Genesis (11 page)

He could tell himself that it was because he had not been able to pinpoint enough reference words to understand their sentence structure all he wanted--and that
was
true--but it was because he had not paid close enough attention to what Bri was saying. There were some words she used often enough he should have been able to grasp their meaning--if he could’ve prevented his mind from wandering.

His obsession with Bri, Kole discovered when the
Sheloni
sent their droid to fetch him, was going to be his downfall.

Chapter Seven

Kole’s first clue that this was no mere examination to assess his injuries and repair damage if necessary came when he saw that the examination room had two tables and that both were configured for a purpose other than a simple examination.

The second was when he discovered that the Sheloni had ‘inadvertently’ left on a monitor that was focused on Bri’s sleeping form.

And the third clue came when, instead of escorting him back as soon as they had mended his cracked ribs, they moved ‘the device’ over his groin.

He hadn’t experienced this particular form of torture before, but he had heard about it from those who had.

Sweat instantly began to form on his pores and fury to roil within his veins.

He should have realized something was up when they didn’t gas him. There was only one reason, after all, that it would be more important to them to have him lucid than docile from the drugs.

He wasn’t capable of an erection much less release if he was drugged.

He gritted his teeth, feeling a sense of triumph threading through his anger.

If they thought staring at Bri on the screen was going to be enough to push him over the edge, they were going to find that they were mistaken.

“Your cooperation will be appreciated in extracting a specimen,” one of the Sheloni told him as he was hooked up to the ‘milking’ machine and felt it close snugly around his flaccid member, using the mechanical voice they communicated with the
Hirachi
with since they were incapable of forming the words of his language.

“Appreciate it all you like,” he snarled. “You won’t get it.”

They couldn’t form facial expressions like the Hirachi either since the muscles in their faces didn’t allow for it, but he saw the perpetual grimace the creatures wore relax in what was their closest approximation to an expression of amusement.

“Perhaps,” the creature responded.

The response made Kole long to wrap his fingers around the thing’s neck and squeeze until its eyes popped from the sockets, but they’d restrained him as soon as he’d entered the examination room, and, in any case, he knew one of the droids in the room would frustrate any attempt on his part to harm the Sheloni. They moved slowly, but they processed at lightening speed and fired with uncanny accuracy. No matter how fast he could move, the droids were far faster, and he would be hit with a debilitating ray before he could even launch himself at the Sheloni.

Instead, he nursed his seething anger, focused his gaze on the wall, instead of the monitor, and his thoughts on the bloody battle he and his tribesmen had fought, and lost, when they were taken. It was unlikely they would have won anyway, but the fact that a good half of the fighters had been elders in his village--including his parents--hadn’t helped.

They’d been rebels and dreamers--the elders--believing they could escape the Sheloni by moving deep into the wilderness--far from the ruins of their ancient cities where everyone else lived, or rather struggled to live. All they’d succeeded in doing, though, was breeding a new crop of slaves for the Sheloni. His entire youth--all of them--had been trained almost from birth to fight and where had it gotten them?

A faint whisper of sound distracted him from his dark thoughts, but it was Bri who completely captured his attention and ruined his focus.

Clearly, she’d been drugged. She struggled to hold onto the child anyway, for all the good it did.

He looked away after a moment, frowning, trying to regain his focus, but even his anger had been redirected away from his personal tragedy toward their treatment of Bri and the infant, which was crying now that they’d taken it from her.

It was a mistake to look toward her again. By that time they’d stripped her naked and strapped her to the table, and he saw what the odd looking supports were for.

They’d hooked her knees over them and spread her thighs.

Blood engorged his cock the instant his gaze connected with her
tup
, which they’d turned up to him. Dimly, he realized that it was completely calculated, that they’d guessed it would have that effect on him, and he was still helpless to fight the reaction.

