Abducted

  Al had been busy while we bathed and all the black slime smeared blankets were gone—they had been replaced by a single shiny gold coverlet. I wrapped it around myself, glad to have a way to hide my never-ending nakedness.

  “You know what about them.” Sarden frowned at me as he changed from his own still-damp clothes into a pair of his black silky sleep trousers. Now that I knew he was colorblind, I wasn’t surprised that he limited his wardrobe colors to black and white. At least he could be sure those two shades wouldn’t clash with his skin.

  “No, I don’t know,” I told him. “My feet are fine.” Well, maybe not exactly fine—I had actually cut them up pretty badly in my run from Count Creepy McGrabbyHands—but I wasn’t about to admit that to Sarden.

  “They’re not fine—I followed the trail of blood you left. It’s how I found you, Zoe.” His deep voice was surprisingly quiet and the look in his golden eyes was pained. I realized he still blamed himself for what had happened to me and felt sorry for him.

  “It’s not that bad,” I said, trying to make him feel better. “I’ll be walking around in no time. In fact, I’d be walking now if you’d just give me some Neosporin and some Band-aids.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what those are. But I am going to heal you.”

  “Oh no—please don’t,” I said quickly, thinking of how he’d “healed” the other parts of my anatomy. “I mean, please don’t tell me you want to lick my foot because sorry, that’s just gross. And please don’t say it’s not gross because you have a foot fetish because that’s even grosser,” I babbled.

  “A foot fetish?” he asked, frowning.

  “You know—someone who gets off to feet? Sexually, I mean?” I thought of some of the weird stuff I’d run across on the Internet. “I mean, there are some guys on Earth who love that kind of stuff. Toe porn and foot bondage, and sniffing dirty pantyhose and…uh…” I trailed off, realizing he was just staring at me.

  Finally, he shook his head. “Your little planet is stranger than I gave you credit for.”

  “What?” I asked, feeling defensive. “You can’t tell me in a whole wide galaxy full of planets that Earth is the kinkiest one.”

  “Not by a long shot.” Sarden was busying himself with a shallow metal basin he’d pulled out of one of his closets. “But we tend to fetishize other races and peoples—not individual parts of their bodies. “For instance, you might say I have a fetish for Earth females.” He shot me a grin that made my insides flip.

  “But not Earth girls’ feet, right?” I clarified. “I mean…how exactly are you going to heal me?”

  “Don’t worry—oral healing is only for…the most intimate areas.” His eyes grew half-lidded and I knew he was remembering the way he’d licked me, right here on this very bed. I could feel my cheeks getting hot but I tried not to show it.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, noncommittally. “So then, how—”

  “With this.” He held out the metal basin and then pressed a button on the side of it. Suddenly it started to fill up with bright blue fizzing liquid. “Here.” Sarden stepped forward, motioning for me to put my feet in. “This will help.”

  “It also looks like it’s going to sting,” I said, keeping my tootsies well clear of the fizzing liquid.

  “It will—but only a little.” Sarden gave me a stern look. “Come on, Zoe—put your feet in.

  “I don’t want to,” I said stubbornly. “Plus, I don’t need to—I’m a fast healer.”

  He frowned. “Wounds like yours will take days to mend without the help of the healing agent. How do you expect to get around? You think I’m going to drop everything and carry you everywhere you want to go?”

  “I thought you liked carrying me,” I pointed out, offended.

  “I do,” he growled. “The Gods know I like it more than I should. But we’re going to be leaving for the port on Giedi Prime soon. Once we get there I’ll need to go down and scout around—gather some information. I don’t like leaving you alone on the ship helpless.”

  “Then don’t,” I said, promptly. “Take me with you.”

  “What?” Sarden stared at me as though I’d lost my mind. “After what just happened on Gallana you want me to take you to another port? I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “Can’t you give me some kind of disguise? Something to cover my hair—maybe some baggy clothes?”

