Korzak's Mate: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Tarnen Warrior Mates Book 1)

by Vixa Moon

  “Yeah, you Tarnens…. The more I like it. A big strong alien man who’ll do anything for me.”

  Korzak just nods seriously, as if this is obvious.

  “We’ll be there soon,” says Korzak. “Within the next 20 hours. Now all we have to worry about is the impact.”

  “The impact? You mean this thing won’t land itself?”

  “It should,” says Korzak, punching something into the computer. “But apparently one of the engines isn’t functioning properly.”

  “Great,” I say. “So we’re going to crash land on Earth?”

  “Possibly.”

  7

  Olivia

  The escape pod is shaking violently. We’re hurtling through the Earth’s atmosphere.

  Korzak is punching away at the computer like crazy, moving his fingers with lightning speed, apparently trying to get us to land safely.

  I’m trying not to vomit with pure terror. My whole body is shaking with adrenaline.

  Getting kidnapped wasn’t even this scary.

  It took us a full twenty hours to get back to Earth. It was kind of crazy, seeing my own planet from outer space. There aren’t that many humans alive who’ve experienced the same thing. At least not many that I know of. My whole understanding of the universe, after all, has just been blown wide open. There are aliens after all, unless this whole thing is some huge delusion that I’m having. I seriously doubt that, but I’ve pinched myself more than a few times to make sure this isn’t all just a dream.

  “Brace yourself,” says Korzak.

  “How?” I say.

  There’s nothing to grab onto except Korzak himself.

  So I clutch his muscular body, feeling his bare skin against mine. It feels good and comforting, but it’s not quite enough, knowing that we’re plummeting rapidly towards the Earth’s surface.

  The vibrations of the escape pod have increased dramatically. My head is shaking so much that everything I see appears to be vibrating.

  We’ve passed through the clouds. The ground is rapidly approaching us.

  “Engaging stabilizers,” says Korzak.

  He sounds calm.

  Weirdly calm.

  But he also sounds serious, so I know he’s taking the situation with the gravity it requires.

  Korzak presses some button, and the pod starts to slow down.

  The earth is rushing up to us a little less slowly.

  But the impact, when it hits, is still harsh.

  We smack right into the ground. I hold onto Korzak as hard as I can. The stabilizers did something, since there’s no way we would have survived a real crash landing without some artificial padding from the engines.

  Everything seems blurry now. I hope I didn’t hurt my head.

  My thinking is slow and everything’s kind of strange, as if I’m living in a dream.

  But I’m alive.

  I take a second to savor this fact.

  Korzak’s alive too. I can feel his body moving, pressed up against me. I can feel and hear his breathing.

  The door to the escape pod suddenly opens on its own, revealing green grass in front of us. Real Earth grass! I’ve never been so excited to see grass in my entire life.

  “Come on,” says Korzak, taking my hand.

  He has to struggle to extract himself from the capsule, but he finally does, and he helps me out, taking my hand.

  My feet touch the ground, and I’m back on Earth. Back on firm ground.

  “We’ve got to cover the escape pod,” says Korzak. His voice is deep and commanding. He doesn’t seem the least bit fazed by the crash. Instead, he seems calm and collected.

  But me, it’s going to take me a minute to try to understand everything that happened.

  He sees me just standing here, trying to make sense of this all.

  “Come on,” says Korzak. “Your planet has primitive technology. We can’t let them find this escape pod. It could cause all sorts of political and cultural problems.”

  “Primitive?” I say, noticing that sarcastic bite coming back into my voice.

  But when I think about it for just a moment, I realize that he’s completely right. Compared to all the space ships I’ve just seen in the last day, our technology is primitive. And he’s right about an alien spacecraft causing a huge problem. I’m not so worried about the cultural implications, but I really don’t want to have to spend the next few weeks being grilled by the CIA or something just because they know I have something to do with this escape pod. Not after what I’ve just been through. I need to relax and put my feet up.

