After half an hour of walking, I start to tire. The sun is beating down on me and making me sweat through my clothes. It starts to hit me that I’m no longer in the modern world. I can’t use a washer and dryer to clean my pants and underwear. I can’t replace my shirt if it rips. In fact, if these Aurelians are any indication, the fashion of this planet is heavily skewed towards loincloths.
Forn turns and sees my weariness. For a second, he looks as if he’s about to pick me up and throw me over his shoulder, so I pick up the pace.
This is fucking insane. I’m on a jungle planet with three Aurelians. A week ago, I would have said I’d hated Aurelians…
I swallow hard, trying to get my head straight. I’m going to be joining a very primitive society. A primitive society that hopefully, if Lord Tenderfoot was correct, has a method of communication between these Aurelians and the likes of Diana and myself.
But what if that miracle reveals that this whole time, the three gorgeous Aurelians are just a trio of assholes? Maybe I was so attracted to them because I couldn’t understand them.
My foot gets caught in a divot and I tumble forward. The soft earth makes a good cushion for my fall. Instantly, the three Aurelians are all around me. I blink, the sun blinding me, and accept Forn’s hand as he helps me back up to my feet.
He towers over me, his shadow blocking the hot sun for a merciful moment. I’m so close to his rippling muscles that I feel a hot shudder of lust through my body.
Gods! If he wanted to, he could lean down and kiss me right now, and I’d just melt in his embrace.
I pull my hand away from Forn’s a little too angrily. If there’s hurt in his green-flecked eyes, he doesn’t show it. I feel attached to these three warriors, and I worry that’s ridiculous. I haven’t understood a single word spoken by them yet, and still I foolishly feel like I already know them.
Forn is courageous, but cares deeply for the safety of his two friends. Hadone is reckless, willing to risk his life for glory. Darok is strong and silent, bordering on dour - although now he looks at me with trust instead of suspicion.
“Tammy,” says Forn, tasting my name on my lips. Hearing him say it makes me shudder.
I want these men. I don’t just want one of them. I want all three.
“That boy likes you,” whispers Diana from behind me. I can’t help but feel color coming to my face.
My face is red because of the hot sun and the long hike. I’m not going to blush like some schoolgirl.
But I am blushing. I’m blushing like a virgin… because I am one. Back in the tent was the closest I’ve ever come to losing my innocence. When you spend your days barely eking out a meager existence, and protecting children with what little extra you have, it’s hard to trust men or even find time for them.
Poor Runner. Tod, Tyler and Stacy will all have beautiful lives, but he is going to be indoctrinated into further hatred by the Viceroy.
I can’t let myself think of that, not right now. While he’s young, Runner made his choice – and I made mine. I could have chosen to be an outlaw on my home planet. I could have run from the law, and been hounded by the Viceroy’s troops for the rest of my life.
Instead, I choose to follow three almost-strangers back to a distant, alien jungle somewhere lost beyond the edges of the universe.
And yet, I’d make the same decision in a heartbeat.
Two of those strangers have already tasted my lips.
I shudder, trying to push that thought out of my mind. We set off walking again. The edge of the jungle is deceptively far away, and my legs are already aching – but I’ve got too much pride to ask for help. I already feel too dependent on these Aurelians to survive on this jungle planet. I won’t let them pick me up.
Maybe the Aurelians could massage me tonight…
I shiver at the thought, then angrily snap myself out of it.
Focus, Tammy! Focus!
I turn to Diana and respond to her comment from earlier.
“He’s not a boy,” I answer back – and it was true. Forn towers over the both of us. One in a million humans might be seven feet tall, but they aren’t built like these three Aurelians are. These alien warriors are wide. Huge, broad shoulders swollen with massive muscles that make me feel so small and vulnerable in their shadow – and yet so protected and desired at the same time.
“Oh Gods, how much longer?” Diana sighs, and when I turn my head she blushes. I can tell she meant to keep the complaint in her head.
I feel bad. It was cruel to think of her as ‘just’ a spoiled royal. She’s been through hell. Snatched up from her family, imprisoned, and barely making it out alive? I didn’t have anything left to fight for back on my home planet – everything I’d worked for and everyone I’d ever known or cared about had been killed or burnt to a crisp in the firebombing.
Diana, on the other hand, had been forced to abandon a life of luxury she’d been born into, and now she was alone on a jungle planet where her last name carried no weight or meaning.
While I have fears that the Aurelians will stop caring about me when they find out the truth of how they came to find me, Diana doesn’t even have a single alien warrior looking after her.
As we get closer to the edge of the jungle, I realize I have no idea of what’s awaiting me there.
Do the Aurelians
