Lion Man's Captive, Kaitlyn O'Connor [top fiction books of all time .txt] 📗

thing, either. In anycase, she couldn’t figure out any reason why the alien invaderswould’ve sent these things down. That was probably the most bizarreway to invade another planet that had ever been thought up! Surelythey would’ve used technology?

The alien—Aidan—nudged her andindicated with a jerk his head that he wanted her to followhim.

Duh! Like she was going to go the otherway!

Particularly when he had thelight.

Her bare butt felt cold and wet whenshe got on her hands and knees to follow him, reminding her thatshe hadn’t had more than a couple of sips of water since the daybefore. The hope that the pipe might lead to a reservoir encouragedher to ignore the pain the rough concrete inflicted as shecrawled—to a degree. She paused after a few minutes and pulled thesleeves down over her palms. There was nothing she could do for herknees, unfortunately, and the crawling was way worse on them thanher palms.

She began to consider whether she wasmore worried about her modesty or her knees and decided the hellwith it. The jacket was way big on her. She thought the sleevesmight cover her legs.

Stopping again, she pulled the jacketoff and shoved her legs into the sleeves. It was a struggle to gether feet through the wrist holes, but she managed it and pulled thejacket up around her boobs. When she’d finished adjusting thejacket she discovered Aidan had stopped to see what she wasdoing.

She could well imagine what was goingthrough his mind, but he didn’t say anything. He merely turned andcontinued crawling.

The makeshift trousers werea mixed success. The sleeves fit her legs pretty tightly, butthey did protecther knees and shins. It was loose everywhere else, though, and shehad to keep pausing to adjust it.

They’d been crawling for an hour ortwo, pausing to rest briefly about every fifteen minutes or so,when Aidan stopped in front of her again. Instead of turning andsitting down as he had been doing, though, he remained motionlesslong enough to arouse her curiosity. She discovered when she leanedover to peer around him that there was an iron grate blocking theirpath.

“Could anything elsepossibly go wrong?” shewondered out loud, dismayed and envisioning another several hourscrawling back the way they’d come.

Aidan settled his light on the bottomof the culvert and sat back on his legs. The pipe was small enoughhe was still hunched over as he grasped the bars with his hands andshook them experimentally. Anya hadn’t expected them to move atall. A flicker of hopefulness went through her when she saw thatthey were loose.

“Can you get it out, youthink?”

He flicked a glance at her face. Hisgaze moved downward from there to her boobs for a few seconds andthen he returned his attention to the grate that was blocking theirpath.

Anya hiked the jacket up again, butalthough it flashed through her mind that he seemed way moreinterested in her anatomy than she would’ve thought an alien wouldbe, she didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on it.

Correction—more interested in heranatomy in what seemed like a sexual way.

Then again, she’d heard of men screwinganimals—no firsthand knowledge of that, but when rumors persistedthere was usually some truth somewhere.

Not that she considered herself in thatlight, but he was an alien from a race capable of spacetravel—across vast distances, because they sure as hell weren’tfrom the ‘backyard’. They would probably consider humans as fardown the chain as humans did monkeys, wouldn’t they?

They must or they wouldn’t haveinvaded, she thought angrily. Surely they wouldn’t treat a speciesthey considered equals like they had?

Honesty compelled her to reconsiderthat assessment, though, when she thought about all the wars humanshad waged between themselves.

Was it a territorial thing, then? Thetypical ‘you have something we want and we’re stronger so we’regoing to take it’ thing that humans did to one another?

“Get back,”Aidan said, breaking into her thoughts.

Anya stared at him blankly since shedidn’t understand what he was saying, but he moved back,repositioning himself, almost as soon as he said it and she backedoff instinctively to get out of his way.

Bracing himself with his hands, helifted his legs and began pounding at the grate with his feet. Anyacovered her ears since the noise inside the small tunnel waspainfully loud. Thankfully, it didn’t take him more than a fewminutes of pounding before the grate came loose and fell throughthe hole.

Picking up his light, Aidan extended itinto the area beyond and discovered that it was far larger than thetunnel they’d been following. The bottom dropped several feet fromthe pipe where they were. Scooting to the edge, he dropped,straightened to his full height with a sense of relief and turnedto the female. He saw she’d followed him and was peering down fromthe tunnel.

It was ingrained courtesy thatcompelled him to offer to help her down and yet when he’d caughther against his chest, pulled her from the pipe, and lowered heruntil her feet touched the bottom he was far more aware of her as awoman than he wanted to be. She didn’t feel like an alien female ofanother species. She felt like the women he was accustomedto.

That made it hard to view her asnothing more than a specimen he’d collected as proof of histheory.

Frowning, he let her go,trying to ignore her as she sat down to tug the sleeves of hisjacket off of her legs. It would’ve been easier if he hadn’t gottena really good look at her genitals as she did. That image seemed to burn itself intohis brain.

Dragging his gaze from her with aneffort as she began trying to struggle into the jacket againwithout unfastening the front closure, he lifted the light andexamined what he could of the space they found themselves in. Thelarger tunnel seemed to go on for miles. He didn’t see any way out,any choice for them except to continue to follow thestructure.

It was evidence of a higherintelligence in and of itself, though, not nearly as impressive assome of their technology would be, but certainly worth recording.Lifting his arm, he used the camera on his computer to collect someimages, frowning when he saw there wasn’t enough light to record asclear images as he’d hoped.