Текст книги "Married to the alien cowboy"
Автор книги: Ursa Dox
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 14 страниц)
“Look!” I said, tugging at my scarf and then gesturing to the exposed areas of skin on his big hands, tail, and face. “We even match! It must be a sign!”
I laughed, but it sounded more like a shaky gasp.
The pilot didn’t laugh back, instead glancing in perturbed confusion at the announcement board sign. “A sign to tell me what?”
“Ah… Never mind. Must be a human thing.” Well, I’d learned one new thing about Zabrian culture, at least. They didn’t seem to believe in things like fate or omens. “Anyway, I know you’re supposed to be leaving now. So if you’d kindly just show me aboard the ship…”
“Says here you’re to travel by special Imperial shuttle. Not by a tiny trader,” the pilot said, silencing me instantly.
Ah, shit.
I blew out a sigh, dropping all the smiley pretense.
“Look, I’m going to level with you,” I said. For some reason this made him look in confusion at the floor. “I need to get off this station tonight. Now, if at all possible. You’re going my way. Would you please, please just bring me along?”
Pretty fucking please with a human on top?
His face didn’t exactly soften, but he didn’t look quite as suspicious as he’d seemed before. His tail, flexible as rope but seemingly as strong as an arm, lifted his comms tablet up towards his face.
“Contact Warden Tenn,” he grunted.
I sucked in a breath, hoping that was a good sign.
It took a moment to connect, and I spent that time frantically scanning the docking bay for signs of Magnus’ men.
“Warden,” the pilot suddenly said, his voice dragging my attention back to his hulking form. “I’ve got a human female here. Part of some bride program no one told me about. She’s got papers.”
Even though I held my breath and strained my ears, I couldn’t hear the warden’s reply over the beating of my own heart.
“Tasha?” asked the pilot in response. “Blast if I know. I can’t read human. What’s your name?” He went from speaking to the warden to me so quickly that I almost didn’t realize he’d changed his subject of address.
“Cherry! Cherry Dawson. I swear I’m on the list,” I added somewhat helplessly.
He repeated my name back to his comms tablet. He listened for a moment, then growled an acknowledgement of whatever the warden said before sliding the tablet back into his uniform with his impressively prehensile tail.
“Well?” I asked, not bothering to try to keep the anxiety from bleeding into my voice. If he said no now, I was deader than dead. I’d probably have to-
“Still can’t believe they’re sending those boys brides,” the pilot muttered to himself.
And then he said, to me this time, “Get in.”
6SILAR
The sun had not yet risen when my data tab grew warm and then began to shudder in my pocket, indicating an incoming call from Warden Tenn. I, of course, had been up for quite some time. Under the dark sky, lit by an uncountable number of stars and three bright moons, I’d already mucked out the shuldu stalls, freshened their water, and was in the midst of saddling Tarion when the call came in. I swiped my data tab from my pocket with my tail, bringing it close to my ear.
“What is it?” I grunted, keeping my hands busy with the saddle.
“Good. You’re up,” came Warden Tenn’s reply. “I need you at my office today. Leave now, if you want to make it in time.”
“In time for what?” I growled, mentally groaning over how much work time I’d lose out on by going to Warden Tenn’s station. It was nearly half-a-day’s ride from my ranch to get there.
“In time for her arrival.”
“Whose arrival?”
“Your bride’s.”
My tail tightened around my data tab so forcefully that the useless screen, already damaged, became webbed with new cracks.
“Who?” I asked idiotically, knowing exactly whom Warden Tenn meant, but suddenly unable to come up with any sort of sensible reply.
“Your bride,” the warden said rather impatiently. “Cherry Dawson.”
My hands froze on Tarion’s saddle while my heart leaped like a shuldu.
“I thought she was not meant to come for another twenty-two days,” I said unsteadily.
“That was originally the case. But it sounds like she was in a rush to get going. She joined up with a supply delivery shuttle and will be here before the sun is high.”
Too soon.
I wasn’t ready. It would have been comical if it weren’t so catastrophic, just how pathetically unready I was. I’d planned to build a small addition onto the ranch for her to have her own room. Not only had I not gotten to it, but I hadn’t even started building her bed yet!
