Page 56 of Bred

“I do,” Shank says.

“Do you have twice as many dicks too? Or is it one for each arm? Do you have four?”

“No, that’s Talon’s department.” He shoots me a look that sobers me somewhat. “Your experience has changed you a great deal,” he says in a flat sort of voice that makes it hard to tell if he thinks that is a good thing or a bad thing.

“Has it? I don’t think so. I’m the same as I remember myself being.”

“You had little impulse control to begin with, you now seem to have none at all. You open your mouth and say whatever you are thinking.”

“Well, yeah, why not? What is there to lose? I already lost my mind.”

“Talon will not put up with disrespect, and nor will I.”

I look over at Talon, then back at this guy, Shank. What is his problem? He literally just walked into the room, I asked him about his dick situation, and now he’s lecturing me. I haven’t even done anything wrong. I wasn’t thinking about doing anything wrong. I was just eating fries and counting arms.

He’s handsome, but I don’t know if I like him. I can’t imagine myself ever having gotten on with someone like him. He’s so serious and so stern. He’s like a walking buzzkill. Talon manages to be authoritative without coming across like a celestial hall monitor.

“What are you going to do about it if I am?”

He looks at me, and a smile spreads his lips. I get the sense that this is a rare occurrence for him; the expression looks uncomfortable on his face, and leaves as quickly as it can.

“You truly don’t remember, do you? We will be doing everything twice over, the second time the same as the first.”

“So, I guess that means it will be sort of confusing, and you’ll be really vague?”

The silver eyes flash at me. “Let me be clear, then. When you misbehave, little human, you are punished.”

“Let me be clear,” I reply, pointing a fry at him. “I have it on reliable information that I saved your ass, so how about I do whatever I want, and you take it down a notch or six.”

Talon makes a sound that might be a muffled laugh as the silver-eyed, very tall, multi-armed man strides across the room toward where I am sitting and looks down at me from his great, hard height.

“You want me to punish you, I see.”

“I want you to take a seat and chill. God. I’m eating here.”

To my surprise, he actually does sit down across from me. He is a very different creature from Talon in every respect, though I can sense he is equally powerful in different ways.

“You don’t recall being on this ship? What is the last thing you remember before you regained consciousness on your planet?”

“I don’t know. I just remember like, life things. Vague things. The routine of it all. I used to go up, look around, come down.”

Shank nods. “So this ship isn’t familiar to you, and nor is the captain?”

“Oh, I got familiar with him,” I smile. “Real familiar.”

Talon was having a drink. He makes a snorting sound into the vessel containing his beverage.

“Two dicks, familiar,” I add, in case anyone didn’t understand what I was getting at.

“I understand,” Shank says. He is staring at me with those eyes that look like they should belong to an angel, or a fluorescent sign.

I eat my meal and stare back. I guess it must be weird for them to see me again after such a long time.

Talon sits down next to me and together the three of us sit in a silence that should be awkward, but isn’t—at least until I finish eating.

“What now?”

“What now, is you need a medical scan.”

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