Alien's Challenge: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Outlaw Planet Mates) Read online

Page 6


  When human females first arrived on Reazus Prime, he had not been interested. Universal breeding meant nothing when he did not wish for hatchlings. A male such as himself did not deserve a mate or children. Still, he imagined that life now. A nest. A home.

  Such foolishness. What kind of life could they have on Reazus? What legacy did he have to give? A fourth child with a four-syllable name, made for sacrifice? He had nothing. Anything of meaning, he gave away.

  She rolled to face him, snuggling closer. He stiffened, quills up, unsure how to respond. She did not wake but continued to sleep.

  He relaxed; his quills lowered.

  He would see her safely back to Earth, no matter how it made his hearts hurt to let her go.

  Chapter 7

  Faris

  When morning arrived, Faris found himself reluctant to leave the bed. His tail tangled with her legs. Her face had a vulnerable expression while she slept. When she woke, she would be confused. He wanted to be there to calm her.

  Foolishness.

  Alice would sleep for half the day. When the stimulant wore off, she crashed hard. Her body required rest. Lurking over her made no difference.

  He needed to do damage control. The heist, a simple smash and grab, had spun wildly out of control, and his actions after the fact made it worse.

  Falsespire? The nearest town to where they departed the train? What had he been thinking?

  Faris studied the figure in the bed. He knew what he had been thinking. Alice had nothing. No clothes. No shoes. She did not even have her words. Exposed to the elements, she would not have survived a lengthier journey. As it was, he kept her in the cold for too long and then dragged her into the busiest gambling den in the town. He practically sent Rand their coordinates.

  That did not matter. Rand, for all his faults, was not unintelligent. He would have calculated the train’s location when they departed and deduced his destination.

  Hard -pressed to find a way he could have handled yesterday better, the feeling he had made a serious error lingered.

  The storm continued, isolating the mountain village from the outside world. The sky was a bitter gray with no hint of the sun. He made the trek to retrieve his hovercycle while the streets remained empty. He caught himself sniffing the collar of his coat, which smelled of Alice.

  Foolish old male.

  “Won’t be going anywhere today. The ferry won’t run in weather like this,” the innkeeper informed him when he returned.

  “Then you can help me. My companion requires garments for the cold, including a good coat, and I’d like to avoid the market.”

  He sat at a table, stomach rumbling and ready for the morning meal. The fever burned calories at an alarming rate and hunger constantly chased him.

  The innkeeper, a female of similar stature to Alice, said, “I’m too busy to run your errands all day.”

  Faris set a credit chip on the table and said nothing, waiting. Silence, he discovered, was often more effective to get what he wanted than threats or bargaining. Alice required proper garments today. If they had to leave suddenly, he wanted her to be dressed for the cold.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” the innkeeper said.

  “None intended.” Faris set down another credit chip.

  The innkeeper grabbed the chips and set down a bowl with a bit too much force. Watery porridge sloshed over the side. “You can have my castoffs.”

  “I am much obliged. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. You paid me.”

  He admired the innkeeper’s entrepreneurial spirit and added another credit chip for the bundle of garments she delivered.

  Communications were slow, if they worked at all. That both helped and hindered him. Rand would be slow to receive reports about Faris arriving in town with a human female and the ensuing brawl.

  Rand would understand what that meant. He may have believed that Faris took Alice on the principle that no person should own another, and under normal circumstances, he would. The brawl pointed to another motivation: the fever.

  Faris sent a message to Perrigaul alerting him to an incoming delivery from Kamron. He avoided mentioning Alice, in case the message was intercepted. When the comm network was operational, the message would be delivered.

  Hopefully, that would be good enough.

  Alice

  “Miriam!” Alice sat up in the bed, the blanket falling away as her shout echoed in the room.

  How could she have forgotten about Miriam?

  The fog had lifted in her brain, and she remembered everything. No more fuzzy gaps. No more slippery thoughts. She had been camping when Miriam showed up with the worst pizza imaginable and they were abducted by little green men.

  Miriam wasn’t her favorite person, but she was taken too. Alice had to find her and then figure out how to get back home.

  A knock rapped at the door a moment before Faris entered, carrying a tray. Whatever was in the bowl smelled delicious. “You are awake. How do you feel?”

  “Better.” Alice stretched, her body aching. Faris tracked the movement. “How long have I slept?”

  “It is near sunset now,” he answered.

  “Wow, the whole damn day,” she said.

  “Who is Miriam? She must be important to have three syllables,” Faris said. He had seemed impressed to learn that her family name had three syllables. He handed her a bowl of gray mush and a spoon. “It is porridge,” he said.

  “Miriam was with me when I was abducted. When we were abducted,” she corrected herself. She stirred the porridge with the spoon, finding it sticky and thick. “That’s not the first time you’ve mentioned three syllables. What does that mean?”

  She blew on the spoon before taking a bite. Slightly sweet, the porridge had a bland quality. A mouthful felt like chewing glue, but she was too hungry to turn down food. She depended completely on Faris, and she wasn’t going to turn her nose up at the meal he provided.

