- Emilia -

I don't know how it's possible for anyone to run this softly and still so fast across this rough terrain. He has a good grip on me, but he still holds me very gently and I'm pretty comfortable.

He's huge, easily as big as Jax'zan. His body is bulging with muscles and he has orange stripes across his torso. He's wearing a loincloth that is made from some kind of thick fur and reminds me of a kilt. His face is perhaps not conventionally attractive, with the eight fangs and the unusual proportions, but I feel I can see a strength in the way he looks me straight in the eye. At least I know that Jax'zan's fiery eyes are a common feature for these guys. Except this one's are more orange, so the fire looks more intense.

He chopped that not-raptor's head off like it was nothing. I don't like seeing living things being killed, but it was either that or it would have killed us both.

If Ar'ox had been the first caveman I'd ever seen, I would probably have been scared out of my mind. But I've lived in the same cave as Jax'zan for a good while now, so not much about this guy surprises me.

I yawn. His body is warm and his grip is firm, but not too hard. And this guy smells good. Not of perfume, just of sun and skin and man.

It's been a long time since I've been this close to any male, and I can't help feeling some stirrings down below. This is a hot and attractive a man as I've ever seen, and I'm sure he'll take care of any animal or dinosaur that threatens us.

I also don't get the feeling that he'll murder me the first chance he gets, and I guess that's the best I can expect on this planet. Anyway, I don't have a choice here. If this huge bundle of thick muscle wants to carry me, then I make my own life much easier just coming along.

And actually, I had no idea being carried by a caveman through a jurassic jungle could be this pleasant. I'm sure we'll keep going for a good while yet.

Our speed means that there's a gentle breeze wafting over me, and the sun on me feels really good, not too hot ...

- - -

I wake up and I'm confused for a second. This isn't the cave! Where are the other girls and the smell of the metallic stew or the fear that starts in the pit of my stomach as soon as my eyes open?

Well, I'm still on the alien planet, and I'm lying down. But the hopeless sigh that I usually start the day with when I remember where I am doesn't come. Because there's someone kneeling beside me and stroking my hair gently. Yeah, that's a first.

I get up on one elbow. We're in a pleasant meadow, and there's a stream running calmly just a few feet away. “We safe?” It's the first thing that occurs to me.

The caveman's face is very serious with some kind of wonder on it, and he doesn't take his hand off my hair. “For now.”

I do a quick check. Yep, my dress is still on and not bundled around my neck, and I'm decently covered. I can't believe what happened. I get chased by dinosaurs, rescued by a hot caveman, and my reaction to that is to fall asleep?

“Okay, cool.” I say it in English, because I don't know what it would be in cavemanese. But most people on Earth know what 'okay' means, even in foreign countries, so it has to be one of those things that travel well. Might as well bring the trend here to Xren, too.

I sit up, and now Ar'ox takes his hand off me. Somehow I miss it immediately.

I yawn and take stock. My legs are sore. I'm a little groggy and a lot hungry. That's it, and I know I got away really easy for someone who acted as carelessly as I did today.

I focus on Ar'ox. He's very much in charge here and I want to stay on his good side. The things I've heard about the various tribes on Xren are mostly pretty scary. “Thanks again. You save from Big.”

“Rekhs like to get revenge. His whole pack would have been there very soon.”

He speaks his language in much the same way that Jax'zan does – slowly, but without dumbing it down, even though he must hear that I'm not a native speaker. He clearly speaks a different dialect, but it's pretty much the same language and I think I understand him fine. That makes things so much easier. I'll still have trouble using correct grammar, but I'm sure he understands most of what I say, too. Even if I sound like a cavewoman. “I glad you rescue. Saved life.”

He juts his chin out in the same way that Jax'zan and Sophia do. It means 'yes', and it's their way of nodding.

He's looking at me, letting his gaze wander up and down my body, focusing on my chest and crotch. It's an invasive look, but there's an innocence to it that I find pretty endearing. “So. What your plan?”

He fixes me with those eyes that have orange fires burning deep in them. His thick, wavy hair has a golden tinge to it and an internal light source that makes it glow. It's cut short, apparently by a maniac with hedge shears. He also hasn't shaved for days, so he has a very attractive dark stubble on his muscular cheeks. Heck, this guy has muscles everywhere.

He frowns. “I had a plan,” he says in his deep voice. “Now I don't.”

Yeah, I can believe that. This planet doesn't have any women, so suddenly finding one in the wild is going to throw his whole life into a pretty outrageous chaos. But I'm sure we can work something out. Right now, I have something else on my mind. “You have food?”

