Alien Attraction (The Shadow Zone Brotherhood Book 5) Read online

  Alien Attraction

  Elise Jae

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  FAULT

  Chapter 2

  FAULT

  Chapter 3

  FAULT

  Chapter 4

  FAULT

  Chapter 5

  FAULT

  Chapter 6

  FAULT

  Chapter 7

  FAULT

  Chapter 8

  FAULT

  Chapter 9

  WREN

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  FAULT

  Chapter 13

  FAULT

  Chapter 14

  FAULT

  Chapter 15

  FAULT

  Chapter 16

  FAULT

  Chapter 17

  FAULT

  Chapter 18

  FAULT

  Chapter 19

  FAULT

  Thanks!

  Also by Elise Jae

  About the Author

  One

  WREN

  They’re sending me home.

  Like a prisoner being extradited back to her country of origin… except I have to cross a galaxy, not a simple border.

  And I haven’t done anything wrong.

  But punishment doesn’t always require a crime.

  The wrong woman had gone home with the man I’d been matched to and now I’m adrift—though, after what happened with the one she was supposed to have wound up with, I can’t say I’m sorry she got her happy ever after.

  Still, it’s left me stuck.

  And after months, the computer they use for this stuff is stumped. There’s no other man on this planet for me. I get the equivalent of “return unopened” postage.

  They barely even let me see the world before they decided to toss me off it.

  I feel like some old storybook princess, locked away in a tower. But the walls here aren’t stone. The windows aren’t barred.

  I’m looking up at a familiar, iridescent ceiling. The pattern is supposed to mimic the stars blocked out by the house’s roof. I’ve been starting at this ceiling for months and while it changes. I haven’t.

  I still want what I came here expecting, and instead, I’m sitting in the comfortable warmth of Mary’s living room…. Just waiting for someone else to stamp the paperwork and send me home.

  Okay, that’s not accurate. There’s no such thing as intergalactic passports and I’m done being passive.

  Letting out a loud sigh—something Mary doesn’t even react to anymore—I push myself up to standing. “I’m going to bed.”

  It’s strange how easily that lie rolls off my tongue.

  Simple.

  Succinct.

  There’s no reason for her to suspect anything, and she doesn’t. She just keeps working.

  The woman is always working.

  The Agency keeps her busy… because her match worked.

  Her big alien husband isn’t in town at the moment, but every once in a while, I see her smile, and I know… she feels him, even across all that distance.

  I came here wanting that.

  I still do.

  “Try to get a good night’s sleep. It’s going to be a long, lonely journey home.”

  That word is bitter as it ghosts across my mind. I abandoned Earth as my home on purpose.

  I don’t want it back.

  I walk into the back hall and slip into the room that has been mine since my assigned bondmate took the wrong woman.

  From the window I can see the far off mountains, where monsters are said to roam. I can see the spaceport where ships dock to deliver women to their sian mates and to take random supplies back to Earth in trade.

  I can see the vast city with its steering-wheel-less cars and buildings that seem to change height every day. And I can see the flickering neon-style sign of the one establishment on the planet every sian man knows and holds in reverence. The one establishment I’ve been barred from.

  Margot’s is a strip club on one side of the wall, and a sex club on the other. But it’s a place for bonded human women, and unbonded sian men. The latter, with the consent of their mates—I’ve been told—dance for any sian man willing to pay the cover fee, and enjoy the company of any man vetted by the eponymous owner.

  It’s the only place I could possibly get what I need tonight.

  I glance at the bag by my feet.

  They’re sending me home tomorrow.

  And if I have to leave… I’m not going without one night of pleasure.

  Besides, it’s my birthday.

  I deserve a treat.

  It takes a few minutes to refresh the day’s makeup and redo my hair, but the dress slides on like liquid pouring over my skin, and by the time I slip into my heels, it’s like no time has passed at all. I should probably wait to put them on until I’m outside and safely on my way to the tram but I don’t want dirty feet, and I’m not going to take a purse, so….

  Grabbing the three things I can’t leave the house without. ID, comm, and a credit clip—I rifle through the bottom of my bag in search of something else I’d brought, just in case…

  They all tuck nicely into the side of my bra cup, settling against my breast without messing up the lines of the dress.

  Mary is on a call when I slip out of the bedroom and tiptoe to the back door. It takes two seconds to put the alarm sensor on pause—it’ll turn back on a few minutes after I’m gone—and then I’m out. Headed to get what I deserve.

  Margot’s isn’t close enough that I can walk the entire way, but public transportation here is entirely free, and I get to the tram station as a trio of cars pull into the station. I only spare a single glance back toward the house before I step through the double doors and take hold of the handrail.

