Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
I let him put the metal sliver into my mouth. I think I might let him put anything into my mouth. It covers my tongue, and when I next try to form a word, it comes out a little different. Hard to say precisely how, but it is definitely different.
He speaks to me. His voice is deep and resonant. It wraps around me in a very reassuring and strangely coherent way.
“Do you understand me, alien female?”
“Yes… how?”
“Magic.” He smiles. It may as well be magic. It feels like it. He feels like something magical, or at least mythical. An alien satyr in the flesh, a creature of lustful attraction. His eyes are full of emotion, though the pupils themselves are unsettling. He is very alien, very animal, but almost more human than a human at the same time.
“Whoa,” I say. It’s not particular coherent, but it does cover all the amazement I am feeling.
“Why were you abandoned here?” He asks me the question with gentle curiosity. He seems like someone who could be very dangerous if he wanted to be, but he is being very nice to me.
“I wasn’t abandoned. I’m an explorer. An adventurer. This is my job, to see what’s on this planet and report back.”
“I see,” he says. “Well, we won’t allow that to happen, will we?”
I shake my head. No, we won’t. I don’t know why we won’t, I just know that agreeing with him is important. There is something incredibly persuasive about him, and I don’t think it’s just his handsome looks or the raw animal magnetism he emanates. There’s something else at play, some mixture of mystical and technical. What exactly did he slip in between my lips? It must be some kind of neurochemical interface. The silver has all but dissipated on my tongue. It makes it possible for me to talk to him. I wonder what else it has done. Did he just drug me into submission?
“What did you give me? That silver…”
“It’s just a little device to help you speak to me.”
“Does it make me have to agree with you?”
“No,” he laughs. “It does not do that. It’s something we use to help us communicate with all manner of species. Everything has a language. What I gave you just lets me understand you, human female.”
“My name is Jem,” I tell him.
“I am Gruff. I am the Buck of these woods.”
“What is that, like the alpha?”
“Yes. Like the alpha,” he says. He is smiling at me, those green eyes twinkling, his pants holding back a monster surprise of their own — judging by the way they’re throbbing and quivering in a rod-hard line. “I am the master of this terrain, and keeper of all in it. That includes you, Jem, human woman.”
“You can just call me Jem. How do you know I’m human?”
“We have encountered your kind before. You’re on the list.”
“The list?”
He pauses for a moment before answering me, as if he is trying to determine whether or not I deserve the truth. “A list of hostile species best to be culled on sight. Invasive, generally speaking. With a tendency to make land and colonize.”
“Oh. You’re not going cull me. Are you?”
“Have you brought any males with you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
I’m caught in his aura, so swept up in the majesty of the moment and his incredible alien presence that the darkness of that brief conversation almost goes completely over my head. Almost. This creature, Gruff, is dangerous. His horns and fangs and massive musculature are signs of that, but I suspect he is just as dangerous, if not more so, in mind than in body.
“Do not look so worried. You are female. We do not kill women.”
“Sexist,” I mutter under my breath, more as a reflex than anything else. I am not impressed that I will be spared just because I happen to be a woman. I wonder if EET knew that about these species before they sent me here? I wonder if they were quite well aware that they needed someone non-threatening and a little bit of a bumbler to infiltrate this planet.
“Perhaps, but in your favor,” Gruff points out.
I am wary. Horny, but wary. I can’t deny the excitement I feel in his presence, and I have already sampled his technology.
“I should take my goat and go.”
“Go where?”
“Back to my camp, I suppose.”
“I don’t think so,” he says. “I think you should join my herd.”
He’s still speaking in a kind and open way, but there’s steel in his voice. I’m not being offered the opportunity to join his herd, whatever form that might take. I am instead being told that I will join his herd. I hear that very clearly, even though he didn’t seem to say it. Maybe that is part of the technology now swimming inside me.
“Uh. Yeah…” I draw the word out. “I’m going to get going. Thanks for the alien communication technology. Maybe Strumpet and I will see you around sometime again.”