by Stella Casey
Love From Above
Yearning: Book 1
Stella Casey
Contents
Prologue
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
End of Book – Please Read This
Love From Above
Prologue
Alyssa
He was weird.
And ugly.
And royal blue.
And terrifying.
And right now he was…
Completely naked.
I mean, I had asked to see his true form, but I hadn’t expected him to drop the shorts he was wearing to the floor and step out of them. Maybe he couldn’t shapeshift with clothing on?
My eyes fell to his groin.
I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to see if aliens had…
Oh sweet Jesus. They certainly did.
And this one was a good size, too. At least, compared to the human men I had been with. I dragged my eyes away from his impressive package.
“Alyssa,” he said, and his voice wasn’t unpleasant. It was a little raspy and low — like he had just had a shot of whiskey. “This is the real me.”
“You have so many hands,” I said, and felt stupid as soon as the words were out of my mouth. “I mean arms … I mean … I didn’t mean that … I’m sorry, I…”
The arms I was ogling were just like a man’s arms; well, a well-muscled, sexy man’s arms — there were just more of them.
“It’s okay,” he said, wrapping one of the aforementioned arms around my back.
Suddenly one of the other hands was on my ass. I jumped, not because it upset me, but because it sent a jolt of desire through me.
Still, I couldn’t let him start getting handsy. He had so many hands, I would never be able to keep track of them all. I slapped what I hoped was the one that had grabbed me.
“Now I’m sorry,” he said, looking contrite. “I shouldn’t have touched you without your permission.”
“Berani…” I started.
He stepped back. “Lii’thoou,” he corrected, saying it Lee-thoo. “My name is Lii’thoou.”
“Lii’thoou. I wanted to apologize about last night.”
“Never mind,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “A female who wants to protect her offspring is strong.”
“How did you know I was protecting my daughter?” I said, surprised. “I never told you.”
“You have pictures of her everywhere,” he said with another shrug, as if it were obvious. “What else would you be guarding with such ferocity upstairs?”
Okay. I supposed that made sense.
“And then there’s your…” He glanced down at my chest.
I didn’t understand. “My what?”
“Your … you know … breasts.”
I crossed my arms over the aforementioned body parts. Mostly to hide that my nipples were getting hard from him looking at them and mentioning them.
“What about my breasts?”
He gave me a look. “Well, they’re obviously doing what nature intended them to.”
Ohhhh. Yeah.
Most of the time at work, my breasts were full because I was still nursing Zoe, and I only used the breast pump once a shift, on my lunch hour. He was an astute guy to know that breasts actually had a purpose other than for men to play with during sex. And he could tell that I was nursing, and that these ladies were real, not implants.
I wondered if he had a wife and kids.
I thought about that for a moment but then shook it off, trying to focus on the conversation, not him and my breasts. He didn’t seem to understand that I was really upset about hurting him. So I tried again.
“But really, I’m so sorry for hitting you with my car. And then the frying pan.”
“Not a problem,” he said, and it really seemed as though he wasn’t angry at all. “You’re fierce. I like that. It means you have good genes. Strong genes. You’d be good for breeding.”
I felt my face heating up.
Breeding? Seriously? I was standing here, the first human to ever discover an alien, and he was talking about breeding? And — even worse — I was finding it intriguing?
Then he frowned, as if he’d just realized that he’d made a faux pas. “I mean, you must be a good mother. And I would imagine your child is healthy and strong.”
But my mind was still on the thought of breeding. And me, the woman who hadn’t thought about sex for way over a year, somehow couldn’t stop thinking about breeding and this … male, who somehow didn’t seem so ugly anymore.
“Um,” I said, eyeing the antennae on his head. “Is that even possible? Breeding, I mean?”
And then I couldn’t resist. I had to see what they felt like. I went up on my tippy toes and ran my fingers lightly over his antennae, which were the firmness of an ear lobe … but the skin was infinitely softer.
He moaned and wrapped three arms around me once more, pulling me tight against him. I could feel his hard chest, his hard thighs, and his hard … other things. Apparently, the male apparatus on whatever-he-was worked in a similar fashion to human males.
“Well, I don’t know, Alyssa,” he said, in that rough voice that made all sorts of naughty promises to my lady parts. “Do you want to find out whether it’s possible? Breeding, I mean?”
Did I?
And as I stared into his amber eyes, my body tingling all over, I was very much afraid that I did.
1
Lii’thoou
The sun descended behind the trees that stood on the other side of the tiger enclosure fence. The orange and red light blinded me, but I lazily closed my eyes rather than move. It was a warm day, and I was feeling particularly languid.
