by Gillian Zane
CHARGED
An Otherworldly Reverse Harem
Gillian Zane
Contents
ABOUT THE BOOK
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Glossary of Terms:
Characters:
Polaridi words:
Thank you
About the Author
Books by Gillian Zane
ABOUT THE BOOK
Bobbie Flemming was having one of those terrible, no good kind of days.
Her boss yelled at her because of something a co-worker did, her sometimes boyfriend was getting engaged to another woman, and she wore two different shoes to work. To make matters worse, she agreed to be in a charitable “most eligible” auction for her friend Chuck, who won’t speak to her if she doesn’t show up.
Bobbie doesn’t feel most eligible, and she definitely doesn’t feel like going on a date with someone so desperate they have to win her in an auction. But when two of the hottest men on the planet, who happen to be twins, show up and outbid everyone, Bobbie thinks she’s won the lottery. Until the one in charge opens his mouth and she realizes he’s bat sh*t crazy.
Now, Bobbie’s being whisked off, without her consent, to the middle of Central Park — and what is that — a spaceship?
This was how Bobbie finds herself stranded on an alien planet, with not two, but four incarnations of the same man. (They do that on their planet, it’s like their thing.) And all four of these hot alien males think Bobbie is their fated Charge Mate. All Bobbie knows is she didn’t sign up for this. Sure, the sex might be awesome, and the guys might be super-hot, but what does it take to get back to Earth where everything is normal, and there aren’t Emperors who want to kill her?
Charged: An Otherworldly Reverse Harem by Gillian Zane
Published by Parajunkee Publishing & Design
www.parajunkee.net
© 2018 Gillian Zane
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:
[email protected]
Cover Design by Parajunkee Publishing & Design
Editing by Raw Book Editing
For the Butterflies.
1
Bobbie’s Terrible Day
Bobbie Fleming knew that today was destined to be one of those terrible, no good kind of days. It was going to be one of those days reminiscent of a quirky women’s fiction novel, but without the slow progression to self-realization and the eventual sticky-sweet happily-ever-after at the end. How did she know this? Because as she was riding the elevator to get to her dead-end job on the 11th floor of the seventh tallest building in the city, she looked down and saw she had worn two different shoes. Two different shoes! They weren’t even the same pair in different colors. She liked to do that. When she found a shoe that met her strict requirements of comfort and style, she bought every color they had—well, the good colors.
The metal doors of the elevator reflected her image all warped and distorted, but clearly showing her one red shoe with a stupid bow, and one orange shoe. She might have let out an audible yelp since the mousy lawyer standing next to her startled and was looking at her like she had grown a third head.
“My shoes,” Bobbie mumbled as an explanation for her weird noise making, and gestured in the general direction of the floor. The lawyer nodded like he was placating a crazy person and looked at his phone with consternation even though he hadn’t even pressed the unlock button on the screen.
It was going to be one of those days. She knew it. In every bone of her body. It might be Friday, but she could smell the coming apocalypse in the air. They were becoming routine now in her life. She had refined her Spidey sense to spot them before they had barely begun. With lots of practice, she could now lock on to the impending tragedy and brace for impact. All it took was a simple clue, like mismatched shoes.
Usually, she would combat this kind of day by jumping on social media and sharing hilarious cat videos. She loved cats even though she didn’t have a cat, but considered herself a future cat lady. There would be fabulous cats with grumpy faces that would epitomize her day with fun hashtags that said adulting is hard. A little laugh to ease the tension and anxiety that was her current state of being. It would help her pull her shit together, get through the day, and welcome in the weekend with as little stress as possible, so she could wake up on Monday and do it all again.
Not today though. As soon as Bobbie sat down at her desk, her inbox began to chime. One email after another with little red exclamation points next to them. It was barely 9 a.m. and her department was in a tizzy. One more problem, which was nothing more than a product of her overly dramatic and anxiety-prone client, to fix. It took her two hours to settle down her client and task out what would be needed to fix the current issue. An issue that turned out to not even be an issue once things got rolling. When that was done, she managed to get up from her desk and sneak down to the first-floor lobby where there was a gift shop that sold a plethora of unnecessary crap.
