Page 5 of Argurma Monster

Surprised, he stared at her blankly. “I do not understand.”

“What do you want from me?” she rephrased, jabbing her thumb toward her chest. “What is it exactly that you are expecting?”

The tips of his vibrissae curled with uncertainty. He did not know if she would like his answer, and he did not wish for her to become angrier with him.

“Well?”

“I do not think you will process the gravity of my answer,” he replied.

She flung her hand in the air and exhaled loudly. “Just lay it on me. I’m stuck on this island with no one and nothing else but you. So what is it that drove you to save me? You want to eat me? Fuck me?”

“Yes,” he purred, his eyes slitting.

She frowned, her eyes narrowing suspiciously on him. “Which one is it?” she bit out.

His tongue flicked over his bottom lip. He would not mind tasting her. “Both,” he purred and slowly rose to his feet as she shot up from her chair despite her obvious pain. “Do not do that again,” he cautioned.

“Fuck you,” she snapped. “I may have flirted and played it up to the other alien to get off this planet but I sure as hell am not letting you cannibalize me.”

Talech cocked his head, his nostrils flaring as he drew in her scent for his database to analyze. “You smell good. I just want totaste you. And I want your wet quin to squeeze around my civix as I breed you.”

Beverly made a choking sound, and her hand snapped up into the air to ward him off. “First of all,no oneis gettingbredaround here, so get that thought out of your head. No breeding. None. Second of all—the closest you are going to get to tasting anything is if you raid my discarded underwear.”

“Acceptable... for now,” he amended.

He did not mind starting small. He was a determined male. Unfortunately, she balked at his ready agreement, her eyes widening at him. She scrubbed her hand over her face.

“There is not enough coffee on this island for this.”

“Coffee stores,” he rumbled quietly and immediately hooked into the building’s mainframe, or rather what little was active with the emergency energy supply running.

That he had got it on at all had been against considerable odds. He rooted around through the system and eventually brought up the supply stock. As Beverly said, there had been no recent orders of supplies for the medical unit. Provisions in general appeared dangerously low, far lower than he would expect for a vacant place. For some reason this male she mentioned—Richards—had not been making orders for some time before the system collapsed.

“No coffee,” he announced.

She immediately buried her face in her hand and whimpered. “Just kill me now. No drugs. No coffee. How the hell did Meg and Kaylar survive here for so long with fucking coffee? That’s it. This is officially hell.”

“Hell...a place of punishment?” he queried. “You are being punished?”

She gave him an annoyed look. “I would say so right now.” She groaned and dropped her head into her hand again. “Goaway, Talech, and give me some time alone to kick the walls or something.”

He peered at her for a long moment but grunted as he stood. “Do not harm yourself. This facility held many terrible things, but you are the one good thing for me. In all the pain, it was you I saw. You will live,” he said firmly. He turned away but glanced back at her. “Sleep and heal, Beverly.”

With those parting words, he left her to her thoughts. He would not go far but he would give her the space she required.

Chapter 5

Beverly jerked away, sweat pouring off her, and nearly doubled over at the piercing agony within her side. She clasped her hand to the bandage, panting raggedly. It was just a dream, a terrible dream. Her throat felt raw, and she knew she had been screaming, but it was nothing compared to the deep, clawing ache of her wounds. She swallowed back her cry as she sagged against her bed, rocking with agony. She whimpered in the darkness but heard another sound in the far corner of the room that made her eyes part to stare blindly in that direction.

“Who is it? Who’s there?” she croaked.

A low, pitiful, pained moan rose in response that made her skin prickle, and her heart clenched as she heard the rasp of familiar words that had long tormented her during her stasis. “Bring her to me. Please. Please. No more. No more. Please. Beverly. Griiga.”

Her tongue wetted her cracked bottom lip as she slowly rolled to the edge of the bed, her eyes watering with the pain as her stitches pulled sending daggers of agony through her.

“Talech?” she whispered, and she grunted as her feet dropped to the floor before crying out in pain as her ravaged torso protested.

She nearly crumpled to the floor right then and there, but she caught her weight against the wall and stood there for a long moment as she dragged in labored breaths until she stabilized enough to inch one foot forward. One foot and then another, she crept toward him, forcing herself to stumble across the room as she slid her hands along the wall, his grunts and cries of pain shredding her heart even as they pulled her like an invisible string.

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