Alien Romance: Astral Mates Complete Series (Book 1 - 4): Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Invasion Romance, Alien Romance)

by Chloe Joel

  The therapist looked longingly after him before remembering what she was doing there. With a sigh, she turned to her patient, “Alright, let’s see about getting you taken…” she noticed the smirk on Ashley’s face. Suddenly, her demeanor became cooler, less friendly. “care of.”

  Stiffly, she walked over to the bed. She worked on Ashley’s ankle, and didn’t even bother to apologize for the additional pain. At times, the pain was nearly bad enough to bring tears to the patient’s eyes, but she refused to give her any kind of victory. The entire session became an unspoken struggle between the two women.

  When the session was over, the therapist left without a word. It was only after the door was closed that Ashley realized she had never used the therapist’s name, she couldn’t even remember it now. The only name she had used in her mind for the therapist was bitch. For the whole session! Feeling ashamed and childish, she flopped back on the bed. Her ankle was throbbing, and her head was threatening to chime in with some pain of it’s own.

  Her mind instantly went to Martin. Placing an arm over her eyes, she began to hope that he would come visit her. She would apologize and then things could go back to the way they had been.

  It was just a matter of agreement that she had been hallucinating, that was what had started this rift, and so it was just a matter of addressing it. Of course, he was offended. Playing back the whole discussion, Ashley could see what she had said would be seen as disrespectful and rude.

  Before she knew it, Ashley was asleep again, but this time, the nightmares started right from the beginning. She was alone in the woods, both her step-father and Darren chasing her. They were yelling at her and cursing her as she sobbed.

  Suddenly, their curses became shrieks. Turning to see what had happened, it was as if time had rewound just so she could watch. She saw Martin silently running up on the men, his eyes glowing the same green she remembered seeing the night of the attack. His movements were completely extraordinary, and she knew that because she could see every muscle moving in his naked body.

  A wicked grin was spread across his face as he held out both arms. The muscles in his arms rippled as they collided with the backs of the men’s heads. There were two loud snaps and both her step-father and Darren went down, that same dead look in their eyes.

  With the two men gone, Martin began to walk toward her in a way that looked very much like a predator stalking its prey. Ashley tried to back up but found she was on the edge of a cliff. He walked toward her, then around her. Stepping out into the void around the cliff, he walked on air, as if taunting her to run toward the men.

  The wicked grin was still firmly set on his face, and there was nothing friendly about it. For a moment she considered bolting, but the sounds of leaves rustling behind her stopped Ashley from immediately reacting. Ashley felt her head turn in slow motion. The dead men were now standing up and they were coming toward her.

  She was about to scream when an arm wrapped around her waist and a hand clamped over her mouth. Martin was pulling her close to him and resting his chin on her shoulder, “You only have one choice now.” There was no warmth in his voice, just a smugness that made her feel helpless.

  “That’s right, no point in struggling is there.” With that, he moved faster than that was humanly possible, out into the air.

  Ashley bolted upright in her bed. She had been thrashing in her sleep and had moved right to the edge of the bed. The sudden movement sent her over the edge, and her sprained ankle poised to hit the floor first.

  An arm caught her before she hit the ground. Ashley’s arms hung down in front of her to stop her from a collision that wasn’t going to happen. Momentarily paused as she tried to process the transition from sleep to waking, she hung like a rag doll. Her mind began to take in the familiar feel of Martin as his arm held her and his body pressed against her. Without thinking, she began to thrash.

  There wasn’t a hint of gentleness as he threw her unceremoniously onto the bed.

  “Do you act this way just to piss me off?” His voice was sarcastic and cold.

  Ashley moved her brunette curls out of her face. “I’m so sorry…”

  “Really, that again. Spare me.” His look of disdain made her shrink away from him.

  He turned and pointed to a tray of food and a hot drink beside the bed. “You’ve got 15 minutes to finish the meal before one of my servants comes by to take it away.”