Ruefully, I thought of the info packet left open on my own bed. It contained a collection of articles and essays on human biology, technology, history, and culture put together by some human-Zabrian liaison named Tasha and then translated into Zabrian before printing.
Having been at this penal outpost since childhood, I’d lost out on most of my chance at an education. All the learning I’d done here was through blood, hunger, and hooves kicking too close to my head. I did not need to read often and the practice did not come easily to me. Even so, I’d done my best to muddle through the dense package of pages, squinting at the words in bleary-eyed exhaustion after each long day’s work. Despite my best efforts, I tended to fall asleep mid-sentence, words like eyelashes and Terratribe and wedding dress bleeding into my dreams.
All that work and I hadn’t even gotten halfway through the blasted thing. In my mounting panic I suddenly could not even recall the information I had read.
If this was a test, I was already failing.
“Can’t Fallon take this one? I’ll claim a different female from the next lot in twenty-two days.”
I felt like a coward and a fool the moment it was out of my mouth. No doubt the warden felt the same, because his voice sliced forcefully out of the data tab’s speakers, crackling with anger.
“No, I’m not giving your bride to Fallon. These females may not be Zabrian but they still deserve respect while they are here, and by the Empire I will make sure they get it.” He heaved a sigh. “I realize that you have not been among females for your entire adult life, Silar, but even so, I expect you to use your head. The human women are not cattle to be traded among you at will. Cherry Dawson has already been told your name, not Fallon’s. She is prepared to marry you. She is coming. Today. So get yourself into that saddle and be here to meet her in time or I swear on my badge that I will wrangle you like a rogue bull and drag you here myself.”
The connection was severed. I stared at my silent, freshly-cracked data tab, Warden Tenn’s words echoing through my head.
She is prepared to marry you.
I slid my data tab into my pocket and put on my hat.
She is coming.
I got into the saddle and took hold of the reins.
Today.
I turned my back on my ranch, faced dawn on the dusty road ahead, and left to collect my bride.
7CHERRY
The first thing I noticed about Zabria Prinar One when I stepped off the supply shuttle was the amount of space. I’d gone straight from a human industrial colony planet, where buildings swallowed every stretch of ground, to Elora Station which was all bright, shiny colour and sound. But things were different in this place. If I angled myself away from the pilot and the shuttle that had brought me here, I could almost pretend I was the only person on this planet. Alien emptiness stretched out for kilometres ahead of me, seemingly without end.
There was silence here. The sort of silence I’d never truly experienced before.
The sort of silence that made me, with no small amount of unease, snap my fingers beside my ears to make sure they were still working.
The second thing I noticed was the dust. As soon as I’d taken a few steps, my boots were somehow already covered with it, dry reddish powder coating the black soles and laces. I grimaced, imagining that most of my clothes would probably end up stained the same muddy red colour after a few years here. But it was better than them being stained red by my own blood. And the more I observed this isolated planet with its tough, scraggly sprouts of yellow grass and the pinkish-gold mountains on the horizon, the more I let myself relax into the thought that Magnus’ men might really be off my trail for good now.
“Cherry Dawson?”
In the quiet, the voice seemed unnaturally deep and loud. Or maybe that really was just his voice, because when I turned towards the man who’d spoken, I found an absolutely colossal male striding towards me through the sunlit dust. He said a quick word to the pilot, who was currently unloading boxes from the shuttle, then continued until he came to a stop before me.
“Warden Tenn?” I asked, my eyes running over his face and remembering Tasha’s description of him. Just like she’d said, he had a pale lavender-coloured hide, long white hair, and a jaw that could cut a bitch.
He tipped his broad brimmed hat in what I assumed was confirmation, casting his face into deep shadow. I frowned. The shape of their hats really did seem familiar. I just couldn’t figure out why. It didn’t get very sunny in New Toronto. Most of the hats we wore were toques in the winter to keep warm. I highly doubted I’d ever actually seen somebody wear a hat like this. And yet…
I tried to ignore it and focus on the man himself, squinting up at him in the sun. He adjusted his hat slightly again and I got to see a little more of his face. His mouth was hard and firm, like he didn’t put up with any shit, but there was a warmth in the striking orange colour of his eyes that I decided to trust. He had white eyebrows but no eyelashes.
“Welcome to Zabria Prinar One,” he said. “Silar is on his way here now.”
