Dax, however, didn’t even see the importance of the years of counseling and team-building exercises the three of them had had to do. He had been clear that he’d felt their friendship would have been just as strong if they had built it together over a barbeque in a single afternoon. Hence it wasn’t that surprising that he was now saying, “We should just snatch her out of there and tell her that she’s not allowed to go into her room until she at least attempts to spend time with us. Right now she’s not even carrying her own weight by helping prepare meals like we’d planned. If we don’t intercede, this could go on for years.”
Malo turned his body so that he could give Dax an exasperated look that would hopefully shame him. All his look did, however, was make Dax throw up his hands and say, “Give me one good reason why not! Things couldn’t get any worse than they are.”
“Hey,” said a sudden, none-too-enthusiastic voice in English at the door. The three males looked toward her like prairie dogs that had caught a scent they liked. She had a jar of some sort in her hand. Without another word, she walked to Dax with the jar filled with red liquid and handed it to him.
He looked down at it. His expression couldn’t possibly hold any more confusion.
“Open it for me,” she ordered, but not in a pushy way. She sounded tired. She didn’t look tired, however; she looked good for someone claiming five days ago that she was extremely unhappy about being kidnapped.
“What is it?”
“A jar with food in it,” she said as if this should be obvious. “I can’t open it, and in the past I’d have gone next door to my neighbors’ house and gotten the husband there to open it. Unfortunately, they’re probably, like, a trillion million miles away by now.”
Dax opened it without any effort at all before handing it back to her. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”
“Or me,” Tick added, his words filled with meaning.
“We’re glad to see you out of your room,” Malo admitted, speaking cautiously like he would to a frightened animal.
She looked over at him, and it was apparent that she was far from frightened. She looked weary and resolved. “Dinner in my apartment in thirty minutes,” she sighed, then turned to Tick. “Don’t say anything creepy when you’re there. Bring a beverage—hopefully something that will get me either high or drunk. I’m not picky.” After that, she turned and went back the way she came.
There was a long silence during which the men just stared in the direction she had gone before Malo broke the silence. “Well, I’m suddenly feeling very optimistic about things. All we have to do is go and act like whatever she’s making in there is the best thing we’ve ever eaten and compliment even the smallest things she’s doing, and supposedly everything will go well, according to the human female handling instructions I read.”
“I don’t know if I trust what you read. I think she’s proved she’s a bit of a wild card. The most we can hope is that she’s calmed down and accepted some of this.” Dax gestured to the spaceship around him.
“We might be getting laid tonight!” Tick hooted excitedly, throwing his hands in the air as if victorious.
Dax frowned. “I really doubt that. We’ll be lucky to make it through the night without her dumping dinner on one of our heads,” he replied pessimistically.
“Well, I don’t exactly think she’s ready for that type of intimacy,” Malo agreed. “But this is a good first step. She might actually even be relaxing and settling in,” Malo said, getting up from his chair. “I think I still have a bottle or two of the Analayan wine their king gave me a few months ago...”
Tick finally popped up from his chair. “You’re right. Get her drunk as fuck and then we can start sexy time,” he said, clapping his hands together.
“Relax, Tick. Remember, she’s new to all this and she’s pissed about it. Coming out of that room was probably a major effort.”
“Nervous?” Dax asked, looking over the console at him.
Malo shook his head. “Only if Tick talks more than is necessary.”
Dax nodded. “Same here.”
Tick frowned and looked back and forth between the two before snorting and crossing his arms in front of his chest, grousing, “I’m always getting shit on for being the loveable, entertaining one on this ship.”
*****
Chloe was quickly regretting going out to the men and inviting them to dinner. First of all, she was running low on spaghetti and she would be surprised if she could find that anywhere else in the universe. She might never eat it again, and the fact that she now was going to share it was painful.
But most of all she couldn’t believe that she was actually considering talking to those assholes. She’d attempted to sit and watch movies until she died, but she bored of that after only a few days, and thumbing through her collection of both porn and romantic chick-flicks just made her feel horny and lonely. Now that she’d been propositioned for sex, she was beginning to realize that it’d been a couple of years since she’d even had a guy ask her out. She hadn’t noticed because she hadn’t been so lonely on Earth.
She hadn’t thought about it before, because her little black book was actually a very empty book, but she had still been around a lot of people all the time. She’d woken up at three o’clock every morning for the last couple of years since she’d started running the bakery, and she had a couple of employees and a lot of regular customers. She was constantly talking or dealing with people all day long, and normally much more than she’d like. All the silence and free time was strange.
None of this was fair, and she didn’t believe that she’d ever come to be happy about the huge turn her life had taken, but she had just watched Aliens, Independence Day, and District 9 and had come to realize that the aliens she was stuck with were less like aliens and more like some annoying group of guys with brightly colored contacts, broad shoulders, and black fingernails. She could have been stuck with worse—at least they didn’t have tentacles or weren’t gray willowy aliens with bald shiny heads and black beady eyes like she had originally imagined they’d be. Hence the sudden move to invite them to dinner.
