ALIEN SHIFTER ROMANCE: Alien Tigers - The Complete Series (Alien Invasion Abduction Shapeshifter Romance) (Paranormal Science Fiction Fantasy Anthologies & Short reads)

by Tanya Jolie

  “I love you too,” she said.

  It was insane, but at least it wouldn’t be boring.

  THE END

  Alien Love Triangle

  An Alien Romance

  Chapter 1

  “Oh no,” Amanda said, staring down at her dashboard. “Why the hell does this keep happening?”

  The needle on her gas gauge had just spontaneously shifted from around an eighth of a tank to well below “E,” and, as Amanda’s car sputtered forward, she knew that she was nearing empty.

  That’s what you get for driving such an old car, Amanda told herself, once again. She’d said that same phrase to herself several times over the past few months, since her gas gauge first started giving her problems. She’d tried to keep track of her gas consumption by tallying her mileage, but she’d never been that good with math, and she didn’t know the rate at which her 1992 Chevy Cavalier consumed fuel. So, every once in awhile, despite her efforts, she ended up in a situation like this… though this situation was like no other she’d encountered before.

  “Fuck,” Amanda said, examining her cell phone. “No Service” flashed across the screen at her, and she wanted to throw the useless piece of junk out of the moving car window.

  Amanda looked out at the sprawled-out, empty space beside her as the car continued to slowly lurch forward. She’d been driving along an unoccupied, rural stretch of highway, and there wasn’t a home, business, or shred of discernable human life or activity around for miles. When her car ran out of gas before, it had always been in the city, and there was always a way to get gas—she could call someone, call the auto club, or walk to a gas station. None of those were options at this point, and Amanda cursed herself as she finally relegated to reality and pulled over to the side of the road.

  She thought she’d gotten more than enough gas to get her from her apartment in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to her cousin’s home in Washington, Pennsylvania—but, then again, she’d never been that good with math, and she didn’t know the rate at which her 1992 Chevy Cavalier consumed fuel. Apparently, she hadn’t gotten enough, and she didn’t know how she was going to get more.

  I really should’ve taken advantage of President Obama’s Cash for Clunks incentive, Amanda thought to herself as she got out of her car and walked back to her trunk. She had a spare gas can back there, and she knew it was futile to check it. She was well aware that it was empty, as she’d drained it a few days earlier outside of a bagel shop, but, nonetheless, she checked it. It turned out there were a few drops still in it, and, for a moment, Amanda thought about dumping her bottle of drinking water into the can to try and stretch it. She didn’t know if that would be safe, so she decided against it.

  If her phone had been working, Amanda would have used her Wi-Fi signal to check and see if stretching gas with water was dangerous, but since her phone wasn’t working, she couldn’t… and she couldn’t call her cousin, the auto club, or a cab. She couldn’t do anything. She was, by every measure of the word, stranded.

  Get yourself together, Amanda told herself. She was starting to feel very overwhelmed and intimidated by the situation. Her heart was racing, and so was her mind, and she felt like she was going to cry, pass out, or vomit. She thought of all those cheesy horror movies where a car broke down on the side of the road, and the driver was hunted by sadistic, ravenous, in-bred cannibals. This neck of the woods wasn’t too far from the Appalachian Mountains, you know—and, come to think of it, cheesy or not, those movies were pretty darn scary.

  But it wasn’t just the prospect of being hunted by cannibals that frightened Amanda. She was also afraid of some more “practical” things—like running into your average, run-of-the-mill criminal who was looking to rob, rape, kidnap or murder someone. People like that really did exist, and, if Amanda had any doubt that they did, she knew all she needed to do to be reminded was flick on the local news station.

  Amanda didn’t have any flares of indicators to set up in order to draw attention to her vehicle, and given all her fears, she wasn’t sure that she’d use them if she did. She figured, civilization had to be nearby somewhere. It wasn’t close, for miles, but it couldn’t be that far, and, as she stumbled toward it, maybe she’d find a spot that actually got cell phone reception.