He opens a leather sack and takes out something wrapped in leaves. My hopes aren't high, but right now I'm willing to eat pretty much anything. I don't know how many hours I've been gone from the cave, but it was morning when I left and now the alien sun is setting and the shadows are growing longer.

He hands me another leather pouch, and the weight tells me that it contains a liquid. I look up at him. I don't know the local word for alcohol, so I have to use one from English. “Ahr ded teh booze?”

“No. Water.”

Huh. I didn't expect him to understand what I was saying. But he probably took a guess. Water sounds pretty great right now. I take a swig from the pouch. Yep. Water, pretty fresh tasting and very tepid. That's fine with me. I'm parched.

Next he gives me a pack wrapped in green leaves. And sure enough, inside is a dryish patty of ground nuts and berries and meat. I bite off a little piece and scrunch my face up in expectation of more alien flavors.

Then my eyes widen as the flavor fills my mouth. This isn't completely awful! It's nutty and has a smooth consistency, and it's very salty and kind of stringy in parts, but it's considerably better than anything I've ever eaten back at the cave.

I take another bite, much bigger, and chew happily away. I suddenly like Ar'ox much better than before. They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, but now I think the same is true for starving UFO abductees as well. “Hahr dooh,” I say with my mouth full, and again I have to continue in English, “the recipe?”

He raises his eyebrows in a quizzical manner. I can't expect him to understand that.

I smile. “Never mind. Forget question. Food is very tasty.”

He juts his chin out and starts eating his own ration, always looking around as if he's expecting something.

“We safe here?” I ask again.

“The woods are never safe. But no Bigs are nearby. It will soon be dark.”

“Is good or bad?”

He considers it. “That is good and bad. In different ways. Some Smalls hunt only at night. It's not wise to move around in the dark. Staying in one place is better if you have fire.”

“We no have fire,” I shrewdly observe.

“We must have fire for Emilia,” he says very seriously. “Emilia must be kept safe.”

I nod eagerly. That's exactly in line with my own views. Cool, we're already agreeing about important stuff.

Ar'ox finishes his pack, curls up the leaves and tosses them far away. Then he suddenly draws his sword with a metallic zhing. I gasp and reflexively crawl a couple of feet backwards and away from him at the sight of the shiny blade.

He gives me a little smile. “No reason for fear. Ar'ox will keep you safe. Emilia stay here while Ar'ox collects firewood.”

Ah. He wasn't going to behead me after all. Well, you never know with cavemen. I've heard so many bad things about the other tribes here that I expect anything to happen. Sophia was almost sacrificed on a stone altar by one of the gangs here, and I'd prefer not to meet that fate.

He casually saunters off, and I have my first chance to really take him in. He walks tall, with a straight, muscular back that has never seen an office chair. His movements are fluid and measured, and I get the feeling he could walk like that for months without getting tired. The skin he's wearing around his waist can't totally hide the shape of the round, delightfully flexing butt inside. The tiger stripes across his body make him look primal and wild and extremely dangerous. Exactly the kind of guy you want on your side here on Xren.

Is he on my side? Well, he's very eager to protect me, so I guess he is. For now, anyway.

He's moving further away, occasionally bending down to pick up a piece of wood, and I have a strong urge to run to him, where it's safe. He's so secure in his movements, and so confident in everything he does, that he has a magnetic effect on me. I want to be close to him. Very close.

But I'm able to control myself. If he thinks I'm safe here, then I should probably stay put.

I finish my own food and wash it down with more water. Then I get to my feet and walk the couple of yards over to the river. The bottom is white sand and the water looks completely clear. Most streams here in the jungle run very clean, I've noticed, and I've drunk from a few of them without any bad stuff happening.

I squat down and take a sip. Yep, it's fresh and cooler than the water in Ar'ox's pack. As usual I check the banks and the bottom of the stream for something that could be decent clay, but here there's just fine sand and round rocks.

In fact, it looks so inviting that I may just take a little bath. I stretch my neck. Ar'ox is busy collecting firewood, so I pull my dress over my head and carefully take a step into the river. The current is just strong enough to be felt, no more. I squat down near the bank and clean myself as well as I can.

Getting some food in me helped my mood a lot. It's the first meal I've come close to enjoying on this planet, and now I feel almost content. It's amazing what a little bit of blood sugar can do. And this situation isn't much worse than being back at the cave. Here I have my very own caveman who seems pretty dead set on protecting me. That has to count for something.

I put my atrocity of a dress back on. Most of the girls don't use any underwear except when we have to. The panties and bra we had on when we were abducted didn't last long in this jungle, and the leather contraptions we sometimes have to use are not the least bit comfortable.

