Alien Alphas: Twenty-Three Naughty Sci-Fi Romance Novellas

by Grace Goodwin

  I’d snickered about it when I’d brought him his third slice. Dry humor had always been my favorite.

  He’d smiled, and god help me, I’d blushed.

  As you already know, I’d done more than blushed when I found him waiting for me outside that night. I’d been an enthusiastic participant. Having him push inside me felt like the culmination of the perfect date with the perfect guy, not the end of a long shift where I needed a shower and my feet hurt. I’m still not sure what I’d said that encouraged him to reach for the buttons of my cardigan, or if I’d touched him first.

  Had I?

  I could not remember.

  It didn’t matter. All I felt now was used.

  Embarrassed.

  Stupid.

  Guilty.

  Alien fucktoy was stamped on my forehead.

  The restaurant guest was still waiting, a small box in his extended hand. Blinking out of a daze, I chewed my lip and knew I didn’t want whatever was nestled under that white lid. Standing like a statue, I appeared rude and my natural inclination to be obedient made me self-conscious of just how ungraciously I was behaving.

  No eyes were on me, but it sure felt like everyone was watching.

  The guest remained patient, even under my squinty-eyed scrutiny.

  Unlike Phi’s silvery green, the markings on the guest’s face were purple. They were soft and speckled, almost feminine. And he was dressed in a tailored suit like some sleazy attorney.

  Phi had been dressed in jeans and a sweater... he’d looked accessible and normal. The alien sitting before me seemed to have weaseled his way into a position of authority. That sentiment was even in his voice when he said, “Take the box, Emily.”

  Next thing I knew, the gift was in my hands. Popping the lid open, I found a cellphone inside. Underneath was a note that read: Yours must be malfunctioning, as you do not answer when I call. Here is a working replacement.

  I stifled a nervous snigger. Like I’d said, dry humor was my favorite kind.

  The modest flip phone in my apron worked just fine, even if it lacked all the bells and whistles of the latest smartphone shining and pretty in that box. I didn’t have texting capabilities, not when that extra fifteen dollars a month could go somewhere necessary. Besides, what would I need all that for? All I wanted from my phone was a way to call my brother, to talk to his wife and his children.

  Everything I needed, I had.

  I don’t think Phi really expected me to keep the new phone. It was more of a why have you avoided your job for days and ignored me?

  Because I was a coward...

  I also really disliked awkward conversations. Sure, I could fake it at work, because none of what I said to customers was real. It was a spiel, a gig, where I just smiled and took orders—story of my life.

  Why had Phi even wanted to talk to me after sex? Men didn’t do that. Not with girls like me.

  I don’t know what possessed me to reach into that box and tap the home button, but before I knew it the phone’s unlock screen flashed to life.

  With my audience of two aliens, I stood slack-jawed, unsure if I should burst out laughing or be mortified. Right there, right on that pricey phone’s screen was... an alien dick pic.

  Chapter Three

  Phi’s stupid phone sat in my pocket, flattened against my humble flip phone and making a bulge in my apron. Why on earth I still had the thing, I couldn’t tell you. I’d just sort of panicked when I should have left it in the box and returned it to the pervy alien’s well-dressed chum.

  Instead, I’d backed into the kitchen only to be yelled at by my boss.

  That, I had deserved. I’d run right into one of my coworkers and knocked a tray from her hands. Food had gone everywhere, broken dishes scattered. Marinara sauce was all over Rosalee’s white button-down shirt.

  I’d scrambled to clean it up, but... uh... it was pretty clear I was permanently on her shit-list.

  And Chef was pissed.

  The extinction of our human men—not that anyone would call it that out loud—had made those who were thriving a type of self-righteous prick. I found myself unable to like them. Would they have been so self-serving if they were not so important to the gene pool?

  Yes, I had deserved to be reprimanded for my clumsiness, but no one deserved to be screamed at so loud even the dining guests could hear.