My stomach tightened. I was really here. I was doing this.
I was about to meet my husband.
The pilot, who’d never bothered to tell me his name even though I’d asked, made his last trip out of the shuttle, holding my bag this time. I reached for it, but Warden Tenn took it instead, hoisting it easily over his large shoulder.
“If you’ll just step inside, we’ll wait for him,” he said.
“Him” being Silar. My new alien groom. Oh God.
I nodded nervously, wishing Silar were already here. Not because I was excited, but because the waiting had to be worse than whatever weirdness my new husband would bring.
The warden led me around the shuttle to a building I hadn’t noticed because I hadn’t yet looked back this way. It was large and fairly simple in design, with what looked like wooden planks for the outer walls. There was another structure beyond, with a large, fenced-in area beside it. It looked a bit like images I’d seen of small farms on Terratribe II.
“This here is the warden’s station,” Warden Tenn was saying as he stepped up onto a shaded porch and opened the door into the building, his bulk making the wooden boards creak. I watched his tail with fascination as I followed him. It was so damn long. Longer than seemed natural for an upright, walking creature. It was too long to just hang behind him without dragging all over the floor, so it stayed loosely wrapped around a shiny, knobby sort of buckle on the back of his belt. Like looping rope slung over a hook.
“You’ve got a data tab?” he asked as he shut the door behind us. We were now standing in a large but very simple room, lit by light streaming in from a window at the front beside the door. Through it, I could see the pilot getting back into the shuttle and preparing to lift off. It seemed deafening when he did it, and I waited with gritted teeth until things were quiet again before answering.
“I have a comms tablet,” I said. The warden placed my bag down on a large wooden chair. I unzipped it and fished out my tablet.
“Good,” he said, taking it. He took out his own comms tablet, or “data tab,” I supposed, and activated a data sharing setting before placing it directly beside mine and waiting for a few seconds. “You’ll be able to contact me here anytime now.”
He handed my comms tablet back. “We’re pretty isolated out here. You won’t be able to tap into any of the bigger galactic data streams with just that little thing. So you’ll be limited to communications with other tabs on the planet and to whatever files are already stored on your tab’s memory. But if you need to download something, or get in contact with someone off-world, I have a more powerful signal tower on station property you can use. That’s how I keep in contact with the Empire and Elora Station.”
“Alright,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. The reality of this situation was really starting to bite me now, and the teeth were sharp. Not only was I completely isolated, the only human on a planet of unknown alien males, but I wouldn’t even be able to contact anyone off-world without coming here to ask permission to use the tower first? And I wouldn’t be able to keep track of human news, either. Terratribe I could collapse tomorrow and I would have absolutely no idea.
I’d never been so cut off from, well… Everything. I reached out and gripped the back of the wooden chair, feeling so adrift that if I didn’t steady myself with something solid, I was fairly certain my knees would buckle and I’d hit the floor. The last thing I needed right now was Warden Tenn getting an eyeful of human weakness. If he thought I was sick or something he could call that pilot back, stick me on the shuttle, and punt me right back to Elora Station.
Luckily, he wasn’t looking at me now, so if I appeared suddenly queasy, he didn’t notice. His big, bulky form was bent slightly as he looked out the window.
“Finally,” he muttered under his breath before he straightened and turned back to me. “Silar’s here.”
“Oh!” My fingers tightened on the back of the chair. I’d been told that it was currently spring on this planet, and it wasn’t too hot yet, but I felt sweat coating my palm and beading along my spine. I knew I had to let go of the chair and step out to meet him. I just couldn’t seem to make myself do it.
But for some reason Warden Tenn didn’t seem like he was in any hurry for me to walk out and meet my husband. He was looking out the window once more, frowning this time. For a disorienting moment, it looked like his eyes suddenly glowed from beneath the brim of his hat, but when he straightened up again, they were the same orange as before. Must have been the window light reflecting.
“Stay here,” he said. Clearly, he was used to his orders being followed, because he didn’t wait for me to respond or agree. He just clomped right out the door, his boots heavy and his tail looking more tense than before. The pale purple rope of it was now tightly wound, literally.
Warden Tenn left the door open, and I could hear his voice drifting in.
“Why didn’t you bring your covered wagon? You’re two claws deep in dust. And where’s your shirt? You didn’t think you needed a shirt to get married this morning?”
