The Clone’s Mate by Susan Trombley
Fourteen
“Okay, 34, now say, ‘Nirgal is a used tampon.’”
Subject 34 studied me with an unreadable pair of dark eyes and an expressionless face, but at least his outer mandibles and chitin goggle eyes were retracted so I could see the more humanoid parts of him.
I’d been trying to teach 34 to speak for what felt like hours after he found me standing near the wall, glaring at it and wishing I could shoot lasers out of my eyes to disintegrate the jerk standing somewhere on the other side of it.
I was fairly sure at this point that 34 knew what I was trying to do when it came to getting him to communicate but he was being stubborn for some reason about making the same level of effort he’d seemed to make before.
Instead, he simply watched me in an unnerving fashion as I repeated phrases over and over again. At first, I’d tried to make them very simple, but when he didn’t make the effort to speak in order to repeat them, I just made up the craziest things I could think of, and then it devolved into childish insults towards Nirgal.
I had to admit, by that time, I was good and hangry, so I blame my bad behavior on that. I really hoped I was pissing off the bastard though. I mean, he did say he had to observe everything going on in this enclosure.
My stomach growled in protest at the lack of sustenance. It was well past my usual protein bar time. Granted, my stomach had shrunk significantly since I’d been dragged out of cryo-sleep into a full-on living nightmare with the monster as my only friend, but my body still had needs.
Subject 34 stared down at the source of that soft noise with no shift in his expression, but with a tilt to his head and flicking of his wings as he crouched in front of me that I’d learned to equate with his curiosity.
Realizing things could go wrong if he misinterpreted those roiling sounds as aggressive, I quickly patted my stomach. “I haven’t eaten anything lately, so my stomach is making sounds because I’m hungry.”
If I’d expected a verbal response at this point, I would be disappointed. I wasn’t certain what type of response I’d expected, since 34 could be so unpredictable. When he rose rapidly and gracefully to his feet, I jumped a little against the rock I was using as a seat back near his lair.
The way he towered over me unnerved me quite a bit, but it wouldn’t have done me much good to take to my own feet, because he still stood significantly taller than me. I’d have to guesstimate he neared seven feet tall when standing straight.
He was a beast, in every sense of the word. Massive and armored and threatening, moving like quicksilver, fluid and fast. I didn’t get the chance to ask him what was up before he spread his wings and leapt into the air. They blurred behind him as he flew away from me.
I called after him hesitantly, wondering what new idea had popped into his head. It sure would be nice if he’d make the effort to explain himself to me, even a little bit.
I sat on the sand, leaning back against the rock, sagging with hopelessness and depression. I’d come to several conclusions in the last few hours.
One, Subject 34 did not desire me with the same level of arousal he inspired in me. At least, he’d made zero effort to “mate” with me since I’d told him I could resist his aphrodisiac-like venom. Maybe he was finally respecting my boundaries, but I found it difficult to believe he’d get things like that through his head that fast. Especially not if he really was into me like that. So, I was left with the only possible conclusion. Like my speech and facial expressions, 34 had been merely curious about my body and possibly his own, and he’d acted on that curiosity.
To say I was disappointed was an understatement. I’m not saying I wanted to fall all over him whenever I looked at him, but when I inhaled deep whiffs of his scent, I definitely felt a desire I couldn’t completely ignore. He was still putting out some kind of mojo sexy juice. He just wasn’t pumping it out to the degree that he had before.
Two, Subject 34 was a hell of a lot smarter than I think even his captors were giving him credit for. His failure to repeat the words I’d been saying to him had absolutely nothing to do with his inability to understand them. I could tell he did. Maybe some of my expressions confused him because there were the slightest variations in his expression—the most obvious being the lines forming between his brows—whenever I used human slang or metaphorical language. Still, he was getting the gist of it, far faster than I would have expected.
It killed me not to know what he was thinking behind those cold, dark eyes. I couldn’t even see the wheels turning. No body language gave me a clear clue of his thought process. I’d learned to pick up a few hints like the flicking wings and cocked head, the occasional chittering that came from his throat, and a very subtle increase in the rare times he blinked.
Did his eyeballs never dry out?
I was so deep in thought that when he dropped down to the sand in front of me straight out of the air above, I screamed aloud and jerked away from him. Fortunately, I didn’t hit my head this time. I wasn’t sure I could handle any more of his “tender” nursing of my wound.
I screamed again when he dropped a bloody chunk of gore onto my lap. I flung it off me, shaking my hands as blood coated them, dark and coagulated. It dropped to the sand with a sickening thud, staining the pale, nearly white grains beneath it.
I couldn’t identify what kind of flesh it was, or what part of whatever kind of body it came from, but I was only a little relieved to see that it had a patch of fur on it that didn’t look in any way human. In fact, the vivid coloring of the fur was startling and seemed unnatural. Bright magentas and greens rather than any color that existed in animal fur on Earth.
Subject 34 bent to scoop up the gory thing and tried to hand it back to me with one clawed lower hand, gesturing to my noisy stomach with the other.
“Huuun-gry,” he said in his growling voice. “Ssoundss huun-gry.”
I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat, adamantly turning my face away from the offering. “No thank you, 34.” I held up a hand like I could block that thing from getting any closer to me. “That’s not the kind of food I was thinking of eating. I’m gonna give that a hard pass, k. I’ll stick to fasting for a while.”