  It may not have been the wisest thing to leave a car on the side of the road, but Amanda decided she’d rather leave it sitting there by itself than stay inside it like a sitting duck. Plus, it was a 1992 Chevy Cavalier, don’t forget—if someone wanted it so badly that they did whatever it took to steal it, Amanda figured they deserved it. The car’s Blue Book value couldn’t have been more than $500.

  Amanda hopped behind the steering wheel one last time to collect some of her belongings from the front seat. Her useless phone, wallet, and a half-eaten candy bar had been scattered there throughout the evening, and she needed each of them and more for the next leg of her journey.

  Amanda turned around and reached to the seat behind her to grab her overnight bag. When she turned back around to face the front again, she dropped the bag, gasped, and felt startled. A bright light was shining on her, and a vehicle was traveling in her direction.

  Chapter 2

  “Where am I?” Amanda asked, though she didn’t know if there was anyone around to hear her. All she could see was bright light and white, and all she could hear was the purr of something electronic humming. Her body felt warm, but there was cold air all around her, and even though she was lightheaded and dizzy, she’d never felt so calm and at peace… not ever.

  As quickly as Amanda wondered where she was, she stopped caring. She felt so wonderful—so soothed, yet so alive—that it no longer mattered where she was or how she had gotten there. All she cared about was staying right there, in the moment… with the bright light and the humming, with the cool air rushing over her warm body and the smell of… the smell of… What’s that? Amanda thought as her mouth began to drool and her brain registered the word “bacon.”

  “What the hell happened to you last night?” Marie said, rushing into the room, gnawing on a piece of the irresistible cured meat. Amanda felt a jolt surge through her body, and she sprung up in bed a moment after her cousin entered.

  “What do you mean?” Amanda asked, looking down at the clothes she was wearing. She had on white panties and a white camisole, though she couldn’t recall whether she’d been wearing the garments for a day or for a few hours. She grabbed the blanket from beside her and wrapped her lower legs in it. “It’s cold in here,” she said, running her hand through her hair.

  “You must have had some night,” Marie chided. “I heard you mumbling in here earlier, and gave you some time to wake up. But, now, I’ve waited long enough, and I want details. So why don’t you get dressed, come to the kitchen, and tell me all about it?” Marie couldn’t help but notice that her cousin was totally disoriented and out of her wits, but she figured Amanda must have had one too many the night before and was still recovering.

  Marie stood up and walked out of the spare bedroom, leaving Amanda to herself. It took a good minute or two before Amanda was able to get up on her feet, and when she did, the first thing she did was walk over to the window. She pulled back the curtain and gazed out at the driveway beyond. Her 1992 Chevy Cavalier was parked there, safely and soundly, and Amanda cocked her head to the side as she tried to remember how on earth it got there.

  The last thing she could remember with any degree of clarity was leaving Pittsburgh for Washington. Then, something happened… but what was it? She could vaguely remember pulling her car over to the side of the road before she saw a bright light, and then…

  “What? Are you gonna make me beg you for the details?” Marie said, reappearing at the bedroom door with a steaming cup of coffee. Amanda looked at it and suddenly felt thirsty—very thirsty, perhaps even parched. It was that same disgusting, dry-mouthed taste she got after a heavy night of drinking, and she found herself licking her lips to get rid of it.

  As Amand
a ran her tongue over her lips, she tasted something sweet, and, in a flash, her mind was hit with an image. She saw herself seated at a table with a man, drinking something warm and green from a glass mug. She couldn’t see the man, or what was going on around them, but she could see the liquid in the mug—and, by golly, she could taste it. It was the same taste that still lingered on her lips, and it still tingled her taste buds.

  “Son of a bitch,” Amanda said, sitting back down on the bed. She reached for the pair of jeans that were neatly folded beside the bed and pulled them on. Her memories—or lack thereof—had obviously stirred her back to her senses.

  “I don’t know what type of moonshine they serve in bars around here,” Amanda said, zipping up her jeans. “But, whatever I drank last night, it really fucked me up… and, I can barely remember what happened.”

