by Calista Skye
Fire Planet Warrior's Captive
Calista Skye
Published by Calista Skye, 2016.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
FIRE PLANET WARRIOR'S CAPTIVE
First edition. November 22, 2016.
Copyright © 2016 Calista Skye.
Written by Calista Skye.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Fire Planet Warrior's Captive
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
More Books from Calista
Epilogue
Fire Planet Warrior's Captive
Harper Evans has just crash-landed on an alien planet.
A planet that everyone calls the Fire Planet.
And that's the good news.
The bad news: Her only company is a huge alien barbarian warrior who is panties-meltingly hot and has the most confident manner Harper has ever seen when he casually protects her against all the lethal creatures on the planet.
The even worse news: They're both being chased by the largest wildfire in the universe, an intense blaze that never goes out and is catching up with them fast.
But the worst part is probably that the deadly planet and the insanely attractive alien turn Harper on so much that she has trouble thinking straight.
Still, she can't help noticing that the barbarian seems to think that she's his captive...
Fire Planet Warrior's Captive is a standalone science-fiction romance novel starring a feisty space colonist and a sensationally hot alien warrior with hidden talents.
Expect steamy scenes, funny lines, alien royals, lethal enemies and the barrier-breaking love between a BBW from Earth and an alien barbarian who's convinced that he has finally found his Fated Mate.
Full-length romance novel with no cliffhangers and a happy-ever-after ending!
1
- Harper -
“I'll never get tired of that.”
Harper stroked an errant wisp of hair out of her face and took a breath of thin, dry alien air. The sky was dark, but the planet Bry was clearly visible as a crescent right above her head. Half of the planet was in darkness, and the other half was lit up by the white sun. On the dark side of the planet a thin, yellow line of light was clearly visible as it pulsated erratically along its length.
Ava glanced up at the sky. “Looks like it's picking up steam.” She opened the door to the biodome. “Must have hit a dry area.”
Harper squinted. Ava was right – the huge wildfire that circled Bry's one continent was brighter than it had been the night before. Seen from Gideo Station on one of Bry's moons, it was just a jagged yellow line, but even so it was obvious to everyone who saw it that it had to be an enormous fire.
The blaze never went out. Bry's single continent was a rough O, with a giant lake in the middle. The fire raged around and around the continent like the minute hand on an antique clock, and the vegetation just had time to regrow before it was burned again as the fire completed one more lap.
It was one of the most mysterious things in the universe, and being able to look at it every day from pretty close was one reason why Harper had volunteered to go into space to set up Gideo Station. Maybe one day she would even be able to go to Bry itself and see the blaze from even closer ...
Ava kicked the dust off her boots, stepped inside the biodome and held the door open for Harper. “You coming?”
“Just a moment. I've never seen it this intense before.”
“Suit yourself. I'm not staying out here on pizza night.” Ava let the door slam shut and Harper was alone on the sand outside the station. She couldn't hold back a happy smile. Outside the station on an alien moon many light years from Earth. It still blew her mind every time she thought about it.
It was hard work being a space colonist, with many sixteen-hour days and a multitude of problems that had to be solved every day. But it also let her see things that no Earthling ever had before. Like that eternal fire that just went around and around, once every four hundred days, and no one knew exactly why or how it was even possible. That was why they were there in the first place, monitoring the strange fire planet from this base on the planet's moon. A moon with an atmosphere, even. The opportunity to establish a base here was too good to pass up for Earth's Space Expansion.
A thin whirring noise reached Harper's ears and she glanced behind her. The main telescope was adjusting its angle slightly to get the best possible view of the fire. It was controlled by a computer, but still there were four humans here to set up the station and then take care of the equipment until the computer could handle everything on its own.
It was the best job Harper had ever had, even though she had been skeptical when first she learned that by coincidence, this base would have an all-female staff. There were only four of them, but they had great chemistry and they were all good friends by now. Base chief Ava was the oldest of them, and she made sure that everyone was included in everything. She would not tolerate any infighting at all. That woman was just born to be a leader. Just like Charlotte was born to be a shuttle pilot and Lily was born to be a computer nerd. Harper herself probably wasn't exactly born to be a biologist, but she loved it. They were a great team-
She frowned. One of the stars in the sky above her was moving. No, it couldn't be a star. It moved fast across the night sky. It got brighter, too, as if it was coming closer. It was very white.
A shuttle? No, that didn't look right. And there was no sound, either.
Harper took a step towards the biodome door and grabbed onto the door handle. Now the light went back and forth across the sky, like it was searching for something. It moved insanely fast, then suddenly grew much larger. It had to be coming right for her!
She pushed the handle down and opened the door, ready to dive inside if something threatening were to happen.
