FrankenDom

by Rotham, Robin L.

  “What is with you? Are you diabetic or something? Is your blood sugar bottoming out?”

  “I don’ know, but I’m absolutely staaaarving!” Monica bellowed, mystified yet pleased by the sensations that speaking so loudly sparked in her lower belly. “Take me to the catef-cafeteria and get me some o’ whatever they’re dishin’ up today, ‘cause, by God, it smells good enough to eat for a change!”

  “Shhh!” Shelley looked around wildly before leaning over the side of her desk and muttering, “Sean wasn’t kidding when he said Snow would have your butt in a sling if he thought you were drunk.”

  “Shhh-Sean, Shelley, Shnow. Shhh-Sean, Shelley, Shnow,” Monica sang. “It’s like a lil’ tittie-twister, isn’t it?”

  “That’s tongue-twister, you idiot! Now shut the fuck up before Dr. Snow comes over here!”

  “May I be of assistance, ladies?”

  Shelley’s squeal of alarm made Monica laugh out loud. Then she caught sight of a bulging crotch covered in sublimely tight steel-gray synthetic and fell silent mid-guffaw. Her eyes traveled up, up, up, skimming over a granite belly, pecs that were sharply defined even in uniform and shoulders too wide to be real. She got hooked for a second on a set of sculpted lips and had to drag her eyes upward until they finally met the dark blue gaze of the formidable Commander Kellen.

  Speaking of good enough to eat! The super-sized hot tamale looking down at her made half the female tongues in the compound drag the ground, and a few of the male ones, too. But not hers, though. Nuh-uh, no way, because God, he was so fucking far out of her orbit, he’d need the Hubble telescope to notice her. She’d be dumber than a bag of hammers to get all gooey over his lion-haired splendor.

  “Ooooh, hi, Commander,” she heard herself breathe anyway. God, when had she started talking like Marilyn Monroe? “Are you a gentle giant?”

  Then she smacked herself on the forehead. Duh! Of course, he wasn’t any such thing. He’d blasted Planet Narthan into a flaming charcoal briquette and roasted wienies over the smoldering embers. But what the hell. Nobody was perfect, and it wasn’t like he didn’t have cause, losing his wife and little girl that way.

  Aw, the poor guy could probably use a hug.

  The quirk of his lips as he crouched in front of her desk was inviting enough to make her breath catch in her throat. Okay, scratch the poor guy thing. And the hug. He was a hottie and he knew it, Conan the Barbarian with a James Bond accent. “When the occasion calls for it.”

  “And when it doesn’t?” she dared. Shit, it almost sounded like she was flirting with him. Flirting with Kellen, the ass-kicking commander from outer space. And from Shelley’s fish-eyed look, it sounded that way to her, too.

  And hell if it wasn’t giving Monica her first-ever tingle in panty territory. Okay, second-ever. Watching that other sweaty spaceman push his long hard self into Carrie’s open charms had triggered the first-ever. Maybe this was only the beginning of a major tingle-fest south of her border. Wouldn’t that be, like, the fucking greatest thing ever? She’d always secretly dreamed of tingling, especially whenever she passed the commander in the hall. He was hot enough to—

  No! Monica tossed her spiky head back and forth, trying not to pout. Damn it, it just wasn’t fair! She could flirt with the commander ‘til the cows came home, but in the end, it would get her nowhere. Ever. Even if, in some freaky right turn into an alternate reality, she managed to catch this hunky alien’s eye, the joke would be on the both of them, because the only two things he’d want from her, she had no way of supplying.

  Sex and babies.

  Damn it.

  “Then I’m a different sort of giant altogether.” The commander’s reply to her sally was accompanied by a full-fledged grin that made her squirm with…something. Something sticky and warm and anxious. “But enough about me,” he continued, lowering his tone. “I must apologize to you, Dr. Teague.”

  “Oh?”