I smoothen down my hair as much as possible. The girls and I sometimes use the oil from a certain kind of small fruit to help keep our long hair manageable, but our standards aren't quite the same as they were back on Earth. The easiest thing would be to cut the hair short, but I like my dark brown tresses and I'd hate to lose them. It's a way to show defiance of the planet, I guess.

Ar'ox dumps a lot of firewood on the ground where we were sitting, and I walk over to him, relieved that he's back so I can feel completely safe again.

I smile, because the bath cheered me up and that's what I want to do. “You found wood. Now fire?”

“Now we'll make fire,” he confirms and strikes a piece of rock against the back of his sword, creating a shower of sparks. He catches some of them in a little bundle of dry straw and blows on it until flames seem to lick around his fingers.

I can't hold back a gasp. “Careful!”

But he knows exactly what he's doing, and he carefully places the burning straws into the pyramid of wood he's built. Soon we have a crackling fire, and I sit down next to Ar'ox. I don't care if he thinks I'm clingy – I want to feel safe now.

The sun has passed below the horizon, and immediately the air gets cooler. I keep a little daylight between us, but still I can feel the heat from the large alien caveman. Or maybe it's from the fire.

“Where does Emilia come from?” His voice is deep and could easily fill a large room, but he keeps it pretty soft, probably to not attract predators.

It's a natural question to ask, I guess. But I'm not sure how to answer it. Will he understand if I start talking about Earth and UFOs and so on? And I'm pretty sure I don't want to give away that there are more girls here, living pretty much unprotected less than a day's walk from here. We all agreed to keep it as secret as possible, just in case.

“From far,” I say and point to the sky, where the brightest stars can be seen against the colorful glare from the horizon. “Far star.”

He looks up. “Which one?”

That's a tricky one. Firstly because I have no idea. Secondly because I usually get sad when I think about the fact that I'm insanely far away from my family.

I shake my head. “Not know.”

“Does Emilia come from the Plood?”

I know that's what Jax'zan calls the filthy little aliens that abducted us. They're not popular here, either. So I better be careful with what I say. “Taken by Plood. Brought to Xren.”

He juts his chin out as if he had always known that. “And now Emilia is back on Xren and can go back to the tribe.”

“Um. Maybe.” I don't think he's got the right idea, but my cavemanese isn't good enough for me to explain. It would just confuse him further. And me, probably.

I'm sure he must be very curious about where I come from. Unless Jax'zan was totally wrong about there not being any women on this planet, I'm the first woman he's seen. When we first met, he was pitching a major tent in that loincloth of his, and it was impossible to miss that he must be pretty well endowed. I glance casually down. The way he's sitting, I can't really tell if anything is going on there.

I suddenly realize that I wouldn't mind it if it were.

Because something weird has happened: Right at this moment, I'm not afraid!

The girls and I have been on Xren for several weeks, and every second of that time I have been scared senseless. Even when I sleep, my dreams are full of danger and stress and anxiety. And in the daytime, I'm always looking over my shoulder, fearing that the final attack by not-dactyls or huge centipedes or another tribe has finally come. I flinch at a leaf falling from a tree and I crouch down when I hear a little rodent rustle in the bushes twenty feet away.

But now I'm relaxed. I'm not scared. My body isn't filled to the brim with stress hormones and fight-or-flight reflexes. That must be why I fell asleep while Ar'ox carried me – for the first time in months, I wasn't afraid.

It's him. He makes me feel safe. He knows this planet, he knows how to deal with it, he knows when to run and when to fight. He's totally calm, and he wants me safe. This is his planet, and he's thriving here. He won't let anything bad happen to me.

And now that I've noticed it, I also notice that the fear has given way to something else. I'm sitting here, really close to a stunningly hot caveman who has just saved my life at least twice, he has given me decent food, and I'm feeling safe for the first time in ages. It leaves space for other emotions than total terror to come to the forefront. And one of them is really strong right now: I'm horny.

I haven't had any action for a long time. On this planet, sex has been the furthest thing from my mind, except when I've happened to hear Sophia and her husband going at it. And judging from that, cavemen can be pretty superb lovers.

I glance up at his alien face. Would it be so bad? I mean, it's not like I have a boyfriend or anything back on Earth. None of the girls are going to judge me. And truth be told, I've had sex with much worse guys than this one. Much, much worse.

He looks down at me and smiles, just a little. He has a really sexy mouth – wide and with full lips, with strong, white teeth in even rows between the cat-like fangs. I'd like to kiss it.

I put my hand lightly on his forearm. It's like a bundle of hairy steel cables. “Me is first woman you see?”

He juts his chin out. “Toh. All women were taken away a long time ago. Now they're only in our legends.”

If he hasn't seen women before, then he's probably a virgin. So I may have to paint him a picture here. “You know woman and man different?”