  The man on the seat near the front looks me up and down, but it’s a cursory pass. Cataloguing me and then moving on.

  Back home, on Earth, I’d never have risked going out this late, alone, and without a coat to cover the dress. But here… especially on public transport, there are so many security precautions… I don’t even think he’d try something if he looked like he wanted to.

  It’s only two stops between Mary’s house and the brightly lit staton that has advertisements for Margot’s on flashing screens.

  A group of men disembark from a car further down the tram, and even though none of them look my way, I hesitate.

  Some habits die hard.

  As soon as they’re far enough away, I follow. I don’t know for certain that they’re going to Margot’s, but it’s a good bet, and when they turn down the main road that leads to the club, I start to feel the prickle of anticipation.

  It’s time to slip into the back and get what I came for.

  FAULT

  The beat and thrum of Margot’s is a familiar cadence inside my chest as I push through the doors and into a place that is both heaven and hell.

  Heaven for the delights it possesses. Hell for the knowledge I’ll never experience most of them.

  Margo smiles at me, watching as I walk through the room. She knows my routine, probably better than I do.

  It’s why there’s no one around the chair I always go to. It’s tucked back into one of the darker corners and placed in such a way that even the closest patrons would be too distracted to pay me too much attention. Because everyone notices me.

  I don’t have to order a drink. Margot has already waved someone down. She’ll no doubt be carrying anything Margot thinks I need to know, along with the alcohol.

  And sure enough, the waitress arrives w
ith both.

  “Hannah’s off tonight. Family thing.” She says it with an apologetic smile, dropping down to a dainty little squat as she sets my drink on the table. “Want me to send anyone special your way?”

  “Is there anyone else here willing to have me?”

  Her face blanks for a moment, and even though I knew it was likely when I asked the question, the rejection in that brief shift still stings. I’m old enough to know better.

  Sian men are big. But I’m bigger. I scare everyone but Hannah away.

  “We have a new girl… She started a few weeks ago. Why don’t I see if she’s available.”

  What she meant, I knew, was that she’d point me out to the new girl and see if she wanted to tempt fate.

  Hannah entertains me as a sort of badge of honor. She can “take me”, she says.

  Because I’m a big, ugly monster of a man, who has to duck to go through doorways.

  It won’t surprise me if the new girl takes one look at me and decides to run the other way.

  In fact, she’d probably be smart to.

  I should leave before she has the chance to make that mistake. I down the drink as if it’s a shot.

  There’s nothing here for me tonight, and unlike some of the men around me, watching the others who’ve started their little shows out here never got me off.

  Setting my empty glass down, I turn to rise, but there’s someone in front of me.

  Someone small and smooth, and in a short dress that catches all of the lights that bounce around us.

  “Hey handsome.”

  The way she says it… I’d almost think she believes the word.

  “You look a little lonely. Were you waiting for someone?” Her hair is light—light enough it reflects the colors flashing with the lights. And her tongue presses at the corner of her lips.

  Most interesting is that she doesn’t flinch when I move.

  “I think I’ve found someone.”

  She smiles in a way that makes me think I’d hear her laugh if the music wasn’t so loud.

  When she tips her head back, I want to reach up and trail my fingers down her neck, all the way to where her breasts peek out from the scooping neckline of her dress.

  “Do you want to play with me, big boy?” She slides down onto my lap, and I know she feels the answer to that question, I don’t need to say anything.

  She presses her hands up my chest and her tongue darts out to wet those utterly kissable lips.

  “It’s my birthday, and you look like the perfect present.” When she meets my eyes, there’s a flash of something there… not quite fear. “Why don’t you take me into the back and show me your gifts?”

  I shouldn’t.

  Tonight shouldn’t be any different from the other nights I come here. But Hannah’s off, and this woman is beautiful… and she wants me.

  It’s nice to actually feel wanted for a change.

  The waitress hurries by, and the woman in my lap angles her face away from her… I almost question it, but….

  Her small hand slips around my neck, fingers spearing into my hair, and she puts just enough pressure there to move me where she wants me. To place me in the perfect reach of her lips.

  “Will you be the one who gives me my birthday kisses?” Words and lips both brush against my mouth as she speaks. “You’re the only one in this room that I want.”

  I don’t like watching, but I like being on display even less. Still, there's a plea in those words I can’t resist.

  Her lips are firm, wanting and after that moment’s hesitation, after testing those waters, I take everything she’s offered me.

  And she takes it right back.

  When Hannah kissed me, it was a precursor to our interactions, nothing more. This woman.

  This woman is tasting me.

  Testing me.

  There was so much a person could lie about—could lie with—but there was truth in a kiss that wasn’t easily hidden.

