Adaptation: book I (20 page)

Raj stopped suckling. He stared at his mother and an instant later she felt something piercing as it stabbed through her nipple.

The pain was terrible as it tore through her and almost paralyzed her. The pain stole her breath but only for a moment, and then she screamed. Carmella’s body went rigid before jerking involuntarily and curling into a ball on the floor.

Bilal heard Carmella’s pained screech, dropped the clothes he had been washing, and darted toward the house, Wolf and Girl at his heels.  

Raj and Carmella were both on the floor, the baby crying softly and Carmella rocking in a ball of pain with her mouth opened in a breathless cry. Her hands cradled her breasts, and when she could, she sucked in a deep breath and screamed another bloodcurdling cry.

Bilal scooped up
the baby with one hand and pressed him safely against his body. With the other hand he pulled Carmella from the floor, and sat, holding both of them on the chaise lounge.

“Carmella.”

Carmella clutched her exposed breast, her eyes clenched tightly and squeezing out tears while Raj waved his hands in the air, his cries intensifying.

Bilal didn’t know what to do. He looked at Wolf, half expecting the animal to give him advice. Wolf only whined, staring at him expectantly.

“Carmella.” Bilal pressed his face against her neck and inhaled, searching for some injury but not finding anything. He placed Raj across his legs, jiggling them, but the baby had worked himself up into such a state that his piercing cries stole his breath as he trembled.

Bilal grabbed Carmella’s wrists and pulled them away from her body. Her exposed dark nipple dripped milk, but there was nothing strange about that. He shook her slightly when her eyes stayed squeezed shut. “Carmella.”

She opened her eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“Hurt,” she whispered.

“Where?”

“Breast. He did something …”

Bilal touched her breast, and Carmella winced. It was soft and heavy with her milk. He frowned. “Carmella, I don’t see anything.” He released Carmella’s wrists and picked up the crying baby.

Raj’s normally tanned skin had turned pink. He placed his hand on the child’s cheeks and pressed until his mouth opened. He saw small sensors on the tip of his son’s tongue. They were tiny, not much thicker than thread.

“
Shh,” he crooned. “Daddy’s here.” He placed the tip of his finger against his son’s tongue, and the filaments retreated. Yes, his son had learned. He wouldn’t be so quick to touch anyone with them again. He would need this ability as he grew older. Thankfully he was too young to have poison, but the pain of connecting his nerve endings to Carmella would have been unbearable. Raj shouldn’t use them again until Bilal had properly trained him. 

Bilal nodded at Wolf. “Here, Wolf.”

Wolf shambled over to him.

“Lay down.”

Wolf circled and lay down.

Bilal placed Raj against Wolf, cradled against his belly. Carmella had done it before to get them acquainted. Wolf knew to stay put. Bilal watched him lick the crying baby’s head. Satisfied, Bilal turned his attention to Carmella, pulling her into his lap. Her hands were crossed
protectively over her chest, and though she was no longer sobbing, tears escaped her tightly squeezed eyelids.

He gripped her wrist with his right hand and pulled it back. He gently held her breast with his left hand, lowered his head, and covered her nipple with his mouth. Sweet milk flooded his mouth. He had thought it would taste like cow’s milk, but it was much sweeter.

He concentrated on his task, releasing his sensors and allowing them to burrow into the flesh of her nipple. Carmella whimpered and tried to pull away, but he held her securely in place. He found the trail that his son’s sensors had traveled, repaired the damage Raj’s curiosity had caused, and released enzymes that acted as an anesthesia.

Carmella relaxed but otherwise didn’t move.

Bilal was curious. There was something else here. He stretched the filaments of his sensors and found the old injury from the wolf attack. When he had repaired her, he hadn’t been able to focus on making her perfect, only keeping her alive because he was near death himself. Now he could see the scarring and was ashamed that he’d left such a mess.

Bilal stimulated Carmella’s body to reproduce healthy cells and forced the scar tissue to recede and to disappear. He went over his work and made necessary repairs and several improvements.

Bilal retracted his sensors, swallowed the last of the milk, captured the last drop with a flick of his tongue, and released her nipple.

Carmella watched him with wide eyes. “What are you doing?”

“I fixed it. The injury.”

“Which one?”

“From the wolf bite. Raj found it. He was trying to explore it.”

She tore her eyes from his to her son, who had cried himself to sleep in the comfortable fur bed Wolf provided. “I want to see it.”

Bilal glanced down at her exposed breast where milk dripped steadily.

“Not that.
Your tongue. Those … things. Your sensors.”

He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. She saw that his tongue was longer than normal but not in a deformed way. Then
then little translucent strings pushed from its tip, stretching and reaching forward. She was mesmerized as she watched them wave in the air.

She reached up and placed her fingers in front of his lips, and the sensors touched her fingers lightly. Though she wanted to, she didn’t snatch her fingers away. She took a deep breath and met his eyes. “I thought you said that Raj’s tentacle will come from that patch on his side.”

Bilal’s sensors returned to their hiding place, and he closed his mouth. “It will. But apparently he will have more than one set of sensors.”

“Well, how many?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll examine him again later and try to find them all. But this is a good thing. He can be more helpful if he has more areas that he can link from.”

Carmella covered her breast and moved off Bilal’s lap.

Bilal instantly missed her warmth.

She knelt on the floor before Wolf and gently lifted Raj, who made a face but continued to sleep. She cradled him in her arms and looked at Bilal. “He’s okay? I didn’t hurt him when I dropped him, did I?”

“He’s pretty tough.”

She looked down at her son. “He was … exploring?”

