Chapter 16
She held up both hands, lifting her feet as she tried to step away from any part of him to avoid accidentally stepping on him. “I’m sorry I disturbed you, Nahash. I was just coming to check for more of that energy drink.”
He sucked in a breath, his broad chest expanding even further, drawing her attention to the heavy pecs that would make any human man envious. “You have no idea how much you disturb me, Casss.”
She thought she had a pretty damned good idea, given the way he watched her with such intent focus and hunger. She had to get his mind off sex. She could start by not thinking about it herself. His scales might be snakelike, but the muscles beneath them were all man, and it had been a long time since she’d run her fingers over a man’s chest with appreciation. In fact, she couldn’t remember ever appreciating a man’s upper body as much as Nahash’s.
Her gaze dropped to his lower body, her eyes widening when she spotted not one—but two—cocks poking out from between two of his belly scales, where his groin would have been if he’d been human.
Just as the number of cocks wasn’t human, neither was their appearance. Both of them were tipped by heads that had little spiky protrusions on them. They jutted out from his body, side-by-side—each one longer than any of the human cocks she’d ever seen. Suddenly, the idea of the devil’s temptation seemed far less poetic to her. In fact, his red, spiky dicks would have looked perfectly at home on the demonic version of the devil. His equipment looked terrifying.
She averted her eyes, lifting a hand to her face to block her view. “Um, I should probably come back later. I’m not really that thirsty anyway.”
“My body horrifies you, doesn’t it?”
The bleak tone in his voice caused her to lower her hand and look up at his face, avoiding another glance at his groin. “I’m sorry, Nahash. I know you can’t help how you look, it’s just….”
He lowered his body, pressing everything below his waist against the metal floor beneath him, concealing his dual penises. “I would never force them upon you. You needn’t fear that, Casss.”
She believed him, and not just because he’d said the imprinting made it impossible for him to harm her. Despite his violent nature, she sensed that he had too much honor to hurt an innocent or take something she didn’t freely offer.
She stepped closer to him, hesitantly reaching out to touch the fine scales on the top of his head. “I really love your scales. This iridescence is beautiful.”
His lips tilted in a half-hearted smile at her words. “Your compliment means more than you realize. My people are obsessed with our hair. Baldness is considered extremely unattractive.”
“You sound like you don’t entirely agree with that sentiment.” She cautiously slid her fingers over his scales, feeling his intent gaze on her face.
A scowl replaced his smile. “The focus on our appearance has always been to the detriment of my people. Those who are the vainest tend to be the laziest of our society. Yet, they’re the ones who continue to procreate, creating more like themselves.”
The scales on his head felt smooth and slick as glass as she stroked them. “Still, you said you appreciated my compliment, so it must mean something to you to be complimented on your appearance.”
He lifted a hand to capture hers, closing his fingers around hers to draw her hand away from his head. “I appreciate that you’ve found something positive to say about me, since I know you find me frightening.”
She shook her head, hastening to reassure him. “I don’t though!” She glanced down at his waist, his lower body still pressed against the floor, hiding his groin. “I mean, it’s unnerving. I’m not gonna lie. But I don’t think you’re frightening… anymore.”
He tilted his head, watching her as the end of his tail lifted between them, curling in an s-shape in front of her eyes so the light revealed the multi-colored glimmer of iridescence overlaying the browns and tans of his scale pattern.
“You find my scales pretty. But not appealing.” His tongue flicked out as if tasting the air. “You aren’t aroused by it.”
She wasn’t aroused at the moment, certainly. The memory of his spiky cocks remained too fresh and not at all appealing, but she wondered if he could actually taste it when she did grow aroused. If so, things might get awkward if she couldn’t get the thought of him out of her head.
“The thing is, snakes are… well, animals. I mean, people even keep them as pets.”
He released her hand and surged upwards until he once again towered over her.
“You think I’m an animal? My people were sailing the ocean of stars before your ape ancestors stopped flinging their own feces. We’re not the animals. Nor was the serpent whose genetics were spliced into mine. Her intelligence exceeded that of our best scientists. That was why they could not bend her to their will. It’s why they made me, instead of trying to outsmart her.”
She held up both hands in front of her. “Whoa! Whoa! I wasn’t trying to insult you. I didn’t mean to suggest you weren’t intelligent.”