  “Martin…”

  The man made no indication that he heard her at all as he stalked out of the room.

  Chapter 5

  The next day was even worse. The therapist was scheduled to come in twice a day, and her annoyance with Ashley only seemed to grow worse with every passing day. No apologies were uttered as Ashley grunted at the pain the therapist inflicted. It was only when the patient let out a scream that the therapist even acknowledged the pain.

  “Really, it’s a sprain. Is this what you do? You are unbelievably weak and completely fake.” After that, Ashley refused to make any noises during the sessions that now felt more like torture sessions than therapy.

  Martin barely came in to see her at all. When he did, he said little and always in a tone that suggested he thought very little of her. By the end of the week, Ashley had stopped trying to talk to him, silently accepted the food, and threw it out the window as soon as he was gone.

  After four days of this new routine, the therapist was forced to acknowledge Ashley’s deteriorating state. She brought it up with Martin just outside of the bedroom before a morning session. Since the therapist was now in the habit of waking Ashley up every day, they had most probably thought she was asleep.

  “Thank you for your services Ms. Skelter, but I’m afraid they are no longer needed here.”

  “You have paid me to see her get better, and I take that seriously.”

  Martin’s voice oozed cynicism as he responded, “Oh come on. With the way you have been treating her, you have no intention of helping her. Everything you have done has made Ashley’s situation worse. You know where the front door is. Please, see yourself out before I become unpleasant.”

  “Mr. Batair, there is something seriously wrong with her. You must have noticed it. She’s losing weight, and her ankle is getting worse, not better. I can help her get better. I can-”

  For the first time in days, Ashley’s heart was warmed by Martin’s response, “Perhaps you should have considered what you were doing. You choose to try to break her instead of helping her mend. That much has become perfectly clear.” The therapist tried to speak, but he wouldn’t let her get a word in.

  His next words sounded very menacing, “Do you really think that your activities were going unmonitored? That no one knew how you caused her enough pain that her shout could be heard two floors up on the other side of the house?”

  His tone softened, “I’m afraid I was wrong about you. You are decidedly not the best, and I will no longer be needing your services. I am giving you one more chance to leave before I get someone to remove you from the premises.”

  “But sir, she needs to go to a hospital!”

  “Now you care? Or is it” his voice lowered to nearly a growl, “that if you aren’t allowed in my house, you would rather make sure she is removed from it?”

  “Mr. Batair – I am a professional!”

  Ashley could almost see the sneer through the door as he responded, “You have been throwing yourself at me since you stepped into my home.” He tsked at her, “That is about as unprofessional as it gets, and if I acted like you have with any of my employees, it would be considered sexual harassment.

  There is nothing professional about the way you have carried yourself since your arrival, not toward me and certainly not toward my guest. And while you are quite attractive, your personality and skills are nowhere near my standards. You have wasted enough of my time and money.”

  “I’m going to call…”

  “The police? The authorities? Who are you going to call, Ms. Skelter? Bec
ause I guarantee before you give your first statement on record, I will have ten witnesses lining up against you, including the very woman you were torturing.

  She has lost a ridiculous amount of weight under your watch, and yet you waited until I told you that I no longer need your services to try to do anything about it. Do you really want to start this game with me? Because I can assure you that you won’t win and you will certainly be ruined by the end of it.”

  There was panic in the therapist’s voice, “But-but-but, you don’t understand! At this rate, she’s going to die if she isn’t tended to!”

  His voice was completely different as he responded to someone with very gentle footsteps, “Mr. Benton, if you would please see Ms. Skelter out. Pay her what we agreed to, and make sure she understands if she ever acts against me, she will be ruined that same hour.”

  There was hard defiance in the therapist’s voice, her last words on the matter, “How can you be so heartless as to let her die? I thought you wanted her to get better.”

