4. ZOE

Raasla showed us where to stack the dead Cryons. Cleaning drones would take care of the blood and other… bodily fluids . Death was ugly, no matter if it was alien or human.

When he turned his remarkable, handsome back to go to the bridge, I noticed a weeping hole by his shoulder blade where a silvery liquid ran down.

"Raasla, wait, I think… you're bleeding?" My statement came out more like a question because… well, silvery blood?

"It will have to wait," he retorted dryly, barely turning his head over his shoulder. He left me standing, gaping at the ugly little hole.

"Are you gonna help?" a woman whined, pulling another dead Cryon to add to the growing stack.

Had he killed all these aliens? Single-handedly? Who was this man? A shiver moved down my spine because I wasn't sure if the thought was frightening me or if I was impressed.

We divided into teams and searched what we thought at the time was the entire ship for dead aliens. When we were confident that we found them all, I stared at the heap of dead. I had long given up counting, but there were more than a hundred bodies.

I didn't feel any particular attachment to the aliens who had abducted us. I had feared them when they were alive, had hated them in fact, but seeing this pile of flesh made me wonder about the man who had done this. And emotionless at that.

Did he feel any remorse? Any guilt?

Would I have?

I drummed my fingers against my thigh, slowly mulling my emotions over. No, I decided. Had someone given me a blaster and explained to me how it worked, I would have shot them all down too.

I, though, had seen what the Cryons had done on Earth. Had witnessed the death of millions, our entire civilization. I watched my sister die while my mom was still smiling through the phone at me to convince me they were fine before her expression fell and the horror of what had happened registered on her face.

Did he?

Had he watched loved ones die? Was that why he was saving us? I wanted to believe we were a noble cause for him, but there was something about the man that made me doubt it. He was detached, even from us.

It doesn't matter, I told myself. Who cared what he thought about us or we about him? He saved us, and he would take us to a place where we could regroup. Maybe I could even find out what happened to my mother.

Searching the alien ship for dead Cryons also gave us an insight into the layout and their technology. We discovered rooms where they slept, ate, and did whatever aliens did in their free time when they didn't abduct humans. Now, the rooms were divided among us ex-prisoners. All three hundred forty-six of us.

We were all covered in gore and sweaty, hungry, and exhausted, but instead of going to the rooms we had assigned ourselves, as if by unspoken command, we gathered by the pile of dead aliens, waiting for the one who had rescued us.

Some stood, but most slid down the walls, leaned their heads against it, and closed their eyes. I compromised. I leaned against a wall, watching the two ends of the hallway, waiting for Raasla to return.

It didn't take long.

"We should arrive on Astrionis in five space days," he said without preamble. He marched over to where the dead aliens were stacked and leaned his wrist against a shiny panel on the wall. A door opened like a hatch, pulling up into the ceiling. On the other side was a large area, like a storeroom.

"Push them in there," he ordered.

Moaning and whining, some of us got to their feet and did as told, while Raasla watched emotionlessly. When the bodies were all moved, the first cleaning drones appeared, looking like oval Roombas, to wipe the floor.

Raasla closed the hatch, a loud, sucking sound came from behind it and when Raasla opened the hatch again the storage area was empty.

"Where did they go?" a man asked.

The cleaning drones advanced at the now empty space.

Raasla grunted and motioned with his hand. Outside. The Cryons had been sucked into space, where they would float frozen through eternity. I shuddered at the idea of space being like a giant dump, filled with floating corpses and whatever other waste these advanced species decided to get rid of.

That notion brought on a whole new slew of thoughts. First off, there were obviously more than one alien species out there. At least two that I knew of so far because Raasla was definitely a different species than the Cryons. Three, maybe, because I had no idea if where he was taking us was the same species as him or another.

"Do any of you have any medical knowledge?" Raasla asked, looking among us. None of them would meet his eyes.

"I was a vet tech," I said after a moment's pause.

"You stitched someone up?" His unnerving black shark eyes bored into mine.

My throat turned dry, so I only nodded, not explaining that someone had been someone's pet, not a person, but really, I wondered, what was the difference?

He turned and walked down the other hallway, leaving me to scramble after him.

"What about us?" an older man complained.

"We have our rooms," one of the soldiers ordered, "move."

The last I saw, they all got to their feet and shuffled off while I tried to keep pace with Raasla. "Hey, slow down."

He didn't even acknowledge me.

Impatiently, Raasla held open the door to what I assumed to be an elevator for me, and I caught up.

"I'm not as tall as you. I can't walk that fast." I panted. "Plus, I've been held captive and—" A sharp look from him shut me up mid-sentence.

The door closed, and the lift took off. Literally.