  “OK,” I say. “I’ll help.”

  I see Korzak looking around. He points to some bushes. “We can use those branches.”

  “Branches? You really think that’s going to cover it?”

  “Well, look, it’s halfway buried in the ground.”

  It’s true. Somehow I didn’t notice it before, but the impact caused the escape pod to bury itself deep into the ground. Funny that I didn’t notice it earlier. But I guess I was more than a little disoriented.

  Korzak starts walking over to the bushes.

  I notice that he’s limping pretty badly.

  “Are you OK?” I say. “Did you hurt your leg?”

  “I’m fine,” says Korzak.

  But he’s really having trouble walking. I can see that whatever injury he’s sustained is causing him considerable pain, but he’s managing to suppress it all.

  We gather branches. Korzak breaks them easily off the bush.

  “You’re better at breaking them than me,” I say. “And I’m better at walking right now than you. So I’ll take them to the escape pod.”

  Korzak nods stiffly. It seems to cause him some kind of stress to think that he isn’t able to do everything for me. At least that’s the sense I get from him.

  I do my best to cover the escape pod. From ten feet away, it looks like something odd, although the fact that it’s an alien ship isn’t immediately apparent. But from a little farther back, it’s not really noticeable. It looks more like a grass covered hill—I added bunches of grass, pieces of sod, on top of the branches.

  “Come on,” says Korzak. “We’re going to your house now.”

  “My house?” I say. “What are you talking about?”

  “I set the coordinates to near your house.”

  I look around, and suddenly it makes sense. I knew this area seemed familiar.

  “Your house is just over in that direction. Less than half a mile.”

  I suddenly feel really dumb for not recognizing it. But the truth is, I’ve never walked over this way. If I’m right, we’re across the road that runs by my place.

  “Great,” I mutter. “Now there’s an alien space ship poorly hidden less than a mile from where I live. I’m going to have fun explaining that one.”

  “Come on,” says Korzak. “Do you need me to carry you?”

  I scoff. “Looks like you might need me to carry you.”

  Korzak nods and heads off. Despite his injury, his strides are long. I follow him, having to walk quickly to catch up to him.

  I suddenly realize that he looks completely ridiculous for Earth. Much of his torso is completely bare, and there are all sorts of futuristic weapons dangling off of belts that run diagonally across his chest. Not only that, but he’s tall and huge. Even if he were wearing normal clothes, he’d look out of place, especially with his long, wild-looking hair.

  Well, I think, let’s just hope there aren’t any cars passing when we cross the road. Although the first thing someone would think if they saw Korzak is not: alien. Instead, they’d probably think he was a movie extra or something like that.

  Things start to look a lot more familiar when we get to the road. But it’s pretty surreal coming back to the area that I was kidnapped from only a day earlier.

  It’s somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, and the sun is shining brightly, making everything look beautiful.

  A car is coming down the road.r />
  Sure enough, the driver stops to rubberneck the strange looking, massively tall Karzak.

  Of course, Korzak pays no attention, except to comment on the primitive form of transportation.

  “At least that car has a working engine,” I say. “Unlike your escape pod.”

  Korzak doesn’t say anything.

  “Don’t you ever laugh?” I say.

  “Where’s your dwelling?” says Korzak.

  “Follow me.”

  I cross the road and now my little rented old farm house is visible. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see it. Sometimes, coming home from work, I dreaded the sight of my house. It meant arguments with my boyfriend, or, recently, it meant long, lonely nights alone.

  Korzak makes a grunt when I point out the house to him.

  He follows me inside.

  I laugh when I see that Star Trek is still cued up on the screen.

  Korzak stands in the middle of the room, upon entering. He looks crazily huge, having him inside my actual house, next to my possessions. He looks around, surveying everything. He seems to pay particular attention to the stove and the refrigerator.

  “Let’s take a look at that leg,” I say.

  “It’s fine,” says Korzak.