I couldn’t make out the words in the answer, but I heard the low rumble of a response. The fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck rose. That was the voice of the alien male I was about to marry.
“She’s going to take one look at you and run the other way, boy,” Warden Tenn growled. “Go get your idiotic tail under the hose.”
I was going to take one look and run the other way?!
Well that was fucking ominous. My curiosity and sense of self-preservation suddenly overtook my earlier nervousness. I let go of the chair and hurried over to the window to catch a glimpse of just what the hell it was that I’d be dealing with.
I didn’t get a good look at my husband-to-be. The near-blinding sun was straight ahead and behind him, casting Silar into hulking shadow. All I saw was the silhouette of a large figure with a hat seated atop a huge, four-legged mount that reminded me of… something…
An Old-Earth horse.
Like lightning, it hit me all at once. I remembered what it was that the hats were reminding me of. Seeing shadowy Silar in his saddle, turning his mount by pulling reins and leading it around the side of the building, I finally latched onto a word from my childhood, pulling it from memories of Old-Earth movies I’d watched with Mama.
Cowboy.
I was about to marry an honest-to-goodness alien fucking cowboy.
The cowboy in question was now completely out of sight. I jumped and stifled a small gasp when the sound of hooves and then boots hitting dirt came through the glass of another smaller window on the other side of the room. I sidled furtively up to that little window, feeling absolutely ridiculous as I did so, and peeked out.
Silar was no longer a shadow. With the angle of this window, the sun outside was now at my back, and it drenched my groom in clear, cutting light. His broad, bare back was to me, and I watched the muscles bunch beneath his reddish hide with an odd knot of fascination forming low in my belly. He was currently rubbing down his big alien horse thing, which obviously wasn’t a horse, but I didn’t know what else to call it. It was very horse-like in shape, though its tail was short and upright, like an arrowhead pointed at the sky, and it had two large, curving horns erupting from its head.
Silar’s hands were big. Really big. Vaguely human-shaped, with five fingers and all that jazz, but just so much bigger than any human’s hands had the right to be. And with sharp claws, a dark reddish-brown similar in colour to his hide. His hair hung in a long, loose tie down his back, also a rust-coated brown sort of shade. He had a spot on the back of his belt for his tail to hang, but it wasn’t looped there now. No, his tail was currently snaking along the ground, wrapping around a hose, and pulling that hose over to an empty wooden bucket. Once the hose was in position, his tail unfurled and went to a tap directly below the window I peered out of. Agile as a third hand, it turned the tap. Water flowed into the bucket, and when the container was full, Silar’s tail turned the tap off, looped around the handle, and dragged the bucket until it was directly beneath his mount’s head.
The horse-thing drank gratefully, taking big, sloppy gulps while Silar continued to wipe down its coat and clean its horns. He seemed to be gentle but firm in his ministrations, and it was obvious the animal trusted him completely. That had to be a good sign, right? If Silar was kind enough to his mount to earn that sort of bond, then maybe he’d be kind enough to me, too.
Silar produced something from his pocket and his mount immediately stopped drinking to nose at his hand. The animal munched, and afterwards it made a snuffly sound and bumped its nose against Silar’s hat, nearly knocking the thing off. Silar patted its neck in return, a gesture that was somehow both brusque and tender, as if he were mildly embarrassed by the animal’s show of affection but secretly pleased by it anyway.
This is a good man.
The thought came without warning, as loud and as clear as if someone had spoken it aloud.
I went over the words more intentionally for a second and a third time, letting them roll around in my head.
This is a good man.
In that held-breath moment, watching my husband-to-be in silence from my unseen place, I decided it was true. Mama always told me that what people did when they thought no one was watching told you who they really were. Silar may not have bothered with the formality of wearing a shirt to meet his future bride, but the big man took care of his animals. And that said a hell of a lot more than fancy, formal clothing ever could.
It was probably a damn good thing I thought so, because the very next moment Silar disposed of the few garments of clothing he was wearing. My hands shot up to cover my mouth, my eyes widening as, without warning, Silar kicked away his boots and shucked off his trousers, tossing them all in at heap beside him and placing his hat on top.
OK, Cherry. Time to go.