He narrowed his eyes on her, his lips pulling into an angry snarl. “Then what were you implying by calling me an animal?”
She shook her head, trying to figure out how to extricate herself from this situation. She usually didn’t put her foot in her mouth so badly, but he set her off-balance, making it difficult to concentrate around him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest you were an animal. It’s just that you aren’t human—“
“And anyone who isn’t human is an animal to you?” His bitterness carried real venom, though Cass didn’t think he was actually the venomous kind of serpent. He didn’t need to be. He was deadly enough without it.
She flinched at the anger in his tone. “No, it’s not… We aren’t accustomed to acknowledging the existence of alien life, and every other life-form on Earth is an animal or plant….” She threw her hands up in the air. “I don’t know how to best explain this. A few days ago, I lived in a reality that didn’t include alien intelligence—outside of science fiction and conspiracy theories—and now, you expect me to come to terms with all of this without struggling to comprehend it?”
The tension melted out of his body as he sank back down until he was eye-level with her.
He reached out as if to touch her, then paused, curling his fingers as his hand hung between them. “Is it that I’m not human, Casss. Or is it this,” he gestured with his other hand at his body, “that causes you to reject me?”
She smacked his hand away, though he made no more moves to touch her. “It’s that I met you like a day ago, for starters, Nahash! Cut me some slack here!”
Instead of reacting in anger at her action, a hopeful expression lightened his features. “Does this mean you would reconsider, if you had time to think about it?”
She shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t know how I’m going to feel tomorrow about this, or the next day. I just know that right now, you’re a stranger and our experiences thus far haven’t exactly been romantic. Usually, I don’t sleep with a guy after a first date, much less before one! And that’s when that guy looks human like me and doesn’t have spikes on his penis…es.”
Nahash seemed much more relaxed, even chuckling at her last words. “They aren’t firm spikes. I suspect they’re meant to stimulate, not cause harm.”
She held up a staying hand. “Could we maybe not talk about your penises. I usually like to save those kinds of discussions for second dates.” She smirked. “Actually, you know what. Surprisingly, those conversations don’t usually come up at all. No pun intended.”
He grinned, revealing his dimple, but also a mouth full of sharp teeth. “I sense your sarcasm.”
She returned his smile, deciding to ignore the intimidating teeth in favor of the charming dimple. “That must be one of those super-human abilities you have.”
His chuckle exposed more teeth that would have sent her staggering backwards earlier, but now just caused a minor shiver.
“You know, I like you, Casss.” He sounded surprised at that revelation, even as he said it.
She shot him a skeptical look. “I thought you were biologically predisposed to like me because of the imprinting.”
He shook his head, his smile fading, much to her relief—though she already missed the little dent in his cheek. “The imprinting means I desire you and I want to be with you, but I never expected to like you.”
********
Nahash offered to heat up some of the other rations on the shuttle for Cass, suggesting that she might consider it a date. Though he wasn’t sure what a “date” was, he’d gamely attempted to simulate one after she’d described it, by cooking up a meal that tasted far too much of preservatives to be appetizing, then serving the vitamin-fortified energy drink as their “wine.” Apparently, human females and males chose to interact socially before deciding whether they would become mates. Imprinting made that type of thing unnecessary in Iriduan society.
He wished he had something better to offer her, but while the ship had been well-stocked, the smugglers hadn’t bothered with including a large variety of rations, so he had only a limited selection to offer. He tried to choose a ration meal she’d find palatable. Fortunately, her physiology bore enough similarities to Iriduan biology that she could eat the same food and use the same nutrients, despite the extensive genetic engineering and divergent biology that separated their species.
Unfortunately, Nahash no longer ate like an Iriduan, and he found eating to be a chore at the best of times. Now, it carried the additional burden of being awkward while in her company. His teeth and jaw were not designed for chewing, and since the metamorphosis, he’d learned to swallow his food whole. Now accustomed to eating a much larger portion than the ration meals provided, he’d learned to prefer live prey that he squeezed to death before swallowing, expanding his jaw to fit his mouth around it. He also wasn’t even hungry at the moment, but he made an effort, placing the food as far back into his mouth as he could to make it easier to swallow.
While they ate—turning their chairs to face each other—they talked, eventually switching to a game where they traded off answers when they both realized how many questions they had.
