Anders: An Auxem Novel

by Lisa Lace

  “Something?” I asked as we ran, dodging workers and equipment. I heard someone behind us come through the door and crash into the security guard Emmy had just punched. He was having a bad day.

  “Was it a cream?” If someone spread a tracer cream on her body, they would be able to track her location for days. I had a device that would scramble the tracer’s signal, but I couldn’t activate it right now.

  We dashed to the right, moving down an empty hallway. I was impressed that she could run this far without running out of breath. She must be in good shape. And her abs were beginning to turn me on. I had never been into women who worked out excessively. I thought I liked my women naturally thin and on the soft side. Emmy was starting to grow on me with her fit, healthy body. If I weren’t running for my life, my cock would be hard.

  What was I thinking? I needed to focus before the bastards behind us took Emmy away. That would wreak havoc with my plan and her life. Because as soon as they got any information from her, she would no longer have any value to them and they would kill her. That wasn’t going to happen. I had sworn to protect her. Whether she wanted me to or not, I was going to do my duty.

  “Let’s go in there.” She pointed to a door that read Docking Bay #12. The line of doors down the hallway stretched away from us, with numbers that seemed to advance all the way to infinity, but I knew there were only about ninety docking bays. We were at the main spaceport for Stalwart. Almost all of the shuttles coming to the planet passed through this building.

  I opened the door and ran through, turning and locking it behind us. Thirty seconds later, we heard it rattle and bang from the other side. We didn't stop as we ducked around the spacecraft.

  We heard the sound of blaster fire, and the door exploded. Five people barged into the docking bay, which seemed deserted except for us and our pursuers.

  “Where did they go?”

  I didn’t hear anyone answer. Emmy and I continued to move around the shuttlecraft looking for anything that could help us. We needed to find a place to hide or a way to get out of the docking bay. As we crept through the shuttles, I started a program on my computer that would block the signal coming from the tracer on Emmy’s body.

  We couldn’t find another way out. We were either leaving through the same door we entered or out the giant door for spaceships. Neither option sounded good. A man was guarding the other side of the door, and I didn’t want to roast inside the engines of a ship.

  “How long will the tracker remain active?”

  “The blocker takes a few minutes to start working. If they used a cream on you, the effects are temporary.”

  “That’s not reassuring. They can still track me right now?”

  “Yes. It will be harder for them to find you. But it’s the only way they could know we were in this particular bay.”

  We needed to find a better hiding place quickly.

  Emmy eagerly tried all the door handles we passed to see if any hapless souls had left them unlocked. We got lucky. A door led into a mid-sized private spaceship. She beckoned to me, and we both slipped inside, pulling the door shut. A moment later we heard footsteps approaching our location.

  Even though we were trying to be quiet, we had not closed the door tightly. We wanted to listen to any movements of people trying to find us. Emmy and I positioned ourselves on either side of the door. Neither one of us dared to take a step or make any noise.

  The narrow entrance to the spacecraft was tight. If I moved another inch closer to her, her breasts would brush slightly against my chest.

  I tried to ignore her proximity. I focused on controlling my breathing until it was calm and quiet again. The footsteps came closer. I heard someone pull on door handles.

  They would reach our spaceship in a minute. When they did, it would be obvious our door was open. I prepared to fight, flexing and releasing my muscles.

  I waited for the door to fly open when a loud voice came from the vicinity of the docking bay door.

  “What are you doing in here?” There was a pause until the voice start yelling. “Security! I need security here right now!”

  We heard the sounds of a scuffle followed by silence.

  I let out my breath. Emmy and I looked at each other. She motioned her head toward the interior of the ship. I nodded, hoping I could understand her without any explanation. The spaceport worker had bought us some time, but we weren’t out of trouble yet.

  EMMY

  I noticed Ven was good-looking before I married him. But once I found out that he was an annoying, stuck in his life, stuffy billionaire, I lost interest. It didn’t matter how sexy he was.

  I didn’t have anything against wealthy aliens, but he wasn’t the guy for me. I didn’t need a man at all. But if I were going to pick someone for myself, it wouldn’t be an alien who pursued his interests all day and would do anything to maintain the status quo.

  Anyone who wanted to be with me needed an interest in adventure. I was an archeologist who hunted down precious treasures, and there wasn’t anything normal about my life. I loved it, and I knew it wasn’t for everyone. I couldn’t imagine being with someone like Ven. He was so desperate to keep his life the way it was that he would marry a stranger.

  Right now, I wondered if there was more to Ven than I had originally thought. He certainly handled the gun smoothly. The shot from a moving car to take out the other car’s batteries had been difficult. It took a lot of practice to be that accurate with a civilian weapon.

  Today he wore casual clothes. I don't know if Earth was exporting its clothing styles to Stalwart, but he wore a tight T-shirt on top that showed off an incredible body with well-defined biceps and a broad chest. His bare arms had a purple stripe here and there in different locations, and I momentarily wondered if there were any markings on his cock.

  My mind wouldn’t stop. I remembered when he took my hand. Fireworks ignited inside of me that went straight to my core. I might not have noticed all of Ven’s attributes yesterday, but I was certainly seeing them today.

