The desire grows strong within me. The desire to take Alice now, to throw her down onto the forest floor and–

No. I can’t touch her like that.

I’m little better than the Ice Cliff men I killed. My spear hardens and swells at the sight of her, and the need to press it inside her is impossible to ignore.

But I must.

Not because she told me not to touch her, but because I know something the Ice Cliff men did not. I know what will happen to me if I bond with her. If I take her as my mate.

I’ve wanted her as my own since the first moment I laid eyes on her. I’ve wanted to own her. And maybe when I first took her from the Emperor Clan, I was only lying to myself that I’d sell her to free my own clan. Maybe I knew only that I wanted her as my own, and I made up whatever reason I could to hide that truth from myself.

But seeing the Ice Cliff men go into a frenzy to take her, to ravish her–I’m reminded of what I know. Of why I cannot truly have her. Why I must sell her as soon as possible.

“Come,” I say, and I gesture for her to follow me.

I do not take her hand. The spear between my legs is as hard as the one in my hand, and touching her now would only make it worse.

I glance at her as she follows, and even though the thick cloth covers her luscious curves, I can still see the fullness of her breasts and the roundness of her backside burned into my eyes. My eyes find themselves on the soft skin of her neck, nearly as white as tree bark, and her green eyes shine like jade leaves.

I’m downwind of her now, at the least, so her overpowering scent of femininity has no effect on me. At least until the wind changes direction.

I soon hear the river flowing, and I hold out my arm to stop her.

“What is it?” she asks.

“The river. We will follow it to Therassus.”

“Therassus?”

“The city downriver,” I say. “Someone there can tell us where my clan is.”

“I don’t see a river,” she says.

Her face scrunches up in a way that makes me want to tear the mantle off her. Her full lips press together, and her eyes widen skeptically. She places a hand on her hip, and I can again imagine the full curves hiding beneath her mantle. I look away, toward the river.

“It’s through the trees,” I say. “But it will be dangerous for us to travel outside of the tree cover. We will follow it through the forest as long as we can.”

She raises both hands high up into the air, and suddenly her mouth opens wide as the river. A strange noise escapes her mouth: a long, drawn-out sound that gets louder as she stretches out her body. Is she...in heat? My erect spear prays she’s in heat, that she’ll throw herself at me and end this torment I’ve felt since I first saw her.

My brain fears it. Fears that I’ll have to fight her off me when I want nothing more than to satisfy her every desire.

“What?” she asks, finally closing her mouth.

“You are…” I start, but I don't want to offend her. I’ve said many normal things to her which offended her. “The sound you made.”

She tilts her head at me. “The yawn?”

I don’t know the word. It tells me nothing. I tilt my head back at her. I’ve learned it indicates confusion.

“You don’t yawn?” she asks me.

A breeze brings her scent across me, and I sniff it in, closing my eyes to savor it. She still smells of desire, but not enough to indicate she’s gone into heat.

“Why do you do this?” I ask. “Why do you yawn?”

“Um,” she says, “I don’t think we ever really figured it out.”

Why would she do something like this if it served no purpose?

“It means I’m tired, Proximus. Will it really never get dark? When do you sleep?”

“When it’s safe,” I say. “It will not get dark unless we walk toward the ice.”

“Aren’t you tired?” she asks.

I shake my head. “It’s too dangerous to sleep here.”

“I’m not sure how much longer I can go,” she says.

“We can sleep long when we reach Therassus. Until then, we walk.”

She makes a sound which signals to me she is displeased, but I force us forward. I soon realize that she truly can’t go on, perhaps the yawn tired her out?

“You will sleep,” I say, “And I will stand guard.”

She bites her lip at me and looks almost guilty.

“I am responsible for you,” I say. “As your owner. This is my duty.”

“Okay,” she says, and she looks around, “But where do I sleep?”

I point to the ground. There are few leaves here, few bugs crawling around, and it’s hardly wet. Still, Alice does her eyebrow raising thing to me again, and she says my name in that strange tone.

“Proximus,” she says. “Remember how the Emperor Clan guys had those beds in our cell? I don’t know what your alien beds look like, but humans don’t just fall onto the bare forest floor and pass out.”

“There is no bed here,” I say, looking around in confusion. How could she expect to find a bed in the forest?

She makes the loud breathing out sound, and says, “Remember how it gets dark on Earth? I know your sun is weak, and it’s dim in the forest, but it’s hard to sleep in the daylight. And I’d want to gather some leaves or moss–or anything soft–to sleep on, but you told me the leaves and flowers and things crawling out of the ground might kill me, so I’m afraid to step off the path at all.”

“I see,” I say. “Leave it to me.”

And then I’m off the path. I keep her in the corner of my vision, for fear that more raiders or other clans might try to take her again, but I harvest various vines, fibers, and leaves that will not kill. I gather as much as I can in a big bundle in my arms, and then I bring everything back to her. “Follow me.”

She does another yawn as she follows, which I worry might exhaust her so much she can no longer walk, but she keeps going despite it.

I finally find a big, dead tree. I drop the bundle of soft, safe things at the great trunk of the tree, and I kick it as hard as I can.

The pale grey bark shatters open, creating an entryway. “In here.”

Without thinking, I take her hand, which re-ignites the horrible hunger and lust deep inside me. I take a moment to close my eyes and steel myself, to fight my spear from raising up beneath my cloth.

“Proximus?” her voice asks, soft and enticing. “Are you okay?”

I pull her into the tree, and she looks up and smiles. “It’s nice in here!”

“The tree is dead and rotted from within,” I say. “It will not mind.”

I don’t see how it’s nice. It’s very dark, only the faint light spilling in from my makeshift entryway allows for any details to be seen. The ground is barren, covered in only sparse and long-dead roots.

I bring the things I gathered inside and arrange them to form a nest. Or bed. Whatever it is she wants to call it. She smiles and lies down, and I’m surprised when I see her take some of the moss and place it on top of a jutting root. She rests her head there and stretches out, yawning once again.

This yawn uses up the last of her energy, and she falls asleep just moments later.

I force myself out of her presence, and I stand guard far enough away that her scent cannot reach my nose.

I slept for over 70 Earth hours before being assigned to act as Alice–and the other women’s’–jailer. I will not need sleep for several more cycles, though I recall vaguely that humans must sleep regularly and are unable to store sleep as we can.

I was surprised at first, when the Emperor Clan entrusted me, an outsider, to look over their most precious of cargo. I quickly understood why I was given this task, as one look at Alice meant I will never again be content with a woman of my own race. Never again will my spear find satisfaction. The mere smell of her ruined me. Only the richest of men could afford to keep one for himself, to spear her each time she grew wet for him. To take a human woman as his mate.

And as bad as the longing I will always feel is, it will not kill me. So long as I do not actually spear Alice, then I can survive, even if I survive alone and celibate until the end of all cycles. Or perhaps the old sun will finally die while I still live, ending my suffering. The stories say it will die in a burst of heat, scorching our frozen world one last time before extinguishing forever. A final kiss goodbye.

Or I could go in there now and spear her. Provided she were wet for me, of course. And then what? I’d be bonded to her, but my clan would be forever indebted, and I’d be alone and penniless, with no way to defend or provide for my mate. The best case then would be that we’d surely both die a short time later. that I’d die defending her, and she’d somehow be killed as well rather than taken after my own death. More likely I would die fighting for her, and then she would be taken, and I’d have taken her as my bonded mate only to fail her entirely.

I shake my head. So she must be sold then, and I’ll forever have to wonder how my spear would have felt deep inside her.