She blushed. “I hope you won’t think too highly of me, Ugil. I might disappoint you.”
He shook his head. “No… I’ve heard that human women were pitiful lovers from those that have sampled such before. But… I was not disappointed. I was worried that you would have thought me to be inadequate.”
“I didn’t,” she promised. “You were… wow.”
It was his turn to blush.
She enjoyed looking at him and though somewhere in the back of her mind a little voice was taunting her. It wanted her to ask him to make himself into other shapes that she might find pleasing. She was able to silence those thoughts. She was pleased with things as they were now. There was no need to mar last night or this morning with perverse ideas. There could be time to explore those later… no need to ask about them now.
“So… this is home?”
He nodded. “As much of a paradise as I could build, based on your world.” He licked his lips nervously. “Maybe… you can show me more of what a true Terran paradise looks like?”
She bit her lip excitedly. “Yes, I can.”
She drank it all in. The feeling of it all was overwhelming. All of her fears from the past few days of traveling had come and gone like smoke in a high wind. She had been worried that she would not be accepted. She had been fearful that she would be turned away. She had thought that it was possible that she would not find happiness here.
All of those thoughts were gone from her now and she almost wanted to laugh for having thought of them at all. A moon, built to be a paradise, and she was wed to the man who lorded over all of it.
There really is something better out here, she thought happily.
“Come here,” she said, reaching out and taking his head between her hands and bringing his mouth once more to her own.
THE END
Claimed By The Alien Boss
Chapter 1
Lanie felt her nerves beginning to tremble as she sat in the quiet waiting area. Though for her money it seemed like it was less of a “waiting area” and more like a foot chamber for some kind of royalty. The walls around here were granite… the floors were marble… and there were ten chairs that were fit to be thrones in one of the old monarchies. With nothing but a skylight above her to give her light – and considering how high up she was in the building – it felt like she had died and was awaiting the final judgement of God.
Not far from the truth though, is it? Asked the little voice in the back of her head.
“Shut up,” she whispered to the small voice nervously. She caught herself in that and realized that she had whispered at all without meaning to. A nervous habit, that was, and a sign of the kind of state of mind that she was in.
She did not get nervous often, but it wasn’t something that she could ignore or suppress. As few and far between as such instances were for her, they were like wine: the longer she had them stored away the more potent they became. More than that, she got nervous at predictable times, like now: the unavoidable time spent inside a waiting area for her job interview to begin. Her nerves always waited until such a time to begin their dance, making her feel as if there was some invisible soiree behind her eyes and only the neurons in her brain were invited to rave.
Her skin tingled, she drummed her fingers nervously on the cover of her personal portfolio, and she resisted the urge to touch her hair considering it had taken her more than an hour to get it the way she wanted. Not a single hair could be out of place… not today it couldn’t… not for this.
She recalled the advertisement on the net like it was only yesterday, she had been so excited to see it.
Wanted: A live-in attaché to CEO of high stakes and fast-paced technology company. High pay, 9 figures a year to the right candidate. Comprehension of business practices, ability to multitask, fluent with computers a must. Applicants must be clean, orderly, understanding of multiple languages a plus. Respond this link for application.
She had sprung for that link the same way that teenage boys went after the bra clasps to their first dates. And though the advertisement had been simple she knew enough about computers – everyone did – to know that it was legit. Though her hopes had not been high and merely childish at best, she had sent her application off with the same grace as someone taking a shot in the dark.
It had been less than week later before she got her response, detailing where and when she was to come for her interview. She had about hit the roof of her living unit when she authenticated the business title on her receipt message.
The response had come from Madison Technologies.
She still couldn’t believe her good fortune. It was like she had wished upon a single lucky star or something of that nature. As a child she had been taught about wishing upon a star, like all children had been, and had eventually given such a belief over to childish superstition as she had matured. But now, just a few short months out of college, and she was sitting and waiting for her interview in one of the largest – and most influential – conglomerates on the planet.
Madison Technologies… she thought excitedly for the umpteenth time since she had opened her eyes from sleep this morning. Anyone in her line of work knew the name, the same way that people all over the world knew Santa Claus even if they didn’t believe in him. Such a powerful entity was on the bucket list of anyone who wanted to work on the cutting edge of the most advanced technologies… to be close to the real frontier of anything. If it was new, M.T. was researching it… developing it… building it… or patenting it. If it was something that was unknown, then M.T. was theorizing it… looking for it… or developing a means to prove it.
M.T. owned the patents on so many ground breaking technologies that it was considered by most to be the new Rome of the world. If all roads led to Rome in the ancient world, then every piece of tech in the new world was born in the labs of M.T. And it wasn’t only the tech that the company developed… it was the market share that made it the envy of every other conglomerate in the world.
