by Megan Alban
He glanced at her to gauge her reactions so far. She sat on the sofa, hands clasped, black curls tumbling around her lovely oval face. Only her eyes looked wary.
“Celeste, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But I’m not going to appear to age as quickly as you...unless you want the nanites too.”
She had bounced off the sofa and stood with her back to him, gazing unseeingly out one of the windows. “How long you been taking these, Rayse?”
He rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t take them, I’ve always had them.”
She turned, silhouetted against the light. He couldn’t read her expression. “Is that why you are never sick?”
He nodded.
“That’s why you will live longer?”
She started to turn away, but stopped, and swung back to him. “Does your cousin...does Sandra have these too?”
After a moment, he nodded.
“And the baby?”
“Yes, and John. He agreed to the nanites so they would age at the same pace. The baby’s ones, well, they came from Sandra. His daughter, Laura, would die without them, of course.”
He heard her sigh. She came across the room and reached up to take his face in her hands.
“Rayse, honey, over the past few weeks, God has managed to get my dad a great job, with shares thrown in. He got Mom talking to us about her problems at work, and being diagnosed as bipolar, and that her work was trying to get rid of her before the fall semester so she couldn’t get tenure. He helped her find a lawyer willing to represent her interests at a reasonable price, though she hasn’t said who, with the result that her employer backed right down. God even managed to get my crazy parents back together again and Monique into school. I reckon if he can do all that, he can deal with a few nanites.”
He bent to kiss her tenderly. His arms held her as if she was his greatest treasure. Which she was.
“There is one other thing, my love.” He buried his head in her ringlets, afraid to go on. Then he drew her back to the sofa and sat her down. “I had to get Sandra’s permission, and John’s, to tell you this.” He paused, looking into her eyes. He was more afraid than he had ever been. His mouth felt dry, his heart pounded. He hadn’t meant to tell her, but he loved her. She needed to be aware of exactly what she was getting into.
Celeste reached out a slender hand and caressed his lean cheek. “Rayse Borg, nothing you could tell me could stop me loving you. If Sandra and John are okay with it, why shouldn’t I be?”
He caught her hand and kissed her palm. Then reaching forward he drew her head close, to whisper in her ear for some moments, before releasing her.
She gaped at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
He shook his head, regarding her intently.
“This is absolutely real?”
Rayse nodded.
The silence lengthened. She began to shake her head, but at the same time began to smile. “Rayse Borg, sometime you are going to have to tell me all about it, and real soon! Only thing you need to know right now is that it doesn’t make a bit of difference. I love you, and will till the day I die.”
Rayse pulled her back into his arms. His kisses were urgent, a combination of enormous relief and burning desire.
“Mine forever and always?” he asked between kisses.
“Sweet pea, you ain’t ever going to get rid of me.”
When their lips parted again she sighed and rested her head on his chest.
Rayse chuckled.
“What you laughing about?”
“You forgot to mention God moved Monique back home. Frankly, that was my biggest worry.”
Celeste gave his chest an admonitory slap. “My family breaking up was no joke to me, Rayse.”
He eyed her. “Sweetheart, it was even less of a joke to me. There was no place for me in your life. I need to know I come at least equal most of the time. I could only dream about coming first.”
“Oh.”
She stood silent for a few moments. “First thing you need to know, dearly beloved, is that I realized that I could trust you to forgive me when I make dumb choices. I knew they wouldn’t. Second thing is that you know how I like to be independent, don’t you?”
Rayse nodded, wondering where this was going. Had he said too much?
“When are you going back to Switzerland?”
“Three weeks, at the latest.”
“Then, how would you like to be married by then? This lot of classes ends in two weeks. I’ll talk to Sandra and tell her I can’t start another batch till I’ve spent some time with my man.”
He grinned down at her, ignoring the small voice that said she could tell Sandra no, but not her family.
“Like it? I love the idea!”
“And I’m going to tell my parents that they are welcome to the wedding. I would love for them to be there...but I’m marrying you, with or without their approval, and I would appreciate them welcoming you into the family.”
Celeste couldn’t say anything more. Her feet were inches off the floor and her mouth was completely covered by Rayse’s. His arms held her fiercely against his chest.
He raised his head and looked down at her as she gasped an inhale.
“You have no idea how much that means to me.”
She grinned up at him. “Does that mean more sex?”
“You need to ask?”
About the Author:
Wendy C Giffen graduated from Homerton College, Cambridge. She is the author of The Selene Experiment (a Sci-fi series) and Around the Bend (Travel Stories) and An Alien Touch and Alien to Love which are the first two books of the Alien series.
She is working on other books, due out in 2016. She is a certified Psycholinguistic Hypnotherapist, an erstwhile teacher and potter, and lives on an island off the West Coast of Canada.
More Books!
If you want to know more about other books in this series, or about other books I have written, please visit: wendycgiffen.com
While the Alien series is hot Romance (18+), I am thinking of doing a less melting version of each book.
