by Zara Zenia
Her Alien Captor
A Sci-Fi Alien Romance
Zara Zenia
Juno Wells
Illustrated by
Natasha Snow
Edited by
Elizabeth A Lance
Copyright © 2020 by Zara Zenia
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Natasha Snow Designs
Edited by Elizabeth A Lance
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the authors’ imagination.
Contents
VIP Reader Club
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
About Zara Zenia
Also by Zara Zenia
About Juno Wells
Preview of Alien Prince Charming
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1
Something was wrong.
That, Melody knew. She’d always had a knack for feeling situations out, gut feelings, some people called it. Others went with intuition as the name of the sixth sense that prickled the fine, invisible hairs on Melody’s neck anytime things weren’t quite what they seemed.
It was a near-supernatural gift that had served her well since she was a street kid playing lookout for Jodie.
Only problem was, her gut didn’t tell her what was wrong, only that something was. And as the seconds stretched by, the dread only grew worse.
She narrowed her eyes at Brandy. She felt it too, didn’t she? There were tiny droplets of sweat on Brandy’s upper lip, her lips quivering just a tiny bit as she smiled and took the package Melody brought.
“Thanks for this,” she said, her small hands wrapping around Melody’s latest haul, tucking it away quickly—but not so quickly that Melody didn’t see the tremble in her fingers.
The streetlight just beyond the alley flickered, humming when it did, making both women jump, eyes darting around at the shadows.
Melody didn’t like feeling so jumpy, so on-edge, but it was a thousand times worse that Brandy was feeling it too. That meant it wasn’t just her nerves or paranoia. That meant her sixth sense was onto something. She never should have doubted it.
“Everything okay?” Melody asked, the hand on her hip slowly slipping around to her back pocket, the tips of her fingers just tracing the edge of a switchblade she never thought she’d have to pull on Brandy. Not the woman with the sweet face, the body that could let her pass for sixteen even though she was twice that, and the relationship they’d had for as long as Melody could remember. Once she graduated from being Jodie’s lookout, Melody was on her own finding scores, doing the jobs. The hardest part of being a jewel thief, in her experience, was unloading the goods, and Brandy had always been a solid, reliable fence.
But she’d also never set off Melody’s alarm bells quite like she was doing tonight.
Brandy licked her lips, the sweat beading, dripping to the asphalt that glittered with broken glass. She took a step back, retreating into the shadows.
“Brandy?” Melody asked, suspicion spiking her bloodstream with a fresh dose of panic. As Brandy retreated, the flickering streetlight glinted off a pendant tucked under her shirt. One Melody recognized. That couldn’t be right, though. Brandy was a professional. She knew better than to keep hot items in her possession for too long—definitely not as a personal item.
“Forgive me, kid,” Brandy said, wincing as she took another step back. Confusion made time stop for Melody. The pause shattered with the crunch of tires on pavement and flashing blue lights spilling into the alley from behind her.
“You’ve gotta be shittin’ me,” Melody growled, realizing she was trapped in the alley, no way out but through the cops, and she wasn’t really prepared for that kind of fight with nothing but her switchblade on her.
“They were gonna put me away for a long time, kid. I’m sorry,” Brandy said, her voice tight with regret.
“Melody Blake, this is Memphis PD. Step out of the alley with your hands up,” a disembodied voice called through the too-bright lights that made Melody squint and blink too quickly.
“Shit, shit, shit . . . Fuck,” Melody hissed, taking her sweet time to turn around and lift her hands. There was no point in causing trouble, but that didn’t mean she was going to be happy about cooperating either.
The moment she was out of the alley, a uniformed officer shoved her against the back of the patrol vehicle, administering an unnecessarily rough pat-down. He found the blade in her back pocket and tsked to himself as he clicked the blade out with a deadly zip.
“This weapon alone is enough to nab you a few years behind bars, sweetheart,” the cop said, a cruel sneer in his thick country drawl as he dragged the flat of the knife over her cheek. Melody froze, holding her breath even, not willing to give the pig anything even resembling an excuse. She knew they’d waste no opportunity to add a resisting charge to her list of other transgressions, and with her on record as resisting, they could get away with a hell of a lot. No one in Shelby County was going to come to her defense if they got a little rough with her when she was armed and uncooperative.
