Alien Bride, page 6
part #2 of The Alien Series
“How dare you? You evil son of a bitch! You monster! You stupid alien! You scumbag!” Each name she calls to me is punctuated by another book. I reach around to grab a pillow from the chair and use it to shield my head. In addition to being a skilled musician, I notice she can also throw quite well.
“What is wrong with you, woman?” I holler at her.
“What is wrong with me?” Thankfully, she pauses her onslaught of books to tell me what the problem is. “You left me locked in this room for two days! TWO DAYS!” she wails and starts throwing books again.
“What are you talking about, you insane creature? You have most certainly not been locked in here!” I tell her, crouching behind the chair and clutching the pillow tightly over my head as books fly like missiles past me.
“You liar! What kind of sick joke is this? I’ve been locked in here for two days with no food. Thank god there was fruit on the damn table or I would have been eating these books!” She lobs another book at me, and I dare a glance from behind my chair after it sails past. Her eyes are red and swollen, and although she is raging at me, there are tears streaming down her face.
“Alessandra, this room has not been locked! You could have opened the door at any time or even ordered food on the prompter!” I explain to her.
“Bullshit, I tried the door a hundred times. It would not open!”
“Show me!” I yell at her.
“Fine!” she says, stalking over to the door… a book still in her hand. Slowly, I make my way out from behind the chair, but I bring the pillow with me, just in case.
“It won’t open!” she tells me as she stands in front of the door. It is as if she is waiting for it to simply acknowledge her presence. She paces back and forth in front of it a few times to prove her point.
“Is that how you tried to open it?” I ask, and a smile is already playing at my lips.
“No, not the only way. I tried asking the… the… computer to open it.” She gestures her hand toward the door as if a computer sits in front of it.
“How?” I ask, crossing my arms over my pillow shield.
She huffs out a breath but still shows me. “Computer, please open the door,” she says while looking up at the ceiling. I stifle a laugh.
“Did you try the pad by the door?” I ask, and she steps back to show me her handiwork. The screen is smashed. “Why did you do this?” I ask, astonished, and her brows draw together in a furious expression. I sigh.
“Like this.” I step forward but keep my eyes on the book in her hands. I place my hand over the screen and swipe it. Even with the damage to the screen, the door opens in response. I assess her reaction. The door shuts and I swipe the cracked pad again to prove to her that she could have left anytime she wanted, with nothing more than the swipe of her hand.
She closes her eyes and takes a few deep breaths. I assume when she opens them again she will have realized her error and be calm and better able to explain her behavior. But when they open there is no change in her. Her eyes are as wild as ever and she grips the book tightly before she swings it at me, this time without letting go. It connects with my shoulder as I try to dive out of her reach. Then, this ridiculous human actually chases me. I run to the far side of the dining table as she pursues me. Luckily, I am too fast for her. I work to keep the table between us. After a few lunges in either direction she actually dives over the top! I make a run for the bedroom.
“What is wrong with you, woman? Are you insane? Clearly, you are insane!” I answer my own question as she races after me, swinging her book like a battle-axe.
I scan the bedroom for some way to subdue her. Thinking quickly, I grab a blanket off the bed and throw it over her. In a tangle of bedding we both fall to the floor. I wrap her up as tightly as I can and use my more significant weight to pin her down. She wails and struggles beneath me.
“I’m going to kick your ass,” she tells me in such a serious tone, it feels less like a threat and more like a fact.
“What are you talking about, Alessandra? You will kick me in my ass? Are you unwell? I have no idea what has been going on here, but I demand you see the doctor at once,” I tell her, now inches from her face. Despite my own anger and confusion, I cannot deny how intriguing this human’s appearance is to me. Even with her eyes still red from her tears and weariness etched into her features, it is obvious that she could be considered nothing but beautiful.
She closes her eyes again in an effort to calm herself. This time she seems to have more success. Or perhaps it is the fact that I have swaddled her like an infant. I will have to use this method again, the next time she rages.
“You left me here for two days with no food. You did not teach me how to open the door, you did not teach me how to use a prompter to get food, you did not send anyone to check on me,” she explains slowly, between deep breaths. Her eyes remain closed, as if it is taking all her might to convey this to me calmly.
“I did not realize humans were so primitive that I needed to explain how to use a door,” I huff at her. Her eyes shoot open. If looks could kill, I think to myself.
“The doors in the halls open when you stand in front of them, asshole. Don’t act like that’s not a thing, because I’ve seen it.”
“These are private quarters. If they opened every time someone walked by, people in the halls would get quite a show.” I give her a teasing smile.