Stand alone books in this series that are out or coming out in 2016 include:
An Alien Touch – Book 1
Alien to Love – Book 2
An Alien Wind – Book 3
Alien Roots – Book 4
To Find an Alien – Book 5
There is also:
The Selene Experiment – a stand alone, but the first in a Science Fiction series.
The Trustee – a stand alone novella. Science Fiction.
Around the Bend – a short book of traveler’s stories.
Game Plan – a stand alone novella. Contemporary (18+) Romance
If you would like to sign up for the occasional email update please visit my website: wendycgiffen.com
Alien Mercenary’s Desire
LIA COLE
1
Sharla shook the bars of the cage. It hadn’t done anything the first time she’d tried, or the third, or the fiftieth. She was probably somewhere at try number three hundred and seventy two, but she’d lost count.
Nothing she did made a difference. She was stuck in a small room, bars across the width connecting the walls, imprisoning her on the wrong side. An open door seemed to lead to a short connecting hall, and then a busier corridor, but a strange red light filtered the opening, and she only caught shadowy glimpses of her captors as they passed back and forth.
Take a deep breath. Look around. Find something. Anything.
It didn’t matter that she’d talked herself through the same exercise approximately two hundred and forty three times in the hours that she’d woken up, fully dressed from her blind date, head splitting. And in a room she’d never seen before. If she didn’t do something, she’d start screaming again, and her throat still hurt from the last time she’d lost it.
Take stock. What’s here?
Small room. Bars too narrow for her to pass through, embedded into the wall. A shelf jutted out from
one wall. She tried again to lift it, ran her hands underneath the smooth surface, but it refused to budge. Despite waking up on the shelf, there was no bedding, no sheets, nothing soft. Nothing movable.
She examined every inch of the cell again, convincing herself she must have missed something, a clue, a possible weapon to use against her mysterious captors.
Nothing.
Only a faint hum under her hand when she pressed against the wall, as if the vibrations of a giant machine.
And that told her nothing.
Another deep breath. If they got her in here, there had to be a way to get out. And she went back to the bars for try number three hundred and seventy three.
She lost count before the red haze blocking her view of the outside corridor stuttered like the static on an antique television set. For a moment, she couldn’t make out anything other than a tall, blocky shape. She tensed her muscles, ready to fight, ready to run.
But the moment she made out the form heading towards her, she shrank back, curled up on the shelf, pressed into the wall.
It was like all of the old science fiction abduction films, come to life.
Pale grey skin emerged from beneath a dark blue jumper that Sharla could see no fastenings on. But she wasn't really looking that hard at the design, as her attention was riveted to the creature’s almost featureless face. A mere split of the skin where a nose might be, the barest suggestion of ears, and most disturbing of all, large dark expressionless eyes that fixed on her with an unwavering stare.
It didn't move for long moments, but Sharla felt cold malevolence radiating from it.
"Finally you wake. We had begun to wonder about your dosage." The creature did not move, but those eyes filled with darkness seemed to crawl over her form.
"It has been too long since we have harvested from your planet, and perhaps the records were out of date."
Sharla blinked. Harvested. From her planet. And even though she knew he wasn’t speaking English, or Spanish, or even anything from her rusty high-school French, she could understand him.
"You can imagine our pleasure when we realized that not only are you a healthy female of breeding age but are also untouched. This will bring a nice bonus. I believe we have already found a match for you."
His voice was disturbing enough, flat, dispassionate. But his words were the stuff of nightmares. Sharla’s voice chocked in her throat.
The creature placed a long finger along the side of the cuff he wore on his left wrist. Immediately a red haze appeared in the cell, bisecting it, keeping Sharla curled against the wall on her bunk. The air around it crackled, and seeing the red haze close up made her certain she did not want to touch it.
The creature flicked the cuff again and the bars of her cell withdrew. He turned and took a tray from a low table she hadn’t noticed before and placed the tray and its contents inside of her cell. He stepped back, tapped commands into the cuff again, and in sequence the bars reappeared and the red haze holding her back faded into nothingness.
"You should eat and maintain your strength."
Sharla didn't move. She looked at the orange block on the tray sitting on the floor in front of her and shuddered.
“The meal has been calibrated to your nutritional needs. It would be foolish for you to resist. If you refuse to eat, you will be sedated and forced."
Without another word the creature turned away from her and left the room. The red haze flickering to let him pass into the hallway beyond.
Sharla swallowed hard, and shivered as she stared at the stuff sitting on the floor in front of her.
Poisoned?
Probably not. From what the alien had said (alien! screamed a small voice in the back of her head), they needed to keep her alive and healthy. Because she would…
She froze. Healthy female. Of breeding age. And… she wrapped her arms around herself. Untouched. There was only one reason she could think of that would make anyone be interested in all of those things. All of those science fiction abduction films just got real.
Hysteria clawed through her throat, and she shoved it down. If that was the reason she’d been kidnapped or not, it didn’t change anything, not right now.