  “Fucking idiot!” Slamming a pot against the stove, he’d turned, gathered a bread roll, and thrown it at me. “Get the fuck out!”

  “Sorry, Chef.” Dumping a handful of broken plates in the trash, I demurred. “Right away, Chef.”

  Rushing out of the kitchen, hands sticky with ruined food, hair a mess, and expression one of worry, I knew in that moment that I was going to get fired.

  The missed shifts, the fraternizing with guests, the broken plates... it added up.

  Maybe if I slept with him like the other girls did, he’d let me stay.

  I sure needed the money.

  But, ugh. I knew he’d demand bareback... and I just could not bring myself to do it. The men wanted children, you see. Lots and lots of babies they’d never help raise. Males didn’t live long. The population needed to grow. Blah, blah, blah.

  My brother was one of the rare birds—a wonderful person, a great dad, and a good husband. He’d never used the fact his lifespan will be reduced to father children with other woman outside the bonds of his marriage.

  The media called it repopulation withdrawal. Men are encouraged to be prolific, women are encouraged to shoulder the burden of single motherhood without complaint.

  And then there is me—the waitress with condoms in her basket at the grocery checkout.

  I cannot tell you how many dirty looks I have received over the years. Considering that chlamydia and gonorrhea are once again thriving in our society, I’ll take my chances with the occasional disapproving look.

  You don’t even want to get me started about syphilis or HIV.

  No joke, I’ve had several would-be lovers flat out refuse to fuck me if I insisted they wear one. Those types of exchanges usually ended with the gentleman in question lecturing me on the necessity of our species’ propagation. After all, I might be blessed with a boy and uplifted from my crap social standing of childless unwed waitress.

  Fuck those guys—and not in the biblical sense.

  I was nineteen the first time a boy tried to bully me. Young and stupid, I’d buckled, leading to one of the worst sexual experiences of my life. Nine years later, I no longer let pushy assholes stay in my apartment once they refused to wear a rubber.

  My sex life was not flourishing.

  Childless, almost thirty, with no prospects, I’d settled, even made myself content with my lot in life.

  Personally though, I can’t imagine human men were such jerks three generations ago. Then again, maybe they were always godawful. I don’t know, and it’s distasteful to ask too many questions. On the upside, it had opened up vast opportunities for women in predominantly male driven career fields. Or I suppose it did, before the new species arrived with their superior technology and eagerness to saturate the workforce.

  I’m not even sure if I should call them male. I think they are all male... or maybe asexual. I don’t know. They certainly took on male dress and mannerisms. I don’t know if they all have the same thing under their clothes.

  Maybe they chose to present as male because it would offer them an edge. For example, there is a rumor that a particularly popular alien seeks to run for congress. Men have a better chance of getting elected. I don’t know why that terrifies me, but it does. I’ll admit I might even be envious of his success.

  After all, I got the short end of the stick. This is it for me.

  My father died at thirty-six, leaving my mother with two children to support. My big bro enjoyed an education; I enjoyed working at a diner after school to help put him through college.

  He was never a dick about it, and if I feel a little bitter, it’s not his fault our mo
ther sought to raise him up. That’s just the way things are now.

  Had I the chance, I think I would have liked to be a teacher. I like kids, even if I’d been less than enthused about having one with some random guy just because the gene pool must swell.

  My sister-in-law is a really lucky woman. Or maybe not. After all, she is the one who is going to lose her spouse.

  I’m going to lose my brother.

  Two kids would need financial support, and I’d already been sending them half my earnings every month for years.

  Fuck. I’d have to find a new job right away.

  “You should leave.” Yup, marinara had ruined Rosalee’s shirt. There would be no getting that stain out.

  “I haven’t closed out my tables yet.” If I left now, I’d lose the tips. I needed that money.

  There wasn’t any compassion waiting in the large brown eyes of the waitress I’d pissed off. “Chef wants you out. You’re causing a scene standing here staring into space. Just go.”