So Melody stayed perfectly still while Officer Fuckface dragged her own knife down the side of her face and then the side of her neck. His partner was back at the alley entrance, talking to Brandy—probably about how much her sentence was going to be reduced for her snitching. Melody just hoped she got that shit in writing and that her downfall wasn’t all for nothing.
Not that it was much consolation.
“They told me you’d be more trouble than this,” the officer said, sounding angry about it as he secured her switchblade and cuffed her. “Told me Melody Blake’s been a bitch and a half to catch, that she’s quick and smart. Don’t seem like much of that’s at all true to me. You sure we got the right bitch, Cal?” he called to the other cop in the alley, snickering to himself as he
slipped his hands back between Melody’s legs to feel up the insides of her thighs once more.
“Not hiding anything else I need to worry about, are ya?” he asked, dragging his knuckles along the gusset seam of her jeans.
Fuck this, Melody thought with an internal growl. She jerked her leg, stomping backward on the officer’s instep.
“You bitch!” he howled, his voice laced with enough obvious pain to make Melody grin ear-to-ear. It wasn’t a smart move, but she wasn’t the girl who was going to sit there and take it. Never.
“You’re gonna regret that,” the cop grunted as he yanked open the back door of the cruiser. Without giving her time to duck her head, he shoved Melody into the back seat, ramming her forehead into the car hard enough that she saw stars flashing around her eyes.
“What’s your issue over here, Daryl?” the other cop asked after leaving his conversation with Brandy. That dirty rat apparently got to walk away from this fucking fiasco.
“Station told us she’d be a hassle and they were right. She’s over here causin’ trouble, stomping on my foot—”
Cal clucked his tongue. “Resisting arrest, assaulting a law enforcement officer—those are some pretty serious charges, young lady. And that’s before we start to go through all the shit we got on you back at the station.”
Melody had no doubt where this was going. No doubt whatsoever. They were two power-hungry leering pigs, with more physical strength than her, even if they didn’t have guns and authority to boot. They were all alone, no witnesses, and she was—well, Melody was a lot of things, but modest wasn’t really one of them, so she didn’t have trouble acknowledging how attractive she was. She was a knock-out, a toned, curvy body, muscular but feminine, dark hair and even darker eyes, all courtesy of her Cherokee heritage. The few errant freckles she had despite her olive complexion were all thanks to the Irish part of her.
Put them together, and Melody wasn’t surprised the cops were salivating over her, but she was pretty sure they’d offer some kind of ‘arrangement’ to any halfway decent candidate. She wasn’t going to completely flatter herself here.
Even though the ‘proposition’ hadn’t happened yet, there was no doubt it was coming. They were surrounding her with those same hungry looks, pressing her closer toward the back of the car.
“You know, if you were to act a little nicer, we might be able to put in a good word for you,” Cal said.
“We’re real good friends with the judge,” Daryl added, nodding slowly, his eyes traveling down Melody’s body. Her head still throbbed from where he’d slammed it into the car, and he was trying to coerce her into sex.
Stay fuckin’ classy, Daryl, she thought to herself before sneering at the both of them.
“I’d beg that fuckin’ judge to give me the damn electric chair before I’d ever suck either of your tiny mushroom dicks,” she growled, spitting for emphasis.
“You’re gonna regret that,” Daryl grunted. “You’re gonna regret that so much,” he said, his voice halfway between angry and hysterical.
“Chill out,” Cal said, getting into the driver’s seat and giving Daryl a strange look. “You made your bid. She’s too dumb to see it’s a good deal, so that’s on her,” he said as he buckled his seatbelt. Melody thought that was oddly understanding for a cop who wanted to use his position of power for sex, but then when his eyes caught hers in the rearview mirror, any shred of gratitude faded in an instant. The look he gave her was hard, mean, and determined. Despite what he said to his partner, Melody didn’t think Officer Cal was giving up on her that easily.
She twisted her hands, testing the give in the cuffs. It had been awhile since she’d had to bust out of these things, and it would be tricky. Not impossible, but she’d need some luck for sure.
Fucking Brandy. She cursed at the memory of her so-called friend backing away with fear in her eyes. After all the years they’d worked together, all the successful jobs, all the money they’d made together, this was Melody’s thanks? She got to be a pawn in someone else’s plan? Used by another with no regard to how it would effect her?
Bullshit. Pure, fucking bullshit. That’s what Melody thought of that.