  “You could barely walk,” I say. I gesture to the couch to get him to sit down.

  He sits down. His weight causes the couch to sink where he sits. He stares straight ahead, looking curiously at the images from Star Trek.

  It looks so surreal to have this huge alien sitting on my couch that I start laughing nervously.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Uh, nothing,” I say. “Roll up your pants so I can take a look.”

  Korzak does so.

  “Looks like your ankle is messed up.”

  His ankle is black and blue.

  “I’ll go see what I have for it,” I say.

  “It’s fine,” grunts Korzak. “It’ll be healed by the end of the day.”

  “By the end of the day? I sprained my ankle once and couldn’t walk for two weeks.”

  Korzak laughs. “We Tarnens recover quickly,” he says.

  “Maybe so,” I say. “But I’d like to see if I can do something for it.”

  I head into the bathroom to find the emergency kit that I’ve never used. I suddenly realize, upon examining the contents, that I have no idea how to treat a sprained ankle. I think when I got mine I got crutches and instructions not to put any weight on it for as long as possible.

  “Well,” I say, returning to the living room. “There’s some kind of ankle wrap in here. Maybe that would help. Hey, what did you do to my TV?”

  “Is that was this apparatus is?” says Korzak, gesturing to the TV.

  There’s no longer Star Trek on the TV.

  Instead, there are all these alien symbols, spread all over what looks like a map of the solar system.

  “What did you do to my TV?” I say, repeating myself. I’m pretty upset. After all, Star Trek has been my little safe haven. I don’t want to lose it. Not for some crazy alien map.

  “If you broke my TV…” I say, suddenly realizing in the middle of speaking how ridiculous I sound. Anyway, after what I went through, I’m not sure I’d be able to relax with Star Trek, given that it involves traveling through space and encountering all sorts of aliens, and some very dangerous ones at that.

  “I’m just projecting a map of this system,” says Korzak. “It’s easier to read on a larger screen. I want to make sure the CATs haven’t come back looking for us.”

  “Come looking for us?” I say. “I thought you said they would think we’d have been destroyed on that ship of yours.”

  “That’s what I hope,” says Korzak. “But if we’re unlucky, they’ll remember to scan your planet Earth, and they’ll pick up our signals here.”

  “Wait,” I say. “There’s no way they can find us among all the people on the planet…”

  As soon as I say it, I realize I have no idea if that’s true of not.

  “Sure they can,” says Korzak. “That’s how they found you the first time, after all. And now they have my bio-signal.”

  “Great,” I say. “So now we have to worry about those guys coming back… just what I needed…”

  “We don’t need to worry about it yet,” says Korzak. “Not until the alarm goes off. I’ve got it set so that it’ll sound a warning if they enter this system. And I sent an SOS signal to Tarnen, so a ship will be coming for us. Then you and I can head back to Tarnen to live.”

  “Uh,” I say. “Yeah, about that… I think we need to talk about that…”

  I may not have a job or a boyfriend here on Earth. And Korzak may be insanely hot. (In fact, he’s starting to grow on me, the more I look at him.) But I’m not planning on going to spend the rest of my life on some distant planet, especially not one where I don’t know anyone.

  8

  Korzak

  The sun is setting on this strange Earth planet. It’s odd to be here, feet firmly planted on this distant rock so far away from Tarnen. It will take weeks before a ship is sent, since the message will take a long time to travel through space to Tarnen without being detected by the CAT.

  It’s good to be near Olivia Masters, my fated mate. But… things aren’t going exactly as planned. At this point, I thought I’d be back on Tarnen with her. I didn’t expect her to be kidnapped. I didn’t expect to lose the Verdant Falcon. And I certainly didn’t expect her not to instantly desire me back. I also didn’t expect her to have such a sarcastic bite to so much of what she says. Her sarcasm comes through loud and clear from the translator—there’s no mistaking it.

