What a strange and sublime creature fate had chosen as my mate. A creature with skin the colour of milk. And blood the colour of poison.

Never had I known, in all my war-filled life, a poison quite this sweet. So sweet I’d gladly let it kill me. Over and over again.

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER FIVE Cece

Fuck me sideways. Apparently these aliens were vampire aliens. How had no one figured that out yet, with all the data we’d collected? I didn’t even know I was bleeding until this guy/alien/thing had collected the blood on his fingers and fucking licked it. And now his tongue – a tongue forked into three freaking parts, was working steadily away at my neck. I was completely frozen, scared that one wrong move would change this interaction from one of tongues to one of teeth. His gigantic hands were on me, one holding the side of my face, the other at my hip. There was something undeniably sexual about the positioning of our bodies, and when his very, very hard cock (at least, that’s what I assumed it was) pressed against my abdomen, I sucked in a breath. I’m in trouble.

I had to get out of this situation. I had to do something. I was about to be fucked. Or food. Maybe not even in that order. Oh, God.

His tongue, or one part of it, at least, caught the edge of the cut on my neck and electricity shot through me, arching down my spine. I cast my mind about for a way to get out of this. There was no way I could escape or physically overpower this monster. I gave a small cry as his tongue moved lower, exploring my collarbone beneath my jacket.

Tongue. Tongue! Language!

What words had I learned? My brain seemed to have gone completely blank. Come on, come on...

“Ablik!” The word exploded out of me, and the alien froze. “Ahbluhk? Oblique?” I couldn’t remember the exact pronunciation now. But it seemed to have worked either way. The alien slowly drew back. My skin was hot where his mouth had been, and instinctively I reached up, my hand smacking against the flesh and staying there. I felt the slow ooze of blood and the dampness of his saliva against my palm as I stared at my captor, taking in his form, in detail, for the first time.

His skin was a deep copper, fading to brown, and even as dark as black at certain points, like his shoulders, his feet, and the end of his tail. Yup. A tail. It was long, but not skinny like a cat’s. It was as thick as one of his massive thighs at the base, tapering to a dark, firm point, almost like a kangaroo’s, but without fur. His feet, too, were oddly kangaroo-esque – long and dark, with one long central claw and two smaller ones on the sides, his ankle high, strangely bent, and strong. His hands seemed mostly human-like, with four fingers and a thumb on each, but with black claws that looked like they could rend my flesh without even trying.  From his shins to his shoulders he looked mostly like a man – a massive man, though, packed with hard muscle and easily seven feet tall. I craned my neck to look at his face. The bottom half – the strong, sharp jaw, and the mouth, were mostly familiar, besides the fangs and tongues, at least. But the top half of his face was where things got... weird.

His nose was largely flat, flaring open and down like a cat’s. His brows were heavy, raised, and dark, the skin fading from bronze to black as it met his dark hairline, his hair falling in one thick, black braid down his muscled back. At the top of his head, on the sides, his ears stood tall and pointed, like a doberman whose ears had been cropped. And his eyes. What the actual fuck. Those eyes. They were like nothing I’d ever seen before. They were large, with no white to speak of. Huge and black, with a shimmering collection of copper-coloured sparks in the middle that swirled, expanded, and contracted. It looked like tiny metallic galaxies existed in those eyes, the stars moving outward and inward, called by some strange gravity. If I weren’t worried about having this guy, or animal, or whatever he was, kill me and bury my bones in the desert, I would have admired the foreign beauty of them.

But as it was, I was worried about getting killed and dumped in the desert. So I latched onto the one thing that seemed to have caught his attention and slowed him down.

“Ablik!” I said again, my voice squeaking. His ears twitched, and he cocked his huge head, stepping back and letting me go. Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, he pulled a knife from one of the leather-looking straps tied across his torso.

Oh, shit. Had I offended him? What did ablik even mean, again? Was it stick? Weapon? He hefted the knife – more like a machete, though it looked small in his hand. Uh oh. Maybe he thinks I’m threatening him. Great work.

“No, no, sorry. I didn’t mean ablik. I meant... Um... God, I can’t remember any other words. Maybe you could put the knife away for a second, eh? Nice alien...”

He cocked his head again, his brows contracting, the copper specks and swirls drawing in tightly towards the centre of his eyes. It seemed like he was trying to focus in on something.

He held the knife up between us, and I flinched back, my eyes squeezing shut. But no pain came. Instead, his deep, growling voice boomed in the small space, reverberating throughout my body.

“Ablik.”

I opened one eye, then the other, lowering my hands as I realized he was pointing at the shining black blade of his knife.

“Ablik,” he said again, then he took out his axe, which seemed to be made from the same black material. “Ablik.” He pointed to the axe’s black blades.

“Oh,” I said, relaxing somewhat. So maybe our interpretation had been right. Ablik was weapon? Or maybe the dark material the weapons were made of.

I tentatively reached forward, brushing the flat of the axe with my fingers. The material the blades were made from was incredibly smooth and hard.

“Ablik?”

He gave a thrumming sort of yip, which I imagined must be some kind of confirmation.

OK, cool. We have one word in common so far.

What other words did I know? As long as we were talking, he wasn’t licking me or doing any other weird stuff. And that was probably good. I ignored the electric thrill that ran under my skin, everywhere his bizarre tongue had touched me. I would have to analyze that feeling later.

“Um... Um... what about valok?” If I remembered correctly, that seemed to be a small ground-dwelling animal that the aliens picked up and ate raw.

His dark brows raised slightly, the shimmering sparks of his eyes moving outwards. He took a step, turning from me, but still keeping himself firmly planted between me and the crack in the wall. Damn. But then again, where the hell did I think I was going to escape to? I’d seen what those massive crab things had done to the pilots and soldiers. At least, so far, all this guy had done was lick me. And I’d noticed, in the chaos, the way he’d even managed to take a couple of those creepy crawly bastards out with nothing but his primitive blades, almost like he was protecting me. That is, assuming he wasn’t just trying to beat the spideys to a tasty Earth girl meal. My eyes drifted over his slab-of-muscle body, the massive pecs, broad, rippling shoulders, the tree trunk thighs. The loincloth that was still pulled suspiciously tight. Yikes. Well, as long as he kept that area under control, we’d be golden. Guess I’ll take my chances with kangaroo gladiator dude. For now.

He replaced his axe at his belt, then bent, using the knife he still held to saw off what seemed to be a plant along the rock wall near my feet. It was small, greyish-green, and looked a heck of a whole lot like an Earth cactus of some kind. He handled it carefully, avoiding the nasty-looking black barbs on its smooth, dry surface, standing and holding it up between us.