by Kye Mooney
Rescue Me (c)Kye Mooney (Kiss Wild/D.E.W as Calista Skye with Q.W. as the plotmaster) 2015
All Rights Reserved.
Editing: 3distributions
Cover Art: LuxArt
Lily doesn't expect an attempted abduction when she sneaks out of the presidential mansion on Alpha 9 for a night to herself, or the hero with glowing green eyes who shows up and helps her fight off the attacker. It seems like the start of a storybook romance, but her hero has a secret that could make it impossible for the pair to act on their attraction.
Is their relationship strong enough to weather his secret when another potential attack brings it out?
a BBW, Alien Shifter Hero Romance
Rescue My Heart
1
Finn
Finn rolled his eyes and lowered himself to the pillows lining the family table, pulling the steaming shell of Lelek closer, his eyes gazing into it absently. This routine was getting tired.
He was an arena champion, too, but he very much doubted his accomplishments would ever claim a quarter of the fanfare. When had anything he'd accomplished been up for discussion? He was happy for Roland, he was, but this had never felt like home. It was more a position holder than anything. Finn desperately needed to get out there and spread his wings.
He was 23 solar returns, and Sector 3 was looking pretty damn good to him right about now. He needed to get out of the family house. Plain and simple.
“Everyone, Roland has an important announcement!”
Suppressing a sigh, Finn fixed his attention on the special, polished shells mother only brought out for special occasions, bracing himself for the inevitable ego-stroke his brother would be enjoying the entire evening. Again. Roland was perfect. Accomplished. Exactly what their mother wanted in a son.
Eyes glancing his glowing brother, Finn quickly found something else to look at.
“Really, Mother. It's only a promotion.”
“Only a promotion?!" Their mother scoffed with entirely too much emphasis. “We are going to celebrate each milestone, every step of the way, young man!”
Because everyone's "milestones" were celebrated in this family, right? Eyes glancing the ceiling, Finn drew a sip of the Somxiu tea he'd been made to contribute to the festivities, already bored and settling into that familiar old feeling of placeholder-invisibility.
“What's wrong with you?”
Blinking out of his thoughts, Finn lifted his head to his mother's question, knowing the scowl he'd find waiting for him on her heavily-painted face. The scent of licorice and marigolds plumed his head as she drew closer.
Yeah, she was pissed - to no one's surprise.
It was very easy to piss Mavis off. Have a woman in labor for 65 hours on your way into the world, and it's unlikely you'll ever live it down.
Maybe there were other reasons she disapproved of him. But the closer he got to his 24th birthday, his interest in the 'whys' of it all were on the fast track to becoming non-existent.
There'd been a time he'd desperately wanted to bask in her pride. A time when she'd seemed someone he absolutely had to win the approval of, but she'd been looking more of an ogre in his eyes that year. And he was eager to put her at the back lights of his hover bike.
There had to be a better life out there. One maybe that would laud you, and show the people who made you feel ten inches tall that you, too, had a purpose.
Wherever it was, it would be glorious. And it was waiting for him. He knew it in his bones.
“Something in my eye,” he said with only the wisest hint of sarcasm in his tone.
Looming over him, his mother lifted her nose a bit higher, her lips pursing together even more tightly if that was possible.
“For a moment there, it almost looked like you were frowning while we're all preparing to celebrate your brother.”
“I wouldn't dream of over-shadowing his special day, Mother.”
His mother sniffed her disapproval, but didn't linger on it, having wasted enough time talking to him already. This was Roland's day, as most days were, and she had much to do to over-celebrate the fact that he was alive and breathing on Alpha-9.
Running his hands through his hair, Finn sighed softly, and rose up to help her bring out the aromatic bouquet she'd been in the kitchen preparing all day. But when his mother's praise for his dear brother ventured into the territory of comparisons with his own shortcomings, the last straw descended that finally broke the proverbial centellian's back.
Finn left without a word, hopping on his hover-bike without a clear destination in mind. He needed to be anywhere but there; that was all he knew.
He needed the wind in his hair.
Needed a sign that he wasn't born to bear the brunt of his mother's miseries.
Needed something to tell him he, too, had something waiting for him.
Something great.
Something that wouldn't be over-shadowed.
Something that was his. For once.
2
Lily
“One order of Luger fries,” the lime-haired server announced as she slid the playfully designed package of green fries over the counter to Lily with an obviously strained tether on her star struck state.
The pink-skinned girl's flash of a smile told her she'd recognized her on sight. Luckily, Amlas weren't the sort to go all fan-girl and draw a crowd. Their excitement tended to be self-contained.
"Donsha," Lily thanked her.
The Amlas girl returned a shy nod and skittered away.
Tucking herself into the bright yellow booth, Lily pulled the cardboard tray, decked in lightning bolts and cartoonish emulations of Saturn and other titans in the Milky Way toward her.
Stomach growling, she lifted the soda first.