I’d already spied on his quiet moment with the horse. It was well past the point of decency to continue to peep on him now, when he was bare-fucking-naked beneath the bright alien sun.
I may have decided my groom was a good man. But I guessed I just wasn’t a decent woman. Because when Silar used his tail to turn on the hose once more and hold it over his head like a shower’s spray, I could not tear my eyes away.
Sparkling beads and rivulets of water rolled downward from his head to his body, and I gaped at the result. It was as if every drop of water was actually vivid paint, because by dousing himself in the stuff he changed colour before my very eyes. He stood gleaming and wet, no longer a male with reddish-brown hair and reddish-brown hide to match the reddish-brown dust, but a figure of startlingly saturated colour.
With his tail holding the hose in place overhead, both his hands went to work, scrubbing and swiping at his limbs as the dust was rinsed off of him like blood. His muscles tensed and lurched beneath smooth hide newly-revealed to be a rich yellow-gold colour. His hair’s transformation was even more shocking, the dull grime rinsing away to slowly reveal bright blue strands that were highlighted turquoise where the sun hit just right.
Watching this slow, melting reveal of new colour felt somehow even more intimate than his original undressing. I’d once seen a picture of an Old-Earth tropical beach, and Silar’s colouring reminded me of that. The deep gold of the sand and that heart-achingly pretty sort of blue that you could just tell had to be an absolute dream to swim in. Not that I even knew how to swim. Lakes on Terratribe I were very cold and very, very polluted. But there were certain shades of blue in certain bodies of water that seemed to invite you right the hell in, swimming abilities be damned.
Silar’s hair was that sort of blue.
It was long and straight, hanging nearly to his waist. He wrung the water out of it, then scraped it back into a somewhat-tidy tie at the nape of his neck. His tail remained in constant motion, rinsing off the rest of his body as he dealt with his hair, sending water rolling down the dips and harsh curves of a muscled frame that, now shiny with moisture, looked like it had been carved from solid gold.
Seriously. Solid gold. The male looked like some artisan had lovingly crafted him into existence. An artisan with a real hard-on for masculine musculature, because Silar had that in spades. And it wasn’t just rippling muscles he had to spare, because when he tossed down the hose and turned around, I came face-to-dick with the biggest phallus I’d ever seen.
Holy hills of Terra.
That was the kind of cock that would either make a girl fall to her knees and thank her lucky stars… Or say her fucking prayers. And as I’d only been with two human men before, both with what I assumed had to be perfectly acceptable, average-sized human dicks, I counted myself in the latter category, my mouth going ash-dry and my tummy tightening with a tingly sort of dread when I thought about actually getting something that big inside me.
Even in his presumably relaxed state, the organ wasn’t totally limp and floppy. It was slightly stiff, that same golden colour as the rest of him, arching out and down away from the taut V-shape of his groin and poised above a sizeable, sac-like mound that I supposed was the Zabrian version of balls but less… dangly.
I placed my hands on the window sill and leaned forward until my nose was smooshed up against the dusty glass. I’d given up all pretense about pretending I wasn’t spying now, but hey, a girl needed to know what she was in for! My husband was packing what could easily be considered a murder weapon in most galactic jurisdictions, and I figured it was just plain irresponsible not to try to get a better look now. This was for my own future health and general genital safety, damnit!
Only problem was that besides knowing that it was big, gold, and made of firm flesh, I couldn’t suss out any other details. Now that Silar had tossed down the hose and used his tail to twist the tap off, he’d turned away from me once more to grab at his trousers, lifting them from the ground and beating them ferociously with his tail. Dust rose like plumes of thick smoke as his tail snapped against the garment over and over, and once he was satisfied (or maybe once he’d just given up on ever getting his pants completely clean) he pulled them back on. His tail twisted itself around the knob on the back of his belt while he yanked on his boots. He swept up his hat in his dark claws, straightened, put it atop his head, turned, then froze.
Even with the shadow cast by the brim of his hat, I could easily see his eyes. They were such a bright white that they actually glowed. Which made it painfully, terribly obvious that they were now laser-focused on the window. Or, to be specific, the annoying Peeping Tom of a human with her nose pressed to the glass like a greedy kid at a shop’s display. Was there a female version of a Peeping Tom? Peeping Tina? Peeping Tory? Peeping Too-Bad-Your-Alien-Fiance-Is-About-To-Send-Your-Human-Ass-Straight-Back-Because-He-Just-Discovered-What-An-Idiot-You-Are?