“Oh, you smartass,” she hisses. “Do you think this is funny? I was abducted from my home and kept in a cage for weeks, just to get rescued.” I notice she refers to her rescue with vehemence. “And I get locked in a cage all over again! It’s sick. It’s inhumane. As awful as it was on the Makaan ship, at least they fed me and I could see the other women. I’ve been all alone here, going insane—”
“It is my mistake, Alessandra. I did not realize how primitive your people are,” I tell her solemnly now, truly sorry her ignorance of our door operating system has left her so distraught.
“Just because humans do things differently than your people doesn’t make me primitive, you idiot.” I laugh at her words. No one has ever called me such foul names, at least never to my face.
“You call me an idiot, but to be fair, you are the one who did not know how to open a door…” I tell her, laughing openly now. She continues to look indignant. “Did you mess your cage on the Makaan ship this badly? Is that why they gave you to me? I thought they were trying to be generous, but it appears they were just trying to get rid of you.”
“You insensitive, foolish excuse of a man!” she screams, kicking wildly inside the blanket I have trapped her in. She wriggles so forcefully, I worry for a moment she might actually escape and beat me with whatever she can get in her hands to use as a weapon. “You have no idea what I’ve been through! No concern for anything I’ve lost! You’re just as bad as them… if not worse, because in your sick, backwards little mind you consider me your spouse!”
“You are my spouse,” I say more seriously now, and I feel an odd wave of insistence as I say it. She says nothing but laughs ruefully at her own predicament. I can see the wheels in her mind turning, and I watch her as she tries to collect her thoughts. All the while I maintain my hold on her. I’m still not comfortable letting her up. I don’t trust she has fully calmed herself.
“Can you just try to imagine for a second what it’s like from my perspective? To be ripped from your home and everything you know. To be stripped naked and left in a cage like an animal, where you can see others but can hear nothing except the sound of your own voice…” She struggles to go on, and something about her words makes me intensely uncomfortable.
“You should not speak of this,” I tell her, without thinking. She freezes and stares at me, her gaze so penetrating I almost worry that she can read my thoughts. “Save it for your testimony,” I explain. I should not hear any more of how the Makaan treated her. I do not want it to shape my perspective of the Makaan as a whole. I need to approach them with a positive mindset if I want to maintain the track of our negotiations. I cannot let anything interfere with that.
Alessandra’s eyes well with unshed tears at my words and she purses her lips, as if biting back the words she wished to speak. I try to read this unfamiliar expression… but just then, her stomach growls.
“You have not eaten,” I say. “Come, my insane wife. Let’s go get some food. I’ll have someone take care of all this while we’re away.” I eye the room. Alessandra relaxes beneath me, and I take that to indicate her surrender. I push off of her body and hold my hands out to help her to her feet, but she slaps them away and glares at me with angry eyes.
“I’m not your wife,” she says so cuttingly that I imagine if she had her way, she wouldn’t be. Something about that doesn’t sit right with me, though I don’t quite understand why.
“Would you like to freshen up before we go?” I ask, and though her eyes narrow again, she still shuts herself away in the bathroom. I can see that Alessandra’s anger runs deep, but I can hardly keep from laughing. Her human face is so expressive! I think I will make a game of getting reactions out of this pretty little human.
Chapter 9
Alessandra
Kye basically told me I’m a mess, so I go to the bathroom to clean up before we head out. I hate that when I look into the mirror I see he’s right. I have two days’ worth of worry and tears showing on my face. My hair is a mess from being swaddled, I have no makeup, and my clothes are completely disheveled.
I splash water in my face and use Kye’s comb to tame my hair. There’s a knock at the door, and when I swing it open Kye is standing there with fresh clothes for me. I want to think of the gesture as an olive branch, but the smirk on his face is so judgy it just makes me want to smack him over the head with a book again. I snatch the clothes out of his hands and slam the door shut. Assessing what he brought me, I put on the top, but forego the skirt and keep my pants on.
“Okay, I’m ready when you are,” I tell him after emerging from the bathroom. I see him frown and follow his disapproving gaze to my pants, but he makes no comment otherwise about my attire.
“Let’s go,” he says and holds his arm out for me to take. I scoff and walk past him. Outside the door I turn left, but he grabs me and spins me right… I guess I should let him lead, but I still refuse to take his arm.
We walk for quite some time, and I begin to suspect that Kye is taking me the long way for some reason, but I really appreciate the opportunity to be out of the room, so I don’t complain. Every second I spend out and about, I feel more and more like myself again—and god, how I’m tired of feeling like I’m going insane.
“I’ll take you up to the garden, I think you’ll enjoy it. The staff can deliver our meal there,” Kye tells me, and those have to be the most wonderful words he has spoken to me yet. I take a few centering breaths as we walk and attempt to regain some perspective. Given that I apparently was not locked in the room and my two days of captivity were a result of a technological miscommunication, I try to remember that this alien is not all bad. Self-centered, cocky, insensitive… yes, yes, and yes… but maybe not all bad.