  Her little pity-party promptly forgotten, Monica followed his gaze as it flickered to Dr. Snow, who was now deep in conversation with—what was his name? Lieutenant…something. Shauss, that was it, Lieutenant Shauss. Now there was another primo piece of alien real estate. Why had she never noticed how yummy he was? Those thick streaks of pale blue in his otherwise black hair were just inspired. God, what she wouldn’t give to trickle it through her—

  “For your own safety,” Kellen was saying, “I would advise you to keep what I’m about to tell you to yourselves.” He paused and looked hard at Monica, probably making sure she was listening. To prove that she was, she forced her eyes as wide-open as they’d go, and he shook his head and sighed. “I believe that you, Dr. Teague, are experiencing pheromone intoxication.”

  “Excuse me?” she and Shelley said simultaneously.

  “Jinx! You owe me a Coke!” Monica crowed.

  “Congratulations, Doctor,” Kellen said dryly. “As I was saying, you appear to have suffered an overexposure to Garathani pheromones. You must carry the twenty-second halethoid mutation, which renders Terrans’ olfactory receptors more susceptible to their influence.”

  Monica gasped in outrage. “I do not!”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Doctor.”

  “I don’t!”

  “But you think it smells divine in here, don’t you?” he challenged, glancing at Snow once more.

  “Well, yeah, but that’s just lunch.”

  Kellen looked at Shelley’s BTC badge and asked, “So, S. Bonham, RN, have you noticed anything out of the ordinary? Does it smell to you like the kitchen is preparing something especially delicious?”

  Shelley shook her head with a frown. “No, it smells like it always does in here, like new hospital and old jockstraps.”

  Monica struggled to her feet, anxiety suddenly taking hold of her. “I’m not a mutant. Now leave me alone.”

  When she turned to leave, the world swirled and she just about ended up on her ass. It was humiliating to be rescued by the commander, who swung her up in his incredibly hulky arms like the overgrown child she resembled. Thrilling, but humiliating.

  “Let me help you to your quarters,” he offered gently. “The effect should wear off within a half-hour of my departure.”

  Since her head was still spinning like she’d had one or six too many margaritas, Monica laid her head against his chest. His mile-wide, rock-hard chest. Her hand itched to slide over every pectoral hill and valley outlined by the satiny finish of his uniform, but she confined herself to a visual tour with a sigh of regret. Some behaviors were just too deeply ingrained to be overridden, even by the table-dancingest, lampshade-wearingest kind of intoxication.

  Damn it.

  “Lay on, MacDuff,” she murmured, closing her eyes and basking in the novelty of being carried for the first time in her memory. That lovely, scrumptious scent drew her nose to his armpit, where she sucked in a lungful and held it before exhaling in a rapturous rush. “Oh my God, did anyone ever tell you that you smell good enough to eat?”

  “Yes, but not recently,” came the amused chuckle in her ear. “Thank you for saying so.”

  “Hey, why hasn’t this ever happened to her before?” From the sound of her huffing and puffing, Shelley must be practically running to keep up with them. “She works with you guys every day.”

  Kellen’s hesitation made Monica open her eyes and look at him. It was disconcerting to find him looking back. Such amazing eyes. Maybe if she stared into that velvety navy-blue long enough, she’d see stars.

  “We only emit actively when we’re excited. Sexually.”

  Sexually. Ooooh, that tantalizingly adult word, so rich and delicious as it dripped off his tongue, made her shudder. She was seeing stars, all right, and they were falling fast and landing hard, right in her achingly empty lap.

  “So it was the guy doing the na—er, performing on stage who caused this?” Shelley asked.

  Stopping in the middle of the hall, Kellen and his amazing eyes looked at her friend. “In a sense. To be
perfectly truthful, the demonstration was arousing enough to the rest of us that our glands…went into overdrive, so to speak. It takes more than one emitting male to saturate a room that size.”

  Diverted by the play of muscles in his jaw as he spoke, it took a moment for Monica to assimilate what he’d said.

  “You’re horny!” she accused, wide-eyed, her heartbeat accelerating. Part of her was horrified, knew she ought to be blushing to the tips of her toes at both the idea and her own candor. Fortunately, that part of her brain currently in the driver’s seat was deriving too much pleasure from the flurry of intriguing visuals to be concerned. “That’s why you smell so good.”

