Read Aliena for Free Online Page B

expecting to have sex at the moment. To sing without mating, merely reaffirming our camaraderie, our love.”
    “I can do that, now that I understand.” Then she sang her note, and he joined in with “Aliena.”
    Farther along they heard a siren. “Pull over to the side,” he told her. “Slow down, stop if necessary. That sound means there is an emergency vehicle that needs to have the right of way. It is one of the rules of the road.”
    “Rules of the road,” she repeated, slowing as she drew to the side. In moments the ambulance passed rapidly, going the other way.
    “Now resume,” he said. “We have been good citizens.”
    “I am learning so much from you,” she said appreciatively.
    The lights were on in the city and in the suburbs as they arrived. Their block was bright. And sure enough, there was a car parked before Aliena’s house. Her people had returned.
    “Please, kiss me, this one time,” she said as she brought the car to a halt.
    Brom didn’t argue. He put his face to hers and kissed her on the mouth. This time there seemed to be a kind of desperation in her response. She really was afraid of what was coming. So was he, possibly for different reason.
    There were a man and a woman by the house: Sam and Martha. They turned as the car stopped, and forged toward them. Martha was at this moment one grim woman, and Sam looked like death supercharged. Brom could tell just by looking at the man that he was more than capable of murder.
    Aliena got out on her side of the car and faced them. Brom did the same on his side. “Alice! Where have you been?” Martha demanded.
    “I took her to the beach,” Brom replied for her.
    “We swam naked,” Aliena added helpfully as Brom winced.
    “That will be enough of that,” Sam said.
    “Did he hurt you?” Martha asked.
    “He mated me.”
    Both people froze in place. Then Sam spoke. “Get out of here, man, and don’t look back. You have no idea what you’re messing into.”
    “No!” Aliena said. “Brom stays.”
    “Dear, Sam will handle it,” Martha said. “The man won’t bother you again. Come inside. We must check you for damage.” Sam endorsed her words by slamming a massive fist into his palm. This was obviously serious mischief.
    “I damaged not am! You are whom with associate to self tell who may?” Alien demanded angrily, garbling her words as she did when disturbed. There was an imperative tone Brom had not heard from her before. As if she were a princess, and these her servants.
    They stared at her, evidently taken aback. They had probably never seen her so angry before, and neither had Brom.
    “If I may translate,” Brom said, emboldened by Aliena’s distress, “she is telling you to fuck off, asshole.”
    “Endorsement!” Aliena agreed. “Copulate distantly, colon terminus!”
    Martha glanced at Sam. “It seems he is in the picture. You had better brief him.”
    “I’d better,” Sam agreed grimly.
    Aliena faced Sam, her whole body shaking. “Talk only will you. Touch not. Him tell all.” She glared, and Sam actually paled as if rebuked by a superior. She was definitely a princess.
    “Understood,” Sam said.
    Now Aliena turned to Brom, her hauteur melting into concern. “Go with him, beloved. Listen to what he says. When, if, if you return, I will welcome you.”
    If? There it was again: her doubt that he would still want her, once he learned more about her. It was past time to find out what this was all about.
    “Beloved?” Martha repeated questioningly.
    “We can talk in my house,” Brom told Sam, as Martha possessively guided Aliena to her house. “I can tell you’d as soon kill me as look at me, and are more than capable of it, but I can tell you this at the outset: I love her, and she loves me.”
    “You don’t know her, and she is incapable of love as we know it,” Sam said.
    “I know her well enough to know that now she can love, and does. Ask her; she’ll tell you.”
    “We shall see.”
    They entered