Raptor King (Alien Beast Kings 1)

I feel safe. Super safe. And provided for, even though I’ve yet to taste even one of the weird fruits or maybe vegetables from his garden.

“You must have been here for a long time,” I say. “To have made all of this, to get plants to grow. That takes…” I don’t actually know how long it takes for plants to grow, but I know they're not quick. Plants are slow. It’s basically their only notable characteristic. If you speed them up with a camera, they go kinda buck wild, but under normal circumstances they're super slow. So anyway. He's been here a while, and it doesn't take a genius to work that out.

“I have not had a conversation with anything that could talk back in many moons,” he says. “I will enjoy having you.”

I feel this warm glow in my stomach that kind of spreads out all through me, all down my arms and legs, finding my fingers and my toes. I haven’t been wanted in a while. I’ve practically felt invisible.

I don't know how good I should really feel about being the companion of a male so desperate to talk to literally anyone he’d probably have found the weasel guy at the bank to be decent company. But I’m going to feel good anyway, because fuck it. If today has taught me anything, it's that reality is garbage and your feelings don’t need to reflect it.

“I think I might like being here too,” I smile at him.

There’s chemistry between us. It’s undeniable. There's a hot kind of desperation we both share, though for different reasons. He hasn’t been laid in ages because he’s been here alone. I haven’t been laid in ages because everybody became a disease-carrying danger. It was not sexy.

A soft breeze whips around the both of us. It takes the curtain of his hair and lifts it sideways across his face for a moment, perfectly framing the beautiful angularity of his ever-so-handsome visage. He has a strong, wise face which also holds no small hint of brutality.

I look around, because staring at him is starting to make me feel hot and I’m blushing and I don't know what to do with myself. This all happened so quickly. One moment I was living a normal, if fucked up life, and the next I find myself in a primordial heaven.

It’s like Eden, almost. A perfect, unspoiled, prehistoric world in which an alien Adam and a human Eve get a second chance. I’m aware that the kind of thinking I’m currently engaging in might be called a delusion of grandeur by the sort of people who diagnose that sort of thing, but it fits. He and I are the only people here.

He’s looking at me with an expression which makes me fizz all over. He opens his mouth, and I find myself holding my breath as I wait to hear what he has to say. There is a pregnancy to this moment. I think he’s going to say something…

“May I see your mating parts?”

“What?”

That went from charming to something else real fucking quick.

“I am curious as to whether we are physically compatible.”

Oh god. My face is flushing bright red. I can feel my pulse in my ears like a drum, and all sorts of nervous feelings are rushing through me. I too, am curious, I guess, but wow. I did not expect him to say that. I guess he doesn’t know about human sexual politics. I’ll have to educate him.

“It’s not common where I come from to show my… mating parts… to males I have just met.”

“Ah. You need a few minutes.”

He says it in such a deadpan way I almost think he’s serious, but then he smiles and I can let the breath I’m holding out. He’s hot. He’s very hot. So it’s not that I don’t want him, but the idea of him seeing me naked, like, right now, that’s intimidating as hell. What would he think of my body? And would I be… compatible with whatever parts he has? He could have anything down there. He could have something that’s round, or maybe triangular.

“Are you hungry?”

I am so damn pleased he changed the subject, and I am even more glad that he changed it to something to do with food. I am incredibly hungry. Even more hungry than the dinosaur which tried to eat me earlier.

“I am hungry.”

“Good. I prepared myself a generous lunch before I heard you screaming in the distance. It may still be warm.”

“Where is it?”

He points to a somewhat steaming hole in the ground. I am suitably confused.

“You eat the dirt?”

“No. It is beneath the soil. The soil keeps it warm, and the hot rocks beneath cook it in the first place. It’s a rather ingenious method, don’t you think?”

“Sure. Ingenious. The earth is your oven and all.”