Taking Tilly (17 page)

“
At least they think
that’s what happened. If you ask me, I don’t see how they could
know whether their enemies did it or not. And maybe that was the
idea? Doing something that evil in such a way that it could be
blamed on nature? Sounds like something humans would do. I mean, if
they could. They’ve been trying to weaponize the weather, you
know.”

Tilly didn’t know whether to believe
the tale or not. How could she know?

She shrugged when asked. “I’ve always
kinda had a talent for languages. I figured this was one language I
really needed to learn. Not saying I’ve perfected it or anything,
but I’m better than they think.” She grimaced and then shrugged.
“Better at their language than they are ours. It’s awful—what
happened to them. I mean, at least we know Earth and everybody we
left are still there. It’s a comfort … to me anyway. But I think
the worst thing about their situation is that it makes it really
hard to hate them and I’d like to hate them.”

Emily snorted. “I’m not having any
trouble hating the bastards.”

The woman sent her an unfriendly look.
“You wouldn’t.”

“
What the hell do you mean
by that,” Emily demanded, narrowing her eyes at the
woman.

The woman sent Tilly an uncomfortable
look. “You think about it,” she responded finally. “Let me know
what comes to mind.”

Chapter Nineteen

It was a lot of
information to digest. Unfortunately, it made the food she was
trying to eat
hard
to digest. She had to struggle to eat a respectable amount of
the food on her plate when she’d dug in to begin with
enthusiastically.

It occurred to her that she hadn’t had
any of the symptoms that she knew of that were associated with
pregnancy.

Well, the bloating, she supposed,
since it seemed to be enough to draw attention to it.

She hadn’t noticed it
herself, but then again she hadn’t had ‘real’ clothing to wear
since she’d been taken. She would have noticed ‘swelling’ in
her
clothes.

But no nausea. Shouldn’t she have
gotten morning sickness?

But then, even if she was pregnant,
she had no idea how far along she might be or when morning sickness
was supposed to kick in.

It seemed to her that it was supposed
to be one of the first signs, but she didn’t suppose everybody got
it. Everybody was different and pregnancy effected them
differently.

She didn’t know and she didn’t know
how to find out, but her birth control was definitely well out of
potency and if these alien men could get her pregnant they’d damned
sure loaded her up with enough seed to produce an army.

At any rate, the more she thought
about it the more certain she was that they wouldn’t have come
after her if they didn’t know she was pregnant.

She just wasn’t sure of how she felt
about it.

She supposed it was an anchor
baby.

That thought wasn’t a happy one even
though she thought it should have been if it meant she had some
sort of security because of the baby.

After a while—when the men
came to collect her to walk her back—she realized
why
it didn’t make her
happy.

She’d become emotionally attached to
the men—the commander most of all.

How stupid was that?

Why? Was there a rational explanation
for it?

She did know she’d felt rescued and so
very grateful to them when they’d come to get her back. She hadn’t
given a lot of thought to why they did. But she’d known she
couldn’t endure what that cat-man creature wanted to do to her and
survive—not long.

She didn’t know how Emily had survived
it!

She’d always thought of her little
sister as so fragile!

But she supposed it had broken her
mind instead of her body. Maybe her arrival had saved her sister
after all. She had no idea, she realized, how long her sister had
been with the cat-man. She knew how long Emily had been gone. She
knew how long it had taken her to get to the slave market, but she
couldn’t say without a doubt that Emily had gotten there very long
ahead of her.

And Emily hadn’t said a lot to her
besides ‘I hate you!’

Sooo … maybe she felt a connection
because he had rescued her and maybe it was because he was the key
to her survival. Maybe it was like a drug dependency? The sex
produced endorphins she’d gotten addicted to because of sex with
him.

Confusing, but still
possible.

Or maybe they produced strong
chemicals like the human male that helped them to bind women to
them? In effect addicting them to their particular chemical
signature?

He’d kissed her, she remembered
abruptly. He’d had sex with her in a way that had felt like making
love and he’d protected her and saved her.

It wasn’t entirely insane, she
decided, that she’d developed some feelings for him—in spite of
everything.

So that was the source of the
unhappiness. She cared. They didn’t. She was still just a fuck
toy.

She was so deep in thought that it
wasn’t until they reached the hotel that she realized that she was
alone with the commander, that somewhere along the way the second
had fallen by the wayside.

She glanced at the commander uneasily,
wondering why she was alone with him and if she was going to like
it or … not.

The lights came on overhead as they
entered her room. The commander looked up at the ceiling and the
lights dimmed.

Surprise flickered through her. Most
often they wanted blinding light when they fucked so they could see
every pimple and flaw, she thought wryly. She jumped and sent him a
wide eyed look when she felt the weight of his hands on her
shoulders.

He massaged them and then cupped her
face in his hands.

She didn’t think she’d realized just
how giant he was till then or how precarious her position was … or
how carefully he must have handled her not to inflict
damage.

He stroked his hands down her hair, as
if smoothing it. “Tilly … beautiful,” he murmured.

A jolt of surprise went through her
and then she felt her face heating with discomfort.

She wished! She was barely above
average, but if he wanted to think she was beautiful …. Or at least
say it. That was nice anyway.

He searched her gaze—for her reaction
she supposed.

“
I am Torin.”

She frowned. Unlike the
woman she’d met in the dining hall, she hadn’t managed to hear
enough of their talking to even
begin
to know what he’d just
said.