My mouth gaped open when I realized the sides of the lift were made of glass—or the alien equivalent, like the walls of our cells—and I received my first view of space. The freaking elevator was moving outside the freaking spaceship, up and sideways along the spaceship's hull.

"Is that even safe?" I blurted out, not expecting an answer because… because… I stared into the black void of space.

We glided around a rounded corner, and my mouth gaped even wider at the sight of an emerald-green planet shrouded in orange swirling clouds. Fuck me, I thought, I'm in space!

For a moment, I forgot everything. The invasion by aliens on Earth, my abduction, my fellow ex-prisoners, even my sister and mom. If being abducted by aliens had been last on my list of things never to happen to me, being in space was even further down.

I pressed my hand against the cool glass, needing the physical touch to assure myself this was real.

The elevator reentered the ship, and the view of space disappeared. It was replaced by white walls with shiny dark spots, and the door opened into another hallway.

Without a word, Raasla charged out, and I after him.

"Your people forgot one," Raasla said, pointing at a corpse. Stepping over it, he resumed moving forward.

"I will notify them," I remarked dryly. "You know it would have helped if you had shown us the elevators." None of us suspected there was another level to it. We had never even seen the ship we were taken to.

He grunted and stopped so abruptly that I plowed into his back. Silvery blood trickled down beneath his shoulder blade, and I jumped back. "Oh, I'm so sorry."

A sliding door popped open, and he stepped aside like a gentleman to allow me to enter a luxuriously decorated area.

The first thing I saw was a giant panoramic, floor-to-ceiling window, giving me another glimpse of the emerald planet we were circling.

The noise of the doors closing and Raasla's light footsteps divided my attention from the window to him. It only took a second for my entire focus to be on him as he shrugged out of his shirt. Good grief, that man was stacked.

There were roped muscles on top of muscles the likes I had never seen before. No normal man had muscles like that. They appeared hard as steel, but that might have been because of his silvery flesh. Without a word, he turned and walked toward an array of shelves built into the wall and grabbed a black box.

"You probably have never used this before." He opened the box, to show me an assortment of tools I couldn't even begin to guess at their purpose. He picked one that looked suspiciously like a very skinny vibrator. I pursed my lips, reminding myself not to draw conclusions until I was sure what he wanted me to do with that thing.

He pushed a button on the side and the tip glowed yellow. "Like this."

"Ok-ay." I drew out.

"Just hover it over the wound on my back. I can't reach it, otherwise I'd do it myself." He explained, handing the tool over to me.

"Do you have any alcohol wipes, or anything for me to clean the…" I trailed off when I saw his uncomprehending expression. "Alright, guess not. Okay then. Turn around."

He did and I forced myself to keep breathing as I stared at more ropes of muscle, which seemed to dance under his silvery skin. But seeing it up close I realized it wasn't really silvery. It wasn't white or gray either, but a strange combination of all three of them, depending on how he moved and how the light hit him.

"Are you done?"

"I haven't even started," I grumbled, embarrassed at the idea that he caught me gawking at his amazing body. "Tell me if I hurt you."

"Just get on with it," he rumbled.

Fine, I thought. Whatever.

Before I could hold the instrument up however, I noticed an array of fine scars moving up and down his back. Scars? Some were crisscrossed, some were round, some long. What had happened to this man?

"Can you do this or not?" He sounded impatient.

I pressed the button like he had shown me and aligned the yellow light, focusing solely on the task at hand, ignoring the still trickling silvery blood and the urge to wipe it away. Slowly, I moved the light over the wound and watched in astonishment as it began to seal.

"Wow!"

"What?" When he turned his head, our eyes met for a fraction of a second, and I swallowed. Those eyes. All black and deep. They looked liquid, like an abyss. Like a dangerously deep abyss I could easily drown in. My finger moved off the button and the corner of his lips slightly rose, exposing a dimple in his lightly sunken cheek.

Oh my God! My knees quaked. With a hard staccato, my blood pulsed through my veins, heating me from the inside out. What the hell is wrong with me? I barely escaped death or whatever from my alien captors, and now I'm horny as fuck for another alien? That thought was but fleeting. The instrument dropped from my fingers to the ground, but the sound of it was ignored, just like my mind screaming at me to be rational.

My body suddenly had a mind of its own, and it wanted to fuck this alien man.

Ever so slowly, he turned around. His hand lifted so his palm could caress my cheek. The curve by his lips deepened arrogantly. Having me seemed like a forgone conclusion to him. I was sure many women had fallen to their knees at the sight of it, and I wouldn't be an exception. I also wasn't under any illusion that this would be more than this moment.

But being wanted by a man like him, even if he was an alien with silvery skin, was like balm on my wounded soul.