  “But…why would you want to go? After what you just went through?”

  “I want to help,” I said simply. “You’re letting me go even though I’m your best chance of getting your sister back. The least I can do is try to help you gather information.”

  “And what makes you think you’d be good at that? You don’t strike me as the stealthy type,” he remarked sarcastically.

  “Thanks a lot! I can be when I want to be.” I lifted my chin. “Also, I’m small which is more than you or most of the other aliens I’ve met so far can say. Dress me in dark clothes, maybe give me a pair of dark glasses or something to hide my eyes and I can be very unobtrusive. Just a quiet little mouse sneaking around the corners of the room listening to what everyone is saying. No one will even notice me.”

  “Well…” He frowned thoughtfully and I could tell he was considering my idea. Good—I really did want to help. As strange as it sounds, I felt really bad about him giving me back my freedom with no idea of how he’d get his little sister back. Also, I’d be bored stiff on the ship all by myself.

  “Please?” I pleaded. “I really want to help. Look, I’ll stick my feet in the bath and I won’t complain no matter how much it stings if you just let me go with you.”

  “All right,” he said, nodding at last. “I agree—on one condition.”

  “Which is?” I was already getting ready to put my feet in the blue, fizzing basin which he had been holding patiently all this time, but his next words stopped me.

  “I’ll let you come with me and help find information about my sister if you’ll tell me what happened to yours.”

  “What?” I froze, unable to move. “What…what do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean, Zoe,” he said quietly. “You’ve mentioned her several times now and I know she has something to do with why you’re so deathly afraid of being submerged in water. But I want to know why—the whole story.”

  “Why should I tell you?” I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest defensively.

  “Zoe…” He gave me a long look. “I told you about Sellah, about how she was taken.”

  “That’s different though,” I whispered. “Your sister—she’s still alive.”

  “Yes.” Sarden put down the basin and leaned forward, cupping my cheek in one hand. “Please,” he said, staring intently into my eyes. “I need to know.”

  “Fine.” I pulled back from him and he withdrew his hand. “I’ll tell you,” I said. “But I might as well do the foot thing while I do.”

  He picked the basin back up, held it out, and simply looked at me.

  “Fine,” I said again and took a deep, shaking breath. After all these years, it still hurt to talk about it.

  There was silence from Sarden and I knew he was waiting. Well, might as well get it over with. Gritting my teeth, I put my feet into the blue liquid—which did indeed sting like hell—and began talking.

  “I wasn’t very old when it happened—not that that’s any excuse. I was seven and my sister, Angela, was five. We had just moved to Tampa from Minnesota.” I looked at him briefly. “You have to understand—Minnesota is really cold, so almost nobody has a swimming pool. But Florida is really hot so a lot of people have them down there.”

  “A swimming pool is an artificially made body of water big enough to swim in?” Sarden guessed.

  “Exactly.” I sighed. “Anyway, our next door neighbor had one. They had a fence around their yard but we could still see it through the chain link. All blue and inviting…” I swallowed hard, remembering how fascinate
d Angie had been with the pool. How she always begged to be allowed to go over and just look at it.

  “Zoe?” Sarden prompted, and I realized I’d been sitting there silent for a while, just thinking.

  “Neither of us knew how to swim,” I told Sarden. “We were supposed to take lessons later that summer but, well, we hadn’t had them yet.”

  Okay, I was stalling and I knew it. Might as well get the hard part of the story over and done with.

  “One day my mom had to go out—I think she got a call from her new job. She was only going to be gone about an hour and she hadn’t had time to find a good babysitter in Tampa yet. I guess she thought we would be all right alone, just for that short length of time. So she told me…she told me…” I cleared my throat, forcing myself to go on despite the hard knot of pain and shame that had formed in my stomach. “She told me to watch over my sister,” I said, forcing the words out at last. “To take care of her—not to let anything happen to her.”

  “You were too young for a responsibility like that,” Sarden said in a low voice.