It’s how they can afford nine figures to a glorified assistant, she thought, feeling the tingle at the opportunity that she had been sitting patiently for within the last ten minutes. Or at least what felt like ten minutes as she didn’t have the heart to check and see how long she actually had been sitting here. She wanted to savor every sweet instance of this day… the bliss of it all was too real to believe and she could scarcely believe that she had made it at all.
Lanie had done some research when she had applied for the job. Forbes Magazine had put Madison Technologies at the #1 spot on the Fortune 500 list. So had Time Magazine… Business World… Tech Frontiers and a hundred other magazines that she didn’t need to read to know that M.T. was at the center of the bullseye for business and development.
That added to her frayed nerves, the research that she had done. Statistics showed that 95% of all people who applied to work for M.T. never made it past the application process since the business was so selective about the people that they hired. That much was common knowledge; only the best of the best ever made it in, allowing for how many breakthroughs that the company made. And of the 5% that made it in, only 1% ever made it as far as interviewing for the man behind it all.
That explains why you’re alone here, the little voice said, causing her feet to start bouncing nervously on the floor.
She looked around, anxious for something else to focus on besides the very reason she had been called in here. There were certainly plenty of other – albeit small – distractions in the room with her. Like so many other waiting rooms that she had seen it was an impressive place that, if she were to judge such things, was expensive to build.
No credit card was safe when they built this place, she thought looking around.
The floors were made of white marble and polished so highly that she could have used it for a mirror. The chair she sat in conformed to her shape and she was able to look at the floor over her knees as she leaned forward. Her reflected twin stared up at her
and she gave herself an appraising look. Her chocolate colored skin was perfect, her eyes were dark, and her jet black hair was tied in a ponytail that hung limply over her right shoulder. Her figure was rounded, she carried full breasts, hips, thighs, and calves that were not the average size of most women in her business but that had never held her back from becoming the best at what she did. Dressed in her best gray business suit, she almost felt intimidated by her own reflection.
I’ve got this; she thought to herself, gazing at her own reflection in the floor, I can do this… I’m going to go in there… I’m going to conquer… and I’m going to be sitting as the personal attaché the most influential man on the fucking planet!
Positive as she tried to be it did nothing to calm her nerves. She continued to drum away on her portfolio and looked to her watch. Not to check the time, but simply to look upon the device itself as if gave her no small amount of comfort.
The watch itself was an antique, more than two hundred years old, and still in working order. Her great-great-grandfather had worn the watch from his days in the military when he’d served in one of the wars that America had fought… it was called the Gulf War, if she remembered it right. Back in the days when the Middle East was still a collection of warring religious tribes or something like that. History had never been one of her exceedingly strong skills.
The watch had been passed from one generation to the next until it had come all the way down to her. Her own father, never wanting her to join the military – and also because she had no brothers – had inherited the watch. And he’d kept it until the day he’d passed it to her.
“It’s been through a lot of shit,” her father always used to tell her. “You wear this, you can survive anything. It’s a part of you… it’ll keep you safe.”
She smiled at the watch. It was one of the few things that she had left of her father… of her whole family, come to that. The face of the device looked brand new; there wasn’t so much as a scratch upon the hardened plastic. It was designed to function in the military after all, so it was probably sturdier than most other time pieces. The three hands inside of it had carried on with their function, telling her the hour, minute, and second of the day.
She allowed her fingers to trace the circular edge of the watch and felt the old steel construction of it. The watch was warm from being worn on her wrist and she marveled at it and not for the first time. It had been built in a time when things were not made to endure. All she had ever done – all that anyone in her family had ever done – to ensure that the watch would work was to change the battery. Apart from that, there had never been any work done to the device. It truly was, she believed, a marvel of engineering. Not so different from what she was trying to accomplish here.
“Ms. Church?” said a woman’s voice, startling her.
She almost jumped in her chair, but managed to keep still… barely. She didn’t’ want to appear nervous and every fiber of muscle in her body became as rigid as hull steel. She looked and saw another dark-skinned woman standing in the doorway of the highly glossed waiting room. This woman, much like herself, was dressed in a business suit, her hair tied into numerous braids behind her head and an oddly serene look upon her face.
“Yes?” Lanie said, acknowledging the other woman.
“Mr. Madison will see you now,” the woman said. “Please, follow me.”
Chapter 2
Lanie followed her escort from the waiting room and through a series of hallways and corridors that were devoid of any other people. Apart from this woman and the security officer that had shown her to the waiting room, Lanie had seen no other people. They traveled up two more flights of stairs, made several turns, and crossed down long and wide halls without passing another living soul. Nor was there any sign or sound that there were other people around and Lanie very much doubted that every door and wall in this place was sound-proofed. It was like the whole top floor – floors? – of the building were reserved strictly for the man that owned this company.
