Page 24

I can’t be too bitter about the transportation I’m driving, though. If I wasn’t in this van, I wouldn’t have my army.

The town has maybe a hundred houses. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, so land must be cheap. Each house is on a large plot taking up a city block, so the dwellings are far apart.

I park at the end of the street on the other side of a stand of trees. I consider for a moment if I should wait for the security team. It would certainly be the safest thing to do. It’s at this moment I see a hovercar approach and four females disgorge onto the gravel drive.

It’s as if I can feel their rage and hostility shimmering off them in waves. Something’s happening. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. Whatever their endgame is, it’s going to be soon.

By the look on their determined faces, I don’t think I have time to wait for Drennan’s team.

Once they’ve entered the house, I practically throw out my back as I lift my sexbots onto the grass.

Luckily, there’s a copse of trees on the street corner doing an effective job of hiding my truck and the bots from anyone in the house.

After turning the bots on, I grab the two stunners, giving one to Hugh and keeping the other.

I programmed them all for voice command as well as being able to receive orders from the pad I carry on a makeshift sling over my neck.

I’m about to charge toward the house when I decide I should do some additional recon. I hurry to the too-damaged-to-save bots and find the legless Eric model I tossed on the bottom. He’ll be perfect.

It doesn’t take me long to program him and add a cam to the top of his head attached as if it were an old-time miner’s light.

This house is out in the middle of nowhere and sits on at least an acre of land.

I’m parked at a nearby crossroads. I watch Eric from the end of the street as he uses his elbows to crawl toward the house, then skirts around back.

After punching in directions, I watch through the camera feed as he slides up two steps to the deck in the back and peeks into the sliding glass window.

He’s also equipped with a microphone, and although it’s hard to hear through the glass, between what I see and what I hear, I believe there are five of them in there. It seems there’s trouble in paradise. They’re arguing.

It doesn’t take more than half a minute to confirm I’m in the right place.

I’ve heard the word ‘wog’ at least ten times already.

Fear slithers up my spine as I wonder where my favorite wog is.

I don’t see him and haven’t heard him. Have they killed him already?

There’s a pang in my heart that’s so sharp I wonder if I’m having a heart attack.

I have legless Eric retreat and wait with his back against the wall.

“Okay boys, let’s do this.” I breathe deeply, nod my head to encourage myself, and then step forward.

The five women have lasers, I saw them at Yellowstone.

All I have are two stunners, I know the odds are terrible, but I saw the anger on their faces.

Something was brewing in there and my gut instinct says I don’t have time to wait for Drennan’s team.

The bots form a protective phalanx around me, and we march to the side of the house where there’s only one window.

It’s a stroke of luck they didn’t see us coming and maybe an even bigger piece of luck that a nosey neighbor from down the street didn’t comm them about the small army in their yard, or the risqué van parked on the street.

I tell three bots to go around back and have the five others assemble at the front door. On my order, they all attack at once. Perhaps I’m chickenshit, but I wait, loaded stunner in my hand at the side of the house while I watch all eight feeds on my computer pad.

Shrieks and gunfire erupt. We took them completely by surprise.

It sounds like only one had a gun in hand.

The otherworldly snick of the laser fire makes my blood run cold.

Searching through their feeds, I don’t see Zorn.

My gaze flicks to the backyard as I look for a shallow grave. Thank God there is none.

Hugh stuns the one with the gun, but another picks it up and hits him with a long laser burst. His feed glitches for a moment, but he’s now holding the laser in his left hand and shooting the stunner with his right.

He disarmed the bitch somehow. The woman who held the gun is on the floor.

If I’m not mistaken, she’s screaming bloody murder.

In moments my guys have all the women detained in a corner of the living room. I run in through the front door, stunner clutched in my hands as if I were the heroine in one of the police procedurals I watch on vids.

Satisfied the bots have things under control, I run to a bedroom and grab a huge handful of t-shirts from the closet. I have the Bronson model tear them into cloth strips and in a few minutes, we have all five women tied up in the corner with wrists and ankles bound.

“Where is he?” I demand.

“Your wog is dead,” one of them tells me, a triumphant smirk on her face.

I feel as if I was shot through my heart as a hot ball of lead sinks from there to my stomach.