Drawing a huge sip of the bubbling freckas, her eyes slipped closed in the bliss of it. Fast food, freedom, and a night that could lay a whirlwind adventure at her feet. What more could a girl ask for?
It beat the hell out of a macrobiotic diet that would surely fail to please her dietician, like all the others had, leaving her the overly curvy "with such a pretty doll-face" daughter of the
president at picture time. Sighing with pause, she brushed the thought away and lifted up a fry, inhaling its savory goodness as she washed it down with another sip of Frecka bubbles.
All of the empty compliments that haunted her when she dared to look at herself in the mirror came flooding back: Such a beautiful girl.
She could model if she just slimmed down a bit.
All of those curves are too much for one man.
Those pretty, razor blade sentiments that chipped away at her self esteem every time they were uttered. Things she wouldn't have to hear if no one knew her name. Gods forbid she wasn't a size 4 like most of the other girls on Alpha 9. At least she had curves, a cinched waist that billowed into something that gave her clothing some life. She'd never wanted to be curveless and washboard thin. Never wanted any of the regular impositions she suffered.
What she wanted was her own life.
This little field trip had been building up for some time. She didn't want to be everyone's not-so-little doll, anymore. Hell, she couldn't remember ever wanting to be that.
All she'd really wanted before today was her father, but she was pretty sure that was one pipe dream she needed to let go of. Esteemed positions have a way of changing people, and she wanted him the way he'd been before the glory. Pure and untainted. She didn't like or need the talking head he was now.
Panning the bright rest stop eatery, Lily soaked in the “common” experience. It was ironic how people wan
ted so badly to run from mediocrity into the arms of grandeur. Truth was, it didn't seem to matter where anyone was positioned in life. She lived in the lap of luxury, and she couldn't have gotten away from it fast enough.
Living in grandeur was little more than a prettier prison. The security of it was an illusion if you weren't willing to do whatever favors were needed to keep yourself and your family where they were.
Frowning, Lily brushed away further thoughts of her father, a man she'd once held in the highest esteem, and lifted up another luger fry, taking a hearty bite of the delicacy and resting back against the nano-vinyl cushions of her booth, thoroughly enjoying the manufactured excitement, the bright colors - the fun side of “mediocre.”
She didn't know when she'd head back home, and she wouldn't even feed that line of thought right now.
She was entirely comfortable where she was.
And that was a feeling she didn't come by every day.
3
Lily
“Pretty little thing, aren't you?”
Lily bristled at the tone more than the words the stranger extended to her. Something about it felt off, so much that it was igniting a cacophony of internal alarms in her gut.
Don't look at him.
Don't...
Damn it.
Impulsive. That's what the entire team of service men assigned to her had always told her she was. She was the type to leap without looking, and the moment she looked into the stranger's scarred blue eyes, she knew what he intended for her.
Fuck it all.
He knew very well who she was, and she was looking like a bevy of credits for his exchange accounts right about now. Kurmens were typically scavengers, certainly not the types that would have ever sought her out on the presidential hover-craft.
But her missteps had landed her in his territory, and as he saw it, she was fair game right about now.
“Ever seen the inside of a brig?”
It was a menacing question, and Lily's heart raced at his gall.
She wasn't accustomed to being openly disrespected. It just wasn't done in the usual circles she traveled. She was the president's daughter, and everyone in Alpha 9 measured that up to a position of modern royalty.
But this guy... was a different breed of being. He represented the underclasses who thieved and maimed for their credits, the types who didn't care a lick for the law – only that they were never ensnared by it.
“Look. I have service men on the way. If-”
“You don't.”
He gave her an assessing look like she was particularly shiny fare.
“Beg your pardon? I-”
“You're lying. You have a tell.”
He crooked his head.
“I am not-”
“And you arrived alone.”
This last struck her quiet, and she fought to keep the feeling of helplessness creeping over her from reaching her eyes as he stared into them.
His own eyes were a stony, hard kind of determined. She hated that he'd seen her arrive. It meant he knew for a fact that she was lying to him, tell or no. He'd probably watched her leaf through the diner magazines, studying her as she'd munched her luger fries.
“Come quiet, and I'll go easy on you.”
“Sir, I-”
“Sir? Heh. I ain't no, Sir, doll. Come quiet, like I told you, and we'll get this over with quick.”
Heat flushed her cheeks.
“Get what over with exactly?”
“We'll get to that soon enough. Straight ahead. Onto the pod.”
Feet sloshing through the puddles of Shon rain gathered by the docks, Lily's heart thudded her ears as the stranger took a position beside her. She was afraid to lift her eyes to the pod ahead. Any bit of courage she could dredge up would be dashed the moment she laid gaze to it.
“No point in dragging it out. Pick up the pace.”
“I'm walking as fast as I can.
His laugh was sickly, the undertones of a desperate resolve thrumming them.
“Oh, I doubt that, doll. Do like I ask.”