  Amanda slid her feet into a pair of flip-flops that were beside the bed, thankful that everything she needed to get up and go about her day had been so conveniently located near her.

  “Are you sure someone didn’t slip you something?” Marie asked, sipping her coffee.

  Amanda looked at her cousin and shook her head in the negative. “We both know this isn’t the first time I blacked out from drinking too much,” Amanda admitted. She hung her head low a little and felt humbled—she’d never been a lush, but she’d always had a rather low tolerance for alcohol.

  What was just enough for some people was usually too much for Amanda, and what sent them over the top usually floored her. She’d blacked out a few times over the years, and because of that, she tried to pay extra close attention to her drinking habits—but, like the way she gauged her gas consumption, her calculations must have been a little off the night before, and she’d consumed more than her limit. Though, for the life of her, she still couldn’t remember drinking in the first place, but that had to be what happened, right?

  “Well, what do you remember?” Marie asked, as hungry for information as Amanda was for the bacon she hoped to find in the kitchen.

  “All I remember is drinking something green with a guy at a table,” Amanda said, walking out the door and down the hallway.

  “Was he at least hot?” Marie asked, following after her.

  “I don’t remember what he looked like at all,” Amanda said with a chuckle, trying to make light out of a heavy situation. “But, yeah, he was hot. I remember that much.”

  Amanda stopped dead in her tracks and turned to look at her cousin. “Actually, I think he was the hottest man I’ve ever met in my life.”

  “Yeah right,” Marie said, slapping Amanda on the shoulder. “He was so hot, but you have no idea what he looked like? Whatever! Stop giving me a hard time.”

  From the way Marie responded to Amanda, it was clear that she thought Amanda was teasing her or being sarcastic, but, alas, Amanda wasn’t. When she said that the man from the night before was the hottest man she’d ever met in her life, she meant it, and it simply wasn’t important to her that she couldn’t remember any other details.

  Chapter 3

  Marie’s kitchen was filled with cupcake tins, loaf pans, skillets, and mixing bowls, along with flour, sugar, a variety of spices, and just about every cold dairy ingredient you could imagine. She’d recently started running her own bakery business out of her home, and that’s why Amanda had traveled just two miles south of Pittsburgh to spend a few days with her.

  Marie had just landed her biggest client yet, and she was much better at math than Amanda. She knew that she didn’t have the manpower to fulfill her orders alone in time, and she didn’t have a surplus of capital to invest in hiring helpers, so she reached out to her cousin Amanda to ask for a hand, and Amanda dropped everything she was doing to rush out to Washington.

  “You can pay me in broken cookies and misfit cupcakes,” Amanda told Marie when she accepted her offer. Amanda could stand to drop whatever she was doing because she wasn’t doing much at the time, and the broken cookies and misfit cupcakes were a more appealing payout than anything else she’d received recently.

  Like too many people her age, at 24, Amanda was a couple years out of college and tens of thousands of dollars in debt, but she had no steady income to pay it off and could barely support herself. She’d been an English major—of all things!—in college, and had taken on odd writing jobs since graduating. She’d done a bit of copywriting, some journalism, and some blogging, but it was all contract work, and it was all low-paying. Needless to say, it was nothing demanding or binding, and it didn’t prevent her from going off to help her cousin for a few days.

  “Eat this,” Marie said, handing Amanda a plate as she eyed everything around her in the kitchen, looking for something ready to eat in a heap of utensils and ingredients. The small, thin dish had about five pieces of bacon on it, sitting alongside a muffin flecked with an abundance of fruit and nuts.

  “Cranberry, apricot, and walnut,” Marie said as Amanda went straight for the bacon.

  “Looks amazing,” Amanda said, chewing on the pork. As soon as she swallowed, she broke off a piece of the muffin and shoved it in her mouth. She was instantly pleased with the flavor, and, oddly enough, reminded of the sweet taste on her lips from the night before and earlier that morning.