  “Yeah, okay, Monica, we get the picture,” Shelley hurried to head her off.

  Although Kellen’s gaze had focused on Monica once more, it was his tongue that distracted her now, snaking out to lick his lips before he answered as if Shelley hadn’t spoken.

  “Guilty as charged.”

  Uh-oh. Her heart stopped as his confession echoed in her head. Just stopped dead, right there in her chest. Beat, damn it, beat! Then her brain signaled that she wasn’t getting any air, either. And breathe, damn it, breathe! What the hell was going on with her autonomic nervous system? Weren’t these things supposed to take care of themselves?

  Her pulse rebounded with a thump, her indrawn breath with a shudder. But then she noticed the saliva pooling under her tongue and had to swallow audibly. Oh God, the commander was horny, and he was holding her, and his lips were thick and shiny and they’d be close enough to suck on, if she just had the guts to grab his neck…

  Like he’d want to kiss a freak like you, the ugly voice of sobriety sneered.

  Monica squeezed her eyes shut tight and set her jaw, suddenly depressed and weary.

  “Well, not to worry. You should be back to normal shortly,” she choked with a bitter laugh, pressing her face into his chest for one last snuggle as he continued down the corridor. “Shelley’s knocked up and I’m glandularly challenged, so there should be nothing here to turn you on.”

  His murmured reply was too low for her to catch and she was too tired to ask him to repeat it. By the time he laid her on the bed, she couldn’t even manage to thank him properly and she was out like a light before he’d left the room.

  * * * * *

  Kellen strode down the corridor at a brisk pace, filled with purpose, energized by this morning’s coup and the subsequent encounter with his new mate.

  Don’t bet on it, he’d told her. The unexpected and charmingly offbeat Dr. Teague may not be emitting pheromones of her own just yet, and her current form certainly made him doubt she would ever develop any measure of physical beauty, but the knowledge of her Garathani heritage and her all-but-irrevocable bond with him made his cock rise to rapt attention. Convincing it to stand down until she was ripe for mating would require heroic resolve. Or an entire vat of Malascan ale.

  Convincing it to stand down after she was ripe for mating… His lips curled in a wicked smile. Here he’d been bracing himself for the occasional and hopefully brief coupling with a Terran female, and instead the Powers had seen fit to bless him with the object of his darkest fantasies—a Garathani female without rank or authority. Refusing to even consider that her Terran genes might have shown themselves between her legs, Kellen began counting the ways he would enjoy her and wondered if his cock would ever stand down again.

  He had to stop outside the door and adjust himself before stepping into the diplomatic offices. A waiting page led him directly to Ambassador Pret.

  “Congratulations, Commander,” Pret told him. “I was dumbfounded to learn that a hybrid was hiding right under our noses.”

  “Thank you.” Kellen sank into an oversized conference chair and took the proffered mug of lorba tea, though ale would have stood him in better stead. “No one was more surprised than I.”

  “And let me compliment you on your deft handling of the matter. Many others might have requested probabilities on hybridism or Sparnism before filing.”

  “Many others might have had their petitions preempted by some com-hacking opportunist,” Kellen pointed out. “Since I’m more than capable of calculating probabilities for myself, I decided not to take the chance.”

  “A shrewd, if somewhat cynical decision on your part, Commander. You should consider a transfer to the diplomatic corps when this assignment ends. We could use an officer who thinks on his feet, as it were.”

  Not likely, Kellen thought, amused by the quandary of being too innately honest for diplomatic assignments but too diplomatic to say so. He took a sip of the tea and then reached to set the mug on a strategically positioned coaster on the Ambassador’s polished cherry desk.

  “I was wondering if you could get Dr. Teague reassigned as my aide,” he said casually as he leaned back and crossed his ankles.

  Pret’s brows rose. “With all due respect, Commander, I would have thought you’d remove her at once to the Heptoral.”