Something more threatening, she corrected herself. Because that thing there wasn't just a light. It was something big and dark that totally obscured the stars behind it. It had to be huge.
And suddenly it had many lights! In all kinds of different colors, blinking and flashing and rotating and twirling in a pattern so splendorous that Harper had to gasp at the impact it had on her senses.
She realized that she was gawping, but she found it impossible to take her eyes off the thing. It hovered silently in the air above the sand, and it had to be the size of an apartment building. It was very beautiful and the lights were extremely friendly.
Harper slowly let go of the door handle and just stood there, staring.
Yes, friendly. It only wanted what was best for her ...
- - -
She came to and immediately knew she was in big trouble. She was tied on her hands and feet, and she was lying on her side on a metallic floor.
She knew she had been asleep. Or unconscious. But now she was awake, and she felt no ill effects. She wasn't even drowsy.
She got up into a sitting position. Yeah, this wasn't the inside of Gideo Station or any other place she had ever been. This was ... alien. But not alien in any way sh
e had ever expected. The metal floor was rusty in patches, and the dim light was yellowish. There were uneven walls with strange-looking consoles and lights and technology that had to be advanced, but still managed to look old and even dirty.
But the most alien thing was the aliens themselves.
There were four of them, standing around her in a circle, just silently staring at her in a way that was so creepy it sent shivers down Harper's spine. The were roughly human-shaped, with two legs and two arms that were so long they reached almost all the way to the floor when they stood upright. Except they weren't really upright – they were all hunched over in a way that made them seem unhealthy. Their skin was a yellowish pale that was translucent in places, showing greenish internal organs inside. Their heads were small and pointy on top, and there was no hair, just brownish scales that grew down the sides of their faces.
They had six muddled, dirty white eyes each, on short stalks that hung limply from their low foreheads. That more than anything else made Harper want to shrink away from them. That and the obvious fact that they were clearly aroused. They had dirty loincloths on, but they were all clearly pitching tents in them. Not huge tents, but there was definitely something going on there that Harper really didn't want to know more about.
There was an unpleasant smell in the room and the whole situation just felt unhealthy to her. Very unhealthy.
She cleared her voice. “So if you could take these ropes off me right now, that would be great.”
The aliens looked at her impassively. She noticed that they had some kind of yellowish drool running from their tiny mouths and it almost made her retch. Their hands had two long, pale fingers and no thumbs.
She struggled against the wires binding her. “I'm not kidding. Let me go or there'll be hell to pay.”
Harper felt panic bubbling up, but she was getting angry, too. She had been taken in by the light display from the UFO, probably hypnotized by it, and then somehow she had ended up here in a not too clean spaceship with aliens ogling her. What the fuck did they think they were doing?
“Hey! I'm talking to you!”
They were looking at her. Maybe. Their milky eyes hung down and had no irises, so it was hard to tell. Maybe they were blind. But they did move, so they weren't dead. Still they reminded her of zombies. Alien zombies, sure, but there was something dead about them.
And they were definitely aliens. That in itself was huge. No one had ever met aliens before. She was the first. She groaned inwardly. So of course they had to be the crappy kind of alien. No beautiful elf-like beings with wisdom and extraordinary technology for Harper, like she had sometimes dreamed about in her fantasies before she actually went to space. No, these were dirty beings with knock-out-lights and drool and loincloths and probably hard-ons.
Still they didn't react, and Harper went through the contents of her jump suit in her mind. Maybe there was something she could use to cut the wires. They looked like plastic fiber of some kind.
Okay. She had chewing gum, she was pretty sure. A couple of spare tampons, probably. Her comms unit. A stylus, maybe, unless she had misplaced it like she always did. Chapstick. Medkit.
She glanced down at her utility belt. Oh yeah. And a little ceramic trowel for the plants that they were growing for food in the biodome.
That was it. No knife, no gun, no pliers. Just all kinds of stuff that was useful in their own way, but not for escaping from ties while being maybe watched by aliens that might be blind but probably weren't.
They hadn't tied her that tightly, but the position was awkward. She really had to keep her anger seething, because right underneath that lurked panic.
Harper took a deep breath. “Okay. This is your last warning. Take these wires off me or I'll report you so hard you'll think you died and went to hell- hey, stop that!”
Two of the aliens took clumsy steps towards her and lifted her up. Their arms were so long they didn't have to bend down to grab her and pull her to her feet.
“That's bet- uurgch,” Harper said, because right then the stench from the aliens hit her and she couldn't suppress the dry-heaves. Her mouth filled with saliva and her eyes filled with water, and she had to fight to not just throw up right there.