  She forced herself to smile and make yummy noises.

  “It is not pleasant. You do not have to pretend,” he said.

  “Oh, thank fuck.” She swallowed the mouthful with a grimace.

  He watched her carefully as she ate. “Three is a sacred number for my people. A three-syllable name is respectable.”

  She sensed that it was more complex than being respectable. “But your name has two.”

  “I am not respectable,” he said.

  “Agree to disagree.”

  His eyes did that sideways blink again. This time was less disturbing.

  “I killed a male,” he said.

  She nearly dropped the spoon. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Yesterday, he shot people. A lot of people. Plus, he was efficient about it, like he had a lot of practice shooting people. She couldn’t even pretend it was in self-defense. He robbed a train. He was a thief. Hell, he stole her.

  Remarkably, this did not bother her. It’s not like he was a serial killer. He went out of his way to maim —not kill —the goons on the train and in the club. Unless that’s what he wanted her to think, to get her guard down.

  “Are you a serial killer?” she blurted out.

  “I do not enjoy killing, but I must do what is necessary,” he replied.

  She had no response to that.

  “This is not a good place,” he said. “Reazus Prime was a prison planet. Everyone here was a convict or an administrator.” His top lip curled as he said the word, like it left a bad taste in his mouth.

  A prison planet.

  Alice finished the bowl, thinking about the bomb Faris dropped.

  “I need to go home to Earth,” she said. Then, as an afterthought, “I need to find Miriam.”

  “Who is Miriam?”

  “She was with me when I was taken,” she said, realizing she repeated herself. “She’s my friend. Kinda.”

  While Miriam was a colleague, one Alice found annoying, and this whole thing was sort of Miriam’s fault, she didn’t deserve to be left behind. Alice m
ight not like the woman, but she had a heart.

  “Speaking of abductions, so aliens. That’s a thing,” she said.

  “Obviously.” Faris sat on a chair and kicked his feet up on the mattress. Shoeless, she had a good look at his very alien feet. Four long toes and a talon—thumb?—at the back.

  “Aliens are a thing,” she repeated. Placing the empty bowl on the side table, she sat cross-legged on the bed. “Honestly, I should be a lot more freaked out than I am. I guess I have Star Wars and Doctor Who to thank.”

  Waking up to inhuman faces had been more shocking than upsetting. What had upset her were the gaps in her memory and her sluggish brain, a side effect of the stasis pod.

  “There has not been a war with Earth. This doctor misinformed you,” Faris said.

  That was the cutest thing she’d ever heard.

  “Okay, so let’s start with the basics,” she said. She had a long list of questions and starting with fundamentals seemed the best approach. “Aliens know about humans, so why don’t humans know about aliens? I mean, until I woke up here, I would have told you that aliens are make-believe.”

  “I do not know intergalactic policy. Earth may be protected because the inhabitants are primitive.”

  “Primitive!”

  “Earth lacks interstellar travel.”

  “We went to the moon,” she protested.

  “Any species can bang two rocks together and go to their planet’s moon. It is not difficult,” he said, voice dripping with boredom.

  Wow. The arrogance.

  Alice swallowed the urge to argue. “So, aliens know about Earth and occasionally steal people.”

  “What is known of Earth is very little. Humans appeared here two years ago. A ship with human cargo detonated and the cargo was ejected. Your pod was part of a salvage auction,” Faris said.

  She blinked, hearing his words but the meaning did not quite sink in.

  “Two years? Two years!” She jumped up from the bed. “I was in a stasis pod for two years? Oh no, my mom thinks I’m dead.” She paced the room, the floor cold against her feet. “I figured a few days, a week maybe. I could say I took an impromptu trip but not for two years. She probably thinks I was eaten by a bear.”

  Alice gasped. “Or murdered and buried in a shallow grave. Poor Mom.”

  She had to get home quickly, just to tell her mother she was alive. Her job would be long gone, but that didn’t bother her. Interesting. Her heart hurt imagining her mother cleaning out Alice’s apartment, though.

  Then, a thought. “Wait, how long is a year for you?”

  “A rotation around the sun.”

  “Yeah, but how many days? A year on Earth is three hundred and sixty-five days, and a day is twenty-four hours, and an hour is... wow. This isn’t helpful.” Comparing units of time seemed fruitless, and nothing good happened from panicky math.

  A hand gently touched her shoulder. “I do not like this face you make.”

  “My I’m-about-to-freak-out face?”

  “Yes, it is very…” His thin lips pulled down into a grimace, and his eyes squeezed shut.

  Alice covered her mouth with her hand. She shouldn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny, but something broke in her and the laughter turned into tears. She was a mess, a crying, blubbering mess.

  “My apologies. I did not intend to upset you,” he said. He rested a hand on her shoulder, stiff and uncomfortable, like he seldom touched people for purposes other than stabbing.

  She threw her arms around him, needing contact with another living person.

  “Hug me back or it’s weird, Faris,” she said between sobs.

  His arms came around her, holding her. Initially awkward, once his stiffness melted, the embrace was perfect.

