Page 5 of His Human to Adore
Mybodystirsawakeas a scream splits the air right after a loud clap of thunder. For a moment, I forget where I am and what’s happened to me. Hell, the first thing I freak out about is how bare my head is since my arm is propped against it. The memories of how I ended up in the bed come back to me quickly, and I steady my worry before it can turn into full-blown panic.
“Go to sleep, human,” a man’s voice calls out in the darkness. Again, I try not to let it freak me out too bad since Kendra said she was sleeping in this room with her mates. Still, I can’t see anything, and a masculine voice that has a lisp when he says a word with an S is freaking me out because it’s reminding me I’m stuck on a new planet with lizard men. “Dath is having nightmares. His screams are nothing to fret over.”
Another scream from nearby has me pushing off the bed and standing in the room’s darkness. The weird tugging in my chest is begging me to go to the scared demon alien, but I can’t see anything. So if I try to get to him, I’m only going to hurt myself. The tightness in my chest only restricts me more as thunder rumbles outside. There’s a rustling coming from across the room as one of the demons sharing a bed with Kendra gets up. Kendra mumbles something with a whine, and her other mate huffs in what I’m assuming is a laugh.
“One moment, sweet Kendra,” the demon says to Kendra before I hear footsteps padding against the stone floors. “New human, can you see me?”
“Of course, she cannot,” Kendra’s second mate grumbles from the bed they’re sharing. His irritation seems forced like he’s trying to keep himself serious. Kendra said something about them behaving before they knew me, so I’m going to assume his crankiness is because of that. “There are torches in the hall. Toron and Yril leave them lit for Dath when there are storms in case he leaves his room.”
Footsteps move from in front of me and then across the room in the other direction until a door swings open, and a soft, warm light streams in from the hallway. The demon man turns around to face me, his big, black eyes narrowing at me like he’s trying to determine if I can see him yet or not. I move toward the light as his eyes cut over to the doorway again.
“You can see?” He asks. I open my mouth to respond, but another scream has the demon frowning. His eyes soften as he continues to stare out the doorway. Whatever is happening to the screaming demon must be something they’re all used to if no one is rushing to aid him. It makes me sick. Not just that it’s a normal occurrence but that he has had something happen to him to have him have such nightmares.
“Someone should be with him,” I cross my arms in front of my chest, not liking how thin the shirt feels now that I’m fully aware of everything around me and not about to pass out from being sent to a new world so quickly. The red alien standing in the doorway doesn’t lower his gaze from my face, which I guess shouldn’t be surprising since he’s probably wrapped around Kendra’s finger. “He’s obviously in pain.”
“Dath is in pain whenever there is a storm.” The demon rubs his head, and I notice he doesn’t have horns like the first one I saw when I was first sent here. I hope my demon has nice horns. Woah, that thought hits me out of nowhere, and I try to swallow it down and pretend it didn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. “It is best if Kendra’s sister just goes back to sleep.”
“You want me to sleep while someone is screaming his head off right down the hall?” I put my hands on my hip, cocking my hip to the side and narrowing my eyes at the big demon standing in the doorway. He’s blocking the doorway, but I have a feeling if I told him to move, he’d do it.
“His head is still connected to his body.” The demon frowns even harder at me but steps away from the doorway so I can walk past him if I want. When I don’t make a move to go toward the door, he looks over to the bed he was sleeping in. I turn to look, too, and see another demon staring at us in the darkness. A smaller body still pressed against his chest, apparently still asleep or pretending to be, so she doesn’t have to be part of this conversation.
“Let the human go,” the dark demon that’s still in bed says. His scales are so dark I can barely make out his features, but I can see a smug smile has found its way onto his lips. He’s the same one who saw me when I first entered the world. “Maybe it is her nose that is making her stubborn.”
“Excuse you?” I turn my full attention to him. There’s someone screaming down the hall while thunder shakes the entire stone building, and I’m stubborn for wanting to make sure the man screaming is okay. Nia used to have nightmares after moving into the stadium two years ago, after waking up to her brothers both dead in their apartment. She would wake up feeling like the world was ending, with heartbreak still fresh in her mind. I can only imagine how the man screaming now feels when he wakes up alone every time this happens.
“Shut up, Erkoz,” Kendra says. There’s a shift in the darkness, and then she’s sitting up in the bed, pushing her hair behind her back. “Sorry, ignore him. He thinks he’s funny. How are you feeling, Deja?”
The dark demon in bed, Erkoz, mumbles, “I am funny.”
I don’t get a chance to respond to Kendra before another scream makes me clench my fists together. “I’ll meet you all in the morning,” I say before walking out of the room and following the sound of the scream to the room right next door. No wonder it’s so loud and disruptive when it’s happening not even ten feet from me.
