Page 46 of Stranded with the Alien

He hefted his laser-blade and his eyes gleamed.

“I am going hunting.”

He loped into the gathering darkness.

Kara stood in the rain for a few more moments until the night chill drove her back into the tent.

Stripping off her shirt and trousers, she wrung them out and lay them in a corner. Her underwear would just have to dry off while she was wearing them. No way was she getting naked with Vahn around.

Now that the immediate danger of dying of thirst had been averted, the memory of how she’d kissed him made her cringe with embarrassment. Sweet Jesus, what had she been thinking? She’d practically thrown herself at him. She wanted to curl up and die.

She wondered what he’d thought about it. He hadn’t kissed her back, but he hadn’t exactly stopped her. He was twice her size, he could have easily pushed her away. Or used his serpetri to knock her out again. He hadn’t done either.

Maybe he was just being polite. Or maybe he felt bad for you because you were all needy and desperate.

Her cheeks burned with mortification. She’d only kissed him because she thought they were about to die, she thought defiantly. Totally understandable. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that.

She pulled on Vahn’s jacket. It was way too big on her – big enough that it covered her from neck to knee. Good. She didn’t want to give him the wrong idea.

What, like the idea you gave him when you snogged him?

“Oh, shut up,” she muttered.

She sat in the opening of the tent and watched the rain for a while, letting the sound of the downpour soothe her. There were barely any stars visible, the night sky obscured by rain clouds. So she didn’t see Vahn until he suddenly metamorphosed out of the dark right in front of her.

“Shit!”

She jumped out of her skin. Vahn grinned mischievously and squatted in front of her. Rain dripped from his hair and face. He was holding what looked like a fish and his pockets were bulging.

“Here.”

He threw something to her. It was some kind of fruit, spherical and firm with satiny skin and a stalk where presumably it had been attached to a tree.

“Is it edible?” God, she hoped it was. It looked just like the peach she’d been fantasizing about.

“Yes. I tested one with mydendra.”

“Your…?”

He held out one of his serpetri and showed her the tiny bumps at the end. The bumps she knew could open into little sucking, pulsing craters.

“They are rudimentary gustatory receptors.”

“Come again?”

“In Earth vernacular, taste buds.”

Kara very carefully kept her face immobile.

“You can taste stuff with your tentacles?”

“With my serpetri. Yes.”

So back at the cave, when you had that thing inside me, you were able to TASTE me?

She swallowed, hoping he wouldn’t notice how flustered she was by his revelation. Fortunately his attention was elsewhere. He was busy adjusting the tent flaps so they formed an awning over the entrance, creating a little porch which shielded them from the rain.

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