  My ankle is already feeling better. But Olivia insisted on wrapping it in some primitive Earth bandage. I don’t think it does anything but slightly immobilize the ankle. But I let her apply it to simply humor her. It was calming to have her warm, delicate hands against my skin…

  We’re both sitting on the couch watching the map of the system. So far, no CAT ships have appeared. It’s quite possible they really did think they destroyed us along with my ship.

  “I don’t know about you,” says Olivia, suddenly. “But I’m starving. I’ve had about enough of watching this crazy map of yours. It’s got to be some of the worst TV I’ve ever watched.”

  “What do you have to eat?” I say. I’m hoping that these Earthlings don’t eat anything too strange. Most Tarnan warriors, like myself, eat a strictly carnivorous diet. It’s part of our culture, and hunting in the wilds of Tarnen is yet another one of our rites of passage. There’s nothing like killing a Zarzak beast with your bare hands and then roasting it over an open fire, the same way our ancestors did for thousands and thousands of years.

  “Let me check the refrigerator,” says Olivia.

  She gets up and moves towards the kitchen, where there are a couple strange devices. She opens a box, some kind of primitive refrigeration device, and bends over to poke her head inside it.

  I can’t keep my eyes off her ass as she bends over. It’s like a perfect bubble, round and delicious. My cock starts to grow hard just looking at her.

  “Not much, I’m afraid,” says Olivia, pulling her head out of the refrigerator, her hair waving to the side as her head swings.

  She looks so beautiful, so incredible. I don’t regret for a second traveling so far to find her. Everything was worth it, and whatever we go through next will be worth it. I’ll die to protect her. I’ll die fighting for her. I’ll do whatever I have to do just to keep her safe, just to have her.

  She catches me looking at her ass. At first, a look of anger appears briefly on her face. But it fades quickly and she blushes slightly.

  I get the sense she likes me staring at her.

  “How do you obtain your food?” I say. “Do you hunt?”

  “Hunt?” says Olivia, laughing. “No, not me. That’s not really my thing.”

  “How do you obtain it then?”

  She laughs, to my surprise. “Wh
y don’t we just call for some takeout?” she says. “That might be the easiest thing right now. What do you want? Chinese? Pizza? BBQ?”

  “I’m not familiar with any of those selections,” I say. “Why don’t you just order what you normally get? But I may require a very large portion.”

  Olivia looks me up and down. “I bet,” she says. “OK, I’ll order an extra large pizza with everything on it. Well, I’d better make that two extra larges. You do look like you eat a lot.”

  I nod my head approvingly.

  “Now where’s my phone?” she says, hunting around the apartment. “Oh, yeah, damnit, those aliens… damnit…”

  “You don’t have a way to contact the food distributors?”

  “I can do it online,” she says, as if suddenly remembering something.

  She opens up a very primitive looking computer and starts tapping away at it. “There we go,” she says, after a couple minutes.

  The whole time, I’ve been watching over her shoulder, getting a sense of what her planet’s technology is really like. It seems like their computers are mostly just rudimentary communication devices.

  “How’s that ankle feeling?”

  “A lot better,” I say.

  “Hey,” says Olivia, from where she sits next to me on the couch. She folds up her computer and places it on a small table. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about…”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, you know how you were saying that you’re going to take me back to your planet…”

  I nod my head. That is the plan, after all.

  “Well, the thing is… I mean, I have a life here and everything. And I wasn’t really planning on moving anytime soon…. Plus, don’t you think it’s a little… soon, for us to be moving somewhere together? I mean, we just met, and we’re not even dating or anything… I mean, I really appreciate you saving me, but you’ve got to admit that I wouldn’t have been kidnapped if it hadn’t been for you…”

  I nod. “I understand your concerns,” I say. “But I know that you’ll change your mind in time…”

  I can’t read her reaction, but her face does something funny. Some kind of human gesture or emotion that I can’t read. After all, there’s no translator pill for facial expressions.