A part of me thinks the demon who was watching the bedroom door will come out to the hall and make sure I make it to wherever I’m going safely. Instead, I’m standing in the hallway, alone, and trying to decide if I’m going to barge in or if I should knock on the door first. When he screams again, I open the door and leave it open so the light from the torches illuminates enough for the room so I can find my way around.
There are three beds in the room. Two of them are completely empty, but they’re messy like they’ve been slept in recently. The third has someone covered up in a blanket, their body thrashing around as they cry and whimper, something I can’t make out since it is mostly hissing. I stand in the doorway, unsure of what exactly I thought I was going to do, but I know someone needs to do something. The poor man is obviously in distress, but it shouldn’t be up to me to make him feel better, considering there are plenty of other men here who probably know him a lot better.
“Please,” Dath’s whimper is heartbreaking when he manages to get the broken words out. The tightening in my chest almost becomes unbearable at hearing his broken voice. “Please, I’m sorry.”
I rush over to the side of the bed and press a palm against where I think his cheek is.
“Shh, it’s okay,” I whisper the words, but he’s already calming as soon as I touch the cool scales of his face. The muscles of his body seem to relax slightly, and then he lets out a deep, trembling breath.
I keep stroking his cheek, hoping that he just needs some touch to feel safer or more secure where he is. If he were Nia, I’d be crawling into bed behind him to hold him in my arms until the nightmares finished, but he’s not Nia, and I don’t know if he’s going to feel violated by a stranger climbing into bed with him.
A roll of thunder claps loudly outside the stone building and causes Dath’s enormous eyes to open wide in horror as his mouth contorts to scream again. I grab his face between both of my hands and try to will him not to scream, not when I’m this close to him, because it will absolutely break my heart. Especially when I can see the terror in his eyes. His mouth trembles, his eyes still wild, but it’s clear he’s not fully awake. His body is reacting like he’s awake and ready to fight, but he’s still deep in his nightmare.
“You’re safe,” I stroke his cheek as his mouth starts to close. I don’t know how true my words are, but I just need to make him feel comforted enough to get through the worst of his dreams. The women told me I was safe when I first arrived here, so I’m assuming he’s just as safe as me. “You’re safe. Nothing can hurt you.”
Dath blinks slowly, his breath ragged and blowing against my face, and his hand comes up to rest on mine on his cheek. His hands are icy, just like the rest of him, but a warmth settles in my chest and stomach as he touches my hand. He tilts his head to the side, his eyes still dead and asleep even though they’re open, but says nothing.
We stay like this until his breathing is calm and the trembling in his body is still. His hand leaves mine, and I’m almost sad to lose his touch until I feel him grab my hip so quickly that I don’t have time to react. He pulls me into bed with him until I’m the little spoon to his big spoon.
“At least the goddess allows me a female in my dreams,” Dath whispers against my head. His heart is racing, but his body is more relaxed, and his breathing is even. His grip against my waist is so tight there’s no way I’m getting away from him, but I don’t even want to. For some reason, I’m perfectly content to act as this weird demon man’s teddy bear since it’s calming him so much. “She gives me such a beautiful female to ease my terrors.”
The words he’s saying shouldn’t have butterflies erupting in my stomach. Nope, they should be slightly scaring me since this giant alien with nightmares seems to think I’m just a figment of his imagination. Instead, I’m wiggling around in his grasp to get as comfortable as I can and allowing myself to relax in his arms. His big hand rests against my collarbone, and he presses against me with a bit more force. He’s stilling my movements, and then I feel why, as something long and hard presses into my backside.
“This is not one of those dreams, beautiful human,” Dath mumbles as his hand moves down my collarbone until he cups my breasts, causing me to squeak in surprise. A low rumble in his chest tells me he thinks my reactions are amusing, but he still thinks all of this is a dream and that I’m not actually here. He leaves his hand on my breast but stops squeezing it. A soft rush of air blows against the top of my head, and then he’s settling, the dead weight of his arm an indicator of his body relaxing in sleep.
Thunder rumbles the room around us, but this time, instead of screaming, he holds me tighter as his body tenses. He speaks softly, much too soft for me to understand his words, even if they weren’t some weird combination of hissing and clicking that I’m assuming is their language. Somehow, my translator isn’t picking up whatever those words are, even though they’re the ones I really want to hear. His arm flexes, his hand tightening on my breast. He’s not doing it sexually, but I still feel my insides cramp and a pulsing starts in my clit. I squeeze my eyes shut, not letting myself feel weird sexual feelings for an alien who’s having nightmares and isn’t lucid enough to know that I’m actually in bed with him.