“Can you blame her?” Kino spoke up from around Shalea’s shoulder, her expression dark behind her long hair. The redhead stood at her side with a scowl of her own.
“We didn’t exactly fall asleep naturally.”
“What happened?” Tessa asked, frowning. The women exchanged glances. Shalea spoke first.
“We were taken,” she explained, her face growing morose.
“I was the first one they woke. They told me how we were no longer home… that we were safe. I tried to escape when they left me here… but… this place…”
“We’re not home,” Kino insisted, narrow eyes flashing.
“We’re not even in the same planet. I signed up for a stupid experimental trial only to get abducted by fucking aliens.”
“Hold on—Aliens?” Tessa gawked.
Serena slumped, nodding.
“I didn’t believe Shalea either, but after Kino showed me the outside… They’re right, Tessa.”
The air escaped from Tessa’s chest like she had been punched in the gut and for a moment, she tried to deny it all, she tried to shake her head away from the thought that any of this was real, but one look to the outside was more than enough proof.
Living as someone without a home, Tessa had become intimately familiar with the sky. She had fallen asleep countless nights facing the stars and seeing the colors of the sky fade, and she was so familiar with the moon she liked to think of it as her only family.
So when she looked out at this foreign sky, seeing all those colors, and seeing the outline of not one but two moons, and even a thin line cutting through the horizon… Tessa knew this wasn’t a joke and that this wasn’t a trick of her eyes.
Tessa began to shake, doubling over and gasping when she felt Serena catch her and someone else grab hold to her arms.
“Take slow breaths, Tessa,” Serena said softly.
“It’ll pass.”
The panic attack was almost violent and Tessa had half a mind to burst into a run and escape anywhere, but this place…
Suddenly, the door opened again and when the women turned around, Tessa saw Yana, smiling at them and holding on to Kanako, Kino’s sister. The woman’s eyes were wide and dazed but brightened when they landed on her sister.
“Kanako!” Kino exclaimed, rushing past them to yank her sister into her arms and away from Yana.
Suddenly, she spoke and her voice was rushing in Japanese. Tessa couldn’t understand what they said and she wanted to ignore them. Instead, Serena pulled her close to whisper in her ear.
“Play along.” Shalea and the redhead moved closer to the other women, bringing her in warm hugs that made them appear as though they were related, which was ridiculous, considering they were hardly even friends.
Sure enough, time passed and Tessa came to realize that that all the women taken from the room had been abducted.
Recovered from her panic attack, Tessa found herself pacing over the strange couches and chairs set up for the women to sit.
Shalea remained standing like Tessa, leaning against one of the arches and glaring at the sky outside.
“Alright, we have to at least know where we are.” Tessa said after some time pacing.
“Did you guys find out anything?”
The women shook their heads. “We asked,” Serena began, hugging to a woman named Celia. Celia’s olive skin looked pale and sickly, she wasn’t doing so well.
“But they only told us we’d know in time.”
“Seriously?” Tessa snapped.
“That we’d know in time? Ugh this is such bullshit.”
“Obviously,” Kino grunted. Her sister said something in Japanese, and when Kino looked back, she was rolling her eyes and replying.
“Okay can we just speak in English?” Shalea asked with a deep frown.
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to make our cover any less fake.”
“That’s another thing,” Tessa piped in, ignoring Kino’s careless shrug and Shalea’s grunt of annoyance.
“Why sisters? Do they honestly think we’re related?”
“Yana does,” Shalea replied, crossing her arms.
“It was the first thing he told me. That I’d be alright, that I’m safe, and that ‘my sisters’ would be awake to join me soon. Honestly, I thought that meant I was going to get eaten or something.”
“I was brought here after Kino,” Serena explained.
“Then when Franciska was brought here, we decided it would be a good idea to pretend we were all sisters. It would make sense to just play along instead of trying to alienate one another.”
Franciska, the redhead, shifted in her seat, wrapping her arms around her legs.
“It’s a shit idea, but we got no other option. We’re better off trying to survive together than alone anyway.”
Tessa sighed, but understood.
“Yeah but don’t you guys think they’ll notice we aren’t related? We don’t exactly look alike.”
“So?” Kino pointed out.
“They’re aliens, it’s not like they can tell. As far as I know, they may think we do look alike. They probably think it is normal for siblings to speak in different languages too.”
“It’s fine,” Kanako sighed, her accent thick.
“I need to practice anyway.” Kino replied harshly in Japanese, but Kanako smiled in reply.
“So we’re all here?” Tessa asked.
Shalea nodded.
“Only eight of us were taken, and eight of us are here.”
Tessa let out a slow breath before looking at all of the women watching her.
“What is it?”
“Just wondering if you’ve got a plan,” Serena said with a small smile. Tessa floundered.
“Me? Why me?”
“You did figure out the thing with the messed up time when we were back on Earth,” Franciska said.
“Faster than any of us. You probably have better instincts or intuition or something.”
“That doesn’t make me a leader,” Tessa replied, shaking her head.
“She’s right,” Shalea said, straightening from her position by the stone arches.
