3
EVE
The walls swallowed us up, and it felt like I was moving so fast that I’d vomit, but before I could, the ship had already spit me back out.
I landed on my feet and stumbled, and I’d have fallen if Thuliak hadn’t grabbed hold of me and held me tight against his body.
We were in a large and extremely fancy space. There was a huge bed, a fountain with water that glowed and shifted to subtle hues of bright pink, green, and teal-blue. Thuliak’s quarters had a huge dining table as well, higher than any table I’d seen—probably because these alien men were all so tall.
The ceiling was dizzyingly high for a room on a spaceship. He waved his hand, and the space above us filled with colorful flying things. I squinted to get a better look, but still couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. There was bright blue, orange, violet, yellow—all the different colors you could imagine, but they were flying around like some kind of bug. One came down closer to me, and I realized itwasa bug, but its wings were these incredibly vibrant colors with captivating patterns. The bug flew toward me, and I shrieked and jumped backward.
“It’s just a butterfly,” Thuliak said, holding up his hand.
“A what?”
One of the bugs landed on his finger. It had pale blue wings with streaks of deep purple and black. The colors on its wings almost looked powdery.
“Is this from your homeworld?” I asked.
Thuliak shook his head. “No, they are from yours. From Earth.”
“Are they real?”
He shook his head again, and all the bugs disappeared. “I was trying to make you feel at home. Our data on Eden is very lacking. I’m constantly updating it—right now I’ve just told the Hivemind that there are no butterflies on your world—but there’s a lot more we don’t know about Eden than we do know about it. You can definitely help me with that.”
“You said you did something,” I said, glaring at him. “To speed up the breeding. You sounded pretty smug about it to your crew.”
He got the exact same smug grin on his perfect face that he’d had on the bridge when he’d hinted to his crew that he’d done something.
“You know,” I said, “that across the entire planet, only a few dozen women get tainted every year. Your pack is going to be waiting a really long time.”
“High Command was fudging those numbers. It was closer to two thousand women per year. Still, not fast enough. I’ve accelerated things.”
He eyed my body, but frowned. Then he did a little dismissive gesture with this hand, and suddenly I was surrounded by mist. The mist fell away, and my mask and baggy clothes were gone. I was left standing naked before him. It would have felt unfair, but he was naked too. His cock twitched and began to grow as his eyes ran across my nakedness.
“What did you do?” I asked, trying to tear my eyes from his growing dick.
“Broadcast images of my kind to your world.”
“I meant with my clothes!”
“You don’t need them anymore,” he said, and his cock twitched and started to stand tall, slapping up against his chiseled abdominal muscles.
“And you didwhatto Eden? What kind of images?”
“Pornographic ones.”
“Porno what?”
“Images of cocks, Airlock.” He grabbed the base of his cock and stroked it slowly. “Big, teal cocks. Cocks spilling their seed. I am awakening the sexual urge of your world.”
“You wouldn’t!” I shoved him, not that it managed to move him at all.
“I already did,” he said. “We’ll still let the women choose, of course, but I can’t stand by and leave them in the dark like your High Command was doing.”
“It’s not for you to decide. This is our way.”
“Wasyour way. And which choice did you make, Airlock?”