For what it was worth, the alien dragon whatever-he-was kept his single eye trained relentlessly on my face. He didn’t let it dip even for a moment to my bare chest when the blanket wasn’t covering me. His scaly brow was bunched in concentration, maybe even concern, as his golden gaze raked across my cheeks, leaving a trail of warmth in its wake.

I guess I’m an alien to him, too. Maybe he doesn’t care about my naked body. It probably looks all weird and squishy and fleshy to him, anyway.

With a weakening flush, I remembered with vicious clarity that he’d already seen my bare ass and pussy when I’d been bent over in the sunshine outside, and he hadn’t ended up doing anything weird then, either, though he very well could have if he’d wanted to.

With that somewhat reassuring and deeply embarrassing thought in my head, along with the increased complaining of my bladder, I weakly kicked away the leather bag thing and wrapped the blanket awkwardly around myself.

“I have to pee,” I said thickly, fighting wooziness and clutching my blanket-dress. “Where do I do that?”

Mr. Dragon Dude obviously hadn’t been peeing into an external bladder this whole time, so there had to be somewhere nearby I could go. I was weak, but now that I was awake and at least somewhat with it, there was no way I’d be able to relax enough to pee in my bed the way I’d obviously been doing up until now.

The alien balked when I limply heaved my legs over the edge of the bed and let them hang there. He swung his great snout towards one of the room’s doors, his expression furrowed with alarm, and it was so clearly a maybe-we-should-wait-for-the-doctor look that it made him seem nearly human. But he wasn’t human. He was well over seven feet of green-scaled, glowing alien muscle with wings sprouting from holes cut raggedly in the back of his robes.

Nope, not human, and probably not even halfway trustworthy considering he was the one who’d abducted me in the first place. But in that moment, he was just about all I had.

“I have to pee,” I said again. I adjusted my blanket so I could hold it with one hand, then pointed over at the leather pouch abandoned on the bed beside me. “I have to pee and I am not doing it in that bag.”

His brilliant eye lurched from my face to the bag to the door and then back again, an uneasy triangle of movement. I was pretty sure he knew what I wanted but he obviously wasn’t jumping into action to help me. Instead, he just stood there, a great green and gold slab of silence.

“Fine,” I muttered. I’d find the bathroom alone then. If I stayed here much longer, I really would pee myself, and after all the pain I’d gone through and the fresh hell of finding myself naked under his alien stare, that was just one humiliating step too far.

I hardened myself with the intense, almost bloodthirsty knowledge that I would find a fucking toilet even if it killed me, took a shallow breath, then hopped down to the ground.

Maybe the fever had cooked my brain a little more than I’d realized, because it never dawned on me that my legs wouldn’t be able to hold my own weight until they didn’t. They didn’t spare me a single second of strength, so I couldn’t even say that they’d buckled. It was like they weren’t even legs at all. As if sometime during my stay in bed all the muscle and bone in the lower half of my body had dissolved into mannapuuro, a Finnish semolina porridge.

Two huge hands closed around my waist. My bare waist. The protection of my blanket was now a useless heap on the floor, leaving me completely exposed. The alien locked one arm around my back, drawing me close – Oh God oh God that’s way too fucking close – until my entire naked front was plastered against his robes. He leaned forward, snout at my throat, chest sealed to mine, dipping me back like I was his dance partner. My ribs felt like they were full of bees and my head felt like it was full of sand and I couldn’t have struggled out of his grip even if I’d wanted to. All those thoughts about him maybe being trustworthy, about him not caring about my body, evaporated in a terror-stricken instant, replaced with stupid stupid Suvi you were so damn wrong.

I should have just stayed in the bed and peed in the bag.

“Let me go,” I gasped.

But what a pointless thing to say.

Because I’d asked him to let me go before, hadn’t I? And he hadn’t done it then, either.

His arm was like a living band of metal against my back. His inner forearm held firm in its place against my spine, his fingers curling around the base of my skull as he leaned me so far back that the ends of my long hair brushed the floor.

I can’t let him get me down to the floor. Once he’s on top of me, it’s over.

I put every morsel of strength I had left into fighting his hold, and for a disorienting moment, I actually thought I was successful. But after shaking my heavy head and blinking a few times, I realized that he’d merely straightened up once more, drawing my body along with him. We were upright again because of him, not because of anything I’d done.

One of his arms was still strong against my back, holding me steady.

The other was held slightly aloft, the white blanket that had been on the stone floor a moment ago hanging like a flag of surrender from his fist.

Oh.

He’d just been reaching down for the blanket and trying to make sure I didn’t fall at the same time.

Using only one arm and the assistance of his thick tail under my ass, he plopped me back onto the bed once more, then got to work securing the blanket around my shoulders like it was some sort of cape. He tied two corners of the blanket into a knot at the base of my throat, and I had to admit it was pretty impressive the way he was able to work so quickly, with such deft and capable movements, without even looking at what he was doing. His eye was suspiciously expressionless, his gaze blank and firmly fixed somewhere above my head.

Once the knot was tied, he gave each side of the blanket a firm tug inwards, as if shutting the curtains on too-bright sunlight, before he finally risked a glance down.

“Thanks,” I said weakly, tongue feeling heavy and sticky in my mouth. All I’d done was get out of bed and I was already exhausted. I hadn’t even taken a single step! Helpless despair threatened to overwhelm me, but I fought it down. I wouldn’t be able to do anything at all if I completely fell apart and lay back down. There’s a Finnish saying that Elvi used to remind me of all the time, especially when I was young and she was trying to break me out of my shell for hockey: A brave man gets to eat the soup.

If I wanted my soup, or, in this case, getting a trip to the bathroom, I’d have to grit my teeth and keep on trying.

“I have to pee,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time, blinking back tears of irritation. “I’m going to go do it.”

As if anticipating me jumping down again, the alien moved liquid-quick to hold me back, settling his huge hands firmly on my shoulders. He said something, jaws opening and closing very close to my face – close enough for me to realize for the first time that he had a dark blue split tongue moving in that mouth.

When I didn’t answer, he heaved a sigh and lifted one hand from my shoulder. Using two fingers as tiny legs, he mimicked a walking motion through the air, pointed at me, and made a hissing sound of disapproval. Then he jerked his snout towards the bag.

The message was clear. Humans who can’t walk have to pee in the bag.

“No,” I said, shaking my head until it felt like my brain swam inside my own skull. My hair was greasy and limp, flopping in stiff tangles. I tried to scoot off the bed once more, but he stopped me again. He made another rumbling hiss sound, then looked to the still-closed door like he’d done before. He stared at it, as if willing someone to open it and come through it, before apparently making up his mind about something and scooping me into his arms.