  I took a chance and stole a quick peek at him for a moment as we moved through the spaceship’s dim interior. He stared back at me without speaking. He was talking volumes with dark eyes that seemed to hold many secrets.

  I didn’t mind secrets. I had some of my own. There was something about Ven that made me want to discover the answer to every one of his. I wanted to know what made him tick. I wanted to understand him. And I guess I wanted to fuck him, too.

  My knees had felt weak when we waited at the door together, hoping no one would find us. There were so many different emotions pulsing through my body that I could hardly sort them out. Fear had been predominant, but there was longing too and a desire to be closer to him. If I had only moved one more inch, we would have touched chest-to-chest.

  “How about in here?” he whispered, opening the door to a cargo space. There were several large cartons providing cover. “I don’t think they’ll search every ship. The person they knocked out already alerted security. The cops should be here soon. Even if they do explore this ship before security arrives, we’ll have a chance to shoot whoever comes through the door.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  We shut the door behind us. There was a round window at one end of the room and two jump seats that could be pulled down for additional passengers. The extra seats had restraints. I imagined this area was where the workers stayed during take-off. This spaceship had a lot of bells and whistles. It was a luxurious personal vessel, and I imagined a rich and famous Stalwartian owned it.

  “When things settle down out there, we can sneak out and make our escape. I’m going to increase the power of the signal scrambling their tracer. It should make it harder for them to track you.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I sat on the floor and tried to slow down my racing pulse. Ven hovered next to me. I was acutely aware of his presence. He was just close enough to touch me, but he was careful to leave a little distance, like an invisible barrier. Ve
n typed some information into his computer until he felt satisfied and sat back.

  Adrenaline filled me after our race through the spaceport. Having Ven so close to me was doing interesting things to my libido.

  I had never even been interested in a human male before. I was attracted to certain actors, and there was one person in school who I daydreamed about, but those were all fantasies. It was entirely different when I wanted a male who was right beside me and who might be thinking about me too. That had never happened to me before. I wondered if I had always secretly yearned for an alien to sweep me off my feet.

  Nah. I was probably just too busy.

  Merely making it to university had been a challenge. I finished high school when I was seventeen and worked two jobs, studying the rest of the time to pass my classes. After university, it was more school all the time.

  I never had time for a man. I could have had a boyfriend when I was working on my Ph.D., but no one was interested in me at the time. If they were, I wasn’t interested in them.

  All of a sudden, I felt insecure. I had never been in this situation before, and I didn’t know what to do. Should I kiss him?

  “Emmy.” Ven stared straight ahead.

  The sound of his voice brought me out of my daydream and back to reality.

  “What?” I felt nervous. How old was he, anyway? He looked like he was a few years older than me, but the way he was acting right now made him seem even older than I thought. He turned his head and he had an intimidating look in his black eyes.

  “You are going to tell me everything immediately.” I couldn’t look away. I knew he was right. I tried as hard as I could to keep him out of my mess of a life, but he was here despite my best efforts. Now his life was in danger. He had a right to know.

  “This is going to sound strange, but there’s a ladle. It’s all the ladle’s fault.”

  Chapter Ten

  VEN

  I closed my eyes, shutting out the view of the cargo hold. With my vision cut off, I could smell a faint stuffy odor. The shuttle had taken a long space flight recently, and they hadn’t had the time to recycle the air. When I drew a deep breath in through my nose, I caught a whiff of Emmy’s scent. The fragrance was both sweet and foreign in an intriguing way.

  “A ladle? You mean, like a spoon for dishing out soup?” I stared at her blankly, knowing my face was a mask of disbelief.

  She sighed, looking down at her knees which were drawn up to her chest. The position of her legs crushed her breasts and made them temptingly bulge up out of her bra.

  One of the drawbacks of tall, skinny women is that they have small breasts. All of my former women had been deficient in their chest. I couldn’t stop staring at her breasts, which rose and fell as she breathed. My mind wondered what it would feel like to hold her plump mounds in my hands and take one red bud into my mouth. What color were her nipples?

  Did I want her nipples in my mouth? Wasn’t this woman crazy? If I was honest with myself, I had to admit that I wanted her breasts and much more. But I couldn’t let myself get carried away with Emmy. I was sure she was more trouble than she was worth. I just needed her to stay with me for a year as I had planned with Montana.

  After we had finished our time together, it wouldn’t matter if she needed to go somewhere for work or personal business. We had to live in the same residence. It was a big house, and we wouldn’t get in each other’s way.

  I reluctantly drew my attention away from her breasts. How could all this nonsense be because of a magical spoon?

  She gave me a rueful smile. “If it weren’t for the Silver Mestolo of Zelia, or informally, Zelia’s ladle, I wouldn’t be here right now. I would probably be working in a museum on Earth, cleaning dirt off arrowheads.”

  “Emmy.” I tried to restrain my temper. The woman was irritating but simultaneously so attractive that I didn’t know what to think. “Try to say something that makes sense soon, or...” I broke off, not sure what I would do, but imagined it would involve our bodies pressing together.

  “Or what?” She glared at me with a challenge in her eye.