Bobbie turned over a pair of atrocious flats which were vaggazled—vagina plus bedazzled—Bobbie’s word for overly-decorated and glittery items. They happened to be pink, which was pushing it with matching her current outfit, but they would do. She winced at the price, even though she knew what it would say. Thirty dollars. Thirty, because the proprietor, a female who had perfected the resting bitch face, knew what these shoes were here for. They were here for people like Bobbie. Women who rushed out of the house without checking their shoes, or women who were overeager to wear new heels without bringing Band-Aids, or women who were prone to accidents and broken shoes. Women who were in the midst of a shoe crisis, and would wince as they forked out thirty dollars for an atrocious pair of glittered flats, but didn’t have another choice. Some women might have powered through the day in crappy shoes, knowing this woman probably picked them up for a couple bucks at a jewelry show, but for thirty, Bobbie was willing to take the hit.
She reluctantly handed over her card while the proprietor smiled a rare pleased smile, which had everything to do with the taking of money, and nothing to do with giving her customer a bit of reassurance.
Bobbie didn
’t bother hiding the fact that she changed her shoes in the store. She slipped her mismatched heels into her oversized bag, flipped off the owner of the store as she turned her back to her, and marched out in shoes that didn’t match her outfit. Bobbie tried with all her might not to look at herself in the elevator’s reflection as she made her way back to her floor. Pink flats were better than mismatched heels, she told herself.
“Bobbie!” Her name was like venom on the lips of her boss as she rounded the curve back to her cubicle.
“Mal?” Bobbie asked.
“I need that Fisher report before you go to lunch,” her boss said with a wave of the hand and a quick turn in the opposite direction.
“Good Morning to you, too.” Bobbie sighed and went back to her cubicle, knowing she had two hours to produce a report that normally took four. Another day of eating her lunch at her desk.
When lunchtime had come and went, Bobbie had completed her portion of the report and sent it with a satisfied sigh to her boss. She managed to extricate herself from her desk and get to the microwave, coated with the explosions from everyone else’s lunches, to pop in her own bland, diet frozen meal. After four minutes of watching the little tray spin around and around through the food-speckled glass, she grabbed it, cried out from the heat, and then managed to get it onto the counter, where she again burned herself by removing the plastic covering.
It seemed like an act of God was needed to get her back to her desk with the food, but somehow she managed. She fished out her eReader, bringing up her current read, an epic fantasy about a runaway half-elf and his merry band of mismatched friends doomed to either save or destroy the world. She shoveled the bland food into her mouth as her tragic day slipped from the forefront of her mind and she was taken to a world where the trees talked, and dragons could be ridden into the skies.
“Bobbie!” The food on Bobbie’s fork flopped off, bounced on her left tit and began to slide into her bra. When she tried to save the food, her hand knocked into the plate, upending it and landing it open portion down. Splatters went everywhere, including her face and her computer screen. She didn’t turn around; she stared at the mess in horror.
“Where are the financials that go with the report?” Her boss all but screeched at the back of her head. “I have to send it to Farraday, and I can’t without the financials.”
“Lauren was supposed to send you the financials. Remember we discussed it in the meeting yesterday?” Bobbie reminded him.
“I don’t care who was supposed to do it. You were in charge of the report, Bobbie. You were supposed to send it to me.” His voice had gotten more high-pitched with each word.
“You were the one that told Lauren it was her—”
“Stop with the excuses, Bobbie. Get the report done.”
Bobbie finally turned around to face her boss, glancing over at the side of the room where the awful Lauren took up space. She was gone, probably out for a late lunch. She was known to take a two-hour lunch while conveniently forgetting to punch out.
“Lauren’s at lunch; she has all the data,” Bobbie said, but she knew by the look on his face, he didn’t care.
“I need that report on my desk in thirty minutes, or you'll find yourself without a job.” He didn’t bother hanging around for a response before he stomped away and Bobbie was left with an almost impossible task.
Forty-five minutes later, five threatening voicemails left for a girl who refused to answer her phone if it was the company’s number, an amateur hacking job into Lauren’s console, and Bobbie managed to deliver the report, even though she was pretty sure the numbers weren’t right.
Her stomach growled atrociously, and Bobbie pulled herself up from her desk, which still had smears of her earlier failed lunch all over it. She would clean that later, she told herself. Now, she needed to spend more money that she wasn’t supposed to spend on an overpriced sandwich that was damn good, but not worth the price. By the time she got downstairs though, they were all out of sandwiches, all out of soups, all out of those handy little salads in the clear plastic to-go boxes. The only thing left was a paltry little blueberry muffin left over from the breakfast stock.