The sweat that had leapt from his pores before was nothing compared to the rivers that formed and slickened his skin as he fought to regain the ground he’d lost. He couldn’t drag his mind from it. Looking away did no good. Closing his eyes didn’t help. The image was printed indelibly on his mind.

And once his flesh responded to her, he was facing a loosing battle. The machine kneaded his sensitized flesh mercilessly until containing the expulsion of his seed became sheer torture.

Nothing he could think of to do served to distract his mind--mostly because his mind was in as much torment as his body and chaos reigned, making it nigh impossible to put two thoughts together. “It will do you no good,” he growled finally. “The women will find a way to expel the seed, even if you succeed in planting it.”

The Sheloni that had spoken before favored him with another look of amusement. “Not this creature. These beings are docile, far easier to manipulate because they are very emotional and weaker than your kind, as you see.”

He’d been afraid of that. He tried to look contemptuous. “Then I should not concern myself,” he gritted out. “Even to attempt to bear a Hirachi babe would kill such a creature. She is too small, too frail.”

The Sheloni almost seemed to shrug. “We have plenty now for our purposes. They are very nurturing, willing to rear a babe not their own. You have seen this for yourself. Even if she can not survive the birthing, it will not matter. We have some for breeding, some for nurturing.”

The rage that went through Kole at that cold assessment almost succeeded in diverting him enough to regain control.

Almost.

Unfortunately, it produced more than rage. It produced fear--for her. It clouded his mind with thoughts of her, focused his entire being on Bri. She wasn’t replaceable. He wasn’t going to be able to bear watching her swell with his child, knowing it would probably tear her apart when it made its way into the world. Nausea swept through him, and he felt a lessening of the clamoring of his body for release. “Better a Hirachi than a halfling,” he bit out, nauseated that he could be bartering the life of one of his own women, one of his tribesmen whom he’d grown up with, for this alien female, but helpless to fight the urge to try.

“Perhaps it will not be as fine a specimen, but it is bound to be stronger than the weaker parent, and more docile than the Hirachi,” the Sheloni said complacently. “In any case, we have disposed of the Hirachi females. They were far more trouble than they were worth.”

That comment went through Kole’s chest like an arrow. Abruptly, his member went flaccid and he very nearly
did
throw up.

* * * *

Bri would have liked to believe that she was dreaming the strange things that she remembered when she woke, but after the third incident she couldn’t comfort herself with that lie anymore--not when she’d awakened with drying semen on her thighs.

The examination table, and the positioning of her body on it, had been reminiscent enough of pelvic examinations she’d had that she thought at first that she was confusing the actuality with her memories. She’d also thought she had imagined Kole being in the room.

One plus one equaled two, though. Spread thighs, plus Kole, plus semen equaled an attempt to impregnate her.

Plus her IUD was gone. She hadn’t even thought to check it after earlier examinations. The moment it occurred to her what they might be trying to do, though, she’d checked.

She should have realized they weren’t stupid enough to miss something like that.

She’d been too stunned at first even to feel anything but stunned. She still couldn’t feel much besides stunned until the nightly visits stopped and the fear gripped her that they’d stopped because they’d succeeded, not because they’d given up.

How was she going to protect Cory if she was pregnant? She’d felt as if she stood some chance of protecting both of them as long as she continued to gain strength, agility, and speed. She was going to
lose
that, though, if she grew heavy and awkward with a baby. She’d
seen
what pregnancy did to women even if she’d never had a baby herself. Their bellies ballooned out and before long they were waddling and holding their backs, unable to bend over. How could she run, dodge, and climb?

She couldn’t.

They’d taken her damned IUD, though! Even if she was optimistic and considered the possibility that they hadn’t managed it yet, they’d try again, and she didn’t have any way to stop them.

She refused to think in terms of pregnancy and Kole. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that little detail, but she was sure she didn’t want to think about it.

Apparently he was no happier with the thought of fathering a child on her than she was at the thought that he might.

