Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
I make a soft moaning sound that might mean anything.
He pats my pussy in a possessive and tender way. “Good,” he says. “Because this is probably the last time I will spank your ass like that. Next time I punish you, you’re going to be sporting a tail.”
I frown slightly at the threat, but I don’t really have the energy to resist his command. It has been an incredibly long day filled with horrors and the combination of sexual exhaustion and his mental powers put me to sleep.
CHAPTER 2
Mara
When I wake again, the station is lightyears behind us. I am in a beige bed that is the most comfortable I may have ever slept in. The linen is still crisp even after a night in it, which is unheard of in my experience.
Before I open my eyes, I am assaulted with a series of memories.
My ship is gone.
My mission to bring water to my people is… derailed.
I sit up, not knowing what time of day it is, and also knowing that it doesn’t matter because technically it is any time of day in any number of planets. It is lunchtime, and bedtime, and it is time for a little snack, and it is time to be getting on, and…
“Whoa,” I say as I get caught in a temporal overwhelm.
“It’s alright, pet,” a deep voice says.
Freak appears next to me.
He wasn’t sleeping in the bed. Was he sitting next to it? Watching me sleep? I have a vague sense that he might have been.
“Breakfast time,” he says, very nearly setting me off into another episode. He produces a white bowl and a white bottle and pours something from the white bottle into the white bowl, then hands it to me. There is also a spoon, but that is not what confuses me.
“Cereal,” he says. “With milk.”
I’ve never heard of such food. Seeing it doesn’t help either. I take the spoon and wriggle it about a bit. Some kind of soup, perhaps?
“What is this? Flakes of little… what?”
“Corn,” he says. “And the nutritional excretions of a bovine. Both very good for your health, so I’m led to believe. It’s all fortified with vitamins and minerals.”
I decide to taste a little of it.
It is excellent. It tastes like bland feels, but in a good way. A comforting way. I feel ancestral memories blooming, as if hundreds of those who came before me are pleased by this meal I am consuming.
“Thank you,” I say. “This is good.”
“It is acceptable. The ship’s rations are a little sparse for humans,” he says. He sits on the edge of the bed, still wearing his tight black pants and little else. “I think your escape attempt has made them less generous in the kitchens, if I’m to be honest.”
“Are you going to get some clothes?”
“No,” he says. “They’ll see clothes again now, as long as you can resist yourself from naming my near nudity.”
“Was it easier to just make everyone think you were clothed instead of actually being clothed? How do you do that?”
“Natural talent,” he says.
“Is that why they were experimenting on you?”
I see his face tighten as he confronts a memory he doesn’t want to deal with. I guess I understand that. I don’t like thinking about…
“So… you were sent away as a sacrifice,” he says, changing the subject to the very thing I was trying not to have in my head.
“I really don’t want to talk about it. But I guess it doesn’t matter, because you will just go ahead and read my mind.”
“I can respect your mental privacy if you wish me to,” he says. “But I like knowing what you are thinking, and where you have come from. Besides, I am not really reading your mind.”
“What are you doing?”
“Feeling into what you are feeling,” he says. “Experiencing memories with you, sometimes. To many, a mind feels like an individual thing, but it is not really. It broadcasts as much as it receives, if you know how to tune in.”
“And you do.”
“Yes. It is one of the traits of my species. We are, not to use too offensive of a term, a more advanced species than your own.”
I shrug. I don’t have much ego when it comes to humanity. I know what we are, and what we’re not. And I know wishing things were different doesn’t change anything.
“I’m used to being around aliens,” I say. “I used to go off world with my dad. He was a trader. A really good one. He opened up all sorts of routes for the colony. But he disappeared on a mission, and then it was just me. They had other traders, but they weren’t as good and a lot of the deals that my dad made ended up being abandoned. And then, eventually, the ground got dry and they decided that the sun needed to be appeased, and I was selected.”