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Chapter Five

A liyah

Sirius is smart and industrious. He’s catching on to my language faster than I catch on to his, even though I used to speak it. It’s been so long since I spoke it or even heard it, it sounds foreign to my ears.

By the time he completes his eighth arrow, he’s making them stronger, straighter, and faster than me, even though I’ve been helping Poppa since I was a little girl.

I can’t help but picture a future with us sitting around the fire in our lodge. I see him playing with our little ones while he works with wood or leather, and I cook.

But that’s a fantasy. It’s clear that won’t happen. He wouldn’t join me in my pallet last night. He curled into a ball in the tiny curve of the far wall. I joined him and made certain we were both covered in pelts, but he presented his back to me and didn’t respond when I put my arm around him and sang.

He’s going to accompany me to my village. I told him it was three sleeps, but I can stretch it into four. That gives me four days to help him soften toward me. I don’t understand males. I don’t know what he wants. He liked kissing me by the stream, he couldn’t fake that, but he doesn’t want to be with me. Maybe he has a female in the village he came from.

It takes me a long time to fall asleep because I worry about how to pack a lifetime of touching into the next four days.

Sirius

We woke at the first streaks of dawn and were off within minimas . I helped Aliyah clean, making the cave ready for others of her tribe to use on their next hunt. I’d wondered why a lone female would be hunting several days from her village, but she tells me she does this regularly. It’s clear she’s good with a bow. She saved me from those savage beasts.

The skin on my abdomen is well healed, although the red scars stand out in stark contrast to the tan flesh. My internal organs, however, haven’t recovered so quickly. At times I feel a tight pull, sometimes acute, sometimes dull. It happens every time I change position from sitting to standing or vice versa. Sometimes I’m wracked by a sharp pang for no reason.

It doesn’t matter. I’ve learned to live with pain since childhood when the guards beat me randomly for no reason. My mission is to keep moving and bring Aliyah back to her People. With no more touching.

Her pack is full of seeds and nuts we dip into when we’re hungry. She wants to stop and sit, snacking leisurely, but I keep us moving. The less time we dawdle, the better. We talk while we travel. I learn her language better with every step. I’m past simple nouns and verbs. I’m learning concepts, grammar, and syntax.

We’ve kept up a fast pace all day, although I could have run it in a couple hoaras . The sun is past its apex, and soon we’ll need to find a place to bed down for the night.

I hear the falls before I see it. The first thing I spot is an arching rainbow painted in the sky in droplets of moisture in the air.

“ Amarack ,” she informs me, pointing up ahead.

“Rainbow.” I nod. “Waterfall.”

There’s a high wall of rock, maybe fifty fiertos tall with a steady gush of water spilling over the top. The pool below is calm at the leading edge, with the water becoming progressively choppier until it meets the back wall in a riot of rippling three- fierto waves.

Aliyah runs to the edge of the water, sets her weapons and pack on the ground, shucks her clothes, and dives in without hesitation. She’s familiar with this area and probably passes it every time she hunts. She must know the water’s safe.

She flips onto her back and calls to me, “Sirius, come,” then spins onto her front and swims away.

I grind my molars and close my eyes. Drac k. I can’t unsee that image. Annum s from now that picture will be burned into my brain. Beautiful Aliyah, naked and guileless, a genuine smile on her face, and her perfect brown-tipped breasts poking out of the water.

A male who wasn’t a geneslave would stroke himself at night to that image until he was old and gray and his cock didn’t work anymore. I don’t have to worry about that. The Feds made certain my cock didn’t work from inception. I can’t lose an ability I never had.

But I can nurse that picture in my mind—working cock or not. And I know with certainty I will. My stomach contracts in a dull ache having nothing to do with the mam’non mauling. It has to do with desire for something I can never have.

I stand, hands on my loincloth, unable to make myself tear it off and dive in. As she looks over her shoulder at me, she must be wondering what’s wrong. I’m still standing on the shore like an idiot.

I hate swimming. The Feds were abusive drackers in a thousand ways. I imagine it started before their little mind games with the toys and the krunck ore and the shock collars. It continued until the day I escaped.

