Power: BBW Alien Lottery Romance (Chosen by the Karal Book 3)

by Harmony Raines

  “Do you enter the lottery? To escape?”

  She shook her head. “No. I will die here on the Earth. It’s my home.”

  “Yet you want to know what my planet is like.”

  “Yes. So I can paint it. If you tell me, it will fuel my imagination. There’s nothing left on this planet to do that. Only books and pictures. And dreams.” She hesitated. Weren’t those enough? “But if you tell me, I can paint it, make it real.”

  “I do not wish your people to hope. I do not wish you to paint my planet in case it gives them false hope. The lottery will enable some females to come to Karal, but many more of them will die here.”

  “We know that. And anyway, we all die.” She was quiet for a moment. “Please. Just one thing. Describe to me the most amazing thing you have ever seen on your planet.”

  “There are too many to choose from.”

  She smiled at his evasion. “Pick a favourite. One thing.”

  “No.” He folded his arms, reminding her of a little child, obstinate and uncooperative.

  Perhaps if she went first, he might be more willing. “Once, when I was five, my father bought home a seed. He had found it while out looking for work. He didn’t find a job, but we didn’t care, because he had found something so much better, he had found potential life.” She looked up to see him still with his arms folded, but he was listening to her.

  Taking a sip of her tea, she looked across to her paintings on the wall. She had all of the time in the world to wait. Her father had taught her that patience was a gift to cultivate in the same way they had lovingly cultivated that little seed.

  He took a sip of his tea and grimaced, but then took another sip, his face settling to a look of distaste instead of disgust. How different it must be on his planet, with enough food, water and power to live comfortably. So much like the generations who had lived so long ago. The time stretched out between them, and she calmly waited, feeling his impatience growing.

  “Did it grow? The seed.”

  “Tell me about your favourite thing,” she countered. “And I’ll tell you about the seed.”

  “I do not bargain,” he said bluntly.

  She got up from the sofa and held her hand out for his cup, which he had now drained. He handed it to her and she went back into the kitchen, feeling hungry. Opening the cupboard, she took out some crackers, dry and probably a little stale, but if she coated them with some synthetic cheese spread, they were edible.

  Reaching for a plate, she placed the crackers out, spreading them with a thin layer of cheese. Wrinkling her nose at the smell. Edible. Just.

  Going back to settle herself down on the sofa, she offered him one, but he held his hand up, not wanting the food near him. Eating them carefully, trying not to let the crumbs spill everywhere, she ate them while he glanced at her nervously, and then back to her paintings.

  With a loud sigh he once more went to the door. The rain could still be heard on the roof. Vanessa waited patiently while he looked outside, shut the door a little hard and then came back to her. His hair was dry now, and it curled around his neck, making him look somehow wild, primal in his bearing.

  While she ate, her fingers itched to pick up the pencil and paper once more and sketch him, but she kept her cool while she ate the crackers. He fidgeted more, and she wondered if he had ever had to sit so still, with no entertainment, before.

  At last, she finished her crackers and said, “I just realised we have not introduced ourselves. I am Vanessa Roderick.”

  His eyes narrowed as if he was trying to work out if this was a new game. “I have no use of your name and you have no use of mine.”

  She sighed at the air of superiority he had around him; he reminded her of the ‘pents’ who tried to block out their species’ demise by living high up above the smog, their houses opulent, filled with antiques from a forgotten age of plenty.

  Knowing he was a guest and she should bite her tongue, she said, “Do you have no use for manners on your planet either? Now I am beginning to see that living the rest of my life on Earth is probably a happier prospect than any woman who wins the lottery might have. Or are you one of a kind?”

  “How long until the rain stops?” he asked abruptly, ignoring her question. She thought he was going to go and look out of the door again, unable to work out why he was so rude and restless. This might not be where he needed to be right now, but his other choice was to brave the rain. Which left him no choice at all.

  “Hours, probably. And even when it does, you won’t be able to leave. Not until the streets are dry.”

  “It is not far to the airport. I can walk there when the streets are still wet.” His fingers tapped impatiently and then he did go and check the door again.

  Vanessa stood up; she tidied the kitchen, and then went to the closet. Reaching up, she took down some blankets. She made him feel uncomfortable. He made her feel a little angry.

  “Well, if you have no intention of being civil to the person who took you in and gave you shelter, then I am going to say goodnight. Here are some blankets. The sofa is comfortable; you might need to push two together.” She dropped the blankets on the sofa nearest her and then blew out most of the candles. “Goodnight.”

  He glared at her. “I am not tired.”

  “And I am. Goodnight.” She walked across to the bed, hidden away behind a curtain. There she undressed quickly; hating the way her body reacted to the nearness of him. Why would any woman find him attractive? But she did. He was rude and arrogant, but she wanted to know more about him. If he had asked her to, she would have stayed up and talked to him. But it was clear he didn’t want her company or her questions, so she would rather lie alone in bed, almost definitely unable to sleep, while he was here.

