But Char’noth was shaking his head.
“The equipment is set to receive a subject—not send. There is no time to recalibrate for the two of you. What is needed is a distraction. Watch.”
He worked some of the glowing controls and we heard high, tinny notes echoing in our chosen female’s domicile.
On the lightscreen, we saw the male who had been menacing our female with his weapon frown and cock his head to one side.
“What’s that?” he demanded. “You got somebody in here?”
“What? No! I don’t know.” The female—whose name was either “Ry-lee” or “babe” (it was hard to tell since the male had called her both)—shook her head distractedly.
Char’noth played the notes again—he was trying to lure them to the large, flat surface he’d called a mirror which was located in another room of the domicile.
“There it is again—it’s coming from the bathroom.” The puny, scruffy-looking Earth male, who had skin which was an unhealthy dirty-tan color, several shades paler than our female’s warm brown tones, glared at her. “You do have somebody in there. Is it another man?”
“What—you think I have a hidden lover who plays the trumpet on the toilet for the hell of it?” she demanded. “I don’t know what that is.”
“You’re lying. Go.” He motioned with his weapon for her to head towards the source of the noise. I clenched my hands into fists as I saw the muzzle of the primitive but effective-looking firearm sweep towards her face. If he hurt her…
An answering surge of rage and anxiety came from Lucian. Glancing briefly at my temporary partner, I saw the fear we both felt for our female on his face. It almost made me like him better. Almost.
Char’noth played the notes a third time and the two Earthlings finally entered the area the male had called “the bathroom.” It looked like a fresher to me with an area to collect and dispose of waste and a booth with a nozzle mounted on the wall which might have been a personal cleansing unit. But none of that mattered—what caught my eyes was the large, flat glass mirror hanging on the wall. When the two humans stared into it, it was almost as though they were looking through a window right at us—although they couldn’t see us.
Or could they? I saw both their eyes widen as they leaned forward and the female breathed,
“What the hell? Blue…green…what?”
I figured she must be talking about our skin color. I have dark blue skin tones with green eyes like most of the males in my clan and Lucian has light green coloring with blue eyes which is usual for the Fang Clan. Neither of us would be remarkable on our home world of Denaris but to Earthlings who were only used tan and brown skin, it probably looked fucking strange.
I don’t know why Char’noth decided to show us to our chosen female and her attacker—maybe as another distraction. But it only made the situation worse.
“I knew it!” the male shouted, waving his weapon wildly. “You’ve got other men in here. You’re cheating on me!”
“I don’t know who they are or what they’re doing in my mirror!” the female protested.
“Yes, you do—you lying bitch!” The male leveled his weapon at her head. “If I can’t have you, they sure as hell can’t!”
“Bring her through!” Lucian shouted at the same time I growled,
“Now, Char’noth! Now.”
“Transporting,” the high, ridiculous voice of the Commercian informed us.
There was a shimmer of light and both our chosen female and the male who was menacing her disappeared from the lightscreen…and reappeared at our feet.
Chapter Five
Rylee
For a moment I didn’t know where I was. I felt dizzy and light-headed, as though I’d just been spun around really fast by one of those carnival rides that uses centrifugal force to pin you to the wall while the floor drops away under you.
I blinked to clear my vision, took a deep breath, and looked around.
I realized I still didn’t know where I was.
All I knew was that I was sitting on a hard, cold metal floor with the two guys I’d seen staring at me through the mirror looking down at me.
They were both incredibly, ridiculously tall—like professional basketball player tall—but they weren’t lean or skinny. Both of them had broad chests and plenty of muscles to spare bulging under their blue and green hides. At five foot nine I’m no delicate flower but next to them, I felt like I was surrounded by giants.
“Who…who are you?” I breathed, looking up at them. “And where am I?”
“You’re aboard a station orbiting your planet,” a high, thin voice answered me. It wasn’t coming from either of the huge guys though. Looking around I saw a dark blue worm-looking thing about three feet high with googly eyes on stalks and multiple arms scuttling towards me.
“Ugh!” I gasped, scooting away from it. It looked like some kind of an insect with all those arms and legs and I do not do insects. I get enough of them living in Tampa, thank you very much. Especially roaches—I hate roaches—but I’m not really fond of any creature that skitters around and has more legs than I do. At second glance, I thought the thing looked more like a centipede than a worm.
My sudden motion put me right up against the legs of one of the two huge men—if they were men. When I looked up again, I saw it was the green one.
“What’s wrong, little female?” His voice was deep and smooth and he leaned down to look at me anxiously. He was wearing black trousers and a gray jacket of some expensive, shimmery material with an elegant rounded collar that looked like it had been tailored to fit him. He looked like he belonged in a board room or a court room—someplace urbane and professional. If they admitted seven foot tall green people, that was.
“She’s frightened—you’re frightening her, Lucian.”
The one with the blue skin glared at the green one and then bent over to look at me. He was also wearing black trousers but his were much tighter and he also had on a kind of leather vest that showed his muscular arms and chest. There was a leather band with some kind of sharp, jagged red things threaded onto it tied around his right bicep. In contrast to green guy, he looked like he belonged in a jungle or an Indiana Jones movie. Or maybe one of those extreme survival reality shows. He struck me as some kind of rugged explorer or someone who worked with his hands.