“We shouldn’t be worrying about leadership when we still have very little to know.”
“Well what do we know?” Serena asked, pursing her lips.
No one spoke, leaving an empty silence to spill with no inspiration. Tessa hugged herself despite the warm air, feeling cold in such a strange place.
To their surprise, they didn’t wait for long because suddenly the door was opening and Yana was walking in with a wide smile.
“I’m pleased to see you are all happy to be together,” Yana said.
Tessa found herself wanting to punch him, hating his stupid face and his beauty.
“But the time has come for you to be primped and chosen!”
“Wait… what?” Tessa asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Yeah, we’re not going anywhere until you tell us why you’ve taken us from our home.” Shalea snapped.
The other women began to chorus in agreements, standing quickly to band together.
“It is not a problem,” Yana said, his smile never faltering.
“I’m sure you must be very confused. You’ve been brought here for one reason. However, I cannot be the one to explain, so please come. I will take you to our Greatest.”
He turned and moved toward the door. Suddenly it peeled back again, yet it pulled and pulled to reveal a wide hallway where the women were being looked upon by a long line of men.
Tessa gasped in surprise, noticing how all of the men looking toward them were astoundingly handsome. The only thing that made them different from men from back on Earth was that their skin were different shades of pink, blue, yellow, and purple. Their eyes were also strangely colored, but this only seemed to add to the allure.
“Come along,” Yana urged, walking through and the men made bowing motions, as if greeting them.
“What s
hould we do?” Celia asked, her voice small.
“We don’t exactly have much choice, do we?” Shalea replied, and after exchanging glances with Tessa, they both nodded.
“Yeah,” Tessa said.
“We won’t be able to figure out anything if we stay here.”
Sure enough, the women began to follow Yana, huddling close and even holding hands as they were unsure how to react to the men staring at them.
“They’re so gorgeous,” Cassandra, the woman who had entered with Celia, crooned.
“Don’t fall for it,” Shalea admonished quickly.
“This could be a trap.” Tessa agreed silently, following Yana’s figure down the immense and splendorous hallway.
They were led further in until they arrived before a large and tall oval door, designed so much more intricately than any door Tessa had ever seen. Yana approached it and pressed a hand to the surface when the door shuddered and parted much like the other ones have.
It revealed an immense and astounding chamber, a large dais was settled at the very center of the room but the top was covered by what looked like a large curtain. When they approached, Tessa noticed that it wasn’t made of cloth… but of something that moved like it was also alive.
When it pulled back slowly, all of the women gasped. Tessa could only describe the chair on its top as a throne, but it was wide and long. On top of it was a man, body corded with powerful muscle and his skin was a color of a softened peach yellow—the closest to normal skin color of all the men they had seen—and clothed in long pants that blended almost into skirts, his torso bare.
His body was perfection, and his jaw was perfectly chiseled. His face—Tessa had never seen a body or a face so beautiful in all her life—looked like it had been sculpted by angels.
It was as terrifying as it was amazing.
When he looked at them, something overcame Tessa. A powerful heat that made her body shudder and feel tight all at once. Around her, she could hear the women at her sides let out soft gasps of surprise and she wondered vaguely if he had the same effect on them.
“Welcome,” he spoke and Tessa felt the heat in her body course like a powerful river, rushing to poke around the sensitive of her nipples and the sudden slick heat between her thighs.
“To Rusneon.”
Serena suddenly collapsed to her knees, a high pitched moan burning past her lips as she clenched her legs tight, her hand clutched tight to her lips as she twitched on the ground.
Tessa instantly became alarmed, hurrying toward Serena to see if she was alright.
“Serena,” Tessa called, trying to get the woman to look at her. Serena’s eyes were unresponsive, eyelids fluttering as she shook.
“Serena! What’s wrong? Tell me!”
Before she could get a response, Tessa heard other moans erupt from the other women. When she turned to look, Kino and Kanako were sitting by one another, breathing heavily as their cheeks flushed.
Celia and Cassandra were already on the ground, thrashing as if possessed. Franciska had her fingers in her mouth, biting down as she struggled to remain standing but was slowly sliding to the ground.
Even Shalea was shaking, but she was one of the only ones to remain standing, even though she was heaving and twitching where she stood.
Looking back at the man upon the throne, Tessa couldn’t help but feel a surge of anger at him. “What did you do?!”
His lips pulled back, revealing perfect teeth. The blistering look in his expression made her insides squirm pleasantly. Tessa took in a sharp breath, pulling away from Serena as she continued to convulse on the ground.
“What are you doing to them?” She demanded.
“Tessa,” Shalea groaned, and when Tessa looked at her, she saw that her face was tight with a familiar expression. Tessa nearly jolted in surprise.
It was almost impossible to not notice that the look was one of pleasure—even if it was unwarranted. “You’ve got to get out of here…”
“Well, well,” the man spoke and Tessa felt her body react. Shalea let out a soft keen, biting down hard on her lip.
“You seem to be the only one unaffected.”
When Tessa looked back, she saw him slowly rise from his chair, her eyes honing directly over the way the material hung dangerously low on his hips. The effect was almost instantaneous.