I was thrown into deep pools of water as early as I can remember. I was never taught to swim, although later I looked up various techniques on the Database. They kept us in the pool for hoaras , once for almost a day. If we approached the water’s edge, they’d shock us. Swimming is neither fun nor enjoyable.

Aliyah approaches me with strong, sure strokes. “Aliyah teach,” she calls to me, a wide smile on her face. “Easy.” Climbing back on shore, she gently grabs my hand. “Aliyah teach Sirius. Safe.”

By all the Gods, could any other being exist who’s as beautiful as this one? And she’s so close, water sluicing off her hair, nipples in hard points, sun glinting off her skin. I remove the leaves of my loincloth, grab her hand, and follow her into the water. It seems safer than standing on the shore wanting to kiss her more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.

I swiftly swim from the calm edge of the pool to the roiling waters at the bottom of the falls to show her she doesn’t need to teach me. I hope that keeps her away. She can have fun without worrying about me.

I realize how wrong I was when she swims right up next to me and grabs my hand. The sound of the falls is thunderous, so she leans close, her nipple grazing my bicep as she speaks into my ear, “Fast,” is all I hear. But by her hand motions, I realize she wants to race from here to the calm edge and back.

She laughs and swims away from me before I agree to the race. I’m so much taller and stronger than her it’s not a fair competition, so I slow down and only beat her by one stroke. She’s winded, still paddling under the water to stay afloat. She flips her hair forward then back to get it out of her face. It floats behind her in a shiny black cloud.

This is torture. Even as I try to ignore her, the back of my mind is cataloging every detail, every nuance of her movement. Her black eyelashes clump in wet spikes. The sun glints off the water, accentuating every ripple. The roar of the falls, the blue of the sky, and dear Gods, the smile she’s bestowing on me could pierce a male’s thickest armor.

I try to hide my obvious appreciation, but I’m certain she sees the look of sheer desire in my eyes. Swimming closer, she slides up my body, both diamond-hard nipples grazing a trail up my chest in a manner so sensual I’ll be able to retrace their exact journey a decade from now.

She must feel it, too. Her azure eyes are round in shock. But she doesn’t dart away. She slides higher, wraps her arms around my neck, and plasters herself to me, placing her head on my pec.

“Aliyah,” there’s warning in my voice.

She bobs higher in the water and lands a hard kiss on my mouth. The water heaves from the force of the falls. She grabs me tighter and wraps her legs around my waist.

I open my mouth to scold her, but she silences me with a kiss that is hard, passionate, and insistent. I kiss her back for long moments, knowing I shouldn’t, but unable to stop myself. Burying my hand in her hair, I press her closer, granting myself better access to her mouth, spearing my tongue into her depths.

Knowing this is sheer madness and being able to stop are two different things. She’s split open, her core riding my belly, which is feeling no pain at the moment. My hands roam from her shoulders to the globes of her ass, noticing every slope and hill and valley along the way.

I’m screaming at myself inside my mind, ordering myself to stop in Creen’s voice. He was the meanest guard to ever walk the face of planet Malego. But even hearing his malicious voice inside my head, even remembering the moments they let me drown in the pool on Malego until I lost consciousness and they had to fish my body out—none of that makes me terminate this kiss. She does.

Aliyah

I realize what I’m doing when I notice I’m clinging to a naked male, my core less than a handspan from his cock. The People have no prohibitions about nudity, but firm rules about sexuality. We are expected to make a lifetime commitment to a mate before we share sex with them. I know what’s happening is dangerous—and wrong.

I pull away from Sirius and kick to the shore. I’m embarrassed. He must think I’m not nice. Maybe I’m not, because I want to do more than kiss him—my body wants and yearns and desires things I don’t even understand.

But I do understand that I can’t be near him right now. Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m partway up the steep, rocky cliff. I’ve done this many times before. It’s thrilling to dive off the top into the rushing waters below. This will give me something to think about other than Sirius and kissing. I love the thrill of climbing high on the rocky ledge.

I realize too late I shouldn’t do this when I’m distracted. I lose my handhold at the same moment my foot slips on the mossy surface of the stone. I fall slowly, watching myself as I desperately grab at the rock face with my hands. My feet scrabble to gain purchase. But I keep slipping as I slide down the craggy surface, then kick away just in time to avoid a jutting precipice.