  As she lay still, looking up at the ceiling, she tried to reason what it was about him that she found so annoying. And then she realised. He reminded her of the men responsible for tearing down the last trees, the men responsible for killing her father. Too full of their own self-importance to give any thought for anyone else.

  Chapter Seven – Lytril

  Manners. What did she mean? He was polite! It was none of her business, he didn’t want some stranger to know she had the Hier Ruler in her house. He could see it now, his face on all of those hideous Streams, bright garish images of him. What he couldn’t work out was why it mattered so much to him that he had offended her. She had gone to bed, leaving him here alone, while he wanted her company.

  On Karal, he would have commanded her to stay. Here he had no authority. In this room, she was his equal. And he was her guest. She was right; he should have been more open with her instead of being obstinate. But he had his reasons. Although he didn’t want to admit them.

  Especially not to her.

  He got up from the sofa and took one of the candles, illuminating the paintings hung on the wall. Running his fingers across the surface, he could feel the brush strokes, where she had made the paint thicker to give more depth to the paintings. They were so beautiful, so vibrant, that he could almost imagine he could reach in and pick the fruit from the apple tree she had captured so intricately. That, as the seasons changed, he could stand here and watch the leaves fall to the ground, littering the floor of her apartment.

  It was then that he realised he knew the answer, about the seed her father had brought home. This was a painting of the tree which her father’s seed had grown into. How else could she have got it so right?

  Turning to where she slept behind the curtain, he wanted to yank it open and demand she tell him the rest of the story, although he knew the ending. But he couldn’t. He did not trust himself. Removing his finger from the painting of the apple tree, he ignored the rest and instead took the blankets she had given him. Shoving the two sofas together, he made a makeshift bed and lay down to rest.

  Before he closed his eyes, he once more checked his communicator, but there was no word from Okil. The faint bleep to show where his ship was, was his only comfort; it
reminded him that he had a home, that he would leave tomorrow and never think of Vanessa again. Yet a small voice inside of him told him he would never forget her. This female human had touched him in a way he had thought impossible.

  As he crossed into the world of dreams, he didn’t know that his emotions were skimming across his skin in bright, colourful swathes. That they illuminated the pitch-dark room and woke up his host. She pulled a robe on and drew the curtain back from her bed, slowly at first, checking she wasn’t going to disturb him; but finally, her inquisitive nature took over.

  Chapter Eight – Vanessa

  The mystery of him was too much for her and she stood over him, watching the rise and fall of his chest beneath the blankets, while the colours illuminated his face. Reaching out her hand, she held it a few inches above his skin and watched as the colours moved in time to her fingers.

  Reds and golds clashed together. She swirled her fingers around and around, the colours almost leaving his body to touch her fingertips. As she concentrated, she picked up something else; it wasn’t just colours. If she closed her eyes and let her mind, go blank, she could pick up his emotions.

  Could that really happen? She had heard the aliens were devoid of emotion, a thing he had almost confirmed by the way he treated her. But the colours made her see him differently. Did he hide them away under his flesh when he was conscious? How hard it must be, fighting each waking moment, to continually keep them in check. But now they were free, she could sense them, sense what he was feeling.

  Fear scraped its fingers across her mind, not her own fear, but his. Although she couldn’t think of what he would be frightened of, unless he was the next prize in the lottery and he didn’t want a human female. He had made it quite clear he didn’t think much of humans.

  Instead of her fingertips, she experimented with the palm of her hand running along his body. Her skin tingled, picking up new emotions, protective, nurturing, all the emotions a man like him should be capable of, and yet here they were. And something else, she tried to pick it up, but couldn’t, not for some time. Then it hit her: desire.

  She pulled her hand back from him, as if he had burned her. Her body leapt with joy. It wanted him to desire her, to want and need her, but that was never going to happen. She never sought out love, or even friendship now. In some ways, since her father had died, she had become like this alien, her emotions firmly in check, under control.

  Unable to sleep now, she did the thing that filled the long hours of the night. Taking her new paints, she went upstairs, feeling a surge of happiness as she squeezed the colours out of the old tubes and found it usable.

  Allowing her mind to wander, she imagined what he was seeing as he slept. With hands dancing across the canvas, she painted him, picturing his dark looks, but she lifted them, making him happy. In her painting, he stood watching animals in a forest. Trees filled with vibrant blossoms, greens so vivid they made her eyes fill with tears, and at the feet of this big, muscled man, she drew the image of a child.

  If he were going to have a mate, then he would have a child. And he would be like her father, showing that child the wondrous world around him. Only his world was still alive, cared for and not polluted. As she painted, her eyes filled with tears. Memories she had not accessed for months came to her, draining her, so that when the painting was finished, all she could do was lie down on the paint-splattered cloth on the floor and sleep.

  There she dreamed, of the man in the painting and the child at his feet. But there was another there too. A woman, and if she allowed herself to look really closely, Vanessa knew she would see herself. But Vanessa turned away; she had decided never to have children, never to bring an infant into this forsaken world. And she would never leave it. Karal and the lottery were for other women. Not her.