  My pocket vibrated, and I jumped, squeaking, “Table twelve is almost done. I can drop the check now.”

  Rosalee spat, “How am I not making myself clear? You’re fired. Leave.”

  The buzz of one phone vibrating directly next to another annoyed me enough that I grew a backbone and turned on my coworker. “I’ll leave when table twelve has paid.”

  * * *

  Feeling pretty sorry for myself, I walked out of the diner with a pocket stuffed with less than fifty bucks.

  And a stupid phone.

  I knew Phi’s alien buddies had seen and heard what had happened. I was sure they were observing me in those final fifteen minutes before I was practically shoved out the door, and I could not help but be angry with the pair of them.

  Somehow this felt like their fault.

  No, that was just me shifting blame. It was easier to be mad at strangers than take responsibility for my own clumsiness and poor choices.

  There were other restaurants. I’d find another job. Everything would go back exactly the way it always was. I told myself this on the long walk home. The mantra didn’t help ease my shitty mood.

  Ignoring the constant vibration in my pocket, on the other hand, did make me feel a little better.

  I could have silenced it. I could have turned the phone off.

  I didn’t.

  Maybe it made me feel less lonely on that walk of shame. Phi had come to my apartment, had had sex with me, completely for me. He’d gained nothing. Some part of me, the part that was tired of doing everything for everyone else, had liked it more than I should have.

  Even with the weird alien dick.

  I was almost tempted to answer just to see if I could run away with that sensation again.

  I was more tempted to chuck the phone into the street and watch it get pulverized by passing cars.

  On my left, smack dab in the middle of my city, was a park where I had played soccer as a kid. There were old trees, a lake, a little segment of wildlife and rugged beauty in the concrete jungle I’d been raised within. People didn’t go there anymore.

  Now, the park, like so many other places around the globe, was filled with a shining black spacecraft larger than the grandest skyscraper in the glittering financial district.

  It annoyed me, and was another thing we just didn’t talk about.

  Looking at the monolith, at what I knew had been crushed beneath it, I frowned. There had been a swing set not fifty paces from where I stood that I had played on when I was little. I had loved that park.

  The smoothness of the black ship made it difficult to tell where doors or windows might be located. The glassy surface looked icy, even with the early autumn sun shining so bright I had to squint.

  I leaned against the wrought-iron fence and wondered, was anyone inside? Could they see me staring and know how much I disliked that black thing?

  Did they sense how I felt?

  That ship no one talked about and no one came to see should not have been there.

  “Emily.” There was a question in the way he’d spoken my name. Concern.

  How long Phi had been standing behind me, I couldn’t say. But I could tell you that deep down I knew he’d be there, invading my memories of this once great place.

  “My brother is dying. He won’t survive the year.” I had no idea why I’d said such a thing to Phi, nor did I fully grasp why my voice pointed the blame at him.

  Three long fingers reached forward to tousle the fringed hair at my shoulder. I shied, pulling back, my eyes caught in the shutter of his inky pupils. Click click click click, went that silent, unsettling camera.

  He still touched me. “The environmental impact your species has had on this planet is catastrophic. The consequences are extreme.”

  And my species was dying. How many generations could we possibly have left? Maybe that’s why they had come here—to wait for us to die off while trying to subvert the pollution before we ruined the earth for them to sweep out from under our rotting feet.

  Fumbling in my apron pocket for Phi’s phone, I said, “I used to play here when I was little. Your ship... it smashed—”

  I was cut off when Phi unexpectedly stepped forward and pressed his mouth to mine.

  Like the first time he’d done such a thing outside my restaurant, I felt overwhelmed and drunk in seconds. Wrought-iron bars digging into my shoulder blades, I found my body trapped by the fence, the silvery-green male, and a whole heap of feelings I should not have.

  And I was really sad for some reason.

  Trying to mutter things into his mouth was pointless, all it led to was a series of smothered squeaks left to die.