It takes long moments as I freefall through the downward rush of water, then crash into the waiting pool below. It doesn’t seem welcoming and smooth like it does when I dive. It feels like I fell on hard, stoney ground. I hear the loud smack over the thunder of the falls, then hear my name, then lose all awareness.

Sirius

I pray fervently to a God I don’t believe in as I swim to her more swiftly than I would have thought possible. She’s limp, face down, drifting toward the calm edge of the pool. I carry her onto the grassy edge of the shore and lay her on her side, pounding her back until she expels the water she swallowed.

She sputters and coughs and then vomits, too weak to sit without help. There’s an ugly gash on her right leg from ankle to knee. It’s bleeding profusely. I grab nearby doram leaves, wet them, and plaster them to the cut. Aliyah told me the all-purpose leaves have healing properties as well as being worn as clothing.

Her eyes open to slits and she makes the effort to smile at me despite her debilitated condition. I lift her onto my lap, lay her head on my shoulder, and cradle her against me. Despite the moderate temperature, she shivers and burrows even closer to me.

“I’ll take care of you, Aliyah. I’ll keep you safe.”

“Cave.” She points directly at the falls.

“On the other side of the mountain?”

She shakes her head.

“Behind the water?”

She nods.

I lift her up, and by the sharp pang in my gut, I wonder if something tore open inside me. I don’t stop for a moment, though. I jog to the edge of the water closest to the falls. After setting her down, I dive in, dip behind the curtain of water, and lift myself onto the rocky edge that is, indeed, the mouth of a cave.

It’s one of the People’s caves. I can see furs piled in one area and dry wood against the back wall. I swim out, collect my female, and lift her safely inside the dry cave within a minima .

By the time Aliyah’s ensconced in a thick pile of furs, she’s unconscious.

I shuttle back and forth to the shore, swimming with the packs, weapons, and extra doram leaves held high over my head.

This cave is better equipped than the one we stayed at previously. There are more furs, a few cooking utensils, and several leather pouches with nuts and seeds. When I have time, I’ll explore the back reaches of the cave because I wonder if there’s another way in.

I build a fire with some dry wood and boil some water in one of the leather bladders someone conveniently left behind. I soak a large doram leaf and tend Aliyah’s wound with it. The cut is jagged and about an ince deep, but doesn’t explain her loss of consciousness. She must have hit her head in the fall.

I’ve been a slave from birth until a lunar cycle ago. I’ve been beaten, abused, forced to fight, and starved until I almost died. But the worst pain I’ve ever experienced was minimas ago when I watched Aliyah tumble off the face of the craggy rock. It was as if I experienced every iota of her panic as her limbs clawed for a handhold and she found none.

Her fall happened in slow-time as I watched every scrape, every time she glanced off the rock, and when she finally kicked away from the surface of the wall making a direct dive to the water’s surface.

My heart squeezes in my chest as I glance at Aliyah’s sleeping form. This confirms the fact the Feds lied when they said we had no emotions. I feel tender warmth toward the beautiful female lying in the thick, gray pelts.

I don’t know exactly how the Feds created me. The guards said the scientists threw genetic material in a test tube, shook it up, and waited to see what grew. It’s clear to me now that whatever they did to create us, they weren’t as skillful as they wanted us to believe.

They wanted to construct super-soldiers. A good soldier feels nothing and can march and fight and kill until they’re dead. But, at least with me, they didn’t breed my emotions out of me. So they abused me from my earliest memory until my emotions hid so far inside I was convinced I didn’t have any.

All I have to do is consult my clenching heart to know my emotions have come out of hiding. Since Brianna and the people on the Lazy Slacker rescued me, I’ve experienced many emotions. I just wasn’t convinced that’s what they were until right this minima .

I do have feelings, and the emotion I have right now is heartbreaking. I worry Aliyah might not make it through the night.

I slide into the furs with her and snuggle next to her, pulling her close to me to stop her uncontrollable shivering.

“I’m going to keep you alive, Aliyah.” I kiss her forehead, then surround her in a tight embrace. “I’m going to make sure you wake up tomorrow. I’ll get you back to the protection of your People. And then I’ll leave you alone so you can find a worthy male in your tribe. It certainly won’t be me.”

I may be a geneslave with emotions. But I’m still a geneslave.