  “So you have no idea what this man from last night looks like,” Marie started, looking over her itinerary for the day as Amanda continued eating her breakfast, “but do you remember anything that happened with him?”

  Amanda felt a chill move over her spine, and the moist muffin caught in her throat for a moment. “No,” she said, straining hard to swallow.

  “Then how do you know nothing bad happened?” Marie asked. Of the two of them, Marie had always been the more sensible and grounded, and this morning was no exception. She thought her cousin was glossing over too many important details. “Maybe you should call the police or something.”

  “And tell them what?” Amanda asked. “I can hear it now: ‘Hi officer, my name is Amanda Leonard, and I got really drunk last night. I hooked up with a guy and can’t remember what happened. I know he didn’t hurt me or do anything wrong, and I’m pretty sure I had a great time. But my silly old cousin is overreacting and thinks something is strange about it, so I’m calling you to file a report.’ Yeah, I can see that happening.”

  “I’m not old,” Marie said, throwing a dish rag at Amanda, motioning for her to wipe up some crumbs that had accumulated on the counter. “And I’m not overreacting. You only have scattered memories of what happened last night, and that should concern you a little more.”

  “Well, it doesn’t,” Amanda said, shoving more bacon into her mouth before wiping off the counter. She couldn’t quite explain it—to her cousin, or to herself—,but the fact that Amanda couldn’t remember much about the night before really didn’t bother her.

  Her mind felt completely clear, and she had nothing that even faintly resembled a hangover. She knew that nothing bad had happened the night before—she could just feel it in her bones—and, if anything, she was sure that something good had actually happened. It didn’t matter to her that she couldn’t place her finger on what that good thing was because, whatever it was, it left her feeling so alive and reinvigorated that it really didn’t matter.

  “Just forget about it,” Amanda said when she saw that Marie was still staring intently at her. “Please?”

  “All right,” Marie said, shaking her head at Amanda. “But don’t let something like that happen again. You’re only here for a few more days, and you have a job to do. I don’t want you going out, drinking until you black out, and putting your life—and my business—in jeopardy.”

  “I know,” Amanda replied. “I don’t plan on drinking again any time soon, so I promise. Nothing like that will happen again while I’m here.”

  “It better not,” Marie said with a smile that was as sincere as it was playful. “I’ll be watching you.”

  Something about the last sentence Marie said made Amanda feel ill at ease, and she was
sure she’d recently heard someone else say it too…

  Chapter 4

  Amanda felt something swelling inside her, something ebbing and bowing against every inch of her flesh from the inside. It felt as if an octopus had crawled inside her and had extended its tentacles out in every possible direction, pushing and pulling Amanda to her limits and challenging her most tender boundaries.

  She felt the sensation in her head, her arms, her legs, and, of course, her most sensitive regions, and it pulsed throughout her body to the most delicate yet steady rhythm. It was breathtaking and enchanting, and just as Amanda felt her body curling toward carnal completion, she woke up in a start, panting and sweating cold, sticky bullets.

  Amanda looked around her and realized she was in the guest bedroom. She’d put in a hard day’s work helping Marie prepare for the upcoming event, and she filled up on plenty of tasty treats in the process. The hours had just flown by, and by the time nighttime came, Amanda more or less passed out as soon as her head hit her pillow. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but it was long enough that she felt rested.

  What the hell was that? Amanda wondered, still reeling from whatever it was that she just experienced. It had been such a primitive feeling, but it had been so ethereal, and, even if she—Amanda, the writer—tried to explain it, she’d have been hard-pressed to find the words.

  But whatever that feeling was, Amanda wanted to feel more of it, and since she knew there was no way to feel it again, at least not that she knew of, she decided to make herself feel the only thing she’d ever felt before that came close to that feeling. Though it was in second place by a considerable difference, Amanda ran one hand over her firm breasts and slid the other down into her panties. She closed her eyes and called to mind the only memories she had from the night before—of the unidentifiable stranger sitting with her at a table.