“It’s all right, babe—you’re safe here with us,” he rumbled in a voice which was just as deep but considerably rougher than the green guy’s.
“What?” I stared up at both of them, almost forgetting about the talking worm-insect thing. “What did you call me?”
“Babe.” The blue guy frowned. “Isn’t that your name?”
“No, Drace, her name is Ri-lee,” the green one corrected him, pronouncing my name like it was a foreign word. “’Babe’ is clearly a derogatory term.”
“Actually, it’s a term of affection—when it’s used by the right person. It’s a form of ‘baby.’” I said and then thought, did I really just say that? Am I really having a discussion on semantics with two huge blue and green guys in the middle of what looks like a space ship on a cheesy science fiction movie? Are they aliens? Have I been somehow abducted, right through my bathroom mirror?
Apparently so.
“Oh God…oh, God, I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I swear I won’t do nothing bad ever again—just let me go home!”
I looked over and saw Phillip was beside me on the metal floor, completely freaking out. His gun, I saw with some relief, was gone. But so were his clothes.
Come to think of it—so were mine.
Looking down at myself, I realized that I was completely nude—what my old friend Zoe would have called, “butt-nekked.”
“Crap!” I wrapped my arms around my chest and squeezed my thighs together tightly. What the hell was going on here? Now that the first shock was wearing off I was beginning to panic. Where was I? Who were these people? What was going to happen to me?
“Please,” Phillip moaned b
eside me. “Please, just let it be a dream! Let me wake up soon, please!”
His words gave me something to hang on to and I began to understand what was going on.
A dream, I told myself. Of course—this is all just a weird, elaborate dream. I’m dreaming.
I’ve always had extremely vivid dreams—I even kept a dream journal in college for a little while for a psych project—so this seemed completely plausible to me. Look at how quickly we had switched locations, from my bathroom to an alien spaceship or wherever this was, instantaneously. That was something that only happened in dreams, right? And how else could I understand the big aliens’ language when they talked to me? Surely a dream was the only explanation for that.
And then there was the fact that Phillip, my slimy ex, was clearly contrasted with the two hot alien guys—both of them completely drool-worthy, though in different ways. Probably that was my subconscious telling me I needed to move on and start dating again. It was presenting me choices—would you rather be with an urbane professional with the world at his fingertips or a rough but sexy outdoorsman who works with his hands? That was a tough one—I really couldn’t decide.
Now that I thought about it, it was all so clear—so obvious. The panic which had been threatening to overtake my mind dissipated and I could think again. But though I stopped panicking, I also couldn’t stop shivering—the metal floor was freezing against my bare ass!
“Are you cold?” the green guy asked me. He had black hair and blue eyes, I saw. “May I offer you my undla?”
I had no idea what an “undla” was but when he started taking off his gray tailored jacket, I figured it must be the name for that article of clothing. He was every bit as muscular as the blue guy and his broad chest was mouthwatering, even if it was a light olive green like the rest of his skin. He draped the undla around my shoulders and I pushed my arms through the sleeves, which were much too long for me. The garment was warm from his body heat and carried a crisp, clean scent like expensive cologne and the smell of the ocean with a wilder tang underneath.
“Thank you,” I said gratefully, pulling it closed around me. I would have buttoned it up but there were no buttons. It didn’t seem to matter though, because the edges of the jacket stuck to each other almost as though they were magnetic and it closed neatly, hiding my breasts and sex.
As soon as I was covered, I had a moment of pure relief. Nobody likes to have that “naked in public” dream. Although my subconscious seemed to want to go one better and make me have a “naked in front of two huge muscular aliens on a spaceship” dream.
Thanks a whole freaking lot, subconscious.
“Allow me to help you up.” The green guy had one hand under my elbow and was lifting me before I could answer him. The blue guy moved to help him, putting his hand under my other elbow. Between the two of them, they not only lifted me up—they lifted me right off the ground!
“Whoa!” I exclaimed as my feet rose two feet clear of the metal floor. “I’m good now, guys—you can put me down.”
“Our apologies. My friend here can be a bit overeager at times.” The green alien gave the blue one a withering look and they set me back on my feet.
“Asshole.” The blue one glared back. “Ignore his high-and-mightiness,” he said, switching his attention to me. “I’m Drace—Drace of the Claw Clan of the K’drin Jungle of the planet Denaris.”
“And I am Lucian of the Fang Clan,” the green guy said, smiling. He seemed to have extremely long, sharp teeth, which made me a little nervous. “Of the great desert city of Y’brith, also of Denaris.”
Okay, as introductions went this was kind of freaky but I could deal with it.
It’s all right, I told myself firmly. Everything is all right—this is just a dream.
“Nice to meet you both,” I said, smoothing down the gray jacket. “And thanks for your, uh, assistance. I’m Rylee. Rylee Hale.”
“Oh man, this is bad…this has to be a bad trip! I can’t deal with this, man,” Phillip wailed, breaking into our introductions.
