by Black, Tasha
So You Think You Can Marry an Alien
Stargazer Alien Reality Show Brides #1
Tasha Black
13th Story Press
Copyright © 2019 by 13th Story Press
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
13th Story Press
PO Box 506
Swarthmore, PA 19081
[email protected]
Contents
Tasha Black Starter Library
About So You Think You Can Marry an Alien
So You Think You Can Marry an Alien
My Big Fat Alien Wedding (Sample)
Tasha Black Starter Library
About the Author
One Percent Club
Tasha Black Starter Library
Packed with steamy shifters, mischievous magic, billionaire superheroes, otherworldly alien mates, and plenty of HEAT, the Tasha Black Starter Library is the perfect way to dive into Tasha's unique brand of Romance with Bite!
Get your FREE books now at tashablack.com!
About So You Think You Can Marry an Alien
Love like you have nothing to lose…
Margot Lane thought she had an exciting life - plenty of fans, lots of money, and even her dream role on a hit TV show. But when she busts out of the most expensive and exclusive celebrity fat camp on the east coast, things really get interesting.
Pursued by personal trainers, Margot takes an opportunity to duck out of sight. But she realizes she may have gone from the frying pan into the fire when she finds out that she’s “hiding” on the set of the hot new reality show that’s captured the imagination of the entire planet.
And it doesn’t help that the star of the show is the most achingly gorgeous man she’s ever seen.
Kent and his brothers have traveled from planet Aerie to Earth to take human females as mates and pleasure them into unbreakable interplanetary relations. As part of the project, Kent agrees to star on a reality show, meant to let humans see how relatable aliens are. When he meets a mysterious young woman, he begins to understand the pent-up cravings and desperate demands of his new human body.
Can Margot keep her identity under wraps when the cameras are on? Or will Kent help her do everything she thinks she can’t?
Stargazer Alien Reality Brides:
So You Think You Can Marry an Alien
My Big Fat Alien Wedding
Haunted Alien Honeymoon
So You Think You Can Marry an Alien
1
Margot
Margot Lane glanced around the crowded room.
All around her, semi-famous and uber-wealthy people swayed to Elvis music in the dim light.
It was pretty cool, but it might have been cooler if they hadn’t all been wearing plastic leis and grass skirts.
And trying not to think about food.
A couple of Kennedy cousins lounged on a velvet couch in the corner.
An auburn-haired woman - Margot swore she was one of the Real Soccer Moms of the Gold Shore - bent over the pool table, pretending to consider her best shot. She was really just flirting with her opponent, a starry-eyed personal trainer in a Hawaiian shirt.
It was Luau Day.
At this high-end secret fat camp for the one percent and their celebrity compatriots, there were a lot of themed days.
But in spite of the staff’s efforts, every day felt pretty much the same at A Slender Start.
Margot’s roommate, Saffy, sarcastically called the place A Bulimic Beginning. The younger woman swore half the occupants were bribing the staff to smuggle in contraband candy.
Saffy had just finished her freshman year of college and her wealthy parents had sent her to A Slender Start to lose the freshman fifteen so she wouldn’t embarrass them at the country club.
Margot felt very sorry for Saffy. She could hardly blame the girl for being sarcastic under the circumstances. Saffy had no real reason to be wasting her summer at fat camp.
Margot, on the other hand, had twenty-five good reasons.
“Can you believe this shit?” Saffy muttered, sidling up to Margot. “They don’t even have a hula class. It’s the exact same thing as the Fourth of July party, but with leis instead of flags. I’m going to get a drink.”
“Hey, Saffy,” Margot said, catching her hand before she got away.
“Yeah?”
“You’re a really beautiful person,” Margot told her.
“Um, thanks,” Saffy said.
Even in the darkened room, Margot could practically hear her blush.
“I just wanted you to know that,” Margot said. “You don’t need to lose weight. You’re perfect just the way you are.”
“Are you angling for a low-sodium tomato juice of your very own?” Saffy asked. “Because I would have totally brought you one without all the ass-kissing.”
Margot laughed and Saffy gave her a friendly shove and disappeared into the crowd, leaving Margot completely alone.
This was her chance.
She scanned the room for the trainers, but the only one in sight was about to take his turn at the pool table.
Before she could lose her nerve, Margot slipped between the bodies, making her way quickly, but smoothly toward the exit.
I’m an adult. I can just tell them I’m leaving and check out.
But she knew they would try to change her mind. Everyone would be watching.
And Margot Lane wasn’t fond of confrontations.
Kind of ironic that she was there because most people saw her as the bloodthirsty and protective queen she played on TV.
Queen Esther of A Lion’s Game would have dispatched with the bevy trainers with a few cold words and a withering look.
