Read Olivia for Free Online Page B

toy. 
    “Olivia.”  He gave her a command in his language, pointing at the Rubik’s cube. Playtime was over.
    Olivia set it down reluctantly, there in her alcove.  She pondered briefly what had happened to its owner, but decided to save the asking of that question until she thought she could live with the answer.  This was her toy now, and that had to be good enough.
    He took a seat on the stone bench nearest to her alcove, unwrapping dinner and laying the food—more bread, a handful of mushrooms, and a hunk of cooked meat—out beside him.  He glanced at her, hesitated, then made a little room and beckoned to her.
    She didn’t want to sit with him, and he must have seen it in her eyes, because he beckoned again and this time, pointed.  His shadow on the wall behind him flickered with the coals, almost seeming a separate, breathing entity.  His horns spiked out, devilish and menacing.
    “Olivia,” he said again.  His arm lowered.  He looked at her as she fought not to tremble, and then said, softly but firmly, “You are mine.”
    She was, wasn’t she?
    Olivia sat on the bench and picked up a mushroom.
    He said a word.
    She repeated it dully and took a bite.
    He said another word, exaggerating the eating motions.
    She repeated it around a mouthful of mushroom, wondering if he was going to teach her all the way through the meal.
    He did indeed intend to.
    Olivia repeated what he said, although she had no idea what she was saying.  But she was his, and if this was what he wanted to do with her…well, it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.
    When the meal was finished, he sat back and just looked at her for a while.  The firelight turned his dark eyes red.  He got up and went to the place where he kept his spare loincloths, digging through them to retrieve a small and much-used terrycloth towel.  He held it out, said a word, then mimed scrubbing his face, and held it out again.
    She took it and a candle and went to wash. She found her way down the right tunnel, relieved herself into the canal, then cleaned as much of her body as she could reach with his stinging soap.  When she was done, she smelled a great deal like he did, earthy and strange.
    She started to dress again, realized the futility of that action, and felt her dinner immediately congeal into a hard, greasy lump in her stomach.  She bunched up her clothes, picked up her candle, and made herself walk back into the sleeping room and stand naked before him.
    He looked at her, then away.  His head bent.
    Time stretched and stretched and would not break.
    In silence, he began to undress.
     
    5
     
    Olivia put the candle out and set it on the bench.  She put her clothes in her alcove, fussing with and folding them, anything to delay what was coming.  At last, unable to put it off any longer, she stood and turned around.
    He straightened up and faced her.  Red light from the coals burned on his black hide, caught the angles of his leathery wings, and turned his gleaming claws and talons to flame.  His pelt rippled down over suggestions of muscle, thicker at his forearms and shins, thickest of all at his groin.  His penis, a long, thick hairless organ dangling from the heaviest thatch of fur, stirred in her such a swelling of horror and despair that for a moment, she thought she would faint.
    Olivia jerked her eyes away, biting back useless pleas, and saw him studying her body with the same trepidation and unease.
    Startled, she looked down at herself.  She didn’t work out as often as she should, but she took pretty good care of herself and had always been proud of her slender waist and soft curves.  Her breasts were not small and jutted out like they should.  Her hips were lean, but not boyish.  She had naturally smooth, almost hairless skin, although she didn’t tan worth a damn and was in fact white enough that she almost seemed to be glowing in the darkness.
    She wondered how she must appear to him—a small, bald, wingless