Nipping her lip nervously, she gave her pace a slight uptick, refusing to truly speed up the time it would take to walk herself into a trap that her would-be abductor intended would host the mystery outcome awaiting her.
She tried not to think about what was coming, sneaking glances around the landing bay at anything, or anyone, she might utilize to get away from the scavenger.
“Eyes trained ahead.”
Tears pricking her eyes, she pushed back against the flood of what-ifs that rose to chorus in her head and balled up her fists before forcing them to relax at her side. She could fight, couldn't she? She could. She would fight. There was no way in hell she was going to let him take her and... do whatever it was he wanted to do with her without a fight.
She'd take it out of his ass as her dad used to say... before the presidency stole the wilds from his eyes and made him into a man-thing that was little more than an AI. Her heart squeezed at the thought of him. The real him. The one who'd made life a wild, crazy ride before his new, shiny wards of Alpha 9 took her place of importance in his life.
Petty, maybe, but she missed him.
And she was pretty sure, she wasn't getting him back.
“Up.”
Eyes glancing upwards, she shivered at the sight of the boarding ramp, a passing hover bike disturbing the wind and sending a thick, chocolate lock across her flushed cheek. Damn it. No. She wouldn't do this.
Forcing courage into her legs, she willed them to stop, to ignore the thirst for survival that had allowed him to bully her forward this far. Clenching her fists again, she turned to face him, hoping she'd made her eyes as steely as she needed them to be.
“No.”
“This can go easy, or this can go hard, little doll. Your choice.”
Her eyes flicked up at the sound of a hover bike being clicked into its stand, and she met a pair of green eyes that almost seemed to glow with impossible recognition when they fell upon her.
Noting the change in her expression, the scavenger turned, too, foolishly, and somehow, the wildness in her blood that she'd been forced to suppress for far too long surged to the surface before she could think herself out of acting. Her eyes darting the ground, Lily's gaze set on a sharp, metal winder set just off from a pod awaiting repairs. Without hesitation, she
lunged for it, the scrape of her shoes against the ramps drawing the scavenger's eyes back to her.
He was on her before she could get a good handle on the winder, the scent of hard smoke and rain water pluming out from his coat, but she had strong legs, and she kicked him away with enough force to send him careening back. Throwing her hands out toward the winder again, she managed to grasp the end and tug it forward. It rang out like bells against the ramp.
“Privileged bitch!”
The kurmen grunted, nursing his gut as he lunged for her again, and Lily screamed, a hail of confusion swirling her senses. His arms closed around her, and she pushed against him, fumbling to get a good grip on the winder. She gasped for air as he squeezed her and pulled her off of her feet.
“Let me go!”
“Let her go!”
The scavenger stopped immediately, obviously having forgotten the stranger parking the hover bike. Not that he should have. It was impossible for Lily to shake the sight of those green eyes from her memory. They'd seemed to look into her soul for the brief moment they'd locked gaze.
“Mind your own, runt,” the scavenger gruffed, turning away from him and squeezing Lily tighter, locking her arms down so roughly she couldn't have dreamed of finding the upper body strength to wield the winder against him again.
That was until she heard a sickening crack, and his hold loosened briefly enough for her to get her arms free. When he made to lunge at her again, she lifted the winder sure and strong and slashed him across the cheek with it, sure her eyes were as cold and stony as they needed to be then.
She saw murder in his eyes a
s his hands rushed his cheek, but it was another pair of eyes that caught her own next. A pair that glowed like nuclear apples in a game of post-apocalyptic Holo Wilds.
“Thanks,” she said as he lowered the tool kit he'd brought crashing down on the scavenger's head.
“Sure thing.”
4
Finn
“So, I guess this makes you my hero.”
She'd seen his eyes glow, he was sure of it. Careless of him. If his mother found out, he'd never hear the end of it. They'd be shipped off if anyone found out what they were. His family had worked very hard to conceal their identity. And he'd almost exposed them all.
Shit.
“Yeah. Don't worry about it.”
He was already trying to deny his reaction to her. He knew that. But it seemed like the only way to handle the fact that he'd almost singlehandedly ensured AlphaFront started a full-on search for rogue shifters. Better to cut ties and move on. Especially with the daughter of the friggin' president of all things.
He'd ignore the heat. It would have to subside. No way she was his mate. He was probably just hungry. Maybe sexually attracted, tops. He'd need to take a moment to himself on this one, either way.
“Where's you're, uh, team? Are you out here all alone?”
“Stupidly, yes.”
She grinned, her rosy lips flicked upward and making everything inside of him melt.
Come on, Finn. You're not a one-man army. This chick is trouble with a capital, italicized T.
Shuffling his feet, he looked away from her.
“Listen, I don't want to hold you up. I can... I'm going to go and find someplace to get my head together. I still have AlphaFront to face for leaving without security.”
“Bet they'll be pleased.”
“Delighted. Undoubtedly. At least I don't have any injuries to explain. Glad I can just... put this all behind me.”
“Why don't you want to tell them what happened?”