She also would have been better at sneaking.
“Hey, Margot, how’s it going?” Amberlee asked brightly as she appeared out of nowhere.
“Oh, hi, Amberlee,” Margot muttered back to the petite trainer.
“Where are you headed?” Amberlee asked, a hint of suspicion creeping into her normally effervescent delivery.
“Just back to my room,” Margot lied. “I forgot my lucky lei.”
“Oh,” Amberlee said, her blonde ponytail bouncing as she nodded. “Cool. Hurry back. You don’t want to miss the hula.”
“I don’t think I could live with myself if I did,” Margot said, nodding back.
Amberlee gave her a puzzled look and moved to rejoin the festivities as Margot made her way to the main lobby. No one was at the desk.
Perfect.
She passed the stairs and pushed through the big double doors that led outside. As soon as she hit daylight, she headed for the trees.
A Slender Start was a couple of miles from the nearest little town - Margot knew that much. But she figured she could sweep through the woods to get away from the camp, then come out at the main road, such as it was, and still make it back to the nearby village by dark.
Margot felt better the moment the green canopy of trees closed over her head. It was peaceful, with nothing but the hum of the cicadas and the squirrels scolding overhead.
She hiked uphill a little ways, enjoying the chance to fill her lungs with clean air and get some real exercise instead of the silly sit-ups she’d been doing with the trainers.
“Fit,” Margot muttered to herself.
She’d spent a year t
romping around the highlands of New Zealand in full armor wearing an auburn wig and a five-pound crown on top to shoot the first season of A Lion’s Game. She was willing to bet she was more fit than most of her fans.
That hadn’t mattered though. What mattered was what she looked like.
People want Queen Esther to look fit, like she is in the books.
And the producers had made her sweet agent tell her, a man who had six granddaughters.
“Oh, Margot, you know I’m proud of you, right?” Ed had asked, tears in his voice.
“Sure,” she’d replied, figuring the show was canceled.
“They say the fans like your character, but…”
“But what?”
“You didn’t test well overall near the end of the season. They think you’re… too heavy,” he’d said softly.
“Oh,” she’d said, hurt but not surprised.
Margot exercised every day and ate well. She was a size ten, healthy and comfortable in her own skin. But show business seemed to reward the extremely slender, and no amount of dieting had ever gotten her much slimmer than she was now. She had been amazed and grateful to land the role as Queen Esther.
“They want to send you to a special summer retreat,” Ed had continued. “To help you lose some weight. If you lose twenty-five pounds in the next four weeks, before shooting starts, you’ll get to reprise your role.”
“And if I don’t?” she’d asked. “Are they really going to just replace me?”
“No,” Ed had replied. “They’re, uh, going to… kill off your character.”
Margot had been unable to respond.
“You’re a lovely young woman,” Ed told her. “They say the camera adds ten pounds.”
Then why don’t they send the camera to fat camp?
But Margot never liked to cause a fuss.
So she had politely calmed Ed down and agreed that of course she would spend a month at A Slender Start and do her best to lose weight.
I’m a team player, she’d told herself. It’s for the good of the show. The whole cast is counting on me.
But after a few days of abject boredom and condescension, she’d had enough. Anyone in her business who wasn’t rail thin didn’t need nutrition advice from a bunch of twenty-year old personal trainers. At this point, Margot knew so much about diet, exercise and metabolism that she could probably run her own fat camp.
But frankly she wasn’t interested in running a fat camp, or attending one either.
Margot Lane was tired of being pushed around.
She wasn’t sure what she did want to do, but whatever it was, it wasn’t going to happen at A Slender Start in the next three weeks.
Now she just had to get out of the woods, make it to town, and plan her next move.
Without money or a cell phone.
Part of A Slender Start’s impressive success ratio was that the place was run like a military camp. On arrival, they had taken Margot’s phone and credit cards. She’d had to write an email to all her family and friends letting them know she was off the grid for a month and that they should not respond to her if she got in touch before the month was up - no matter what she said.
It wasn’t a military camp. It was a cult.
And she wasn’t sticking around to drink the Kool-Aid.
2
Kent
Kent tapped amiably on the top of the car and waved good-bye to his driver, Al.
Al grinned and waved back, looking a bit out of place in just his undershirt, with his hairy arms hanging out.
Kent was currently wearing Al’s other shirt. He had borrowed it to disguise himself after he snuck out of the theater to visit his friend at the gas station.
The shirt was bright red with large white blossoms. Al had described it as a Hawaiian shirt. Kent recognized the style from the indomitable Magnum PI.