  “I want nothing more than to see her get better, and the best first step toward that result is to get you out of my home. After that, I know exactly what is wrong with her and how to fix it. Involving anymore low class, poorly raised humans in my life is absolutely out of the question.” There was a gasp.

  “Thank you Benton. Uh uh,” Ashely could almost imagine him wagging a finger at the woman, “one more word and you will be miserable for the rest of your life.”

  That was the last Ashley ever heard of Ms. Joanne Skelter.

  Fully expecting Martin to come into her room, Ashley lay down and tried to look asleep. Her mind raced as she tried to come up with ways to thank him, especially for the lies about wanting her to get better more than anything else. It was touching, especially with the cold way he had been treating her. Ashley decided that she needed to apologize to him and thank him.

  She waited. Nothing. There wasn’t a knock on the door, not even by a servant.

  The patient dozed off and into another nightmare. They had become so frequent and her strength was so drained that she was no longer at risk of rolling off of the bed. Her body barely moved as she woke at the end of a particularly intense and terrifying dream.

  Without opening her eyes, she placed a hand on her head. It had been over a week since the attack (to be honest she no longer had a sense of time – her body had been through so much and she had slept the vast majority of the time), but the nightmares were getting more vivid and worse.

  Surely, the poison had finished working its way out of her body. Her thoughts were muddled, but Ashley had a vague notion that it was the starvation that was bringing about the nightmares now. With her other hand, Ashley struggled to push herself up into a sitting position.

  She squeaked when her face hit something cold and metallic. Trying to lay back down, Ashley found a hand firmly placed against her back. The metallic object was shoved into her mouth.

  As she tried to yell, a hand was placed under her chin, forcing her head up. The food that had been pressed into her mouth nearly went down the wrong pipe. She coughed for a full minute trying to dislodge it.

  “Maybe now you won’t be so stupid about eating.”

  With tears in her eyes from choking, she glared at him. Ashley had been prepared to apologize, to start eating again, but now she was acting on instinct, the very instincts she had initially ignored. She let out a low feral growl.

  Martin sat beside her bed, an amused look on his face. There was no pity, no warmth, nothing inviting about the stone cold expression he gave her. Without another word, he picked up a fork and held it up for her to see. Then he speared a few things on it and arched an eyebrow at her.

  Narrowing her eyes, Ashley shook her head. Martin’s face dissolved into a cruel smile, “Toddlers and young children refuse to eat to make a point. Is that what you are?”

  Ashley’s eyes went to the area of his chest that was clearly visible. No matter how angry she felt, Ashley found she could not stop wanting him. Even when he was cruel, Martin was so much more of a man than anyone she had met.

  Unlike Chad or anyone else she had known, when Martin decided on something, he would act. He had proven that over and over, starting with the night he had saved her. Now that she was acting purely on instinct, her attraction to him was overpowering the desire to fight him.

  For the first time in days, she heard a low rumble of chuckling. Snapping her head up she tried to glare at him, then realized he had put the tray on the bed. With his hands on the top button, he spoke in a low, enticing voice, “I see.” He unbuttoned the top button and slid his hand down to the next one, “I’ll make a deal with you.” Her breath caught as his hand made a flicking motion and the shirt fell open a little more, “For every two bites of food you eat, I’ll undo two buttons.” Ashley’s chest heaved and she momentarily closed her eyes.

  When she opened her eyes, Ashley looked up at his face. He was studying her movements and expression. She desperately wanted to be upset at the way he was treating her, like a lower species. But he was right, she couldn’t focus on anything except his body.

  Having starved herself when her body was still in rough shape, her animal instincts were far louder than her logic or rational thought, and everything in her wanted to feel him. Looking into his eyes, all she could manage was a slow emphatic nod, her physical desire trumping any thought.

  “Good girl.” It was so condescending that it got through to even her starving, sleep deprived brain. She should have been offended, she wanted to be offended, but her eyes were drawn down to the way his pecks were so clearly defined. She let out a moan. Realizing what she had done, she couldn’t even look at his face.

