Page 12 of Her Alien Warrior
"No need," he dismissed, obviously unaffected by whether I was here or not, and it made me feel even more foolish for having my clit think with my eyeballs and not my brain. "Your guardian will be using my offices until she is cleared to rejoin her study group, or a stasis pod becomes available. We will begin your studies with observation of the communal spaces from here." He waved his hand to the large screen that took up the entire wall, and one of the tiles expanded and showed a room withfood dispensers, lounge chairs, and even a workout area where a few large warriors sparred with one another.
"What do you notice?" he asked my daughter, and she stepped forward to observe the room.
She pinched her lower lip with her forefinger and thumb before I saw that her eyes widened with an idea, but she hesitated to say what she thought. You can do it little bean, I thought, rooting for her as I watched.
He prompted her, which eased my worry that she would start off too shy to let him know that she knew the answer, "No question is dumb, no observation is without merit, and you can't focus your efforts without first starting somewhere. What do you see?" His eyes left the screen and instead of watching my daughter and awaiting her answer, those amber orbs stared at me. I knew exactly what I saw there, he was a competent, smart, capable man and I was just a human barely good enough to be researched.
"Uh," Becky cleared her throat, "they are barely interacting with each other, and we want to test their attraction, which can't be done if they keep to themselves."
"Correct, and how do you suppose we can promote their interaction without influencing who they bond with?" He still didn't return his gaze to the screens, and I fidgeted in my seat wondering what he was thinking.
"You can't," she said with disappointment.
"Alsotrue," he motioned for us to pay attention to the screens once more, "but there is still something to be learned from placing them in situations that promote an opportunity to bond. Let us observe as the first influence is added to our subjects." He strolled over to his desk and tapped out some commands on its surface, then sat back as another screen split the wall, to a side room and a human was brought into the room with an alien sitting in the center, strapped to the chair.
I gasped, wondering if the warrior was okay.
General Sou-el assured us both that he willingly participated in this experiment.
The human male groaned but proceeded to approach the necia warrior in the room on the screen that took up the whole wall, making the room feel like we shared it with them. General Sou-el spoke and his voice echoed in the room asking the human to touch one of the warrior's epul while he was immobilized. I could now understand why they had the warrior restrained, because I doubted a human would touch one of those spikes otherwise. They were walking weapons, but though General Sou-el had large epul from his own shoulders, they hadn't harmed me when his tongue was on my neck. I shivered at the memory.
The human being observed touched the base of the epul, where he thought he wouldn't be injured, and the necia warrior shuddered, his nostrils flared, and the human backed up.
"Excellent," the general praised and then asked him to lift his wrist up to the warrior's mouth, but out of reach. He did so and the warrior strapped down, licked his lips and parted them to reveal fangs. Sou-el praised the human male again and then another human came in and did the same steps with the same necia warrior.
While the experiment progressed, General Sou-el would glance back at me and watch as if I too were being observed for some purpose and then he said, "For every study, it is to gain an understanding. With the current stimulus, what kinds of information or understanding could be inferred? We've asked our participants to touch briefly, and have a warrior smell them, then leave. Think on it, and I'll ask again when we've finished with Mouvdeh, the warrior participating currently."
He was so thoughtful, and I smiled at how he was going to be a great teacher and mentor for my daughter. I thought about his question as well, and how the warrior reacted to that first human's scent and touch. His fangs extended, and it was like he wanted to eat them. My imagination went back to how Sou-el touched me, and his fangs dragged across my neck as he licked me. I clenched the chair I sat in, and my heart rate spiked. I could feel my blood pumping and making my ears pulse, possibly causing a rash of nerves like before.
Though General Sou-el's eyes were on the screen and directing my daughter on things to observe about the interaction, his nostrils flared as I watched him. I crossed my legs, and licked mydry lips, hoping I was imagining things. But another part of me hoped I wasn't. Was I crushing on my daughter's mentor?
The whole morning, they repeated the experiment with the same warrior and different humans, until my stomach was growling, and both my daughter and the general turned to see I was still there, and very much hungry. I had sat on the couch watching in fascination at what I could expect when I rejoined my group. Much of the time, I simply stared at the way Sou-el moved, his attention to details, and the way he patiently explained things.
Some humans refused to follow the instructions and Sou-el did not force them to comply. He simply gave them the same praise for being honest about their instincts and asked them to return to the communal room to continue enjoying themselves.
The more I watched, the more my fear faded, and I wouldn't be forced to do anything that I didn't want to do. I could rejoin my group if the researcher in charge handled things the same way Sou-el did. I stared between my daughter and Sou-el just as much as I watched the screen.
He rolled his shoulders multiple times like he was uncomfortable, and I wondered if that had to do with his secondary bone structure that the epul spikes came from. They were still hidden beneath his skin, those large shoulder ones were probably hidden within his back muscles, and he'd rubbed at his scales, multiple times during theexperiment.
"We will resume the observation with the next warrior after we allow them free time to explore the ship or consume energy from the food dispensers," General Sou-el said while stepping away from his desk and the screen showed the restraints on the warrior in the room release him.
"General," the warrior spoke out into the room knowing he could be heard, and the General stopped to listen.
"Yes, Mouvdeh?"
"Who was that first human?"
"I've secured our comm," Sou-el said first and then added, "Do not complete your bond until you reach Trillume if you wish to see that human again. May the goddess bless your bond."
"A name?" the warrior repeated.
"William," Sou-el informed, and then cut the line, the screen going back to a tile on the wall as it was this morning.
"General?" my daughter questioned what just happened, and I was curious as well.
"I will not disgrace the goddess by keeping mates apart from each other. A warrior knows when they have met their mate. What I'm looking for is finding bonds that are not more than physical. This experiment is about attraction, but a mate is more than attraction for a necia warrior. I will allow him the chance to prove himself to his mate. Many do not find that bond, and what they feel is merely physical. For those, I will continue withthe study, but what did you see when he interacted with the other humans versus the first?"
Becky hesitated but then sighed in resignation. "After the first one he had no visible reaction."
