Chapter Three

 

 

When I awake, my surroundings confirm I haven’t been dreaming. I feel as if days have gone by since I last passed out in the purple-eyed alien’s arms. Of course, I have no way of knowing how long I’ve been sleeping.

It’s not the indeterminable amount of time that’s passed troubling me, though. It’s the fact that I’m inside a cage with metal bars, and the cage sits in a large bedroom at the foot of a bed twice as big as the king-size version in my lavish quarters aboard the Stargazer.

A large mug of water has been left for me in a corner of the cage. It’s cold and refreshing and mercifully eases the dryness in my throat. After I finish drinking it, I place the mug outside the bars and resume waiting for whatever’s to happen next. I comfort myself with the fact that if someone gave me water, they at least want to keep me alive. For now.

Tears trickle down my face and I hug my legs to my chest.

God, please don’t let this be real.

Not only am I in a cage, but I’m naked. I wonder if the same alien who’d been carrying me earlier lives in this house. But, then, what does it matter?

I am someone’s prisoner.

An alien’s prisoner.

Disbelief envelops me in a cold sheath, while a part of me remains completely numb and detached from this experience. I spend several moments pretending I’m not here, pretending I’m anywhere but inside this cage on a planet far from Earth.

Birds chirp outside a nearby open window, drawing me back into my surroundings and the urgency of my situation. Exotic scents enter with the warm breeze drifting inside, a mix of jasmine, soil, salty air, coconut, and whitewood. Forest meets sea, I thought. From my place in the cage, I spy green trees with massive, thick oval leaves against a backdrop of vivid blue. When I close my eyes and listen, I think I hear the steady, lulling crash of waves upon a shore.

Perhaps I’m near an ocean or one of the many large lakes on Tallia.

I peer between my legs and gulp at the sight. My privates have been made completely bare. When I touch my pussy lips, even the stubble of roots is absent. In fact, my underarms and legs feel smoother than they had after I shaved the night before the attack.

My wavy hair still smells of smoke. I close my eyes again and wonder how long until someone comes to check on me. I hope it’s not the scary alien, but my gut whispers he’ll be the one to greet me. A shudder runs through me when I recall the furious gleam in his otherworldly purple eyes.

I steal another glance out the window. Maybe I’m not on Tallia, after all. Maybe I’ve been taken to another planet. My heart thunders in my chest, and my palms dampen.

Even if I manage to escape this cage and this house, how will I make it back to Earth? Hopeless scenarios weave through my mind. I wipe the tears trickling down my cheeks away with the back of my hand.

I try to encourage myself to be strong and not show weakness to my captor, or captors, but it’s difficult when I don’t know my location or anything about the aliens who attacked the Stargazer. I mean, fuck. Before today, I didn’t even know aliens existed.

My pulse quickens and I shiver as the sun dims and the breeze turns cooler. In response to the light waning outside, the sconces illuminating the room glow brighter.

I gaze longingly at the blankets piled on the large bed, but I’m afraid to reach through the bars to grab one. The purple-eyed creature seemed like a force of nature, with huge muscles, and for all I know, a horribly violent temper. I hesitate to do anything without permission. If he wants me to have a blanket, there would be one in the cage.

At least the surface of the cage is soft and plush, and a huge pillow rests against the bars.

This isn’t merely a cage. It’s also a bed.

My bed.

Fighting the fresh tears that gather after this truth sinks in, I glance around the bedroom.

It’s not so dissimilar from any bedroom decorated by humans. Aside from the bed, there are tall dressers with small wooden carvings and seashells scattered on top, odd shimmering sculptures placed in corners, paintings and other artwork strewn about the walls, and a door I suspect leads to a bathroom. This could be a suite at the Tallia Grand, if not for the cage.

Heavy footsteps sound beyond the door. As the stomping grows closer, I start shaking and clutch my legs to my chest, trying to hide my nudity.

The door slides open and my gaze immediately locks with purple eyes.

It’s him.

The same creature who’d been carrying me earlier.

I gulp and shift to the back of my cage, terrified by the dark look he’s wearing. His nostrils keep flaring, and he gazes at me with a fierceness that leaves me ice cold.

I want to disappear. I want to turn invisible so he can’t look at me that way anymore.

Instead, I start crying. I sniffle and bite my lower lip, angry at myself for not holding it together. I wish I could be brave and demand clothing, or a blanket, or tell him to let me out of this fucking cage.

But he’s so much larger than me. Muscular. Over seven feet tall. Broad shouldered. His head has to be twice the size of mine. I glance at his hands and cringe. Oh my God. I count seven fingers on each massive hand. The boots he has on prevent me from counting his toes.

His black form-fitting clothing accentuates his brawny physique. The cut-off sleeves of his shirt, similar to a tank top, reveal his tanned, well-built arms. Or maybe not tanned. He has reddish skin, and as he moves further into the light, I realize his skin is indeed an inhuman shade of red.

He has no facial hair, but wavy black locks rest haphazardly upon his broad, tensed shoulders. The combination of his wild hair, high cheekbones, strong square jaw, and perfect sensual lips give him a savage but majestic appearance.

If he hadn’t put me in a cage, I would call him beautiful.

Tremors continue wreaking havoc on my senses, making my breaths come in shaky gasps as I stare through the top bars of my cage. I close my eyes as he steps closer, saying silent prayers for God to please turn back time and let me wake up on Earth, in my bedroom back in Florida. Please, God, please.

A memory suddenly flits into my conscious.

When I was fifteen, Theresa Peters, a college aged girl who lived next door, disappeared for several weeks. Her face was plastered on every road sign and telephone pole for miles and miles.