Looking down, I saw my ex was curled into a shivering ball on the floor, scratching at his face and rubbing his eyes as though he thought he might see something different if he tried hard enough.
“Char’noth,” the green alien named Lucian said with obvious irritation. “Can you put this Earthling away where he won’t interfere with our conversation?”
“At once.” It was the blue centipede thing again. Snapping its clawed fingers, it summoned ten or twelve other centipedes to come carry Phillip away.
“Oh my God!” I gasped, backing up again. (Hey, don’t judge me for being girly—I’m very brave about lots of things but bugs aren’t one of them. Especially three foot tall ones who speak.)
I felt something warm and hard against my back and a deep, harsh voice murmured, “Easy…it’s all right, Rylee.”
Looking up, I saw I had backed up into the blue guy—what was his name again? Oh right, Drace. He looked down at me and I saw he had dark brown hair and light green eyes which somehow went perfectly with his blue skin tones. This close I could catch a whiff of his fragrance, just as I had smelled Lucian’s scent on his coat. Drace smelled wild and hot with a dark, animal spice that was as masculine as Lucian’s cool ocean scent.
“Sorry,” I said uneasily, taking a step away from him as the blue centipedes carried Phillip away, still moaning that he was having a “really bad trip, man.” “I, uh, don’t much care for bugs.”
“The Commercians aren’t bugs—just sentient beings who developed outside the Goddess of Mercy’s sphere of influence,” Lucian explained.
“Um, the Goddess of Mercy?” I asked, frowning.
“Sure—she who gave the seeds of life to the Ancient Ones and told them to spread them on every habitable world in our galaxy.” Drace spoke as though this was common knowledge—something I ought to know.
I shook my head. “Uh, still drawing a blank, guys—sorry.”
“She’s from a closed planet,” Lucian said, frowning at Drace. “They know nothing of the Goddess of Mercy or the Ancient Ones. She probably doesn’t even know she’s a La-ti-zal.”
I frowned at him. “What did you call me? A la-ti-what?”
“A La-ti-zal,” Lucian repeated patiently. “And a Pure One—a female from a closed planet whose people haven’t mingled their DNA with any other race.”
“Which is the reason we think you can help us,” Drace said.
“Help you what?” I demanded. God, this dream just kept getting stranger and stranger! But since it didn’t look like I was waking up any time soon, I figured I’d better play along with it.
Lucian sighed. “Our people—the Denarins, come of a race where two males bond together in order to procure a female as their mate.”
“Wait,” I said. “Two guys and one girl—that’s how it goes in your world?”
“Exactly.” Lucian nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “I got it. Go on.”
“Usually bond partners find each other as children, grow up together and call a mate together,” Drace said, continuing their strange narrative. “But that wasn’t the case with Lucian and me.”
“We were accidentally and wrongfully bonded together during a Clan gathering when we both ate of a ylla roll that had a piece of the same bonding-bud in it,” Lucian said.
“Bonding bud? Yulla roll?” I looked at them in incomprehension.
“The ylla is an aquatic plant which grows in the oceans of Denaris,” Drace explained. “Kind of like your seaweed on Earth. It produces a flower that has binding properties. When two usually compatible males eat from the same flower or bud…” He frowned at Lucian. “It forms a psy-bond between them.”
“A psy-bond?” I said.
Lucian made an impatient gesture. “It allows those who are bonded to feel each other’s emotions and sense their location. It’s very useful for life-mates who are rightfully bonded—they are more able to care for and protect the female the two of them
share.”
“But it’s a fucking nuisance for those of us who don’t want to be bonded together,” Drace growled. “I’ve had this arrogant asshole’s feelings in my head for two solar months now—it’s driving me fucking insane!”
Lucian narrowed his eyes coldly. “Feeling your crude, uncontrolled emotions hasn’t exactly been pleasurable for me either. I’ll be only too glad to get you out of my head.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I said, holding out my hands. “Let me see if I understand this. You two come from a planet where everyone lives in threesomes, like, uh, constant ménage action all the time, right?”
Lucian and Drace nodded and I wondered what the women on their planet looked like. They must be some kind of huge Amazonian-type girls if they could take on two guys this size on a regular basis. The idea was enough to make me close my legs and wince in sympathy.
“Okay, and the way you get bonded is two compatible guys eat a roll made of the same seaweed flower?” For some reason I pictured both of them eating bright pink sushi.
Again they nodded.
“And you guys got bonded by accident and now you can feel each other’s feelings but you don’t want to,” I finished.
“Yes,” said Drace at the same time Lucian said,
“Correct.”
I stared at them for a moment. Wow, this dream had to be the strangest I'd ever had. I was beginning to wonder if maybe the strange smelling smoke coming from my neighbor’s office back at my work had anything to do with it. I had vivid dreams but my imagination usually wasn’t quite this active. But there was nothing to do but play along until I woke up.
“Okay,” I said. “Now that I have the facts straight, what do you think I can do about all this?”
“You’re a Pure One, as we said before,” Lucian said. “We were told by a wise woman back on our home planet that in order to get the bond between us severed we would need the touch of a Pure One.”