Alien Overnight (18 page)

“Smooth, Jasmine,” Shelley observed with a frown. “Very smooth.”

“Oh.” Still catatonic with relief, Monica drew a blank. “Well, there’s really not much to tell. Beyond the obvious, I mean. I woke up a few days ago looking like this.”

“And since then?”

“What, are you moonlighting for the
Intergalactic Inquisitor
or something?”

“You’re stalling,” Shelley chortled. “Come on, Gothchild, spill.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Oh yeah? Then why don’t you fill in a few of the blanks regarding this mating thing for us?”

Something in the stubborn thrust of Jasmine’s chin told her the little bulldog wasn’t about to give up the chase. Fortunately, that last bite of pizza got stuck halfway down her gullet, saving her from answering for a precious few minutes while she choked and gagged and had the ever-loving crap beaten out of her back.

“What do you mean?” she finally asked as casually as she could, eyes still watering as she sipped at the cola they’d brought aboard.

“Aw, give it up, Monica,” Shelley chided. “When the commander told Snow he’d brought you up here, he said it was because he’d claimed you as his mate.”

“He did?”

“Mmm-hmm. Him
and
Lieutenant Shauss,” she added meaningfully.

Okay, now she really was blushing. She didn’t know why, but the idea that everyone down below knew she’d…
hooked up
with two aliens made her squirm with discomfort. It shouldn’t. Hell, for all the attention any of them had paid her, present company excepted, she might as well have been swinging from the compound’s art deco chandeliers while doing it with half the Garathani delegation.

They couldn’t possibly have ignored her more than they already did. Ever since she’d said the state song of Montana was “Embraceable Ewe” at the compound trivia night, most of them had looked at her like a particularly diseased sputum sample.

Humorless bastards.

Well, to hell with ‘em.

“All right, then,” she admitted defiantly. “Yeah, I guess I’m mated to both Kellen and Shauss.”

“Oh my God, you mean you’ve…”

And she’d thought Jasmine’s eyes couldn’t get any rounder.

“No, Jasmine, I haven’t. Not yet, anyway.”

“With either of them?”

95

Robin L. Rotham

Monica looked at her plate. What was she gonna say?
Yeah
,
I
’
ve fucked the
commander
,
but Shauss just slapped my crack until I came all over the place
…

So
not.

“Leave her alone, Jasmine,” Shelley interceded. “It’s not really any of our business.”

Well, hell. Now she felt bad. They’d come all this way to see her—well, technically it was just a few miles straight up, but she assumed they’d had to leave the surface at a slightly less severe angle and take the long way around—and here she was holding out on them.

“It’s not that,” she started.

“She’s right, Monica,” Jasmine said, looking apologetic. “It’s nobody’s business but yours. Please forgive me for being so nosy. I’m just, you know, so curious about anything to do with the Garathani.”

“I can totally relate,” Monica agreed, relief and gratitude for their understanding trembling through her. “And I’m the one who’s sorry for being so guarded. I’ve always wanted to have girlfriends, and now that I’ve finally got a couple, I don’t know how to act.” Taking a deep breath, she straightened her shoulders. “Yes, I’ve had sex with the commander, but not with Shauss.”
Though it
’
s only a matter of time
.

Instead of squealing like high school girls and asking a million questions, as she’d expected, both women searched her face as if looking for signs of…what? Enjoyment?

Regret?

“And?” Shelley finally prompted. They both leaned toward her, and Monica hunched down in her seat. God, this was so hard! She
wanted
to talk about it, wanted so badly to confide in someone. But how could she explain that being bound, dominated and disciplined by them had given her several incredible orgasms before either of them had gotten around to fucking her? And that she wanted it to happen again and again and again?

“And…it wasn’t what I expected,” she mumbled, unable to meet their gazes.

Jasmine finally took pity on her. “So, Shelley said you wanted a haircut?”

*

“I’m getting an unusual reading from the interior of this surface pod, Commander,”

Holligan told him.

“What kind of reading?”

Kellen had been called down to the pod bay for a potential security breach, but this wasn’t what he’d expected to hear.