He discovered a great deal about Earth that he’d never known, given the limited information provided to the common class about their former colony. Though the empire kept tabs on humanity, they also kept much of that information classified. They made their populace aware of how far their civilization had once spread, intending that knowledge to serve as a lesson to their people of what they could accomplish—and also how much they could lose. The fear of losing their advanced civilization never strayed far from the surface of an Iriduan’s thoughts. They would do anything to keep it from happening again.
As a result of the empire’s selective sharing of their past, the average Iriduan citizen could identify a human on sight, and knew about the existence of Earth, but didn’t know the details of the garden planet, or how far humans had advanced technologically.
Cass had many questions about his homeworld and culture, and the shared history of their ancestors fascinated her. She expressed disbelief about the ape-men, though she mentioned that maybe something called “Bigfoot” was a throwback—if his story was really true. When she further explained the creature, Nahash disabused her of that idea, recognizing an Ultiman in her tales.
The fact that aliens from certain species routinely visited and monitored Earth seemed to surprise her, leading her off on a bunch of new questions that had them talking and laughing for hours before he realized they’d consumed all of their food and drink.
When he remarked on that, Cass stood up and stretched, her body drawing his hungry gaze as he tried not to think about how much he wanted to wrap himself around her and taste every inch of her smooth skin. Even if she would allow such intimacy, it would undoubtedly cause full engorgement.
Yet, he was willing to take the chance with Cass, already aroused at the thought of her to the point that his erections had everted. His mind constantly dwelled on what it would feel like to bury himself inside her warmth while he inhaled that scent of hers that drove him crazy and sent a warm, euphoric feeling rushing through his bloodstream and up to his brain.
He watched every move of hers, searching for clues about how she felt. So far, she’d only shown curiosity about his world and species, as well as the forces that had shaped him, but occasionally, during their “date”, she would look at him in a way that suggested she found more about him that interested her.
It was then that he would taste the air and detect a hint of her pheromones increasing in intensity. During those times, her scent—already delicious to him—would become almost irresistible to the point where he had to struggle to avoid coiling himself around her to lick every part of her body where he detected that scent the strongest.
********
Their conversation shifted from more general questions about the Cosmic Syndicate and the member species—the answers to all of which rocked the foundations of Cass’s world—back to questions directed at Nahash and his people.
They’d enjoyed a nice meal—or at least the best she suspected he could provide at the moment. She also really enjoyed his company. He answered all her questions using vivid descriptions to fill out the images that formed in her mind of the places and people he told her about. If he tended to hiss over some of the words, she didn’t notice as much because her translator didn’t pick up that difference. Only when he attempted to speak words in her language that had “esses” did she hear the way he drew the sounds out, as if he couldn’t help himself.
Because she was having a surprisingly good time, she felt reluctant to ask questions that might change their mood, but some things nagged at her conscious. After Nahash cleared away the food containers, putting them into the recycler that served as the shuttle’s trash receptacle, she nerved herself and changed the subject from the Ubaid Space Station they’d been discussing, back to her abduction and the women she’d met when she’d awakened.
“If you felt that your own people posed a threat to me, why did we leave those other women behind?”
Cici and Jia concerned her the most. The first, because she’d already suffered enough, and her hard protective shell had seemed like it was on the verge of cracking. The second, because she was still so young and innocent, and Cass hated to see cruelty crush her shy sweetness. Of course, she still worried about the others as well. She needed to believe they’d been returned to safety. Yet, Nahash had risked everything—given up everything—to keep her away from his people. She wanted to know why he left the other women behind to face them if he thought them so dangerous.
His expression had brightened with his amusement during their conversation, but at her question, the curve of his lips flattened, destroying any hint of a smile that still lingered. “When it comes to you, the situation is complicated. The other females were perfectly safe with my team, and with the crew of Captain Irisek’s ship. They’ll be returned to the safety of their homes.”
She wasn’t willing to accept his words at face value, having had more time to consider their situation. “You said they’d be put in monasteries, but you said it like they’d be held there against their will. They’ve been through enough imprisonment. They need their freedom.”
This time, the smile that curved his lips lacked any hint of amusement. “You think you know what Iriduan females need better than our males do?”
She shrugged. “You’ve said humans are distantly related to the Iriduans, and women understand each other better than men, usually.”