Chapter 10
Kye
I take Alessandra along the far corridors of my ship, hoping not to run into anyone. I’m still not entirely sure if she is emotionally stable, and I’d hate for her to make a scene, but I also can’t in good conscience force her to remain in my room after she believed she was trapped there for two days. So, we take the long way around.
As we walk I notice her interest in the things we pass. If there is a painting, she slows to enjoy it. A few sculptures actually cause her to stop in her tracks. I find myself sharing information about each one… the artist, the location of the landscape, how long ago it had been painted. Before long we are walking slowly and pausing at each piece to discuss it.
She stops to admire a painting of a woman. It shows only her back, she is nude and playing in the water of a secluded cove on Isleria. “This is breathtaking. We have a style very similar on Earth—Impressionism. I’ve always been fond of it.”
“You have a good eye for art. This is a special piece. The artist was a man named Mardari, he lived about a century ago. It was his last painting,” I note, and feel a little shock that it is hidden in a back hallway and not in one of the main corridors of the ship.
“Why did he stop painting?” she asks, not looking up from the canvas.
“He killed himself. The woman here was his muse. She is featured in much of his art, but it is said she spurned him after he bonded to her permanently.”
“Mmmm,” is Alessandra’s only response as she studies the painting. I lean against the wall and watch her assessment.
“Some people believe that perhaps she was bonded to another.”
“It sounds like you have your own ideas about it,” she says, giving me a sidelong glance.
“I think he always knew she did not reciprocate his affection.”
“What makes you think that?”
“In every painting she is turned away from him. There is not a single piece showing her face. Not even in his sketches. Perhaps that was his way of showing their dynamic, that he was always chasing her while she remained just outside of his reach.”
“No one knows who she was?”
“Claims have been made. Every so often someone alleges to have discovered the lost portrait of ’the muse,’ but none have ever been authenticated.”
“Amazing… there are tons of paintings of her out there, but no one knows who she was or what she looked like. What a romantic mystery. We have an art mystery on Earth, too. Mona Lisa’s smile,” she tells me, and I see her own lips curve upward.
“Is her smile obstructed from view?” I ask.
“No. It’s there, it’s just this very slight kind of expression.”
“What is the mystery then?”
“There are lots of answers to that question. For some people the mystery lies in why she is smiling.” She stares at the woman playing in the water for a moment longer before turning back to me. “But the truly amazing thing is just the fact that she is smiling—it didn’t happen in art before her.”
I admire Alessandra’s features. She holds my gaze when I look into her eyes, she does not blush or turn away like so many Islerian women. I like her this way—relaxed, thoughtful. She feels more natural like this than when she is upset. “That is indeed a great mystery then… how to make a woman smile.”
“Yeah, you really seem to struggle with that,” she teases, and we resume our trek down the halls.
“To be fair, it is much easier to make Islerian women smile.”
She feigns a frown, “How sad for them.” I find myself laughing aloud.
We reach the elevators finally, and when the doors open Alessandra freezes. Her eyes go wide and her mouth drops open. She stares past me and through the glass shell of the elevator—at the stars surrounding us. Tentatively, she steps forward and holds her fingertips out until they touch the glass.
“Oh my…” she says, her voice laced with reverence. “Is this real? Not a hologram or video?”
“This is real,” I assure her and somehow feel a ridiculous sense of pride in simply showing her a view from a window. She looks out at the stars surrounding us for a long time.
“That planet there, how close is it?”
“That is Ipoch, it’s where I’ve been the past two days. On the shuttle it takes about two hours to reach the surface from here.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
“No. Ipoch is within our territory, but it is a colony world that my people have in recent years begun to settle,” I explain.
“Are there any more planets nearby?”
“Yes, actually. This system has a handful of planets and habitable moons that we are colonizing.” I lean closer to the window to see if any others are in our range of view, but there aren’t. “We’ll be able to see more from the garden. The view is better there,” I tell her.
She breathes out a reverential laugh. “It’s been weeks since I’ve seen anything but walls. This is the first I’ve seen of outer space since my abduction.”
“What do you think?”
She reflects for a few seconds before answering, “Almost worth it.”
“Almost?”
“It’s been a rough few weeks,” she says, cocking an eyebrow at me.
“We should see what we can do about leveling the scale,” I tell her, as the elevator doors close us in before it propels us upward to our destination.
Chapter 11
Alessandra
Seeing the stars was a deeply emotional experience for me. I mean, really seeing the stars and not just the weird hologram walls from that stupid spa thing Ara tried to force me to do. I actually feel honored to have seen them in such a way—it’s a view no other human has ever had. So few humans have even been to space, and those who have dedicate their lives training for it. In spite of everything I’ve been through, I can honestly say I feel lucky to have seen the stars from outer space.
