Page 8 of Taken to Kor
He. Lied.
He lied to me.Lied. Lied rhymes with tied, rhymes with tried, rhymes with cried.Cried. He…he heard me cry. Not once. Not twice. A dozen times. A gabajillion. And he…heard…everything.
I open my mouth, but I don’t dare answer. I have two options. Only two. I know already that he knows all gabajillion times I cried and did…uhm…other things, too, thinking that he wasn’t there and that I could keep the microphone in my head in place without him hearing me. All he needed to tell me was that I could take it out and he wouldn’t be able to hear…but hewantedto hear. Hewantedto shame me. So, that leaves me with just the two options, then.
I can scream at him about what a psycho sicko tormented weirdo freak he is — but I knew that from the beginning, so really, who’s the dummy here? Me, or Rhorkanterannu — aka, thebad guy?Everyone knew he was the villain. Everyone.But he was all that I had.
He still is.
So that leaves me with option two. Make a bad joke and pretend like I don’t care. Like he’s nothing to me. Or like I’m nothing. Like we’re both big fat nothings.Nothing, rhymes with fluffing. Or bluffing. Strange, that the words look nothing alike.“So you liked my singing that much, huh?”
But I keep forgetting —how can I keep shroving forgetting! —Rhork is a villain. Instead of meeting my joke with one of his own, he sounds super, annoyingly serious when he says, “I liked listening to you when you thought I wasn’t listening. It felt like listening in on secrets not meant for me.”
“That’s because theyweren’tmeant for you,” I snarl back before I can stop the heat in my chest from climbing into my throat.
“Don’t worry, Deena. I gave you your privacy when it counted.”
“Like when? Did you at least let me takea dumpin peace?” I don’t know the word forto crapin Meero, so I shout that bit in Human and hope that the translator takes care of the rest.
Rhork makes a laughing-sighing sort of sound. “Centare, I did not listen to youvoid.”
“Or piss?”
“I removed my communicator when I heard the telltale signs of pissing, but I can’t say I didn’t hear some of it. But pissing and shitting, that’s not what you’re really curious about, is it? You want to know if I heard you…singing.” He says the word with such savory inflection, I know he’s talking about something else. Iknowwhat he’s talking about. “And ontte, Deena. I heard yousing. Sometimes, I even heard yousingfor me.”
My fingers curl around my communicator. I don’t need it at all now that I can talk to him directly through the ship. Knowing that, my impulse is to toss the thing across the pod in a fit of embarrassed rage, but given my propensity to hurt myself on nothing at all, I shove it into the pocket of my pants instead. Men’s jeans that belonged to my dad, they barely stay up on my hips — wouldn’t, if I hadn’t fixed them with a power cable.
“You’re a bastard!” I screech.
His reply is, as ever, calm. It makes me want to pull out every one of my locs at the root. “Centare, I’m a pirate. We have no bastards because every child that is born is ferociously loved.”
“You!” I howl and my shoulders are so tense by my ears and my face is so twisted in rage that, for a moment, I think I might actually pass out.Calm, Deena. Get your shit together! Shit rhymes with pit. That’s what my stomach feels like right now. Rhymes with spit. That’s what I’d do in his stupid face if I could see it. Calm. Stay fucking calm!
“Get out of my escape pod!” My voice comes out ten times louder than I meant for it to, rising in a chaotic crescendo.No, another C-word. Rhymes with hazy.
“Yourescape pod?” Comes the omnipresent reply. The thing I hate most about it? I don’t know where to look.
I shout up at the ceiling. “Yeah!Myescape pod.” I thump my chest. “I’m escaping in it, aren’t I?”
“I believe that pod and its contents belong to me.”
I hate the shimmery, slippery way he speaks. Hate it only because it affects me. I’ve heard that voice in the dark, late in the lunar, when I’m all alone. I’ve let its shivers wrack and wreck me. Let it get under my skin, into my bones. I’ve evensungto it when I thought he wasn’t listening.But he heard everything. Everything. That word makes me want to purge.Rhymes with urge.Or vomit.Rhymes with dawgonnit.I’m so angry I could just burst!
Stay fucking calm!
“Well.” I open my mouth to fake a yawn and choke on it. Then curse. The rage comes back all over again when Rhork chuckles. “Well, you can have it back when you catch me!” I shake my fists up at the image of Rhork hanging there in the ceiling laughing at me. I’ve…I’ve only seen him once with my own eyes and it was every bit as shocking and arousing as I always thought it would be.
If only I could divorce the four-armed, spine-spiked alien from his personality, which is one hundred percentyuck.Rhymes with duck. Rhymes with ffff…oh dear.
“Make no mistake in thinking I won’t.”
I flush again for no reason at all. “Big talk from a guy who has no idea where I am.”
“Tell me and I’ll know.”
“Cute. Anyone ever called you cute before?”
“Centare, they have not.”