  Phi exuded enthusiasm beyond the masterful tongue that was just a little too coarse to feel normal. It was in the way he embraced me, the way he’d pressed me back as he unhooked the gate beside us.

  Drawing me into the park, pulling me straight to that shining black vessel, he had me against it before I even realized what he’d done.

  That flawless surface wasn’t cold as I’d suspected, but warm from the sun and immensely soothing on muscles aching and tense from a shitty day at work.

  Drawing my hand to the bulge between his legs so I might feel it take shape, Phi seemed to promise the very thickness and expanding length were mine, that he’d tailored to my body and wants.

  Graceful fingers undid the buttons of my uniform, parting the white shirt even though we were out in the open. My bra wasn’t pretty, or expensive. It didn’t matter. The cups were tugged down until my nipples popped free, then left blatantly shoving up my breasts so he could pull the tips into his mouth, and I might moan in the open air like a whore turning tricks in an alley.

  How he knew to knead and pinch, to suck and lick, I couldn’t say. His kind didn’t have nipples, just like they didn’t have belly buttons, but every time he toyed with mine, it sent a shot right between my legs. Head thrown back, my weight supported by the angle of the ship, I clung to the thing that distracted me from all my concerns. When he broke the button on my slacks and yanked them down, I let him free one leg completely and hitch me higher to wrap my limbs around him without the burden of cloth between us. His fly was down, my legs were spread, and with one sure thrust... that instrument with its frenzied ring of writhing tentacles was fully inside me.

  Anyone on 11th Avenue could see, not that I had the mental capacity to register the aliens who’d paused in their journey to observe from the street corner, or wonder about the various occupants’ views from houses far nicer than my own. Panting as if I’d run a marathon, I ground against each maddening lunge, breathing his name, begging.

  Overwhelming need to be so full of him nothing else mattered, obliterated everything else in my head. In that moment, I’d forgotten my rotten morning, my anxieties, my brother, the crushed swing set under the ship... my name.

  I would have been his slave and kneeled at his feet.

  I would have taken that pulsating cock in my mouth and let it wriggle down m
y throat for the world to watch.

  I was drowning and he was clean air, his organ shifting to scratch at my every last nerve until I was twitching and making noise no dignified woman would ever moan even in the most twisted private moments. I felt him throbbing in time with my heart, wondered if he’d curve his cock the way he had the last time we’d fucked, until that sweet spot was tickled and I felt like my clit might explode.

  He did, and I screamed.

  The swell between my legs, the way he pulled at my pussy lips and undulated until I might burst, would be my death. Phi rode it out, he dragged me through it, and filled all the places inside where I’d always felt empty.

  And then it was over.

  The aftershocks of my orgasm were almost painful, and I knew my face was scrunched up, that my mouth gaped open, and that I had gushed an obscene amount of fluid to dampen the alien’s open trousers.

  He was so still, watching me fixedly, those pupils changing though his eyes never moved. Pinned against the ship, my legs around his middle, I felt his grip on my hip tighten as he mashed his pelvis forward.

  There was a change in that organ, a manic fluttering as if what had been smooth had sprung... I didn’t know how to explain it... feelers?

  “Be still.” His voice, it was heavy with command and thick with his pleasure.

  It was too much, too much feeling and fullness building up inside me, to the point I could even see movement ever so slightly behind the flat of my stomach. Those searching things invaded, and I began to cramp when they all seemed to find what they were looking for and dove in.

  He had not done this the time before, and I found I wanted it to stop. His second hand flew to cover my mouth when I started to protest. He fused us, his face one of ecstasy when the tiniest of slithering things breached my womb.

  The feeling was like the poke of a Pap smear swab, uncomfortable and sharp. I jumped when I heard a loud pop. It was him, and whatever had caused the sound had given him a fantastic release. He groaned in a way that made me feel utterly filthy. Those horrible things retracted, my painful cramping ended, and his deathlike grip on my body grew gentle.