  And it had never occurred to me how horrible false interest might feel in that kiss… until now.

  Now that I’d tasted her.

  Now that I knew the way this desire felt. Anything less would be a consolation prize.

  She tastes like vanilla and cinnamon and ten other spices I can’t place. And I need to get her into the back, before I do something one or both of us will regret.

  She weighs nothing compared to the monsters I’m so routinely forced to carry, and when I stand, she slides to the floor, a wicked smile on her lightly swollen lips.

  Her fingers twine with mine, and she leads me to the dim hallway that is mere feet away.

  It gives me a moment to really look at her. The dress, less sparkly now that we’re out of the other lights, is… more than the other women who work here wear. It’s a little bit longer, the neckline just a little bit higher.

  There are no cut outs, no long slit from hem to waist.

  It is just a sparkly black dress that probably wouldn’t draw much attention outside these walls. Though… the woman in it would definitely have drawn mine.

  She opens the door, surveys the space, shaking her head and moving on… as though she didn’t know what the room held.

  I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me.

  She’s new.

  There’s no way I would have missed her for long.

  The next door she barely hesitates at, and when we step inside, the sharp snick of the lock is loud in the suddenly quiet space.

  It’s not silent. Music pipes in from a speaker overhead, but it’s soundproofed and the heavy beat of the bass from outside is gone.

  But the light is different, and it shows me her hair is paler than I thought, her eyes, somehow darker. There’s a hole under the left side of her lip where a piercing probably used to live, but more than that, the barely brighter light shows me what I’d hoped most to see, what I was looking for.

  Her eyes are clear. She knows exactly what she’s doing.

  “Now,” she says as she turns for me, leaning back against the door as those eyes rake over me.

  Pure desire burns in them, and I want to go to her, but I’m rooted to the spot until she gives me a command.

  “Why don’t we get you out of those clothes, and show me what you’re going to give me for my birthday.”

  Two

  WREN

  The man in front of me has all of the trademark traits of a sian man, the facial ridging, the strange flatness in the color of his eyes… and the size difference.

  He’s kind of enormous. I’d guess six nine at the very least. I didn’t realize he was bigger than the others until he’d stood and dwarfed me. And he’s built. I almost want to ask what he does for a living.

  But I’m playing a role, and I’m way too horny to waste time on things like that.

  Besides, my proverbial midnight approaches and I need to be out of here before someone figures out I’ve broken in and they come to turn me into a pumpkin.

  I’d snuck in through the back door behind a woman carrying an over large headpiece and heard a waitress talking to one of the women about him. About how he scared everyone else away….

  And I’d had to go see for myself.

  From the look on his face, he’s very used to others running from him. Every move is cautious.

  The dim room is painted black wherever the walls aren’t covered in mirrors. The bed at one end looks freshly made, and a long line of products march across the counter vanity on the opposite side, but they can’t distract me from him.

  He watches me as he pulls the sleeves of his shirt over his hands and then sweeps the rest of it over his head.

  There’s not an ounce of fat on him… but there are plenty of scars. They create a strangely contrasting pattern over his skin. Some are incredibly old and silvery white, others are newer, still dark.

  So I don’t have to do much thinking to guess what he does.

  Lucky me.

  I get to fuck a hero for my birthday.

 
He’s watching me like he expects me to bolt at any moment. I wonder how many women have run away before.

  But I’m not going anywhere.

  Pushing off from the door, I undo the side zipper of my dress—the closest thing I had to something that one of the women working here might wear—and let the slithery fabric fall to the floor at my feet.

  I love the way his focus shifts. Love that my body was able to distract him from whatever dark thoughts linger about his own.

  I want to make him forget. Want him to never think about that again.

  But I don’t get forever.

  I only get tonight… even if I’m starting to think I’ll want more.

  Stepping out of the dress,I make sure to sneak the items out of my bra too. I keep my heels on. They make up a bit of the difference in our height, but the gulf is still immense.

  Looping my fingers in his waistband, I find the seam. Their pants don’t have buttons of velcro, or zippers. I’m not even sure of the science, but I brush my fingers down the front of him, and that seam splits, loosening enough I can slide them to the floor.

  Now, there’s just a thin layer of fabric between me and his cock and already, I can tell, I’m going to be in trouble.

  I let him step back to toe off his shoes and kick both them and his pants into the corner. A glance to the side, to the mirror that shows the both of us. Scraps of fabric are the only thing between us and true nakedness….

  I take a step forward, pressing that tented fabric—and the enormous treat therein—against my stomach. He watches me as I run my hand down his bicep tracing the hard muscle, using the sweep of my hand to move his to my waist.