  He said nothing, patting her back and stroking her head as she cried out her fear and confusion from the past few days. He did not offer empty promises that everything would be okay. She didn’t need fairy tales. She needed to mourn her family and friends, the life she had been stolen from, and the minuscule odds of ever finding her way back home.

  It wasn’t fair. She was angry and sad and alone. No one knew what happened to her, and she felt so very alone.

  Not entirely alone. Faris’ warmth anchored her to the moment. He was solid and present. He had a strength to him that was more than muscle. It ran deeper. Eventually, her breathing evened and her heart calmed.

  She pulled away, wiping at her eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to cry all over you.”

  “It is not a concern,” he said, and she believed him. “Let us assume that a year is roughly the same.”

  “Okay, I can do that. You have to help me get back to Earth,” she said. Then, as an afterthought, “And find Miriam.”

  “That is my intention but I do not know Earth’s location. I do not believe anyone does,” he said.

  “Well, that’s not true because someone came to Earth and started snatching people.”

  “And their ship exploded. They did not share the location.”

  “Typical,” she muttered. “Someone figured it out, so we can too.”

  “The galaxy is large.”

  Alice took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Panic would not win. She had this. She was a librarian, after all. Finding information was what she did. “What do we know? Earth is in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, near the edge. It’s an eight-planet system. Nine? Shit, how does Pluto figure into this?”

  “That is vague.”

  “Well, I’d have more information if we had a computer or a map or something.”

  His quills went flat. “Network connections were damaged during the storm.”

  “Earth is the third planet from a yellow sun.”

  “There are many eight-planet systems with yellow suns.”

  She tossed her hands in the air in frustration. “I’m trying to think of solutions, not reasons why you can’t find a needle in a haystack.”

  “I said I would help you return to Earth, not locate needles.” He hissed out the last word, sounding annoyed.

  “We need information, and we’re not getting any here. We need navigation charts, and we need to figure out what happened to Miriam.” Alice resumed pacing, now with purpose as her order-loving brain made a list. “We were abducted at the same time, so I think we can assume that we were put into pods near each other. If so, then we can assume that her pod was salvaged along with mine, so she went through the same warehouse as me. If we’re lucky, she’s still there.”

  “Doubtful. Human females are a highly sought commodity.”

  Her skin crawled at being called a commodity, but sure. It was what it was. “Then they should have a record of who bought her.”

  “Auctions like that do not keep records,” Faris said.

  “Oh, my dear sweet lizardman, they most certainly do. They might promise anonymity, but they definitely keep track of who drops stacks of cash and on what.” Not that Alice attended any of those sorts of auctions, but that was Capitalism 101: know your customer and hoard their data.

  He scratched at the side of his neck, then jerked his hand away when he caught her watching. “We will have to journey to the Hub to get this information from the warehouse.”

  “And navigation charts?”

  “Yes, I will acquire those for you.”

  An impossible-to-fight smile broke across her face. She had a plan and some tiny sense of control.

  “I feel better already,” she said. “When do we leave?”

  Chapter 8

  Faris

  Her smile was radiant, like the sun breaking through the clouds. Faris hated to steal her sunshine.

  “We must remain here until tomorrow. Possibly the day after,” he said.

  The smile faltered. “It’s been two years. I suppose a day or two won’t make a difference.”

  For her, no. For her friend, it depended on who purchased her from the auction, if her pod had been in the auction at all.

  She stretched, arms over her head, and
the hem of the tunic lifted. Leaning to the left, then to the right, she complained about sore muscles.

  “That is a side effect of the stasis. I know what will make you feel better,” he said, unable to look away from her thick thighs. They were so nude; no scales, just beige flesh that promised so much delight. When they were in the bed, he noticed that her arms were covered in thin, fine hairs. His fingers itched to discover if her thighs had the same fine hairs.

  Even more intriguing was the thatch of dark hair between her legs. Was it as soft as the hair on her head?

  Alice noticed his blatant stare. She tugged down the tunic, her face a blushing pink. “I don’t suppose you found me some pants?”

  “You will not need clothes for what I have planned.”

  The pink on her face deepened to a scarlet. Interesting.

  He handed her the robe to wear and ordered her to follow.

  Snow piled high in drifts on the back deck, but a path had been cleared to the hot springs. The springs ran under the town. Most residences had a pool to take advantage of the hot springs. This pool was rough stone surrounded by a wooden deck. Steam curled above the water. Snow continued to fall but melted when it hit the warm air.

  “Hot tubs?” Alice asked.

  “Naturally occurring hot springs. Soap and rinse at the stall, then soak. It will help ease the ache in your body,” he said. Dropping his robe, he walked naked to the shower stall.

  Feeling her eyes on him, he slowed his pace to let his tail sway from side to side. The cold smarted against his bare feet, but the discomfort was a price worth paying as long as she watched. He rinsed and soaped himself quickly, the water tepid. Once suitably clean, he eased into a tub.

  Heat soaked deep into his muscles. He tilted his head back, watching snowflakes flutter through the air and melt above the water.

  “Join me,” he said, not looking at her.

  “I’m good.”

  “You are not, stubborn human. This will help.”