“Take a look, Sir.” The ensign stepped back from the diagnostic panel and pointed to the anomalous energy signature.

“Do you recognize it?” Kellen asked with a frown.

96

Alien Overnight

“No, Commander, though if I had to guess, I’d say it was some kind of nonstandard flare track.”

“Elaborate,” Kellen snapped.

“Hypothetically, Sir, assuming they were able to access sufficient energy apart from the
Heptoral
’s, someone might create a flare field that could be used undetected within our vessel’s. Perhaps stow away—”

“Who was transported in this pod last?”

“The two Terran women, Sir.”

Eyes narrowing dangerously, Kellen broadcast,
All security details
,
full alert
.
Intruder
on board
.
Empran
,
dampen all flare activity
.

As his feet pounded toward the tranlift, he added urgently,
Shauss
,
put your hands
on Monica and don
’
t let go
.

*

“What the hell?” Shelley’s squeak as she stared past Jasmine made them both turn and look. “Where did you come from?”

Monica rolled her eyes when she saw the robed figure standing in front of the door.

“Chill, Shel. It’s just Ambassador Pret.” She nodded a polite greeting to the diplomat. “Good afternoon, Ambassador.”

“Dr. Teague.” He inclined his own head graciously. “You’re looking well.”

“But how did he get here?” Shelley insisted. “He didn’t come through the door. He just popped out of this sort of air-bubble thing.”

“Oh. Well, I’m not really at liberty to say,” Monica said apologetically. “But it’s no big deal.”

She was surprised when the man walked up to her chair, right through the pile of black hair clippings, and stood close enough that his robe touched her elbow. The Garathani were generally more circumspect—

“Hey!”

In less than a heartbeat, Shelley and Jasmine and the entire lounge had disappeared.

*

Clutching two handfuls of his uniform, Kellen slammed Ensign Verr against the bulkhead. “What do you mean,
she
’
s gone
?”

Fury and fear mingled in an ugly, highly unstable mass of energy that was eating away at his gut. If he let it loose, he might kill someone. If anything happened to Monica, it would no doubt kill
him
.

“A thousand deaths curse me, Commander!” the guard wheezed. “The flare faded before I breached the door.”

97

Robin L. Rotham

“Pret took her.”

Shauss’ words echoed with barely suppressed violence, freezing Kellen to the floor as he stared into Verr’s purpling face.

“And you know this how?”

“The women.”

Dropping the ensign to the floor, he turned on his heel and stormed across the room. The force of his palms slamming onto the tabletop made both women flinch.

“Tell me what you saw,” he demanded, trying unsuccessfully to tone down the brutality in his voice. Each clasped the other’s hand before one of them answered.

“It was the ambassador,” the secretary confirmed with a brief dip of her head. The other, Monica’s nurse friend, just nodded mutely, her chin trembling.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the minister sweep into the room, but he was too focused on his objective to acknowledge him.

“Did he say anything?”

“Not really,” Miss King answered again. “Just, ‘Hey, Monica, you’re looking good,’

that kind of thing, and then
bam
! They were gone in this…this bubble of light.”

Holligan
,
scan the surface for flare tracks matching the signature you found in the pod
.

Kellen stared grimly at the pair, his mind churning. The little blonde, near to bursting with her pregnancy, stared back, tears welling in her eyes. She looked as if she wished to make an inquiry, but was too afraid of him. The secretary, though…

Something about her posture, her expression, wasn’t sitting well with him. Instinct made him lean into her face.

“You are being dishonest,” he charged flatly.

She paled at once and her breath began to stutter in her chest. “No! I swear I’ve told you everything I know.”

Boring into her with his gaze, Kellen saw complicity in Monica’s disappearance.

Surface scan negative
,
Commander
.

Aware that the rage bubbling in his blood might cause him to kill her before he got the information he needed, Kellen looked at Cecine and ground out, “Minister, this female has cost Lieutenant Shauss his chance at a mate. He must be compensated.”

Cecine didn’t blink.

“Lieutenant, the female is yours,” he decreed emotionlessly.

Kellen trained his eyes on the secretary’s panicked face once more.