Then, from my left side, I heard quick footsteps and perked up.
It was her. The vet.
Alyssa.
I didn’t know how to say her name, but I liked the look of it on the tag. Keeping the heavy eyelids of the tiger form I had assumed slitted, I cracked my eyes open wide enough to see her.
I had observed enough human interactions now to know that the other males at the zoo thought she was good looking. She had skin the color of a particular drink I enjoyed when in human form — something called a mocha — and big, dark eyes that met mine for a moment.
My heart skipped a beat in a strange way. Then I remembered that all she saw was a tiger. If she ever saw me in my true form, she would probably run as far away from me as she could get.
Humans.
They were terribly primitive. And superstitious.
And showing myself to her would get me in even more trouble than I was already in. Not that I had any intention of showing myself to her. I knew I had a sweet deal here on Earth, and I wasn’t about to screw that up for sex.
Even if she did intrigue me. I had felt drawn to her since she had arrived at the zoo, though I didn’t know why. But being intrigued was certainly not enough to make me risk my three meals a day and a roof overhead — so to speak.
My duties here consisted of only two things — letting them examine me once in a while, and looking dangerous for the hundreds of humans who came by
every day to gawk at me.
After the tragedy, and the revenge, and the decades of wandering, I was glad of this tiny piece of normalcy, even if I did have to impersonate a lazy, striped beast.
Her steps slowed and she clutched the wire fence of the enclosure, examining me curiously, as if there was something about me that she couldn’t quite figure out with her primitive human mind.
She could never comprehend what I had been through in my 273 years of existence. She appeared to be in her late twenties — a mere child.
Well, child was probably the wrong word. I ran my gaze over her lush breasts — she must have a baby, for them to be so full — and those curves…
Yes, child was definitely the wrong word. She was no child. She was a fully mature human. But she had so little experience, compared to me.
For a moment, I wished I could have her.
I wished I could show her my true form.
I wished I could be with her.
Right. Now.
I suddenly wanted this little human woman with a desire like I had never felt before. It disturbed me greatly, and I shoved it down, ignoring it with every cell in my body.
I had been banished from my home planet, and I wasn’t even supposed to be planetside. But a couple years ago, I had been hanging out in a shady space port at the edge of the galaxy, and had overheard someone describing this little backwater planet known to its inhabitants as Earth. And this primitive planet had a strange thing they called a zoo.
I had known at once that with my shapeshifting abilities, I could pass as one of the creatures. Then all I would have to do was keep a low profile and no one — especially Voran’zi, my parole officer — would know that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.
I was unable to resist the draw of such easy living, after barely scraping by for so many years, and I’d been here ever since.
As long as I returned to my spaceship — that I had hidden not far away, in a remote cave in the hills — and reported in every year, she didn’t suspect a thing. Or maybe she did, but she didn’t say anything.
I wasn’t even sure how Voran’zi got assigned to me, because she could hardly be impartial about her ex-boyfriend. But there was some corruption in the Galactic Police Force; she had probably asked for me, and the connection had been ignored and/or covered up.
I always wondered if she went easy on me because she was my former girlfriend. If I hadn’t gone to prison, I would probably be married to her right now. I was afraid that she might still be in love with me, even though I had definitely gotten over my infatuation with her.
In fact, I had actually been afraid that she might wait for me to get out of prison. And she had waited … a long time. But eventually she had broken up with me, which had been for the best for both of us. I hadn’t been sorry.
I sighed.
What a mess I had made of things.
Well, I would get to talk to her soon enough, and I would be able to gauge how she felt if I wanted to. My yearly check in was coming up very soon. I had better start counting down the days, because it was very easy to forget all about time when I was impersonating an animal.
I made a mental note to find out the date in the examination room at my next checkup. All I had to do was get a glance at the paper where they wrote my info. That was how I was able to keep track of time throughout the years I had lived here.
When I returned to my enclosure, I would scratch out how many days till the check-in with Voran’zi, and mark them off each sunset. It was a very crude system, but it worked.
I did not want to miss my check-in this year, because it was the last one. My spirits lifted at the thought that soon, I might actually be free. No more prison. No more parole. Truly free once more.
So there would be no more ogling the human woman, I thought, giving myself a mental slap. I would not risk everything to dally with a primitive. Not when I had been practicing abstinence this whole time. I could make it a few more days.
The human female I found so intriguing had only been working at the zoo for about fourteen months, and I had noticed the difference between my reaction to her, compared to the other people who took care of me. Somehow, when her hands touched me during an examination, it made me short of breath — even as a tiger.