It took her all of three bites to devour it in the elevator back up to work.
Bobbie’s day was becoming one for the books. But, it was paltry stuff. Stuff she would get over. People in third world countries had much worse problems. Even people in her own neck of the woods were barely hanging on. The receptionist’s husband recently found out he had prostate cancer, the lady from the 8th floor had a son with leukemia, and there were rumors that the AP girl was getting evicted from her rent-controlled apartment. Bobbie didn’t really have the right to complain about her day when it was only trivial things. Little speed bumps in the road of life, and before she knew it, she would be smooth sailing, back to eighty on the intercontinental highway. Bobbie often told herself things like this to reaffirm her positive nature. Positive people brought positive things into their lives. Positive thinking, positive life was her motto.
“Stay positive. Stay positive,” she chanted under her breath, as for the third time that day she avoided eye contact with the girl reflected in the elevator doors. She continued to chant as she wiped at her mouth, which may have still held muffin crumbs, before she exited the elevator on the 11th-floor lobby and entered the reception area. She was looking down at the white smear on her shirt with dismay, which was why she didn’t notice the crowd gathered in the small area until the last minute. She clumsily stumbled to a halt, locking eyes with the man in the center of the crowd. His face went pale when he saw her and Bobbie knew her day was about to get much, much worse.
Most of the people gathered around were from accounts payable, and accounting. They were people Bobbie didn’t associate with much, unless it was a forced company event. Except for one. One of the CPAs, the one in the center of the crowd with his arm around a cute blonde while his eyes were locked on Bobbie.
Bobbie recognized the woman he was holding a little too close to him. She knew she was the COO’s daughter since her father had only recently paraded the girl around the company, flashing the new fancy engagement ring on her finger to anyone who could stand to look at it. Bobbie hadn’t cared to pay attention to who the lucky guy was…she probably should have.
“Kiersten will be taking over as COO, brought into the fold by her future husband Marlin —,” the COO was saying as Bobbie bumbled into the fray.
Future. Husband. Marlin. The gleaming rock on Kiersten’s finger shone like a beacon, reflecting into Bobbie’s eyes and blinding her. It was one of those moments where time seemed to stand still. While Ms. COO Daughter was flinging her sparkly hand around in a circle, weird bird-like words came out of her mouth that Bobbie couldn’t understand. The CPA in question, Mr. Marlin Toups, continued to stare at Bobbie, only now his eyes had narrowed to slits, as if he expected her to do something.
Bobbie had considered this man her on and off again current relationship. And now she was walking in on his what—engagement party or hostile takeover? Had he forgotten to mention this fiancé when they were hooking up in the supply closet yesterday? In fact, she remembered he had explicitly said she was the only one for him as she swallowed him down to avoid any mess.
This was the pinnacle of her day. The apex of her tragedy. And the sad part of the entire situation was that this was becoming the new normal. Every day for Bobbie was a repeat of terrible, no-good things. She might as well get used to it.
She managed to get away without making a scene. She hid at her desk, behind her Alfredo splattered computer screen, and she only let one tiny tear slip down her cheek before she pinched herself and remained strong under the incessant berating of her own inner monologue.
Just another one of those days. Bobbie’s new normal. Not even a Monday, but a Friday. It should be a topic of happiness, since she would be out of the office for two whole days. Her inbox chimed. Scratch that. Because of the sketchy numbers in the recent reporting, t
hey would be working Saturday.
Bobbie sighed, and for a moment let her head slip to her desk in defeat. It was only a moment though. She only had time for one little moment.
When Bobbie managed to leave her cubicle at the end of the day and trudge down the eleven flight of stairs, since the elevators were packed and she didn’t want to wait, all she wanted to do was eradicate the last 24-hours from her memory. Then she would be happy. Maybe. Happy. What an odd concept but that’s all she wanted to be. It seemed like an impossible feat. Bobbie had a niggling feeling that happy wasn’t going to happen anytime soon for her, if ever. She could honestly say her life was firmly planted in the Hot Mess category of the utter failure index. She could be the poster girl for failed basic single girl in action. And she was not being a Drama Queen. She was definitely not a fucking Drama Queen. She’s a realist. And the reality of her situation was that she was a walking, talking, waste of a life at the present moment. Things might change one day, but at the rate she was going—she wasn’t going to hold her breath.