One
“Bad. Girl.”
Those two words are electric. I crave them because they’re true, and because they always come before I get what I most need from the alien who rules me. I stretch out in what looks like submission, but is actually invitation. I arch my back and I present the softest parts of me for his hardest punishment.
Obedience is everything to a king. He rules because his subjects obey.
I am this king’s sole subject.
I am the totality of his realm.
I am all he owns.
And he commands me completely.
Swish… crack!
His lash lands across my heated skin, and I know it is because I have committed the single sin which will always result in swift discipline. I hide my face in feathers and skins, both to muffle my cries and hide my perverse little smile.
* * *
Earlier…
“GGGGRAWRRRGGHGHRRR!”
The sound a dinosaur makes before it eats you runs through to your very marrow, vibrates every bone in your body and makes you realize that Mondays aren't actually that fucking bad.
I am crouching down behind a plant, which is absolutely useless in terms of protecting me from the creature which has to be at least fifty feet tall, or maybe more, or less, who fucking knows. It’s very big, that’s the important part — and the thing about dinosaurs not being able to see you if you’re sitting still? That’s absolutely not true. Because they also have nostrils and they can smell you. This one is smelling me real fucking good.
I pull my sweater down over my knees, as if that might help, as if the dinosaur might think I am a cartoon shaped rock. The smug ginger faced cat smiles up at me from the sweater. I thought it was cute when I bought it. Now it just seems, well, silly. Everything seems silly. I used to worry about things like, well, I can’t remember. This situation has turned my mind blank and reduced both my knees and my brain to jelly.
The beast lunges at me with an open mouth, teeth a matter of inches from my face. Every single one of them, even the smaller ones, is longer than my entire head. It is snapping at me, not biting me directly. It wants to see what I am made of. I suspect it will discover shortly that the answer is mostly meat with a bit of bone and just a hint of resigned disappointment at how my life has turned out.
Do I scream? Do I run? Do I do anything at all to save myself? I do not, because when something this big wants to turn you into a snack, there’s some very old part of your brain which just says oh, okay, fair enough then. It’s nature’s special magic at work.
“GETTOUTATHERE! GEDDOODOFIT! GITAWAY YOU BASTARD!”
Someone is screaming at the murderous dinosaur the sort of way you yell at your dog when it is busy barking at the postman.
A weird hysterical giggle escapes my throat. What is happening? There is no way anything the size of a small building is going to respond to lecturing. You would need heavy artillery and air support to deal with a monster of this size.
Something is coming through the trees. Something massive. Something which leads with a horn the size of my entire leg, followed by a head which is even larger. For a bizarre moment, I am certain that there’s another dinosaur yelling at the first dinosaur. Then I see that the second dinosaur is not only a completely different kind of dinosaur, but it is being ridden by a massive alien.
He is definitely not a man, though he is definitely male. He is a something else. He comes rushing through the undergrowth astride his massive mount, bare chest rippling with all sorts of incredible muscles. Dark hair flows from his head in a magnificent, silky curtain. He wears a sort of crown on his head. If a human wore it, I’d call it a tiara, but he’s far too aggressively masculine to call it that. Aside from that, he is wearing the attire of a wild man. A tunic and leggings, both made from the skins of beasts, and both fit him like a second skin.
The dinosaur lifts its head from me, stares at him, and rushes off at high speed with what I can only call an apologetic shriek. Just like that, it is gone and I’m left staring, still frozen in place from where I froze in place previously. My body is conserving all its energy for freaking the fuck out later, I guess.
“Sorry,” the blue and green man with the incredible black eyes and the even more incredible dark hair says. “Boris is young. And hungry.”
“Uhhh. That’s okay. He’s pretty cute, isn't he.”
I am using the same mental script I used when idiots didn’t control their dogs in my real life. I should be furious, but the sheer social awkwardness of going off on a stranger means I pretend it’s all fine.