“Yes. He loves you Carmella. He would never intentionally hurt you.” Bilal suspected it went further than that but found his suspicions hard to believe because Raj was only a few months old.

It appeared that Raj had been trying to heal the old wound to his mother’s breast.

~***~

Carmella tossed and
turned in her bed that night. Raj could sleep through the night and had been moved to his own room weeks ago. With his parents’ bedrooms only steps away, either could be in his room to tend to his needs in seconds.

She had been afraid to nurse him later in the evening, but Bilal sat next to her assuring her that he wouldn’t hurt her again—and he hadn’t. Carmella stared into Raj’s eyes as he nursed and sensed his awareness and intelligence. His eyes bore into hers, and Carmella felt unsettled, wishing she could understand the meaning behind that look.

She bathed him, changed him, and kissed him. “I won’t baby talk to you again. No more baby talk. I don’t know how much you can understand, but I know that you didn’t mean to hurt me, okay? I know that. Just don’t do that again, okay?”

He stared at her calmly, and she felt like a dumbass. This was a baby, only a little baby. Because one of his fathers was an alien with heightened abilities didn’t mean that Raj was a little adult. She kissed him again and placed him in his crib. Wolf came in and lay by the crib. She gave Wolf an appreciative rub and went to bed.

But sleep was hard to come by. This was a strange life. She had a baby who could use his tongue to create unimaginable pain, and her baby’s daddy …Carmella closed her eyes trying not to remember the sight of Bilal’s head against her breast, her nipple captured in his warm mouth. Once the pain left there was nothing but a sense of pleasure so pure that it shocked her. She hated to admit it, but it felt good. It took all of her control not to wrap her legs around him and beg him to …

Carmella covered her face in shame. What was she thinking?! She drew in a shuddering breath and bit her lip, squeezing her thighs together in an attempt to rid of herself of the erotic throbbing there. Her memory of Bilal’s hands stroking his penis while in the bath flooded her memory, the sight of it growing caused her to groan.

She had not been touched in that way in so long. She thought about the way his throat had bobbed as he swallowed her milk, the way her body pulsed, and the explosive swelling between her thighs. Her breath shot out of her mouth, and she swallowed her cry of pleasure. Oh God … no way was she …

Carmella rocked her hips and sighed until the pleasure ebbed away and her heartbeat stopped racing.

~***~

Bilal liked listening to his family sleep each night. No matter how tired his body was, he always made sure to listen to the soft breaths of Raj and Carmella’s low, even breathing. It always put him to sleep. Tonight she didn’t sleep. He could tell that she tossed and turned.

Bilal closed his eyes and opened his mouth. The sensors in his tongue pushed forward and tested the air. He could “see” her through her breathing and heart rate. Bilal turned on his side and listened, recognizing the familiar sounds for what they were—self-pleasuring. Of course he knew the sound. He pleasured himself nearly every night while remembering videos that Lawrence liked to watch.

“Hey, B,” Lawrence had said. “S
ee if you can find some good porn when you’re down there …”

He understood it all now. Sometimes the remembered images helped fire his nightly masturbation session, but he always pictured Carmella in the scenes because it seemed everything was about Carmella.

He listened to her soft sighs and tasted her passion on his sensors. His hand moved down his torso and beneath his pajamas where he found his penis hard and throbbing. Bilal closed his eyes while he rubbed his fingers over the hard flesh.

He knew that his penis was impressive because he’d seen enough porn. He also he knew that he was more endowed than either of his friends. It wasn’t his design to make himself that way, and he wondered if it felt so good to touch himself because there was more to feel.

He wrapped his fingers around the hard flesh and squeezed slightly, shuddering at the sensation. When semen oozed from hole at the tip, Bilal rubbed it into the head and shaft to create a lubricant. He sighed and suppressed his groans. Touching himself felt good, but it would not be good to have Carmella hear.

Bilal’s fist moved rapidly over his shaft as he thought about dark nipples, large areolas, and the taste of sweet milk …

His ejaculation was so powerful that he had to bite back his cry of pleasure.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Carmella was
in
the kitchen preparing lunch. It was a rare to find her without the baby propped up on her hip or asleep. Bilal was in the living room with Raj, and she considered how far she had come. She remembered once telling Jody that she didn’t want her baby near one of “those things.”

Now her baby was partially one of “those things.”

Every so often she would have a fit of uncertainty concerning the direction her life had taken, and it usually went away as soon as she set eyes on her beautiful baby boy. When he smiled at her or kicked his pudgy feet and played with his toes, she was overwhelmed with love for him.

Carmella wondered if it was love for her son that changed her feelings for Bilal so drastically. It wasn’t because she had been alone for so long. Lonely people did not resort to going out of character or departing from their true natures. Racists might be lonely and keep company with other ethnicities if forced to, but they would still be racist, wouldn’t they?

Carmella decided that her change in feelings had nothing to do with her need for company but her growth and acceptance of the unknown. She was willing to accept Bilal as a man because she knew he was no more or less a human than she was.

She poured the rice into the saucepan. She was ashamed that she felt physically attracted to Bilal. He was someone she accepted as her equal, but he wasn’t really a man even if he had a nice penis. Her cheeks grew warm. He was incredibly attractive to look at, and he was strong. He was intelligent and had the capacity for emotions. So what did it matter that he was an alien and the body he resided in wasn’t the one he was born with?

She had no idea how old Bilal was. He had to be younger than her, and she was damn near forty. She felt her cheeks warm again. What in the hell was she thinking? He was a fucking alien, and that was more important than anything else. She rubbed her elbows and decided that she would ask him.