“Hey, Berani,” she said, calling me by the ridiculous name the humans had given my tiger form. “How you doing, big guy?”
I opened my eyes wide and stared at her, something I had noticed the other creatures doing. It seemed to unnerve the other humans, but not this one. She smelled of citrus, and my nostrils flared to catch every whiff. Her smile was genuine and kind.
“You’re due for a checkup,” she said, talking to me as if I understood every word she said. I had also noticed this about her. She gave every animal respect, as if each creature were worthy, no matter its form. This was in contrast to the other humans, who talked down to me or treated me like I was nothing more than an inferior life form. “So I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I got a little excited at the thought, then tamped it down. It was just a checkup. Just me paying my dues for being allowed to stay here. It didn’t mean anything.
And I was not looking forward to it. Because I was not going to mate with this human. It would give me a chance to check the date. Nothing more.
She covered her mouth as she yawned. “But now, I have to get to my night shift. I’ll see you tomorrow, big guy.”
I blinked.
Of course, I never responded when she talked to me, but I wanted to. I never would. But that didn’t stop me from wishing that I could.
In fact, it was getting hard not to shift into human form and beg to tell her about my day. About this kid who dropped his ice cream, and cried for the whole ten minutes that his family spent watching me. And two guys who stopped and made out in front of my enclosure. And some random man who told me his plan to rob a bank while no other humans were around — I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not.
Hm. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t tell her about my day.
“Bye.” She waved at me, and I turned my head away.
I could never have the interesting little human female, and it didn’t do me any good to wish for it. I observed the woman walk away, her shoes slapping on the concrete path, and for the first time in a hundred years I felt myself wanting more than just mating.
The thought struck me hard, and I was shocked enough that I got off my lazy ass and began pacing the enclosure.
What was I thinking?
I was days away from being free. I was violating my parole by being on a planet. I was breaking at least a couple of galactic laws by being on a primitive planet. Consorting with a primitive would most definitely be breaking a few more.
So no.
Just no.
It didn’t matter if I wanted her — for sex, or anything else.
I was not going to jeopardize my future.
Besides, she was probably too good for me anyway.
I had done things.
I had made choices.
And now I had to live with them.
No matter how much I regretted what I had done, I couldn’t change the fact that I had to pay for my crimes.
And this … watching her retreating form until it disappeared … was most definitely part of my penance.
2
Lii’thoou
I waited until the zoo security night staff walked by, talking and laughing quietly amongst themselves. It was break time, and they were leaving this area for their usual evening game of poker. They sat near the security monitors, supposedly so they could watch and make sure that everything was all right. But in my experience, they barely glanced at the screens.
As soon as they were gone, I shifted. Drawing a deep breath and focusing my energy near my heart, I felt the pressure building in my chest. Then I imagined an ape. When I had the image clearly in my mind, I released the power of the life force and felt the atoms rearranging themselves into a new form.
; As a Gil’nythian, I could actually visualize the quantum field. When I prepared to shapeshift, suddenly I could see the true nature of reality. There were no separate forms. There was only a field of energy. Once I changed my perspective, it was easy to simply move some of those molecules around in order to procure a new form.
I didn’t know exactly how my power worked. I didn’t understand how it knew all the intricacies of a new form — the DNA, the working of organs and muscle and bone, the likes of which I had never experienced before. All I knew was that when I could see the form in my mind, then the life energy took care of the rest. It was simply a matter of directing it.
I looked down at my paws. They were now hand-like, my arms hairy. I jumped to the fence, feeling my powerful muscles bunching as I leapt and climbed to the top. The metal was cold against my skin. I quickly got over and climbed back down, running on my feet and my knuckles to the edge of the zoo. I made it over the high fence with ease in my ape form.
I stopped just at the edge of the trees, where I was still hidden, and imagined the human form I usually took, feeling the energy building in my chest. I released it and felt the molecules shifting.
The face I assumed was my great-great-grandfather’s, except that the skin was that strange pale color many of the humans here seemed to have and the eyes were blue, instead of my usual amber. The hair was black. From the admiring looks I received from human females, I assumed that this form was pleasing to them.
After finding the change of clothes I always kept hidden in the woods, I stood on the edge of the road, a well-dressed human male. I checked to make sure I had money in my pocket before heading out.
I had gotten all my human paraphernalia by sorting through the clothes bins outside the thrift shops. The ones where people leave clothes to donate. The first time I went as a dog, seeing as a naked human man would cause a stir. You would be surprised what kind of nice clothes you’ll find in there, especially if you go to a thrift shop near a rich area of town.