My eyes fill with tears and I almost fall to my knees.

I never believed in love at first sight or any of that bullshit.

And I guess that isn’t what happened with Zorn and me.

It was repulsion at first sight. To hear him tell it, he felt that way, too.

But I grew to care for him so deeply in such a short amount of time. How will I be able to go on?

“Help!”

That’s Zorn’s voice. My Zorn.

“Bitch!” I spit at the woman who told me he was dead.

“He should be dead,” she tells me as she spears me with a hard gaze. “You should be too, for harboring him.”

I point my stunner at her and shoot. My eyes widen in surprise. I didn’t know I had that in me. I guess my protective instincts have never been sufficiently activated before.

“Zorn, where are you?”

“Annora? You . . . you came for me?” he sounds incredulous. Didn’t he think I’d try to rescue him? Oh, he’s thinking about the awful words he spat at me right before I fled our hover-van.

“Of course, I came for you. My flabby self and my sexbots rescued your sexy ass,” my voice is happy as I find the steps to the basement and practically trip rushing down the stairs. Funny, for some reason the “f” word has lost the power to hurt me.

I’m swamped with happiness, so why am I crying? I run to his cell at the end of the narrow hallway.

He’s standing at the bars wrapped in a thick comforter. Before I reach him, I notice the obvious change in his skin color. He’s got that gray look I saw back at the cottage. He’s going into torpor.

No matter his physical state, though, he’s reaching his hand through the bars to me as though I’m a lifeline. And his eyes, those beautiful blue eyes are shining as he looks at me.

“I never thought you’d come. I thought I . . .”

“You thought you thoroughly pissed me off and I’d just go back to Windy City with my tail between my legs because you were mean?

“I’ll admit, it crossed my mind for about a minute. Then I remembered this,” I say as I press my palm to his cheek—his cold cheek. “It didn’t take long before I remembered who you are. The best male I’ve ever met.”

“High praise indeed considering I’m the only male you’ve ever met.”

Somehow, we manage to hug each other through the bars. We even kiss. It’s not a sexual kiss, though, it speaks to how much we care about each other. It’s intimacy, not lust.

“My mom’s security team is on their way,” I tell him. “How do I get you out of there?”

“It’s keyed to Billy’s biometrics.”

“Which one’s Billy?”

“The youngest. Don’t be fooled, she’s mean. Keep your stunner on her at all times.”

I kiss him again, hard, then notice he’s holding onto the bars for dear life. He’s quickly descending into torpor.

“Sit down. That’s an order. You may be a captain in the Draalian army, but I have my own army upstairs. I have ways to make you comply.” Oh, did that sound dirty? Good.

He sinks onto the mattress and pulls the covers around him. I was right about one thing, he was in trouble. I arrived in the nick of time.

As I march upstairs, I hear one of them say, “You couldn’t have the decency to put clothes on these things? We have to look at all these disgusting naked penises?”

“Sexbots, erections!” I order. On command, all eight penises go from flaccid to hard in the span of a few seconds. I don’t know, maybe all nine did. Since legless Eric is lying on his stomach, it’s hard to tell. He must have come in with the three who broke in the back door.

“Better?” I purse my lips and cock my head. Fuck them. Not only don’t they like aliens, I guess they don’t like men. “Which one of you is Billy?”

One of them gets real busy looking innocent as a choirgirl, the others all cast their eyes in her direction. I guess I know who Billy is.

“Jason One, escort her downstairs with me.”

She tries to yank away from him, but although these guys were built for sex and only sex, they’re strong. He unties her ankles and forces her to the kitchen and down the steps as I follow, stunner clutched tightly in my hand.

Of course, she refuses to place her hand on the biometric pad at the cell door, but Jason just forces her, and the cell door pops open.

I need to get Zorn to the van pronto. He’s not standing at the cell door, waiting to rush out of captivity, or into my arms for that matter. He’s lying on the bed. Unless he was very close to passing out, he’d be holding me right now.

I help him stand, putting my arm around his waist, and am about to walk with him out of the cell when Billy says, “Your male couldn’t wait to have sex with me. He agreed to my whole list. Oral, vaginal, anal, two at once, from behind. Everything I’ve been dreaming of since I started watching porn.