  When she woke, she knew there was someone in the room. Someone next to her. She rolled over, hoping that the alien hadn’t left the warehouse and not shut the door. But when she allowed her eyes to adjust and looked up, she saw it was him sitting against the wall, leaning back and looking at the painting.

  “The trees of the Dressel Forest. My father took me there once. It was rare for him to take me anywhere. He was so busy, but we went there once when the floveris were migrating. They are small, colourful birds, the most fragile on my world. He told me that if ever the floveris became extinct, that it would be a sign of an unbalance in my world.”

  “Are there still floveris on Karal?”

  “Yes. I go each year to watch them migrate. I count their number as they rush over my head and know that another year has passed. When I have a son, I will take him to watch the floveris.”

  “When you have a son, you should show him more than the floveris. You should show him everything there is to see and teach him that all life fits together, like a natural puzzle.”

  “Maybe I will. I wish my father had shown me more, spent more time with me. But he was so busy.”

  As he sat still, looking at her painting, she saw the colours cross his skin, more subdued this time. And she felt his sorrow. “You should never be too busy to build memories with your children.”

  He looked at her for a long time, and then rose. “The rain has stopped. I am leaving.”

  She stood up stiffly, and followed him down to the ground floor. He went to the door, pulling it open, the smell of rancid chemicals flowing in. “You should wait until the ground is dry.”

  “I must leave. My people will be worried that I have lost contact. My communicator still does not work. I would hate for our worlds to go to war because they think something has happened to me.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. Earth would lose pitifully.”

  “And so would Karal. We need females to breed or else our species will die out,” he stated matter of factly, not aware of how that sounded to her.

  “That would be a travesty. For your race to die out.” Sarcasm wasn’t usually her thing, but it was lost on him anyway.

  “Yes, it would. For hundreds of thousands of years my people have lived on Karal.” He looked back to her, something hidden in his eyes, but gold skimmed across his cheek. He quickly covered it, pushing his emotions back down. “We have survived many hardships. But the worst was when our females became extinct. It is why my father told me to watch over the floveris, they are delicate, just as the balance between life and death.”

  “Why did your females die?” Vanessa asked.

  He paused, looking out onto the wet street, and she thought he would leave and not tell her. But the man before her seemed different to the man who had been so sullen last night.

  “We put our planet in danger, and the planet punished us. Tried to wipe my species from its surface. But fortune smiled on us and we survived, and we learned our lesson.”

  “Is that why you hate the people of Earth, because we haven’t learned our lesson?”

  He pulled his hood up around his head and took a step out of the door. But just when she thought he was going to leave, he turned and said, “I do not hate you. I pity you. But we cannot save you.”

  She leaned forward, standing on tiptoes, kissing his cheek, and watching the colour red shoot to the spot where her lips had touched his skin. “I know,” she said, and she did, she understood, because she had seen the worst of human nature, of greed and the way life had become devalued. The vision of her father appeared in her mind. Yes, she could pinpoint exactly when she knew humans were doomed.

  He cleared his throat, and then said, “Thank you, Vanessa. I came here to see a side of humanity I could not understand. You have shown that to me.”

  “Which part? The withholding information part, or the serving tea that makes you pull a funny face?”

  He smiled and then looked surprised at his own reaction. “The part that is warm and generous.”

  And then he walked away, out of her life. She stood and watched him, his footsteps wet on the road. She hoped he would make it safely back to his spaceship, and for a moment she wished she ha
d asked him if he was this month’s lottery prize. Because he might just have made it worth entering.

  “Not happening,” she told herself and went back inside to clear away her paints. Afterwards, she would go to bed for a couple of hours. And then? Well, maybe she might have to go and satisfy herself, and make sure the old woman and the boy were alive.

  Although it might be better to leave that to her imagination. In there they would be safe and well, not under the six feet of water that might have flowed under the arches.

  Chapter Nine – Lytril

  He looked down at his communicator, and a pang of guilt hit him. As the Hier Ruler, he should not break the rules, but he just had. If there was a way to undo it, would he? No. He felt his actions were justified. The fact that he had broken the rules where Vanessa was concerned meant he was right, she must have corrupted him in some way. And he needed to learn the power of that corruption.

  Putting the thought from his head, he walked quickly towards the airport, the light on his communicator flashing; he pressed the button that would link him to Okil. Still nothing. He figured the signal was down. Did that mean his action had failed anyway?

  As he broke into a jog, feeling the rainwater seeping into his shoes, he gave it some thought. By the time he got to his ship, he had made a decision, without emotion or judgement. He would leave it up to fate, a thing that only humans believed in. If it were meant to be, she would be entered in to the lottery. And if that was the case, she would win. He would make sure of it.

  Lytril kept going over the short time they had spent together. Why had she affected him when no other human had? Maybe it was the thing they called love at first sight. But he didn’t feel love; it was more primal than that.

  Lust. Yes, that was it. Lust. He wanted her warm, curvy body in his bed. The woman he had seen yesterday, the one chosen for her DNA and her ovulation cycle, was so thin. How could he possibly enjoy mating with a woman who was wasting away?