It was very lucky that the shirt fit both men. Al was short and round and Kent was tall and very muscular. This wasn’t the first time they had done this, but each time Al removed an item of clothing he shook his head in wonder when Kent pulled it on.
“Thank you, Al,” Kent called to him.
But Al was already looking at his mobile phone. Al had a girlfriend he liked to communicate with by typing words and symbols into the phone’s screen.
Kent wasn’t sure why they spoke that way when Al could easily turn the phone into a camera and see his girlfriend. But Al just laughed and said not on company time when Kent suggested it.
Humans had strange ideas about propriety.
But Kent was patient. In time, he hoped, he would understand them better.
“Hello, darling,” the owner called to him from the doorway of the little gas station.
“Good morning, Geraldine,” he said politely. “How is Juniper?”
“She’s laying in her spot,” Geraldine said, shrugging. “She’ll be glad to see you, I think.”
Kent jogged across the gravelly lot to follow Geraldine inside.
Kent was much larger than the average human - his body had been lab-designed to be big, strong and attractive. He had to duck slightly as he followed the small, older woman under the little bell that hung from the door to her store.
Kent gazed with satisfaction over the rows of cellophane-packaged snacks and the shining refrigerators full of cold drinks.
Juniper the cat sat on top of a box of car air fresheners near the large front window overlooking the gas pumps. The sun shone through the window at just the right angle to dapple her striped fur as she lounged.
“Hello, Juniper,” Kent said softly.
Juniper flicked her tail as if in annoyance and he instantly felt the soothing green sensation of truthfulness the cat always brought. Even if she wasn’t glad to see him, he was delighted to know her mind.
All of the aliens from Aerie possessed some form of gift that made them a little more than human. No one was sure why - the scientists thought it had something to do with the process of migrating their once gaseous forms into human bodies.
Kent’s gift allowed him to get a sense of the truthfulness of any given statement.
It had caused him some trouble when he first began to communicate with the citizens of Earth and learned a surprising fact:
Humans were confusingly deceitful in even the most innocuous situations.
That’s why he respected the cat - she was always truthful.
How was he supposed to learn a new culture if everyone was always lying a little?
His brothers didn’t share his dubious gift. They had gifts of their own, but at least they were able to traverse this new planet taking their host’s words at face value.
“Can I help you with anything today, Geraldine?” he asked, turning back to the proprietor.
“Oh, no, child,” Geraldine said. “I’m just fine.”
But a red mist hung around her words as they left her mouth.
Lying.
Kent understood this falsehood, though. It was a simple lie of politeness because she didn’t want to trouble him. Back on his home planet of Aerie, manners were very important, so he understood her reasoning, even if he didn’t approve.
“I was bored today, so I came to see you,” he told her carefully. “Are you sure you don’t have anything at all that I can do?”
She looked up at him, smiling sunnily.
Kent loved Geraldine’s beautiful face. Many lines and creases adorned her visage. Larger ones pointed from her nose to her wide grin, and dozens of smaller ones radiated out from her smiling eyes like sunlight through the trees.
When it was explained to Kent that the lines were from age, he was even more impressed. Each furrow demonstrated the tenacity of this tiny woman. She had survived many changes of the green and blue planet with both her merry smile and her store intact.
Geraldine’s age had also given her wisdom, which she lavished on Kent with abandon.
“Never tell an older person you are bored and want to help,” she advised him now. “You�
��re liable to find yourself snowed under.”
“I will remember, Geraldine,” he assured her, though he wasn’t one hundred percent sure what she meant by snowed under. He could puzzle out the words when he got back to his brothers.
She laughed and pointed him to a stack of crates in the corner.
“Soda man came today, and it will take me all afternoon to move those back to cold storage,” she said. “I don’t suppose you wanted a little exercise?”
“It will be my pleasure,” he told her, striding through the rows of snacks to reach the crates of soda.
He eyed them up. Each crate held eight 2-liter bottles. There were four crates.
“One at a time, sugar,” Geraldine called back to him. “Those are real heavy.”
Without her admonition Kent might have forgotten and tried to carry two or three crates at once. He was exceptionally strong. But he did not wish to alarm his friend by demonstrating it.
He grabbed the first one from the stack and heard her opening the door to the back of the store.
It was good he had come today. Geraldine would have had to carry one soda at a time. It really would have taken her all afternoon to accomplish this task.
“Remember, always lift with your knees,” she told him. “Not with your back.”
He nodded at her advice and tried to picture how to lift a crate with his knees. How would he walk with it?
But it was too late now, he had already lifted this crate with his hands. It would have to do.
He followed her into the cold storage room and listened to her describe how her husband, Ray, used to throw out his back lifting up soda crates and other heavy objects the wrong way.