“Take her, Shauss,” he ordered. “And make it as painful as you possibly can.”

98

Alien Overnight

This couldn’t be good.

One minute she was sitting at the table having a nice, uncomfortable chat with her two closest friends—okay, her two
only
friends—and the next she was falling on her ass in some kind of cave. She squinted in the sudden dimness, making out the squared-off walls and ceiling. Maybe she was in a mine shaft.

Whatever else it might be called, it was for sure a dark, dank hole in the ground, and she hated the dark. And the dank. And she especially hated holes in the ground.

Pret stood over her, and his expression didn’t improve her outlook any.

“I suppose I have you to thank for this?” she asked cautiously, taking one crab-walking step backward before scrambling to her feet.

“Indeed.” Artificial light, eerily blue, emanated from some sort of lantern hooked to the wall, and the more her eyes adjusted to it, the scarier the ambassador looked. He’d always been tall and gaunt, but the lighting made him look like some of the cadavers she’d studied. “But you may save your thanks for after our mating.”

Hell, no. He did not just say that.

“I’m sorry,” she laughed incredulously, “but I think you have me confused with someone who’d actually touch you without containment gear.”

“I would advise you, Dr. Teague,” he said as he shrugged out of his robe, “to sheath that blade you call a tongue before you find yourself without it. Commander Kellen may be tolerant of your insolence, but you will find me considerably less forgiving.”

“Well, forgive
me
if I find you considerably less appealing than a baboon’s shiny hiney,” she fired back, absurdly relieved to see that he wasn’t naked under there. Pret’s body was positively spidery in the dark one-piece suit, and not in that lip-smacking Tobey Maguire way.

“I will make you eat those words.”

“Kellen and Shauss will make you eat your own dick if you lay a hand on me,” she said, looking around for the exit.

“On the contrary, my dear. Apparently Lieutenant Shauss has yet to finalize his claim on you, and though my preempting of his rite might be politically incorrect, it is in no way a violation of our laws.”

“In other words, you snooze, you lose, huh?”

“Exactly. And I’m far from unreasonable. Shauss is certainly welcome to stand third once you’ve borne my babe.” His lips twisted. “Just don’t expect me to watch—the idea of those two rutting on your delicate body turns my stomach.”

99

Robin L. Rotham

“Gee, that’s big of you.” Her scornful words sounded pretty brave, but Monica was getting scared now. Could this be true? Was it really open season on her ass? “If this is all aboveboard, why are we hiding down here?”

Instead of answering, Pret grabbed her.

“You really must pay better attention to hygiene after copulating,” he said tightly as he wrestled her, kicking and scratching, to the ground. “You stink of Kellen’s stain.”

“You’re going to
be
Kellen’s stain, you prick, because that’s all that will be left of you when he’s done,” Monica ground out as she fought to get out from under him. The stone floor was scraping the hell out of her back. God, he was strong for a beanpole! Of course, he had a good six inches on her and he hadn’t just emerged from the Sparnite wringer.

Tearing one arm free of his hold, she raked her nails across his face and heard him howl, felt his blood and skin cells accumulate under her nails with primitive satisfaction.

His backhanded blow made her see stars.

*

“No!”

The female tried to lurch from her seat, but Shauss seized the back of her collar and yanked her upward. She erupted into a flailing tangle of flying arms and legs, clearly terrified. Kellen felt nothing but impatience as he waited for her to break.

“Stop it!” the nurse cried, clearly frightened out of her wits. “She didn’t do anything!”

He regretted that she must witness this tactic, but he hadn’t the time to reassure her now. “Calm yourself, Ms. Bonham. This shouldn’t take long.”

Jasmine King scrapped quite well for a female her size, but Shauss had both arms twisted behind her back and locked in his left hand in short order. His right moved immediately to the waistband of her skirt, ripping the garment from her in one smooth sweep. Shock rendered her briefly inert, but when he tore the white scrap of fabric from her privates as well, she exploded into frantic motion once more, air bursting from her throat in shuddering sobs. Her insubstantial footwear had long since flown off and Kellen imagined being nude from the waist down must have struck the worst kind of fear into her heart.