She hadn’t considered how horribly embarrassing it was going to be to have to look him in the eye after what the slaver aliens had done to both of them. She did the moment she was allowed to leave the room again, but she’d been avoiding him a while already.

It was harder than before to ignore him, though, and after the second day, she had just glanced casually in his direction.

The look he gave her froze the blood in her veins. He wasn’t embarrassed. He was furious--all six and a half feet and probably three hundred pounds of rock hard, muscle bound giant barbarian. Fear filled her at that look, but so, too, did dismay, and then anger.

He looked like he hated her and would cheerfully rip her head off of her shoulders if they would only grant him access to her for five seconds. That look made her knees go weak and the blood drain from her head so rapidly she felt faint. She couldn’t seem to drag her gaze from him, though, could not look away once he’d pinned her with that furious glare.

Wildly, she searched her mind for a reason why he’d gone from friendly stranger to enemy in one leap. But it didn’t take much of a search despite her fear and dismay. Her thoughts went almost at once to the reason for her own embarrassment.

He was angry that he’d been dragged into the slaver alien’s breeding experiment--beyond anger actually to look at her that way. It hurt. It wasn’t her fault they’d picked him.
She
hadn’t picked him to be their lab rat.

It was his fault, she decided angrily, maybe even his fault that they’d thought of it at all! If he hadn’t been looking at her that way it might not have occurred to the slavers to throw the two of them together.

Not that they actually had--what they’d done was almost worse. Well, it
was
worse in a lot of ways--turning something that should have been special into something cold, clinical, calculating. It would’ve been horrible to be thrown into a pen with him waiting to mount her, but at least if they’d been put together they could have had a pretense of it being their own idea. They might have managed to inject some semblance of higher thoughts and feelings into an act that lifted it above animalistic coupling.

She supposed she could understand some of what he was feeling--embarrassment, the horrible sense of helplessness, being used, having something that had been almost nice corrupted in such a way. She supposed she could even understand why a part of his anger was directed at her.

It was because he had tried to befriend her, because he had been interested in her.

But it still wasn’t her fault!

Feeling hurt, angry, embarrassed, and ashamed herself, she finally looked away. The moment she broke eye contact, though, another thought sprang into her mind--that he was angry because, in her blind terror, she’d run to him for help. He’d been hurt, and there was no getting around the fact that
that
had been her fault.

It didn’t matter, she told herself as she turned away abruptly and resumed her walk. She hadn’t wanted to be friends with him anyway. If she’d had any sense of trust in him before the comment about Cory, she certainly hadn’t since. Maybe he really thought the baby would be better off. Maybe he was even right, but she didn’t agree. Her mother had suffered for years, and she’d still clung to life as long as she could. She had felt like whatever she had to endure was worth it. Maybe, if Cory could make the choice, that was what he’d chose? Life, no matter how difficult.

An image of the baby’s face when she’d first found him rose in her mind.

He hadn’t cared. He’d been completely apathetic.

Had
she
made the wrong choice for him, she wondered abruptly, feeling ill at the thought? Was it guilt that made her so fiercely protective of him? Because, deep down, she realized she really couldn’t protect him. It had been selfishness as much as it had been pity that had driven her to take him and nurture him. Had she only been thinking of her own needs? Or even mostly of herself when she should have put his needs first?

She stopped when she reached the edge of her yard and settled near the line, watching Consuelo, who’d been frantically exercising ever since she’d warned her--poor thing! Would
she
have been better off in blissful ignorance?

Lifting Cory’s carrier carefully off of her back, she brought him around to her lap and sat studying his little face. It didn’t look like an ugly little alien face to her now. She loved him, and he was beautiful to her. When he smiled up at her and batted at her face with his fists, she felt like crying. Gathering him close to her chest, she rocked him unconsciously, taking in his scent and the feel of his warm little body and trying to convince herself nothing was going to happen to him, that she wouldn’t let it.