  “Yeah, well…” I shrugged and looked down at my hands again, seeing it all over again. “Angie and I played for a little while but then she got bored so we sat down to watch cartoons on TV. Um—that’s a kind of entertainment for kids,” I added for Sarden’s benefit. “Then, the next thing I knew, I looked up and she was gone. Just…gone.”

  The knot in my stomach had grown so big now it was crushing my lungs, making it hard to breathe. But somehow I was still talking.

  “The minute I saw she was gone, I got up and went looking for her,” I said. “I looked all over the house but it wasn’t until I opened the back door to check the yard that I heard splashing coming from the neighbor’s place.”

  “She climbed the divider separating your property from your neighbor’s?” Sarden guessed.

  I nodded, feeling sick.

  “I ran and climbed after her but by the time I got over the fence she was already…” Oh God, this was hard to say. “Already at the bottom of the…the pool.”

  “What did you do?” Sarden asked softly.

  “I think I screamed for help. I must have because the neighbor said they heard someone shouting and screaming as they drove up into their driveway.” I shook my head. “But no one came—not right away. And Angie was at the…at the bottom…”

  “You jumped in after her, didn’t you?” he asked softly. “Even though you didn’t know how to swim.”

  “What else could I do?” I looked up at him and noticed he seemed blurry for some reason. Also, my eyes were stinging. Must be the fumes from that damn blue fizzy liquid or something. “What else could I do?” I repeated. “She was my sister…my little sister. I was su-supposed to be t-taking c-care of her. But I didn’t. I didn’t.”

  My last word ended on a sob and I realized, to my horror, that I was crying. I hate crying—especially in front of someone else. It makes me feel so weak and girly and stupid.

  Without a word, Sarden put down the fizzing basin and took me in his arms, heedless of the fact that I was dripping blue liquid all over him.

  For a long time he just held me and let me cry. I found I was holding him back, my arms wrapped around his narrow waist as I pressed my face into his muscular chest and let the sobs take me.

  I don’t know why telling him the story affected me so strongly. It wasn’t like I hadn’t told anyone before. Charlotte and Leah knew. Hell, the therapist I’d seen in high school could recite the details forward and backwards. But this was the first time I’d shared this old, hurtful piece of my past with a guy. Not even my ex, Scott, who I had lived with for over a year, had known the details. He’d just known that I had a sister who died when she was younger—not that I had anything to do with it.

  “I should have been watching her,” I told Sarden, between sobs. “I should have kept it from happening.”

  “Gods,” he murmured and stroked my hair gently. “No wonder you agreed to let me trade you for Sellah. You’re still trying to assuage the guilt for something that happened back when you were a child.”

  I swiped at my eyes and looked up at him.

  “Maybe,” I admitted in a small voice. “I know there’s no getting Angie back—she’s gone. But I guess I thought, if I could help you find your sister…help you get back Sellah…”

  “That’s not your responsibility,” he said fiercely. “And you shouldn’t have been tasked with watching over your sister at such a young age, either. Seven cycles isn’t old enough for such adult behavior.”

  “Weren’t you?” I asked. “I mean, I thought you said you weren’t much older than that when your mom told you to look after Sellah.”

  He sighed and nodded.

  “You’re right. I guess…we always feel responsible for our siblings. But Zoe…” He cupped my cheek and looked down at me. “You tried—you did everything you could. You jumped in after your sister even though you couldn’t swim.”

  “My mom said the same thing,” I said, wiping at my eyes again. “She…she never forgave herself for leaving us alone.”

  “Guilt is a heavy burden,” Sarden murmured. He tilted my chin and looked into my eyes. “Thank you for telling me. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”

  “It’s not something I like to talk about,” I admitted. “It’s easier to just keep things light.”

  He gave me a crooked smile.

  “I knew there was more to you than a sense of humor with a thin veneer of sarcasm.”

  “It’s called snarkiness,” I said. “And it works just fine for me.”

