out a good word to use later. I get the idea.”

“We mated as you do,” he says. “Our women were like your women, and all was good.

Then the sun started to die, and we were too content and weak. Many gave up hope, becoming lazy. Most simply left this world, and it’s even said that in this time we seeded humanity onto your Earth. Though no one is sure this is true.”

“You mean…”

He shrugs. Only Proximus could just shrug off the origin of man, one of Earth’s greatest mysteries. “Those who stayed here gave up hope. We forgot how to create new technology, and then we forgot even how to create old technology. Most of what we had built for millennia died along with the sun. We formed clans, and with the last dying knowledge of what we once had, our last scientists unleashed a disease into our world. It changed us. Our men and our women became strong, better suited to survive and thrive in this harsh new world.

“Like, you modified your DNA? With some kind of virus?”

“No,” he says. “We change ourselves. We changed the tiny things within us that make us what we are, and this change was spread through some type of sickness.”

I sigh. Neither of those words were uploaded into his English. I’ll have to teach him later.

“Can you please,” I say. “Please get to the part where you tell me how you fuck?”

He looks at me in surprise at how suddenly crass I’ve become, but I didn’t ask for an entire history lesson of his entire race. I simply am dying to know how the hell he fucked before he saw a human pussy.

“Our women have no spears,” he says, “And though my spear has hardened before at the sight of one of our women, I took no real pleasure in it. Nor did she.”

“In what,” I hiss.

“We must periodically release our seed,” he says. “Our spears harden, and release is–” “Yes,” I say. “Our men do it too. It’s called jerking off.”

“We do this anyway, but sometimes our females are overtaken by a primal urge, to be covered in this seed. I’ve heard them say it is not pleasurable for them, it’s simply a need, much like my need to release my seed. So in these times we must simply release onto the skin of a female.”

“The skin?” I ask. “Where, specifically?”

He shrugs. “Wherever it will land. Usually the belly. Sometimes the back, if she doesn’t want to watch. If it’s a strong pairing, her skin will absorb it, and she becomes with child. I’ve never had a successful pairing. You are my first...and only.”

I try not to laugh. I know some guys–it’s almost always guys–get off on pulling out of a woman and cumming all over her instead of inside her. I imagine how shocked Proximus would be to know that, after his awestruck wonder at cumming inside a woman.

“I read,” he says. “In this book, that part of the sickness that changed us made pairings unlikely. Over many generations, this is how we became as strong as we are. Resources are scarce, and only children who will strengthen are race will be born.”

I find my hand on my belly. “And what about ours? It’s not...what if it weakens your race?”

“It’s our child,” he says. “It will be strong.”

And to show him that I am strong too, that our baby’s blood is not strong just because of him, I get up off the bed and push him toward it. He relents and lies down onto it, and I jump on top of him and straddle him.

He looks up at me with hungry eyes.

“You said none of the others will be tempted by me while I’m pregnant,” I whisper.

“They can smell that you are already full with child. A child who is not theirs.”

“But you…” I say, running a hand over his chest.

“But I smell it’s mine. It strengthens our bond, and my hunger for you.”

I reach back and under his loincloth, and I run my hand up along his balls and to the base of his shaft. His spear. His hardness tells me he’s not lying to me.

I’m wearing a thin cloth which is nearly translucent, and I don’t even bother to pull it off, I just press his hard cock flat against his belly, and I slide backward and spread my legs so the cloth rides up. I let my wet lips slide across his thickness. I watch his muscles tighten as I grind against him, not letting him inside me, but just running my swelling lips against him to tease him, and to make him want me more.

“My emperor,” I say, grinning.

I’m half mocking him, but half serious. I still can’t get over how unreal it feels. That he was made emperor because he got me pregnant, of all things. But seeing the way people respect him, and the way he respects them back even though he’s so far above them now, makes me think he’ll be a good ruler. And hopefully a good father.

He grips my waist and holds me still, stopping me from rubbing against him. I think he’s going to lift me up and press me down until he’s inside me, but he just holds me still and looks at me with serious eyes.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I am not your emperor,” he says. “You are not of our people. Even though I am bonded to you, you must know that you are free to go. The ship which took you is almost ready to travel again. I could send you back…”

“And our child?” I ask. “And you?”

“Of course I want you to stay,” he says, gripping my waist to emphasize his point.

“But...I would understand if you chose to go.”

“I’ll never leave you,” I whisper, and I lean down and press my lips against his.

He growls low in his throat, then kisses me back with hunger. He breaks it after many quick heartbeats, and says, “You could visit Earth.”

“I might,” I say. “But not until I find Elsie and Amber. I’ll take them home, and then come back to my new world.”

I don’t really know how all that would work. Surely the three of us are all reported as missing. I’ll need to tell my close family what happened, but they may not even believe me when I tell them. I doubt I could bring my child with me, even after he or she is much older, but– Proximus reaches back to my waist, grips my ass, and pulls me up onto his cock. I gasp as his spear tip enters me, then I remember that I’m supposed to be in control, not him. I get up on my heels, and Proximus’ eyes bulge as I lower myself all the way down onto him.

“I never thought of this,” he whispers in awe. “For the hole to move rather than the spear–” I shut him up by clenching my inner walls, and his eyes roll back into his head as I move my hips up and squeeze his cock with my tight pussy.

I start to ride him with serious speed. My ass cheeks slap hard against his hips, jiggling with each thrust.

He moves beneath me, matching my speed. He tears the cloth off my body and cups my breasts. He feels so good inside me: warm and full and pulsing with life. I think of the life growing inside me, and I feel even closer to him than ever.

As my wetness surges, Proximus growls and lifts me up with an intense fury. He pulls us both up into the air, and his tall horns rip the thin canopy off the top of the bed. He carries me across the room, and I realize the canopy is stuck to his horns, covering us in a half-transparent bed canopy.

He presses me against the wall, and I wrap my legs around him. He thrusts at the new angle, and he hits me so good and deep that I gasp and drool with uncontrollable ecstasy.

The silken cloth of the canopy slides softly against my shoulders as he rams me, the cloth being held up by his horns and moving counter to his thrusts.

He soon pulls me off the wall, and holds me with just his strong arms, never ceasing his deep thrusts.

I feel my wetness peaking, and I dig my nails into his back to prepare for the orgasm.

Even though he’s holding me tight and I know he won’t drop me, I still want to cling tightly to him as he cums inside of me.

I wrap my arms around his torso and clench my body, flexing all of my muscles as my inner walls tighten and throb wet around his spear.

“Fuck!” I scream. “Don’t stop! Don’t ever stop!”

He doesn’t stop. He thrusts with unceasing energy. Adrenaline blasts through me. It goes from my chest to my head in a split second, and the head rush sends each of my toes apart, and my fingernails deep into his solid back.

Then I feel him filling me up. I’m pregnant already, but feeling him release into me– knowing I can make him feel so good–is everything to me. I laugh and cry as the slickness of his seed drips out of me.

He carries me back to the bed with his cock still buried inside me. But he pulls me off to throw me down onto the bed.

He looks down at me, and I beg him with my eyes to fall down beside me. He does, and he wraps those arms around me as a warm glow fills me from inside. For the first time since landing on this planet, I know we can just lie like this for as long as we’d like, and I know I’d like to lie like this for a very long time. Until the dying sun finally sets.

Preview of Book 2: Barbarian of the Dying Sun’s Mate