But how was she going to get out of this? There was no way they’d just let Brandy go like that unless she’d given them the good stuff, the evidence that would have Melody dead to rights.
Fuckity fuck.
“Since when do you take no for an answer so easily?” Daryl asked, brow furrowed at his partner.
“Shut the fuck up,” Cal hissed. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing out the windshield. Melody didn’t look, using the distraction of their argument to focus on getting out of the cuffs. If she could get them undone, then when they got to the station, it would just be a matter of breaking past them and running like hell.
Not much of a plan, she admitted to herself.
“Don’t change the subject,” Daryl griped. “What’s gotten into you? You fuckin’ want her for yourself, don’t you, you bastard?”
“This is not the time for—”
“Why are you stopping?” Daryl asked, scowling at his partner.
Cal didn’t answer, though. He made a strange, high-pitched squeak. The kind of sound Melody recognized. The sound of pure, unvarnished fear.
It was that sound that made her look up, but it was too late. Whatever she was supposed to see was lost to a blinding flash of white light. White light so bright it erased literally everything else, bathing the world in its brilliance.
Hearing Cal and Daryl whimper and whine like frightened piglets satisfied the hell out of Melody, even if she didn’t get to be the cause of their distress. That bittersweet thought was the last one she had before the white light grew impossibly hot, until she was sure her body couldn’t possibly withstand the heat without turning to ash. It was so intense that even though it only lasted a moment, even though the beam only transported her a short distance, it was too much for Melody. She blacked out before ever discovering that she’d been unwittingly transported aboard an alien’s spaceship.
2
Of all the run-ins with the law she’d had through the years, Melody was sure this was the worst. Antagonizing those hillbillies wasn’t a good idea, and her head was throbbing with the painful reminder of slamming into the patrol car’s door.
Remembering that just brought back another realization as consciousness filtered back into her pain-addled mind—she hadn’t escaped. Those bastards had managed to get her downtown without her seizing her window of opportunity.
Wait a minute . . . she thought, something niggling in the back of her brain, struggling to push its way to the forefront.
The cops hadn’t gotten her back to the station. Something had interrupted her transport, something she hadn’t gotten a chance to see because of the blinding white light that had felt like it was coming from the sun itself.
Melody groaned, finally prying her eyes apart at the memory of the lingering tingle left by that impossibly hot light. The floor under her was cold and hard—metal, she knew at a touch. She pushed herself up to sitting, or tried to, a combination of stiff muscles and a too-low ceiling preventing her from moving enough to even bend her knees.
This place might not have been the station in Downtown Memphis, but Melody recognized a cell when she saw one.
No, calling this thing a cell was too generous. This was a cage. Bars for walls, no sign of a door, no furniture. The kind of kennel you’d trap a feral cat in, she thought bitterly.
What the hell was this place? Where was she? Why? How had she gotten away from the cops, and who would go to all that trouble just to put her in a cage?
There were too many questions, and she wasn’t going to find any answers until she talked to someone.
“Hello?” Melody called into the darkness beyond her cage. There was a faint red glow illuminating the space around her which appeared to be a cargo hold of some kind, filled with crates and luggage galore, but she didn’t see other cages. Not imm
ediately, at least.
The hell?
“Anyone out there? Someone mind telling me what the fuck is—”
“Shh!” a tiny, quiet hiss came from the shadows. A frantic hushed plea followed, the words in a foreign tongue Melody couldn’t parse, but the meaning was clear enough through the emotions. Someone had put the fear of God into the poor girl talking to her.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, but I don’t belong here. People are gonna be pissed off I’m missin’. I’ve got family, friends . . .” All lies, but her abductors didn’t need to know that. For all it concerned them, she had a thriving social and family life full of loved ones who’d notice her sudden disappearance.
What was that like?
“Y’all are makin’ a big mistake here. You’re gonna regret it,” Melody bluffed into the darkness. She gasped when the frantic pleading came again, this time attached to a willowy creature with velvety-looking skin the color of denim, four long, slender arms, and huge, shiny black eyes that didn’t blink often enough for Melody’s liking. Other than that, the girl—if that’s what she could be called—looked kind of human. She had the same basic body structure, two legs, curves along her sides that indicated the same kind of femininity that kept Melody fighting off pervs and pigs. The long tendrils of hair—or was it fur?—that stemmed from her scalp and cascaded down her back were a shimmery sliver-gold that almost looked rose in the red cast.