  “I like it,” he rumbled. “But I want you to know, you can let down the outer barrier of, uh, ‘sharkliness’ and just be yourself with me if you want.”

  “It’s snark—snarkiness,” I said. “But thank you, I appreciate the offer.”

  “You’re more than welcome.” He cupped my face in both hands and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me. He did come in close and I held my breath, my heart pounding against my ribs. I didn’t know if I wanted him to kiss me or not. Now that I wasn’t his prisoner anymore, I didn’t know where we stood.

  Sarden didn’t seem to know either. At the last minute, his lips moved up and he planted a soft, gentle kiss…on my forehead. Great. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed…but I was definitely leaning towards disappointed.

  “Well,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “My feet should be all healed now and I told you what you wanted to know so I get to go with you to the spaceport outside of Giedi Prime, right?”

  He sighed. “On two conditions—you go in disguise and you stay close to me. I want to keep an eye on you at all times.”

  “All right,” I agreed, just glad I was going to get off the ship again. Gallana had been extremely interesting and exciting. I mean, the part where Count Doloroso had chased me and I was nearly eaten by a huge alien monster and almost drowned in freezing water and then died for just a minute from hypothermia, sucked. But other than that, it was an experience I would never forget. I had always wanted to travel—I wasn’t going to waste my chance to see the galaxy just sitting around the ship twiddling my thumbs.

  And on a more serious note, if I could help Sarden get his sister back and avoid the kind of guilt and pain I had in my past, I wanted to do it. Nobody should have to live with that hanging over them—it’s a pain you never completely recover from.

  No matter how many years pass, it still hurts.

  As I watched Sarden examine my newly healed feet—and felt glad I’d had a recent pedicure before he’d abducted me—I thought that I’d like to spare him that pain.

  The big alien, who had seemed like such a jerk at first, actually had a heart. The very fact that he’d comforted me and let me cry myself out against his chest without pulling away or making excuses said a lot about him in my opinion. I couldn’t remember the last time a guy had done that for me—Scott certainly hadn’t. Any dis
play of emotion had made him intensely uncomfortable.

  “C’mon, babe,” he’d say if I even got a little teary. “Enough with the waterworks—okay?” And then I would have to try not to feel what I was feeling and just pretend everything was okay—which was probably one reason I was so good at keeping things light.

  Sarden didn’t expect that of me. Even when we sniped at each other from time to time, he never demanded that I keep my feelings to myself. In fact, he even seemed to welcome them…

  Speaking of keeping things light, that’s exactly what you’d better do with Sarden, whispered a little voice in my head. Stop getting all mushy and come back to reality. He still has to rescue his sister and you’re only along for the ride. Plus, the minute he gets her back, you’re headed straight back to Earth and you’ll never see him again.

  I wondered why that thought made me feel so sad. But it didn’t matter—it wasn’t as though he’d want some Earth girl tagging along after him on his adventures through the galaxy.

  Just keep it light, I told myself again. Try to do your part to get his sister back and don’t do anything crazy.

  Right. Like fall in love. Because that would be the craziest, stupidest thing I could do. It was absolutely, positively out of the question.

  So why did I have a feeling I was already falling?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Zoe

  “Not bad. Not bad at all.” Sarden surveyed me with apparent satisfaction—satisfaction I didn’t exactly share. The ‘disguise’ he had put me in was pretty much the exact opposite of the Majoran dress I had worn on Gallana. Instead of exposing my goodies, it covered everything and I do mean everything.

  Don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t complaining about not being naked. Or mostly naked, anyway. But the bulky black clothes he’d had Al synthesize for me were heavy and hot. They consisted of a shapeless, long-sleeved shirt, thick trousers, and as if all that wasn’t enough—a cape.

  I mean, really? A cape?

  “I’m not wearing the cape,” I said, frowning at myself in the 3-D viewer thingy. “I’m not freaking Batman.”