Her mouth became dry and every inch of her skin was suddenly hyperaware of everything around her and she could feel the skin between her legs grow increasingly wet. Hissing between her teeth, Tessa shook her head.
“Or rather,” he spoke again and she could feel it in her core. Shalea collapsed to her knees and Tessa let out a small yelp to reach the woman, but her legs felt like jelly. “You’re not as affected.”
The surge of anger returned and Tessa was able to fight back against the influence pressing over her body. Looking up, Tessa met his gaze, noting that it was a fine color like gold or platinum.
“What the hell did you do to them?”
“Your sisters are alright,” he answered and she had to swallow back thickly, but every moment she resisted made the situation easier to bear.
“They were just extremely susceptible to my influence.”
“Who are you?” Tessa bit out.
His smile broadened before he was gesturing to himself, “I am known as the Greatest. The leader of my kind. Are you?”
Tessa reached down to pinch her thigh, the pain helped to clear her head.
“Am I what?”
“The leader of yours?” He clarified.
Tessa was unsure how to reply, but her mind was too busy trying to focus on anything else. Her eyes fell on Yana, his eyes met hers hungrily but his smile was kind. Another shiver racked through Tessa’s body and she looked away.
“What is it that you want?” Tessa asked, finally breathing deep enough to meet the man’s golden gaze again. He moved, and it was so fast she almost stumbled back to escape. Instead, he was suddenly right in front of her and whatever pressure her body had been under before intensified tenfold.
She could feel the heat permeate from his skin and dig into hers. She swore she could feel every individual strand of the clothes on her body, the very indentations of the living stone beneath her shaking feet. Even worse, her body was craving, craving so hard to be touched that she was nearly clenching every muscle in her body to keep from falling.
Tessa gasped, throat closing as though had been caught between the precipice of the most pleasurable experience in her life and shock.
“You,” he said.
“You will do just fine.”
Chapter 4
He was impressed, he might say.
Most females—regardless of species—ended up much like the human women writhing on the ground, overwhelmed with the pleasure of his influence. Instead, this one human female stood her ground and met his gaze, even if she was still experiencing his influence.
He had been wary of the idea of venturing so deep into the galaxy to pick out a mate. His advisors had insisted he needed to look for a mate within their confederation, and even suggested picking one from one of the rival planets.
Yet he had always disliked Alterian females—they were far too cold and calculating for his taste—and they were, arguably, the best options for mating in their quadrant. Now, he was pleased with the results of their latest conquests.
Not even Alterians could withstand his full presence, and while he had been concerned some of the human females would probably die within his influence—considering how fragile they had been described in the report—they had all survived and even managed to hold off longer than any other species he had ever met.
And then there was this one.
Eyes a deep shade of ocilion—ice blue, as the humans would call—and slightly dark skin. Her hair was unlike the hair from his people, reflecting light rather than give off aura, was not unbefitting. Yet what drove his pleasure further was noting the rest of her.
Her body was shapely, n
ot as much as Alterians, but delightfully so. Her breasts were not the biggest he had seen but they looked delightful and her hips were wide. She looked like she could handle him… handle enough of him.
She would do. Perfectly.
“What is your name?”
He asked and he could hear how her breath hitched in her throat. So fragile. So pure. He could feel his hunger begin to mount.
“T…” She began, pausing only to gather her composure before swallowing. “Tessa.”
“Tessa,” he tested the name on his tongue. It was sharp, strange, yet not ugly. He liked it.
“Tessa…” he breathed the name out once more, elongating every syllable as he worked the name through his teeth. She shivered and he could feel every vibration of her skin. Delightful.
“I am Ceff,” he introduced.
“The Greatest, and leader of Rusneon.” Take them away.
What of her?
I have decided on her.
Tessa’s eyes went wider when she realized how some of the men they had seen before appeared through the door and went to gather the fallen women. Some of them still groaned and sighed as they were carried off. It was almost amusing.
“W-wait, where are you taking them?” Tessa asked, her voice small. Ceff smiled down at her.
“I have no further use of them.” He answered. Her lips parted and he could catch a glimpse of her teeth.
They were straight and pale, adorable.
“They will be taken care of.”
“What? No!” She shouted, and she was suddenly pleading. Her eyes were no longer dazed and blown wide but narrow and angry.
“You can’t!”
“I assure you,” Ceff explained.
“I can, and I will.”
Her expression morphed from angry to completely livid, and the change of emotion was so sudden that Ceff was left to stare at her in amazement.
Humans were passionate creatures, he had been informed. But this woman’s emotions were nearly as powerful as his and he couldn’t help but feel a twinge in his gut as she glowered at him.
“Take them away,” he ordered and they were gone. He turned to look at her, but Tessa was running after them, screaming.
“Shalea!” Tessa screamed, reaching for the darker-skinned female draped over the shoulder of one of his subjects. The woman reached back, groaning. Ceff was displeased at this and made a motion to another subject.
Alien Romance: Rusneon Mates Boxed Set: A Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) Page 3