Nahash settled on his coils with only the end of his tail sliding free, curving into s-shapes along the metal floor near her feet. He didn’t touch her with it, but she remained aware of it, and shifted her focus from his handsome face to the sinuous motion of his tail.
His voice drew her gaze back up to his face. “You know about our culture. That we have two emperors, and our society is separated into two major castes.”
She nodded in agreement. They’d discussed that much of his culture, though they’d moved on to descriptions of the cities, the large fresh air markets, and the much smaller indoor markets that served as social-gathering places that showcased virtual shopping kiosks. There’d been so much about his world she’d wanted to know that she hadn’t traveled down the path of their government structure.
At her nod, his grim smile shifted into a smirk. “The higher caste consists of unmated males. Mated males and females occupy the lowest caste.”
This was enough to get her attention. “Somehow, I guessed you came from a sexist society.”
Nahash’s expression grew sharp and mocking, the resentful condescension he’d shown when he’d first met her returning in full force. “Naturally, a woman would immediately condemn the measures we’ve taken to keep our civilization intact.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, settling her bare feet flat on the floor as if bracing herself for a verbal battle. “And of course, a man would have a host of excuses for why the woman had to be considered of lower value in society than him.” She lifted her chin, glaring up into his reptilian eyes.
He shook his head while the tip of his tail began to flick in agitation. “Your ignorance reveals how little you actually listened to what I’ve already told you.” He ignored her outraged gasp, continuing to speak in a hard tone, punctuated by angry hissing. “Our females are extremely valuable to us. Only one female hatches for every twenty males. Their lack of numbers isn’t just a threat to the continuation of our species through breeding. It’s our females who spin the cocoons that allow us to undergo meta. We keep them in monasteries dedicated to the Grand Spinner because of their value to our society. As for segregating them, it’s necessary. Many of our females are selfish enough to grow their harems without regard for how it will affect our overall civilization. They might capture males they don’t require, when they’re already at breeding capacity—males who should’ve imprinted with a different female—one just entering a breeding cycle.”
Cass felt stung by his insult, perhaps because it held a truth that deflated her self-righteous outrage. She was ignorant about his culture, despite all that he’d already shared. She couldn’t stop looking at Iriduans through a human lens. Because of the nature of their biology, they’d adapted to a society she found personally distasteful, yet, arguing with Nahash about his culture would only highlight her own arrogance. She’d already offended him by inadvertently implying he was an animal. She didn’t want to offend him again by arguing the merits of his culture as if hers was superior.
There was one point she felt it important to make to him, though. “You brand all females as selfish, but how many do you actually know?”
He looked startled by the question, as if the answer should be obvious to her. It was, but Cass wanted to make a point.
“I was clearly an unmated male when we met, so I’ve never spent time with a female beyond the crèche where my mother spun my cocoon.”
She shot him a smile filled with triumph. “You see! You say your females are this and that, but you don’t even know, do you? Someone told you that, and you totally believed it, because they scared you so much about even approaching a female.”
He scowled, his upper body sliding forward off his coils until he’d moved far too close to her for comfort—so close she could easily make out the tiny scales on his face.
“Would you not be ‘scared’ as you say, if you knew that a man could capture you, heart and soul, with nothing more than the way he smelled? And that once he had you, he could send you into war to die for him, and you’d be so enraptured by him you’d do it willingly, without the slightest protest or hesitation? Would you be happy if that same man had twenty other women who felt exactly the same about him, and he often—or always—ignored you to be with the others?”
Leaning back in her seat as he inched even closer to her, she sucked in a shaky breath which smelled of him. He had a scent like a park after a long rain—crisp, fresh, with the hint of some citrus or grassy scent, and a touch of the earthy odor of wet concrete. She could definitely get into his scent, but not in the way he’d described. Not in the way her scent affected him.
“I’m sorry, Nahash. I really am. I wish I could find a way to free you, and I certainly don’t want any more males to be trapped by my scent.”
His tongue flicked out, and his face was so close to hers that it brushed her cheek. “That’s one reason I took you from my people. They wanted to expose more males to you, to grow your harem.”
She jerked her head further backwards, putting a crick in her neck. Not because his tongue flicking out disturbed her, though it did—for reasons she wasn’t yet ready to examine—and not because his pupils had dilated as his tongue flicked out and then returned inside his mouth.
His words shocked her. “Why would they do that? I thought males controlled society and wanted to keep the women from growing their harems!”