She wondered if they would think this was a date. Although the idea of having extraterrestrial sex was alarming, and not something she had exactly dreamed about, she was quite aware that they didn’t share her qualms.
“This is going to be an interesting night,” she said aloud to the pot of noodles she was standing over. “At least I can cook,” she added with slight optimism. “Because I would have seriously killed myself if I was stuck eating astronaut ice cream and drinking Tang for the rest of my life.”
There was a knock on her ‘door,’ which looked a lot like the old entrance to her apartment until she hit the button to open it, after which light seemed to split a tear into the fabric of the optical illusion around her. She had quickly realized that she would have really been in a blank white room with a bunch of her stuff strewn everywhere if the computer program hadn’t been running.
She wiped her hands clean with a kitchen towel and said, “Come in,” as if she expected it to be the neighbors at her old apartment. The illusion tore near the door and the three larger-than-life males stepped in.
She looked over and blinked at them. They were slightly more attractive than she had remembered. Malo wasn’t dressed in a suit anymore, but in a black shirt and pants like the other two. All their shirts fit their forms well, and they were all in shape. Tick had a bit of a paunch, but he also had a bit of a baby face going on. Malo reminded her of a protagonist from a 1940s romance movie and Dax was just a tall, well-featured man who looked older than the other two because he was mostly silver-haired while Dax and Malo had darker hair.
“Hey, kidnappers,” she greeted with deadpan coolness. She jerked her head toward her kitchen table. “Go ahead and take a seat.”
Malo lifted a bottle that looked like it was made of stainless steel. “As you requested,” he told her, offering it to her.
She gra
bbed hold of it, surprised at how cold it was. “What is it?” she asked.
“It’s a type of wine, I suppose. Instead of being made out of grapes, however, it’s made out of a fruit native to the planet Analaya. It’s pretty potent—to be drunk with small glasses.” As he was saying this, she turned and saw Dax looking through her cupboards, finding shot glasses very quickly. Apparently, he had been the one to transport and arrange her kitchen.
“Sounds good,” she approved. “Get out some water glasses then. We can just get shitfaced.”
The men now looked at each other, exchanged knowing glances, and laughed to themselves. “I don’t think so,” Dax chuckled finally, shaking his head as if she had said something extremely cute and even more naive.
“If you thought the last week was depressing for you,” Tick added, sitting down at her table, “go ahead and drink too much of that. Tomorrow you’d wake up and wish you hadn’t been born. Trust me on that, I’ve been there.”
She raised an eyebrow at him and then walked back to the stove to begin straining the spaghetti. “So what have you all been doing all week?” she asked, trying her best to be conversational as Malo and Dax busied themselves with pouring the drinks. “Like, how do you fill your time up here?”
“We’re a representation unit,” Malo replied simply. “We’re charged with going to sister planets and working through problems, treaties, representing our planet in important occasions or ceremonies, and occasionally making initial contact. Whatever the situation requires. The paperwork, reports, and studying take a lot of our time. At least for Dax and me. Tick mostly just makes sure everything works and our ship stays in one piece. We tend to be away from our planet for years at a time and so we need a specialist on hand.”
“Years?” she echoed, and then scrunched her nose. “You’re on a spaceship for years?”
“No,” they all replied in unison.
Malo was quick to explain, “We have many, many stops along our journey. We rarely spend as long as a month on the ship. And they’re not all on planets who are keeping extra-planetary life a secret like Earth does. The desire to keep such secrets from the general public is rare, especially for planets like Earth that have been visited by representatives of other planets for decades.”
“If you come out of your apartment every now and then, you can come with us to some pretty glorious events and do things your people haven’t even dreamed of yet,” Dax assured her, pressing his back against her pantry cabinet. “You could live a very wealthy lifestyle.”
“Shh—” Malo said, with a ‘shut up’ gesture to Dax.
Dax, confused, said, “What? It’s true. She could. We get treated extremely well most places that we go.”
“The handling instructions said not to mention money,” Tick mentioned, picking up a knife and looking at his reflection in it. Malo sent him a piercing gaze. “That’s right. I read them. But I don’t think they have this girl figured out.” He pointed the butter knife at Chloe.
She blinked at him. “What handling instructions?”
“You know, how to get girls and understand women. That sort of thing,” he responded innocently.
Something in her felt like it had shattered into a million pieces. It must have been her anger, because as soon as she had the mental image of these three masculine aliens sitting in chairs and reading dating guides, she started laughing and couldn’t stop.