Options. One, this was a dream, and everything would be alright. So, it would be safe to eat if she was hungry. And, suddenly, she was ravenous, as if the terror of waking up in the cell had blocked out all other worries.
Second option. This wasn’t a dream. Which meant the alien was real. And she was about to be trafficked, sold to the highest bidder. And also, her stomach lurched, probably meant she was in space.
Which would have been fabulous, if it wasn’t for the whole sex slave thing.
Focus, Sharla.
The first thing was to decide about the food. If it was food.
More facts. She could understand the alien, and she shouldn’t be able to. Which must mean that they’d done something to her. And, they knew she was a virgin.
She brushed down the navy fabric of her good skirt that she’d worn on a stupid, pointless blind date that was beginning to seem like the last normal memory she’d ever have. She was dressed now, but…
They must have examined her. And, if they were going to sell her, they’d want her healthy. And should know what would make her sick.
Hell with it. Dinner time it was.
As she chewed on a corner of the dry orange brick, the panic rose again, choking her. How the hell had she gotten here, anyway?
The last thing she remembered was driving home after yet another bad blind date from yet another online site. It wasn’t that she’d meant to stay a virgin all these years, just somehow it had never happened. Twenty years old, and still a virgin.
She'd gone out with plenty of guys, but there was never any real connection, no spark. What the hell was wrong with her? She couldn't be that difficult of a person to love... Or maybe the problem was her, after all. Maybe it was her own standards that were too high.
Last night’s date had been nothing special in terms of its badness. It wasn't like he’d thrown up out of nervousness, or said something racist, or stuttered anxiously, or anything like that. Honestly, he seemed like an okay enough guy. But was that all she was interested in? “Okay enough?” Who the hell cared about “okay enough?” Lots of people were perfectly fine with “okay enough.”
But was she? Surely she was worth more than “okay enough,” right?
Maybe she was too picky. If she got serious with a man, it would have to lead to intimacy sooner or later. And after all this time of waiting for Mr. Right, Mr. Okay Enough just wouldn’t do.
She'd almost considered going home with the guy last night, just to get it over with. But she couldn't go through with it. Just looking at him, she could almost see the entire rise, fall, and demise of their relationship in his eyes. Maybe a two week fling at best, but nothing more. Nothing with a future.
She chewed on another corner of the orange brick. Maybe a two week fling with no future would have been better than traded across the galaxy as a mail order bride. She’d have to keep that in mind, if she ever had a chance to make that decision again.
2
Kordiss flicked the switches to bring up the screens for his latest job, letting his mind wander a bit. For the most part he’d tried to stay on the right side of the law, not, he thought randomly as he rechecked the specs for the attack, out of any particular sense of morality, but because society could be so convoluted. Really, it was easier to stay away from as much of it as possible. Having berserker tendencies run in the family could make career choices difficult.
So he kept himself to himself on an old freighter he’d bought from a retiring family of Velarian traders, and took jobs that seemed like he’d be out of the mix of things. As a guiding principle, he tried not to contribute to the chaos, and maybe even clean up a few messes along the way. And it seemed like there were a hell of a lot of them.
Like this job. Generations ago, the coalition his planetary system belonged to had o
utlawed the sale of women from primitive planets for illicit purposes. You could still take a bride, but only if the mating was consensual. Didn’t seem that complicated. But not long ago, he’d been told by a distant cousin of a new planet that seemed to be experiencing an influx of raiders.
His cousin had even ended up taking a mate after rescuing one of these primitive women from their clutches. Kordiss wasn’t looking for a mate, but it was interesting news. That, plus an alert that the government had put a reward up for women rescued and returned to their home planets, and he figured he’d found a job that could fill in time between more profitable clients.
So here he was, suited up and armed to the teeth, reviewing the layout of the Nargest ship again. Their species had long been a nuisance, raiding and thieving across most of settled space. Good business, they called it. Luckily their ships tended to hold to a common design, just scaled up or down as needed. He’d tracked this one as it hurtled along its path, its speed suggestive of illicit cargo.
He added another round of explosives to the front of the small, aged craft he’d purchased for just this sort of job. The Nargest fought dirty. He grinned, white teeth flashing against golden skin.
That was alright, so did he.
Their ship was faster, but required frequent fueling. He’d made a calculated guess as to which dying star they’d use to fill their ramscoop, and had plotted a risky course through unstable wormholes to get ahead. His gamble had worked, and now he waited, just out of sight, his own ship’s signature masked by the ambient radiation.
Another glance at the map on his helmet screen, then he patted the little away ship. It wasn’t much of a ship, but probably deserved more than a one way trip, and to be used as a battering ram.
“Cheer up, old thing,” he muttered, vaguely aware that talking to ships was probably a sign he’d been alone for far, far too long. “As least you’re going out on a mission of mercy. A hero, really.”
And then he strapped himself in, and slapped the launch button.
Go time.
3