Oh God. I was supposed to be on my best behaviour. I was supposed to be charming him. Winning him. I couldn’t afford to make a bad impression, and I was pretty sure the one I’d made wasn’t just bad, it was catastrophic. And now he was going to change his mind and send me away and I’d get my stupid self dumped in a frigid lake by the Magnus mafia.
I had to turn this around.
I tried to smile, but realized too-late my nose was still crushed up against the glass. Which meant I probably looked fucking insane. I snatched my head back, silently dying inside when I noticed the oily smudge-mark I’d left behind on the glass. Praying that my husband-to-be was not the most astute of men and that he hadn’t noticed it – or any of the other dumb shit I’d done so far – I smiled again and gave him a jaunty wave.
“Hi! I’m Cherry! I’m – Oh, fuck me. The window is closed.”
I kept my harried smile plastered on my face as I started hunting around for a way to open the window, babbling all the while.
“I wasn’t… Well, I was… But I didn’t really mean to. At least at first. I’m sorry about that. Anyway, I’m just trying to figure out how to open this window so I can talk to you. They told me your translator should be up to date. Although maybe it’s better if it isn’t because then you won’t know how much absolute fucking nonsense is coming out of my mouth right now.”
In a moment of frustrated panic, I placed my hands flat on the square of the window and pushed hard, but all that gave me was sore wrists. Silar still stood there staring at me from outside, close enough that I’d be able to reach out and touch him if it weren’t for the glass between us.
And close enough, it turned out, for him to reach over, pull at some unseen latch, and open that impossible window without taking a single step.
I hadn’t realized how much the dust on the window had been distorting my view of him. With the dirty glass gone and nothing but empty air between us, Silar came into even more shocking and vivid focus, the golds and the blues and the bright, crackling whites of his eyes searing into me.
He didn’t say a word.
Alright, I thought, nerves snaking through my belly, let’s try this again.
“Hi,” I said, lifting my chin and doing my darnedest to smile into the fearsome heat of that white gaze. “I’m Cherry. I’m… I’m here to be your bride.”
Absurdly, even though I knew it wasn’t a Zabrian custom, I lifted my hand to shake, thrusting it out the window at him.
It took him a while to even notice my hand. When he finally did so, he reached out and grasped it in a firm, calloused grip. I practically cried out with relief, thinking that the gesture had to be a good sign.
Except he didn’t stay like that for long. He wasn’t trying to shake or even hold my hand. He simply pushed my hand back inside the room so that it wouldn’t be in the way when he closed the window. Which he immediately did. The glass thwunked back into place with terrible, dusty finality.
And then Silar turned his finely-sculpted golden ass right around and walked away.
Well. That was that, then. I’d fucked things up so royally he was apparently done with me before we’d even said, “I do.” I whirled around just in time to see Warden Tenn stepping up onto the porch and heading towards the open door into the office.
“If he doesn’t want me-” I started to say.
The warden froze in the doorway and frowned at my words. “If he doesn’t… What?”
“Then I’ll marry someone else,” I continued without pausing to take a breath. “Anyone else. It doesn’t matter who.” I knew I sounded desperate, but I was. Humiliatingly, I could feel tears biting at the backs of my eyes. If Silar didn’t want me there had to be some other lonely alien cowboy in this colony who’d be willing to take in a Peeping Tina on-the-run like me. Right!?
The fact that Silar wouldn’t be that man, that he’d so summarily rejected me already and that it actually kind of stung, didn’t matter. I’d take anyone. And if whoever that was didn’t look like he was carved out of a precious metal, well, that would just be too bad for me now wouldn’t it? Shouldn’t have scared Silar off, my literally golden chance at salvation.
I stared at Warden Tenn miserably, willing myself not to cry and expecting with every throttling beat of my heart to hear the sound of rapid hooves carrying Silar far, far away.
But that wasn’t what I heard next. There were no frantic hoofbeats disappearing into the dusty distance.
No, the next sound I heard was the heavy thud of a very big alien wearing very big boots stepping up onto the wood planks of the porch outside…
And coming closer.