  I knew Montana would never have looked at me like that. She would have agreed with me. I always selected a particular type. Genial, agreeable, wanting to please...that sort of woman. Not the kind to openly challenge me and push my buttons.

  I decided to start over. “Please allow me to rephrase myself. I don’t know how long we have. I’m not that smart, and I would like a clear explanation.”

  “The Silver Mestolo. It’s a word in an ancient Earth language that means ladle. The first woman who discovered its existence was a famous archeologist from Earth named Zelia. It’s made from filaden, one of the strongest elements in the galaxy. Even if you dropped a spaceship on it, the Mestolo wouldn’t be crushed.” She trailed off when she saw the look on my face.

  “It’s a serving instrument. I get it. But why does everyone want it?”

  “Morley believed it could cure any disease. It contains a large concentration of Higgs boson particles. On Earth, we think Higgs boson particles are the source of matter and life.”

  It took everything within me not to smile. This human was talking about Higgs boson particles like they were the first ones to discover them. The commonly accepted name for them was Trovveqs.

  Emmy mentioning Trovveqs meant she was highly educated...for an Earth woman. I wondered how intelligent she was. She was much different than I had imagined Montana. I had anticipated conversations about riding and making small talk with my wife, not speaking about physics.

  “The Zelia's ladle has a higher concentration of these particles, and the theory is that it can enhance the life of anyone who drinks from it,” she finished. “It may be able to heal patients previously thought to be incurable.”

  My mind was only partially listening to her words. The other half contemplated Emmy’s education. Even though she came from a primitive planet like Earth, apparently she was one of its most highly educated inhabitants.

  I had old feelings of inadequacy from when my aunt repeatedly told me I was stupid. I couldn’t help it. Whenever I found myself around people smarter than me, I felt like an idiot. I tried to focus on what Emmy was saying, but I had a terrible feeling in my gut.

  At the same time, I fixated on her soft, pink lips. Perhaps if I kissed her, she’d stop talking about Higgs boson particles and bringing up my old issues. But I couldn’t kiss her because I wasn’t going to get involved with her.

  What kind of guy couldn’t handle having a woman who was smarter than him? A pathetic one.

  EMMY

  I tried to ignore how close Ven was to my body. I knew I owed him an explanation. I couldn’t sum up everything in three sentences. He was getting annoyed with my vague statements. I had to start at the beginning, or the motivations of the people involved would be confusing.

  His arm was touching me, and I could feel warmth and tingles at the point of contact. When I was this close to him, I couldn’t deny the attraction. In fact, I could hardly focus on my story. Energy rose in my torso and spread out, making me feel giddy. I forced myself to concentrate on how I had ended up here.

  “Everything started when I was still a little girl. My mentor and teacher, Morley, began searching for Zelia's ladle. He had been searching for it for about twenty-two years when I met him. I was a graduate student in archeology at the top of my class.”

  Ven wrinkled his nose. I realized I probably didn't need to add the part about being the best.

  “He hired me to work with him when I finished school. I started as an assistant and worked my way up.”

  “Because you both became obsessed with a utensil?”

  I scowled. “We weren’t obsessed,” I said, objecting to a word that implied I was nuts. “We were enthusiastic.”

  He stared at me.

  “Persistent?”

  No response.

  “Okay, driven. But not obsessed.”

  “You sound like treasure hunters to me.�
��

  I pressed my lips together. That was the most insulting thing he could have said to me. I didn’t like to be called a treasure hunter. It made me feel gauche. Treasure hunters were classless money-grubbing jerks. I thought of myself as a sophisticated archeologist. With a single comment, Ven had implied that Morley’s work was an obsession, and my assistance said the same thing about me.

  I resolved to control my temper.

  “Morley pieced together many clues about the ladle. He worked on it between paying projects until he had enough information to start an expedition. We were close. We narrowed it down to a single planet and thought a mountain concealed it. I got sick and had to go back to Earth. Morley continued without me.”

  I glanced up at him quickly. Did he think I was a coward? I wondered if he had anything to say but he only lifted his chin, indicating for me to continue.

  “Once I had recovered enough to speak again, we talked every day. We discussed his progress and tried to decipher the riddle of Zelia's ladle. One day was different.”

  I didn’t think about Morley's death often, but whenever I did, I choked up. I tried to pull myself together. I knew Morley wouldn’t want me crying over him. I couldn’t help it. I missed him so much.

  “He was a father figure to me. I never knew my dad.” I didn’t know why I needed to explain my emotions, but I couldn’t stop talking. Ven patiently waited as I wiped my eyes.

  “He called me one day with a cryptic message and then the men who were chasing him...” The tears were falling again. “They caused a cave-in somehow and killed him. I never heard from Morley again. Morley died, and all his knowledge vanished.”

  I sat silently, absorbed in my memories and thinking about my loss. I wasn’t the only one affected. Morley’s death hurt the archeological community as well.

  “Everything wasn’t lost. You’re still here. Part of Morley lives through you.”

  I stared at the floor. “That’s right.” I lifted my eyes again. “The last transmission he sent me held a key to finding the ladle. It has something to do with the Stone Goddess of Heralla.”