Frustration flickered in
his eyes. In a moment, he reached down and grasped her hand,
lifting it and placing it against his chest.
“I am Commander Torin of the Merkdar.”

She blinked at him. She was pretty
sure he’d just introduced himself—way late, but better than
never—except she wasn’t certain enough to risk pissing him off by
assuming it actually was his name. When, maybe, he was telling her
how many ways he meant to fuck her.

“
Commander
Torin.”

Enlightenment. “Commander Torin,” she
repeated.

He smiled and her heart abruptly did a
freefall all the way to her toes. She’d thought he was handsome
from the first time she’d seen him—even when she’d been absolutely
terrified. But the smile transformed him, made him seem so much
more approachable that he went from merely handsome in a distant
sort of way to drop dead gorgeous. She swallowed with an effort and
tried to smile back at him.

He shook his head
slightly.
“I am Torin. Just
that.”

She frowned uneasily, confused all
over again.

He touched her face, stroked her
cheek. “Tilly—Torin.”

She blinked a couple of times and then
smiled, struggling with the urge to touch his rugged cheek.
“Torin.”

“
Yes.”

He lifted his head and his gaze zeroed
in on the bunk.

Well, social hour was over! Tilly
obeyed the unspoken command, moving toward the bunk and settling on
it. To her surprise, however, the nanos not only didn’t immediately
arrange her for fucking, it prevented her from assuming the
position. When she glanced at Torin questioningly, however, she saw
he was in the process of stripping.

True concern washed over her then. “I
think this is malfunctioning.”

He settled beside her on
the bunk on his side facing her and lifted a hand to touch her face
again.
“I know you do not know my language
and I speak very little of yours, but I see you are intelligent and
I hope to make you understand.”
He stroked
a hand along her arm, touched her breasts.
“I can command you to yield to me, to offer yourself to me.
But I want to know … I
need
to know if you would willingly allow my touch if
you weren’t compelled.”

He cupped her
belly.
“This girl child growing here is
mine.”
He lifted his gaze to meet hers.
“Baby is Torin’s.”

Tilly felt the blood leave her face
abruptly, felt a fear she’d never felt before. She tried to push
his hand out of the way. “Tilly’s.”

He frowned and then it hit him what
she’d thought he meant and he lifted a hand to cup her cheek. “Yes.
Baby is Tilly’s. And Torin’s.”

Relief flickered through her. She
wanted to argue that point, but if he was willing to admit the baby
was hers they were making some progress in the right
direction.

He stroked a hand down her back and
grasped something. Abruptly the nano-suit withdrew entirely,
leaving her as naked and as unfettered as he was.

She looked at him questioningly when
he returned his attention to her after carefully placing it on the
floor by the bed.

He caught her hand again and lifted
it, placing her palm against his chest.

She stared at his face and then looked
at her hand and the broad chest it rested on.

She was pretty sure he wanted her to
explore him.

She hoped so because she wanted to
know what his skin felt like and the hard contours of muscle. She
stroked her hand lightly, experimentally along his hard chest to
his belly. And then glanced up at his face. His eyes, she saw, had
slid to half mast. He was watching her, his face taut—heat, she
thought, gleaming in his eyes.

She shifted closer, replacing her hand
with her lips.

A shudder traveled all the way through
his big body as she explored his male breast with her lips. He let
out a pent up breath as if she’d punched him in the solar plexus
rather than kissed him there. His hands clamped onto her upper arms
and carried her to her back on the bed. When she looked up at him
in surprise and wariness, it was to discover his face descending
toward hers.

A jolt went through her when his mouth
covered hers, but the heat of it, his taste and scent as they
rolled over her tongue, sent intoxicating heat through her. She was
so drunk with delight within a matter of moments that she lost all
wariness of him, all sense of self-preservation, stroking her hands
over his silken skin wonderingly, lifting to press her breasts to
his chest.

He broke from her lips to explore her
face and throat and then her breasts. She gasped as he caught one
nipple between his lips and then suckled it, sending waves of
electric heat along her nerve endings to her belly and building a
fire there with the smoldering embers his kisses had already
generated.

She clutched his head to her, stroked
his hair, gasped his name as he moved from one breast to the
other.

“
Now!” she gasped as he
left her breasts at last and headed south instead of
north.

He ignored the demand, caught her
thighs and parted them and then dove at her clit. She nearly came
out of her skin when he covered her sensitive flesh with the heat
of his mouth and began sucking. She pulled mindlessly at his
hair.

He curled his arms around her thighs
and caught her hands, manacling her wrists with his hands and
continued to pull at her clit with the suction of his mouth until
she hit orbit and the top of her head flew off. She gasped,
groaned, fought—to no avail. He pulled at her clit while she
climaxed, preventing her spasms from ceasing or even letting up
until she was screaming with the intensity of it.

It wasn’t until her body ceased to
erupt and her screams petered out to groans that he finally
stopped. She was so sensitive by that time it was pure agony for
him to pull and suck at her nipples, but he ignored her whimpers as
he had her screams and begging.

When he moved up and aligned his cock
with her opening, she thought for several confused moments that it
was his knee.

There followed a glorious battle where
he pried his sword into her sheathe by dent of superior strength
and determination. The muscles along her channel relaxed
fractionally once he’d hit bottom, merely clamping his cock in a
vice-like grip as he began his first retreat. On the second stroke,
his anterior appendage grabbed her clit and began trying to suck it
off while he began to pound into her with his thick
pole.