  To her surprise, he fed her gently, acting much more like the man she had woken up to that first day than the man he had been almost ever since. She ate two bites. When he tried to give her a third, she shook her head.

  Martin laughed and placed the tray back on the bed. Ashley couldn’t help but shiver as he slowly undid the next two buttons. His stomach muscles rippled as he laughed, and she wanted nothing more than to knock the tray off the bed and pull him to her.

  He moved a finger in front of her face. She watched his hand as it went down to the food. Her eyes went back to his stomach as she ate. Ashley desperately wanted to look at his face, to show that she was indignant, but she was too ashamed.

  It was her inability to keep her eyes off of his body that had made him act like this in the first place. He was simply toying with her, enjoying a different form of torture. Still, she couldn’t seem to care because he was doing exactly what she wanted. It would have been difficult to admit, but watching this angelic man undress was one of the most enticing and pleasing things she had ever witnessed. And she was doing what she had already planned to do before going to sleep.

  She lost count of the number of bites she had taken as her eyes drank in the statuesque form in front of her. Finally realizing that he had stopped living up to his end of the deal, Ashley made her move when he began to move the fork back to the food on the tray.

  Martin was focused on his tasks, so he didn’t notice when she lunged forward. Too shocked by the speed of a woman who had been starving herself, Martin did nothing as she reached out and unbuttoned the last button. She left her hands resting on his thighs as she panted, the effort taking far more of her strength than she would have expected.

  It had been one of the most difficult demands she had ever placed on her body. Ashley had not realized just how weak she had become. This time, she couldn’t look at Martin’s face because she didn’t have the strength.

  Having fulfilled her immediate desire, she realized that it was easier to lean forward at this point than to move backward back onto the bed, she put her head on his chest. She felt her body go limp, and she blacked out.

  Hours later, Ashley awoke from a dreamless sleep. She sighed feeling incredible. Not being covered in sweat and having gotten both food and restful sleep was exactly wh
at she had needed, and already she was feeling better. Her mind felt clearer, but she wasn’t quite ready to start thinking about anything real.

  For now, all she wanted to do was enjoy the peaceful sensation of a good few hours of solid sleep and to bask in the lack of hunger that she had become accustomed to. Her stomach felt full, but not uncomfortably so. Her body had far more energy than when she had passed out. As she lay there with a small smile playing on her face, Ashley realized she hadn’t felt so good since before her mother had died.

  Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling. It was only then she realized that Martin was in the bed beside her, his arm wrapped around her waist. In her peripheral vision, she saw his dark hair and she felt the way the mattress leaned toward him. He had not pressed against her, giving her plenty of space on the bed, but he had not left her.

  Turning her head, Ashley saw that he was still asleep. He made a cute noise as he breathed out, and she couldn’t resist placing a hand on his face. His face moved as her hand softly traced the lines of his forehead and prominent cheek bones, but he didn’t wake.

  Ashley’s eyes were drawn down to his bare chest. The shirt was still on, but he hadn’t buttoned it. Her hand traced his face, down his neck and to his chest. Her hand moved over to her own body, and she worked the shirt off. Now completely naked, she rolled over to face him. She began to kiss his forehead.

  Martin’s eyelashes brushed her chin as he woke. Pressing into him, she could feel his sudden excitement. She ran her hands down his arms, removing his shirt with strength she wouldn’t have believed she had a few hours before. As she worked the shirt off, she pressed her breasts against his chest.

  He moaned. Expecting him to try to jump from the bed, Ashley pressed her hips against him and wrapped her leg over his.

  To her surprise, Martin didn’t try to flee. Instead, he pressed his mouth against hers with an animalistic passion. He tasted like an odd blend of mints and sugar. She threw her arms around his neck, pulling him toward her. His bicep flexed against her breast as she slid under him.