She shivered at the thought that she could’ve blindly walked into a situation that would’ve been—at the very least—uncomfortable, if not humiliating and devastating to her and the poor males who imprinted on her. She already felt guilty about not being able to give Nahash everything he wanted from her.
He slowly withdrew back to his pile of coils, but his dilated eyes never left her face, and his tongue continued to flick out to taste the air, drawing her attention to how long it was, which caused another shiver to work its way down her spine.
“I’ll die if I can’t be exposed to your pheromones on a frequent basis. Anyone who knows about our species knows that our greatest vulnerability is the woman we imprinted on. You’ve become the most valuable woman in the galaxy to both my allies and my enemies. By capturing you and holding you hostage, they could force me to do anything. Or, they could simply kill me by keeping you away from me long enough. To protect you, the military was willing to sacrifice some of its soldiers to become your harem. They’re already trained and already enhanced for combat, so would be far more effective guards than those males who volunteered for the mating caste.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “Have any of you ever heard of just hiring guards? Paying them a wage, rather than going through all this drama?”
He tilted his head, the curve of his lips almost reflecting his earlier amusement, though his slight smile was a great deal grimmer than before. “And could we trust those guards who were paid a wage not to seek a higher one by betraying us? For your harem, nothing could buy away their loyalty. They would do anything to protect you, take any measure to secure your safety. Their instincts would demand it, no matter what logic told them.”
Such devotion sounded both appealing and disturbing. All she’d ever wanted in life was a partner who treated her as an equal, respected her, and valued her contribution to their family. She didn’t need slavish devotion, or obsessive protectiveness from her mate, and she also wasn’t interested in having many men kneeling at her feet, begging to share her bed. In theory, it made a good fantasy, but in practice, it would be exhausting and impractical.
“I’m glad you ran away with me, Nahash.”
This time, his broad smile definitely looked pleased. “I feared you would resent me because I took away your opportunity for a large harem.”
She snorted at that. “Where I come from, that sort of thing doesn’t happen. If there’s harems to be had, they involve multiple women with one man. It’s not typically the other way around.”
“Iriduan females would feel resentment at having the option of a large harem taken from them.”
She eyed him, noting that he looked more relaxed now, though his tongue still occasionally flicked out and his pupils remained slightly dilated. “How do you know what they’d feel? You’ve never really had a conversation with one. My conversations with them told me they regret what their scent does to males. Even they say it’s like enslavement. I think they want to love their males, and those who had them did. You can’t paint all your females with such a broad brush when you’ve never even met them.”
He was silent for so long that she hoped he considered her words, rather than taking offense at them. It wasn’t like it mattered for Nahash at that point, since he’d abandoned his people altogether for her sake, but she had to make him see that not all Iriduan females were the selfish creatures he painted them as. She wished the women she’d met could get a fair hearing in their society, instead of being branded as manipulative and greedy because of a biological imperative they couldn’t even control.
When he finally spoke, he had a thoughtful tone. “I’m no longer an unmated male, in danger of falling prey to a selfish, frivolous woman. I’ve been blessed by you, Casss. You’re neither of these things, and perhaps, there are other women like you among my people who don’t deserve condemnation. Perhaps those women would not squander their males on petty fights, nor treat them like playthings to be discarded when they grow bored. I can accept the possibility that these females exist, but only if you accept that so do the worst kind—those females who’ve done terrible things to our civilization simply because they could. Do not assume you can judge all Iriduan females on the basis of a handful of women traumatized by their enslavement. Most Iriduan females have never known true deprivation and suffering.”
She acceded that point. After all, Lady Kiari was an Iriduan female, and she’d never met a more evil woman. “There’s bad apples in every bunch, and sadly those apples often have the chance to rot the whole barrel, but you still can’t throw out every single apple in the orchard because of those nasty ones.”
He cocked his head, his brows pinching together in confusion. “What’s an apple?”
She chuckled as a sudden image occurred to her. “I think it’s something you’re supposed to offer me in a garden setting to tempt me into sin.”
“Where do I find one of these apples?” He glanced around the bridge as if one would suddenly appear.
His reaction broadened Cass’s grin. “You’ll have to find one on Earth.”
“Earth is a long way from here.” He cast her a sly, sideways glance. “Is there anything else that might tempt you into sin?”
She laughed. “You got any chocolate?”