The aliens didn't loosen the wires that held her. They grabbed onto her upper arms and dragged her over to some kind of contraption crudely made from shiny metal bars. Harper had to concentrate to breathe through her mouth to not feel the sewage-like smell they exuded, but when she had blinked the nauseous tears from her eyes, she noticed that the thing had straps on it and that the aliens were clearly adjusting it to her size. She saw a metal tray with some rusty-looking tools on it that vaguely reminded her of surgical equipment.
“Hey,” she yelled, “what the hell do you think you're doing!” She struggled against the grips the aliens had on her, squirming like a worm, but they were surprisingly strong and held her easily.
They loosened the bindings on her wrists and ankles, but they held on to her so securely with their hands that she couldn't move much. “Let me go, you fuckers!”
One alien crouched down and held her leg, then fastened a strap around it. Another one did it to her other leg, and now she was tied with her legs spread pretty far apart.
Shit. In a flash she realized that the contraption was a rack for holding her securely while they- she didn't want to finish the thought. But she couldn't ignore the fact that they were clearly aroused behind those loincloths. “Stop that! Stop that now! I do not agree to this!”
Harper was dimly aware that there were more people in the room now, more aliens with long arms and a hunched posture. The stench intensified, but now she was too concerned with her immediate future to care much.
She yelled and squirmed and yanked her arms to get them loose, but nothing helped. And now the anger was giving way to real panic. These beings clearly didn't have her best interests in mind if they had to strap her to something.
They bent her forward and strapped her wrists to the metal rack in front of her, so she was standing bent over with her butt in the air. The aliens' intention was becoming pretty clear.
And all doubt disappeared when they loosened the lower half of her jumpsuit and pulled it down as far as it would go, and then her panties, so she was standing with her bare butt in the air. And she was pretty sure they weren't just going to give her a beneficial vaccine or check her temperature. Curse the practical design of that jumpsuit that allowed it to be split at the waist!
“Damn it,” she yelled in a last attempt, “I don't want this! You're not allowed to do any of this or anything you have in mind! I don't agree to this!”
But the aliens huddled together behind her. The metal construction was so shiny that she could see them as in a mirror – they were all studying her rear end with great interest.
And then they started prodding her flesh with cold, alien fingers and she screamed in anger and fear.
Her scream partly drowned it out, but she was aware that there a tremendous crashing noise right at the same time. And the aliens were no longer prodding or looking at her.
She stared into the metal 'mirror' and saw that the wall behind her had collapsed. It had a hole in it now, a jagged hole with darkness behind it. She struggled against her binds. If that was open to space, she would be dead in no time.
The aliens had their backs to her and seemed to be staring at the hole in the wall in obvious surprise and fear. And then there was movement. A leg and a body and arms – someone was definitely coming in through it. The aliens clearly hadn't expected it.
Harper didn't know if it was good news, but anything that would postpone the rape the aliens were clearly planning was okay with her.
The light was dim, but that person that just blew a hole in the wall and came in sure looked like a human. A pretty spectacular human. Harper couldn't make out any details in the reflection, but it sure looked like a man with a bare torso and muscles from here to Andromeda. And an axe. Definitely an axe.
She stared into the shiny metal and tried to make out what was happening behind her. It didn't seem as if anyone was that interested in her anymore.
The room had been pretty quiet until now, with only a creaky hum coming from somewhere. But suddenly there was a terrible cacophony of high-pitched noise, a screechy sound that made Harper want to clasp her hands over her ears. But she couldn't, so the just groaned and clenched her jaw, still staring into the reflection. Then it dawned on her what was happening: the aliens were talking. That was how they spoke. Like nails on a chalkboard. Well, it fit perfectly with the way they looked.
And then she heard another voice. Yep, that was a man, no doubt about it. The voice was deep and calm, but still had a note of pure menace and extreme danger. It was no language Harper had ever heard, but it was melodious and had some hard consonants.
There was screeching again. Shit, they were talking more. And from the pattern of the conversation, Harper was pretty sure that they were haggling.
Over her.
Because the aliens were definitely holding fistfuls of shiny metal up to the newcomer, as if trying to tempt him. And they were all gesticulating in her direction. Except the man. He was just glancing at her, not too interested in the shiny things they were shoving in his face. The ugly aliens were very agitated, but he was calm and icy.
Harper felt a small spark of hope come alive. That guy was clearly not a good friend of those aliens. Maybe he was here to save her? Some kind of space police, maybe? He did look pretty human, but she was also sure he was not from Earth.
The screechy noises increased in pitch and intensity, and from Harper's point of view it looked like that aliens were about to attack the newcomer. But he held his ground effortlessly, and she even thought she recognized a smirk on his face.
The she stiffened. The stranger sauntered over to her, sliced the straps with his very sharp axe and took hold of her wrist in one large and callused hand. It had four fingers plus a thumb, Harper counted quickly to some relief as she straightened up and hurriedly pulled her pants up with her free hand.