Page 8 of Bred

“Oh, my...”

I’m stunned. His body is even more muscular and brutal than I thought possible. His form is vaguely human, but much larger and much more aggressive. There are hard lines running between his muscles, delineating them much more clearly than any human male. His skin has that faint gray hue that grows darker at the junctures of his muscled planes. I look down, and...

“Oh.”

“What?”

“You don’t have a penis?”

It’s a blunt question, but shock robs me of tact. He is full Ken doll down there, a hard plated ridge between his thighs rather than any kind of testicles or penis or anything. I expected to see something large and perhaps, given the rest of him, barbed.

He smirks, his wild face transforming into a thing of even more terrifying expression. “Our species holds the male member inside the body cavity until it is to be used,” he explains. “It is poor design which leaves the male genitals flopping about outside the body.”

I suppose he’s correct about that. The human body is riddled with little evolutionary design flaws. This male could never be kicked in the balls. I feel a little embarrassed at having asked such a bold, genital-related question, so I change the subject.

“What happened to my ship?”

“It was incinerated when it hit our shields.”

Caddy thinks I’m dead, then. Everybody does. They’ll put it down to spontaneous shuttle failure. It happens every now and then, nobody knows why. Maybe I do now.

The water laps at my skin, a gentle luxury. Down on Earth, water is a limited resource. I haven’t had a bath in years. There’s no excuse for it based on water restrictions. You’d have to save up your allotment for months to get enough to fill a tub this high, and you’d have died of thirst by then.

“What are you going to do with me?”

That’s the real question. Missing penises and exploded shuttles aside, what I most need to know is what my fate will be. He doesn’t seem interested in hurting me, which I am exceptionally grateful for. But he has also said he won’t return me to the surface, and that means I’m his captive.

“That remains to be seen.”

“That’s not an answer which inspires confidence. I really just want to go home. What if I promise not to say anything?”

“Your promise doesn’t hold much weight, Lyra Patrovich. You would have no reason to keep it.”

“But I can’t leave Earth. I had so much there.”

“You had family? A lover?”

“Well, no, but...”

“Why not?”

That question catches me off guard, but doesn’t surprise me. Everyone asks some form of it when they get to know me. “Because becoming a member of space patrol was my goal, not becoming someone’s wife.”

“You wanted to see space, so this is perfect.”

“Yes, but... not like this.”

“In what way not like this?”

“Not as a captive.”

He smiles again. It’s going to take me some time to get used to his smiles. They’re razor sharp and the way his face moves is entrancing. Each of his expressions makes him look almost like a different creature altogether. I think it is something in the way the razor brows move. They retract a little when he is being nice. The various planes of his face seem to be mobile. His cheekbones can rise and fall, his eyes can narrow or widen, but not in the soft-lidded way mine can. His plated bone structures seem to actually shift. He is so completely alien, I don’t know how to read him. I don’t know what to expect from him.

“Would you like an orgasm, Lyra Patrovich?”

“What?” The question is so incongruous, and so entirely intuitive.

“You need to release tension,” he says. “Orgasm is the most effective means of achieving release. Would you like to orgasm?”

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