My father joined various search parties into the marshes in the days after she vanished. Fear and paranoia quickly swept through town. My mother bought me a can of jogger’s mace and insisted I keep it attached to my hand while walking the three blocks home from school on the days she couldn’t pick me up.

No trace of the girl was found, until an elderly woman outside of town reported screams coming from her neighbor’s house. Police moved in and found Theresa in the man’s basement. He’d been holding her captive and abusing her for eight long weeks.

The details that emerged were ghastly, and I’d always had nightmares of being taken in the same way, snatched off the street while coming home from a party or from school. As my mother had once lamented, “It could have been you, Laylah. My God, it could have been you.”

Now it is me.

I’m the one who’s been taken.

The circumstances are vastly different, but my freedom has been stripped and I’m at the complete mercy of a big scary stranger who wants to do God knows what to me.

I open my eyes to find the alien is now crouching directly in front of me. He seems larger and more frightening up close. His black pupils dilate until only a small circle of purple remains in his eyes. I take it as a bad sign and press harder against the back of the cage, as if I might slip through the bars and fly out the window to safety.

“What do you want from me?” I ask, even though I doubt he’ll understand me.

He sets his palm over a panel on the outside of the cage. There’s a brief glow around his hand, and then the door clicks open.

My breath catches so hard in my throat, for a moment I’m choking.

No no no. Please don’t touch me.

“Come here, human.” His deep voice, and his words spoken in perfect English, shock me to my very core.

“You-you understand me?” A stupid question, but it’s all I can think of. Besides, I’m shaking too hard and I’m far too frightened to move toward him, so I stall in the only way I know how.

“My father was human,” he replies with disgust. “I know many tongues from your puny world.”

I gulp and look into his eyes, so dark and mysterious. “You know of Earth? And you’re really pa-part hu-human?”

“Yes, I know of Earth. Your people should have stayed there.”

I narrow my eyes at him, genuinely confused. “Stayed there? How can you say that if you’re part human? Where is your father?”

His lips curl in a dark smile. “He’s dead. My mother’s family killed him after they rescued us from the research facility outside of Capital Acres when I was but a child.”

“Research facility?”

He’s quiet for a moment before he sighs and answers my question.

“My human father took my Kleaxian mother against her will, and when she became pregnant, she became nothing but a scientific curiosity to you humans.”

“But humans only recently discovered Tallia. You look…much older than me, and I was five when Tallia was discovered.” A million questions linger on the tip of my tongue. I suppose, going by human standards and taking into account his alien features, he is probably ten or twenty years older than me. He’s definitely not younger than me. Well, unless his mother’s race ages more quickly than humans.

I’m fascinated by his appearance and his evolution. For a moment, I forget my fear and move toward him, my hands itching to touch him. What does his skin feel like? His untamed hair?

He grabs my ankle and yanks me from the cage. I struggle and kick with my free foot, but he’s impervious to my fighting, and soon I’m sprawled in the middle of the cool floor. He slams the cage shut, preventing me from crawling back inside.

He looms over me, fury radiating from him in sharp waves.

I think he wants to kill me. Or at least beat the living shit out of me. I cower and again think of Theresa Peters. If I scream, will anyone hear me? Will anyone care?

“This will probably come as a shock to you, but your people arrived here over fifty Earth years ago. We—the Kleaxians—warned you to stay away. This is our planet. We claimed it long before the humans arrived, and now we have finally regained our strength enough to take it back.”

His words fill my head and rattle around, not quite settling in as a truth. Had the Earth’s governments lied about the circumstances surrounding the discovery of Tallia? I’m not so naive as to think governments never lie, but this is a big fucking lie. And to hide the existence of aliens, while still bringing humans to visit Tallia, doesn’t make sense.

He laughs, and the cruelty in his chuckle sends a chill racing up my spine.

“I know what you’re thinking, human. You don’t understand why your leaders kept Tallia’s existence a secret for so many years.”

I nod. “Yes. I was taught the wormhole was artificially created by humans, and then lo and behold, as luck would have it, there was a habitable planet on the other side. It’s what everyone on Earth believed.” At five years old, I had huddled around the television with my parents and brother as the fantastic news reports rolled in. Though young, I had sensed the incredible excitement building around me and understood what an extraordinary event the discovery of Tallia was.

“You were taught many lies, human, and now I’m afraid you will suffer dearly for the crimes of your people.” He kneels and tips my chin up, forcing my gaze to his. His fingers are rough, his skin warm but abrasive.

It’s intimate, the tender way he holds my face.

He looks sad for a moment, and I wait with bated breath, sensing he’s about to impart some tragic news.

“Before our ships destroyed the Stargazer, we closed the wormhole. You are stuck on Tallia, little human, for the rest of your days. Humans don’t have the ability to create a new wormhole to Tallia. They never created one in the first place. They simply discovered a way to make a small, naturally existing wormhole larger, large enough to send ships through.”

Emotion tightens my throat. As the shock of his news settles over me, tears fill my eyes and wet my cheeks. I try to draw back, but he holds my chin in a vise grip.

I’m trapped with nowhere to look but his unforgiving gaze.

“Please,” I beg, but I don’t know exactly what I’m asking for. I’m desperate and afraid, and the word please is all that comes to mind.

Please let me go. Please don’t hurt me.

Please say you’re lying about the wormhole.

“You’re rather adorable for a human. And so pretty when you cry.” He cups my face and leans down to kiss my cheeks, but he’s not simply kissing, he’s also tasting.

Tasting my tears.

I sniffle and more tears fall. He inhales quickly and a moan vibrates from his throat. It terrifies me that he’s reveling in my sorrow.

“I want to go home,” I whimper. Let this be a nightmare. Let me wake up now.

“This is your home now, human. The mountains of Tallia.” He rises to his feet and looms over me like a fierce Viking conqueror. “And you belong to me.”