The thought made her feel very small.
The layout of the building made her feel even smaller.
She didn’t ask any questions as they moved; she only tried to take in the sight of everything that was around her. The walls were made of mahogany, or maybe it was oak… she wasn’t sure, but it all looked pretty damn expensive. None of it was faux either, the wood… she had seen enough of the fake kind to know the real thing when she saw it. And there was enough wood in these halls to make her think that Ian Madison had cut down whole forests in order to make these walls… doors… even the floors in some places.
Along the ceiling there were crystal chandeliers that had been hung every ten or twelve meters. The ceiling itself was ornately covered with more wooden paneling, decorated with golden trim. The floor was covered in crimson colored carpets that were so soft that her shoes seemed to almost sink inside of it. Along the walls there were potted plants, portraits of men, women, of animals, buildings, of scenes of battle, ships, and various kinds of artistic fare that would have been the rule centuries ago in the palaces and estate houses of the rich and supremely powerful. And without needing to look too closely she could tell that they were all authentic… and priceless. And yet Ian Madison had them hung up like most people hung their children’s art on refrigerators.
Until they passed a window that looked out over the city below them – very far below them – she would have thought that they were in a manor house somewhere in the country with rolling green hills, forests, and lush gardens surrounding them or some such place. But outside she saw only what one would expect to find looking out the window of the tallest building in the world.
The great spires of buildings that had once been considered the sky scrapers of their time littered the ground so far below, like miniatures of the very edifice that she was now standing in. Some of them had been two or three hundred stories tall at the time, but from where she now stood she knew that they were visible only when the clouds didn’t get in the way to block the view from so high above. And flitting about between them were tiny dots that were close to imperceptible, but she knew them to be the air cars and sky trams that other people used to get around the city, like metal insects flying inside a concrete hive.
“Here we are,” said the woman that had shown her to her final destination.
She brought her senses to bear as they came to stand in front of a pair of large glass doors. She knew them to be glass, but they were completely opaque and the symbol for Madison Tech. was engraved on them both.
“If you have any questions, now is the time to ask,” her escort offered.
Lanie tried to comb her mental vault for anything that she could ask but nothing came to her. Whether this was due to her confidence or to nervousness she wasn’t sure. She chose to take it as the former and stood up confidently.
“No,” she said gently, “I’ll be fine.”
The braided woman gave an accepting nod. “Very well, good luck Ms. Church.” With that, the other woman turned and left leaving Lanie standing before the glass doors of the office of the most powerful man in the business world.
She took a short and calming breath and pulled on the handle of the door and stepped confidently inside.
The office was breathtaking and it was enough to make her heart skip a beat at the mere sight of it. The floor… the walls… everything inside looked to be made of glass, save for a few knick-knacks here and there. There were some potted plants… a single chair that the office’s owner sat on… and some bits of art that hung on the walls, but everything else was as transparent as the air around it. Though everything else sat on glass – she was certain it had to be glass of some kind – and it seemed as if the few solid items in the office were hung in the air itself, so very, very far above the ground below. Under such construction she thought for certain that the office looked as though it could have been built of air. If ever there was a way to get physically close to Heaven, she was certain that this was it
.
She felt her nerves become lightly unsteady but she pressed on, trying not to let her nervousness show. She walked on, her shoes clicking on the glass and every step she took she felt as if she were literally walking on air. A furtive glance below showed her that every step she took was bringing her farther and farther away from the reliable steel and concrete construction of the building, like a goddess stepping off of a high mountain to converse with some other god in open skies.
And the other god sat ten meters away from the door.
She knew him at once and it felt as if she had been clubbed over the side of the head. The man sat behind a glass desk, tapping away on an electronic tablet without looking up to see her, as if he received unexpected guests all the time. He was thin, but handsomely so. His hair was short and a shade of dark brown and his eyes matched, he had a pointed chin, his suit was English in design, and he wore shoes that looked to have been shined to the maximum. And sitting behind his glass desk he really was the embodiment of a god.
The best kind, eh?
She ignored the little voice in her head as she walked closer and closer. It wasn’t until she came to the foot of the man’s desk that she brought her heels together and waited. Another sign that the man received visitors either infrequently or not at all was that there were no other chairs facing his desk… a sign that he was the alpha in this space and that he alone was privileged enough to sit while others should stand.
She counted a full twenty seconds before he paused from his work long enough to take a breath and speak, though he did not look at her.
“What is your name?” he asked, though he did so in Russian.
She felt calmer for the question. Russian had been the first language she had learned to speak. “Lanie Church, Mr. Madison.”
Absently he nodded and went back to tapping away on his pad. He asked a second question and in French. “Where were you born?”
HIGHLANDER: The Highlander’s Surrender Bride (Scottish Alpha Male Pregnancy Romance) Page 49