  “That would, of course, be my preference.” In fact, only Nurse Bonham’s watchful presence had prevented him from flaring the little doctor directly to his on-board quarters. His initial annoyance had given way to amusement and then a grudging respect for the way she protected her unconscious friend. Obviously frightened of him, she’d nonetheless stood there with her hand on the knob of the open door, inviting him without words to leave. After a lingering glance at the boneless figure on the bed, he’d bowed slightly and taken his leave.

  His bow, once a deeply ingrained habit, a gesture of deference from a bygone era, had taken him by surprise. He hadn’t bowed to a female since… Actually, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt compelled to bow to a female out of genuine respect. He’d always bowed because it was customary and expected. And more importantly, because to not bow was to invite retribution.

  “Unfortunately,” he continued, his look daring Pret to object, “there are factors at work here besides my personal preferences.”

  The Ambassador turned away at once, making a show of topping off Kellen’s still-full mug from an ornate sterling teapot. The dainty Terran antique couldn’t have looked more ridiculous in his long fingers.

  “You, of course, must be the judge of that.” He set the pot down with meticulous care, aligning the handle at a precise ninety-degree angle to the tray, then focused on Kellen once more. “Having the good doctor transferred to your service shouldn’t present a problem. But I’m certain you’ll agree with the necessity of keeping the truth of her parentage from the Terrans for as long as possible. I wouldn’t put it past them to whisk her away for use as leverage against us.”

  “That would be quite unwise,” Kellen said dryly. “We wouldn’t even have to destroy them ourselves. Simply posting a habitat beacon on their solar system would attract every scavenger race from Aptorm to Zeccha.”

  “Wisdom and elected officials rarely walk hand in hand, Commander.”

  “It’s not the elected officials who concern me.”

  “Ah—you’re referring to TAIM?”

  “Among others.” Terrans Against Interspecies Mating, while certainly a nuisance, was only one of a dozen or more groups that had sprung up in opposition to the Alliance since its formal inception almost a year ago. Most of them were spawned in cyberspace, and for the most part only existed there, circulating fantastic propaganda in an effort to sway public opinion against the Garathani. TAIM, on the other hand, was a well-organized campaign with seemingly bottomless pockets, and their thinking man’s approach to scare tactics had done much to foment Terran distrust of the Alliance. But Kellen wasn’t convinced TAIM was the true threat. No, it was the nameless, faceless splinter groups that worried him.

  “Put a protective detail on her, just in case,” Pret cautioned.

  “Already done. Bayan and Tarkan units are covering her now and three more have been called into the rotation.”

  “Good. Cecine would be quite displeased,” the Ambassador concluded with a speaking look, �
��were anything to happen to this one.”

  Kellen’s jaw tightened. How had he found out so quickly?

  Mentally consigning all diplomats to the oiliest corners of Peserin’s hell, Kellen returned his look with a flat stare.

  “Not nearly as displeased as I.”

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  Enemy Overnight - Robin L Rotham

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing

  Copyright 2009

  Prologue

  Dayree King had only been driving for twenty minutes when the hairs on her arms prickled to attention. She hadn’t felt the whisper-soft charge of flare energy in decades, but she recognized it in time to keep from careening off the road when her husband materialized in the seat beside her.

  She tensed, deliberately backing off the accelerator. Ragan’s use of the advanced technology spoke volumes about his determination to keep her home and she didn’t want to have this argument at breakneck speed.

  “Taking the scenic route to the theater?” he asked acidly.

  Dayree spared him a wary glance. It was strange to see him in the passenger seat—he always insisted on driving even when they took her SUV.

  The greenish glow from the dash did nothing to warm the arctic planes of his face as he stared back at her, and suddenly it was hard to remember what she’d ever seen in either the scientist she’d served with or the lover she’d married. They hadn’t had sex since the Garathani settled into orbit six months ago and, as far as she knew, he hadn’t slept in all that time.

  Once the Garathani forged an alliance with the Terrans and began recruiting females for sexual service, Ragan’s devotion to duty, once so appealing in its zeal, had morphed into a fanaticism that bordered on hysteria. That fanaticism was going to cost innocent lives, and though it went against her training—indeed, her very nature—to challenge her mate, Dayree couldn’t let Jasmine be one of those casualties.

  “I have to go, Ragan.”