He stared down at me, the gory chunk that was as big as my head dripping nasty blood onto my already bloodstained lap. I worried he’d force that thing on me given the intensity of his posture. It looked like he was about to insist I eat it. I don’t know exactly how I knew that, but it could have been the way he was leaning slightly towards me, closing me in, wings spreading in agitation.
Or maybe it was the fact that his lips pulled into a true frown, which was a rare sight on his usually blank face.
I sighed in relief when he straightened and took a few steps away from me. Then I gulped and swallowed a bit harder when his face split open, and he lifted the grisly chunk of meat to it. Those clawed appendages darted out of his throat and started pulling off pieces of the raw flesh to masticate them before withdrawing them back into his gaping maw.
On the plus side, I no longer had an appetite. On the minus side, I was about to vomit all over this sand. I turned away, scooting my butt until I sat with my side against the rock instead of my back. I hummed loud enough to drown out the squishing sounds of him eating.
It didn’t take long for him to consume the whole, massive chunk of meat. I wasn’t sure what he’d do next, and I was hoping it didn’t involve bringing more of that stuff to me—not even to eat it in front of me.
Then his lower hand fell upon my shoulder, causing me to stiffen in alarm.
He didn’t touch me much, unless he was doing something to me that I probably shouldn’t want, but definitely did. When he did make contact with my skin in any capacity, it was only because he had intent behind his touch.
Affectionate, he was not.
In this case, I figured it was to get my attention, and when I turned towards him, I saw that he must have grown aroused by his meal.
His alien phallus stood fully erect and jutting from a slit in his body, where a small plate of chitin over his groin had retracted away from the opening just like his facial armor and pincers retracted.
“Okay then,” I said, my mouth instantly watering as the evidence of his arousal spurred my own, which had been slow boiling the entire time he’d crouched near me, sending his pheromones all over the place.
I pushed the image of him eating out of my head as I climbed to my knees, reaching to stroke his shaft with one hand that shook slightly.
Hey, he stings when he’s touched, so I was a little nervous. Not nervous enough to leave it alone, because I really wanted it inside me. I wanted him vibrating in my body until I climaxed, slowly pumping in and out of me in a way that told me he wasn’t really familiar with those motions.
He made a lot of sounds I couldn’t interpret, but he didn’t make a move to sting me when I circled my fingers around his thick girth. A drop of precum welled from the tip of his shaft as I slowly stroked from the base of it to the tip, moaning louder than the incomprehensible sounds he made.
Then one of his lower hands caught my chin, tightening on it until I gasped. As soon as my lips parted, he promptly probed them with the head of his dick.
Okay, I can do this. Hell, I even wanted to! It was a bit demanding on his part, but hey, we were still learning to communicate, and I kinda dug that dominating stuff—in small doses. I closed my lips around his oddly shaped tip, sucking it as deep as I could.
I was rewarded for my effort by a sudden burst of fluid into my mouth that had me choking and pulling back as I swallowed reflexively.
“Hey, I’m excited too, but next time, a little warning would be nice,” I said, though without much heat as I swiped my lips.
“Fffoodd,” he said with the effort he clearly put into shaping the words with lips that I don’t think he really knew how to use yet.
I blinked up at him in confusion, though I noted that he remained erect, my hand still circled around his shaft, the tip of it beaded now with drops of his ejaculate.
“Well, now things have gotten interesting,” Nirgal said in my ear, causing me to yelp in surprise, then quickly release Subject 34’s length.
I’d forgotten for a moment that we had watchers observing everything we did. I wasn’t much of an exhibitionist, and I especially wasn’t keen with having those creeps watching the show.
34 growled in a low, vibrating way that had his chest plates rattling, lowering his body into a crouch as he tilted his head near mine. His eyes had fixed on my ear, and I wondered if he could hear Nirgal’s tinny voice emanating from it.
“Don’t misinterpret his actions, human. He was not attempting to mate with you. He was trying to feed you.”
“What?” My voice rose to a piercing pitch with that question.
Subject 34 growled again, pressing his head against my ear as if he wanted to feel the vibrations of sound coming from it.
“It is remarkable, isn’t it? He can process nutrients within his body to produce a viable food source for others. It is one of many abilities he possesses when it comes to instinctively developing compounds for survival—many of which are not found in nature.”
Oh, Subject 34 heard Nirgal alright!
I had no doubt of that now that he was prodding at my ear as I tried to pull away from him. I didn’t think he liked what he was hearing either. I had no idea how much he could actually make out, but he was growling and chittering, and I took that as a bad sign.
34 held my head in place easily with one upper hand while he poked inside my ear with the other. His body dwarfed mine, his posture curling around me in an almost protective fashion while he sought the source of that sound. His lower hands penned me in against the rock while his upper hands were busy, so I couldn’t escape him.
Not that I could anyway. I watched with wide eyes as his stingers rose on either side of him, the lethal tips hovering far too close to my skin for comfort.
“The implant is too deep for him to remove it,” Nirgal said with serene confidence.
“Without piercing my skull, maybe,” I muttered bitterly, yelping when 34’s claw delved into my earhole.
“I don’t believe at this point he will harm you,” Nirgal replied thoughtfully even as Subject 34 lifted his head away from my face and withdrew his claw from my ear, staring down at me with a visible frown. “Something remarkable has happened. It appears he has chosen to claim you, because we have found no biological evidence that he’s imprinted on you.”