His palm moved down my cheek, leaving my skin tingling. His knuckles moved under my chin, lifting it. My lips opened of their own accord. A tremble moved through me. I wanted this. I wanted him.

I had never been a risk taker. Had never lived on the wild side. I never had a one-night stand. I made men wait for months before I allowed them into my bedroom. But not here. Not that day.

That knowing smile was all that filled my line of vision as his head lowered. I felt the gentle breeze of his breath and closed my eyes. As soon as our lips touched, a tremor of excitement swept over me. But that was nothing compared to the electrical current humming through me when our tongues met.

As if he had anticipated my legs giving out, his hand sneaked around my waist and was all that was holding me up. I linked my arms behind his neck and pressed myself closer to him.

His hand holding my waist moved lower, cupped my ass and pressed me fully against his hard erection. I responded with a moan and ground my hips against him. His mouth left mine to trail down my neck. His hot breath against my skin was nearly my undoing. Nobody had ever gotten me this close to coming just by kissing and touching.

As I leaned back, I got a whiff of myself with my arms raised high and recoiled. I had been held captive for days, before that I had been hiding in a basement with limited water resources. Nicely put, I stank.

"I need… I need…"

"What do you need, beautiful?" he rasped, his voice sending ripples through my skin.

"I should clean up first." I managed.

"So should I," he replied, picking me up as if I weighed nothing and damn, if that wasn't another turn on that went straight into my pussy.

He carried me into another room, doors opened into the walls and in response to him rumbling something, the sound of rushing water filled the air. A shower? In space?

Nope, not going there.

I would not begin to think or analyze. Lying in his arms was… incredible. So was the sensation of leaning against this manly chest, wider than any I had ever seen, wider than any hot movie star I had ever lusted after.

He stepped into the shower, with me in his arms, before he slowly, slowly let me glide down his hard, muscly body.

I felt like I was in a trance when he tugged on my shirt. I rose my arms and he pulled it over my head. Warm water rushed down my oh-so-sensitive body. Every single one of my nerve endings seemed to be laid bare as water rushed over my skin.

"You are beautiful." His voice sounded hoarse and deep as his hands took possession of my tits. His head bent lower as he moved the cup of my bra out of the way and began to expertly suck on my nipple.

His tongue teased around the erect bud, making me gasp. He trailed kisses down lower, opened the zipper and button on my jeans, then pulled them down. I quivered and barely managed to raise first one then the other leg, so he could take the rest of my clothing off.

He stood, and I went to work on his tight black pants. His enormous cock sprang free, looking so strange in its silvery coloring with a black head. Thick, dark veins moved up and down the length of it, and I swallowed when I realized they would bring the most delicious friction to me.

I couldn't help it. I licked him. He tasted strong. Not bitter and not salty, just strong.

His hands moved underneath my arms, and he pulled me up.

"Not yet, my beauty." He tilted his head with that knowing smile of his. Before I could protest or say anything, his hands were back on me. Sudsied, warm, oily hands. They moved over my torso, kneading my tits, turning me into a whimpering mess.

I found the source of the suds by accident as my hands fumbled against the wall. I didn't have a chance to grab any, though, because his hand found its way between my legs and my clit. A finger slid inside me, deep inside me. He added a second and moved them up and down. I have no idea how I kept standing there because my legs turned utterly boneless, but I did, even when I came shuddering on his fingers.

"My turn," I murmured breathlessly when he had worked his magic all over my body. I took hold of his cock, but his hands pushed mine to the side.

"No." He moved up on me and turned me around. My hands found support against the walls of the stall as he pulled my hips back, and I spread my legs, breathing hard and deep in anticipation of his cock as it moved against my entrance.

He pushed in, just a bit at first and I mewled at every inch he conquered after that. Nothing had ever felt this incredibly good before. Slowly he moved in deeper than I would have thought physically possible. Spreading my walls right to the edge of pain, and yes, his hard, thick veins caused the most delicious friction that made me cry out.

My head fell between my arms, and water ran down my back, but all I felt now was him thrusting in and out of me. His hands were on my hips as he directed them back and forth.

There were only his grunts, my mewls, the sound of rushing water, and the tightening of my muscles as he brought me to the edge of the mother of all orgasms. He kept pumping into me, but his hands left my hips and cupped my tits. His calloused thumb flitted over my erect nipple. I cried out as the knot inside me broke, releasing the dam of pent-up tension like a flood rushing through my system, making me dizzy and soar at the same time.

He bellowed his release so guttural, so animalistic that another shorter climax followed the first, robbing me of breath.

I felt his hair first as it brushed against my bare back, then his forehead as he leaned it against me, followed by his hot breath coming out in pants.