The oven timer beeped, indicating the garlic bread was ready, and she couldn’t even grab it because of the way she was holding her guts, as if she worried she might laugh them right out. “What’d you use?” she wheezed. “How to Be the Alien of Her Dreams?” She started laughing again. “How to Make Her Think You’re ‘Out of This World’?”
“Alright, I think—” Malo said, putting his hands out calmingly.
“One more,” she said, stifling her giggling just enough to say, “Men are from Mars?”
Eventually her laugher subsided, and she wiped her eyes, which had been watering, and rescued the garlic bread from the oven. “Alright, I’ll give you guys a break,” she told them. “I suppose if you’re reading about how to get with me, you must really be desperate.”
“We’re not desperate,” Dax grumbled, crossing his arms.
“Go on and sit down,” she invited, finally feeling like a weight had been lifted off of her. It was easier now that she had decided they were more nerds than they were aliens. “Dinnertime.”
“Thanks for cooking,” Malo said when they were seated and she was bringing the bowls of food to the table. “It smells delightful.”
“It better; I have a culinary arts degree from Le Cordon Bleu. The bread will knock your socks off,” she assured, then took a deep breath. If they wanted to act like some guys who had stopped in for dinner, then she was going to let them. It was better than Tick acting like an overzealous ladies’ man.
And when she let them, they did act somewhat normal. Their table manners were a little odd, but so were the table manners of most of the men she’d ever met. She had to teach them how to use forks and how to properly eat noodles, but she actually spent a lot of time laughing. They weren’t horrible, she decided, and in fact they acted quite decently.
She imagined that they were just lonely, which was a kick, since they were attractive guys. Probably if they stayed on a planet for just a couple of months they could have all gotten girls of their own, she realized. But they obviously still wanted her—which was humbling, since she’d never had a very good dating history. Her looks were ordinary. She was average height, average weight, and not particularly beautiful. She had never stood out much from the crowd, and she certainly had never had to beat men off of her with a stick before.
“So, how about some of that wine and we sit down together and watch a movie or something?” she asked them, ready to pretend that they were guys who lived next door if they were game.
“I still don’t know about giving her that stuff,” Dax replied grumpily as he looked across the table to Malo. “I don’t even think it’s a good idea for us.” He finally turned to Chloe and said, “We might say or do something you don’t like and then you’d really have issues with us.”
“Saying and doing stupid shit is half the fun,” she promised, grinning with excitement. She knew from experience that if someone was hesitating like this at the last moment, then whatever was on the table was going to be really good stuff. And she was ready for it. When he continued pursing his lips and looking at her with hesitancy, she told him, “Come on, Dax. I need to relax.”
“Alright,” he finally said, but still grumpily. He shoved himself up from the table, took the glasses Malo and Tick had pulled out of her cupboards earlier, and grabbed the strange-shaped bottle. “What’s the best human movie you’ve got?”
“This is a special occasion,” Tick laughed. “He’s actually going to hang loose. Doesn’t happen often, sweetheart. Consider yourself lucky.”
She was about to say how unsurprised she was that Dax was a guy who didn’t have much fun, since he gave off that sort of vibe, when she watched Dax pour just a mouthful—not even half of an ounce—into a glass and give it to her. He poured only an ounce into the other three. “That’s it?” she asked, unimpressed. It was a large bottle for such a small portion.
“Yeah. I have to work tomorrow,” he informed her unapologetically.
She raised her glass and put it to the light. It was a blue liquid that looked very much like mouthwash to her. She looked at his. “Why do I get so little?”
“Because you are little. At least compared with us. You’ll thank me tomorrow when you can walk rather than crawl into the shower in the morning,” he told her with a firm tone, although he was grinning teasingly.
She had her doubts, but as she continued to examine the liquid, Tick came to her side and clinked his glass against hers. “To us: the sexiest creatures on the ship,” he toasted, and then swung the glass up and gulped down the mouthful. He then made an ‘ahhh!’ sound and l
ooked at the empty glass.
She finally put the liquid to her lips carefully, as if it could burn her. When it didn’t hurt her mouth, she opened her lips, let it in, and swallowed. She looked down, then looked around. There was a warmth traveling through her stomach, but nothing too out of the ordinary. She looked over at Dax and said, “I think you overreacted—Whoa!” She tripped and fell down onto the carpet in the living room. The carpet wasn’t as soft as it used to be—it was just as hard as the floor in the rest of the ship. “Oww.”
“See?” Dax reached down and pulled her easily up to her feet. “Told ya. It can certainly pack a bit of a punch.”
“I’ll never doubt you again,” she wheezed, her head beginning to swim. Dax patiently helped her over to the sofa, with a stance far steadier than her own.
Tick and Malo weren’t far behind. Malo pushed the ottoman up to the sofa, put her feet up on it, and pulled her shoes off. Tick positioned himself on one side of her, sharing her ottoman with his big, clunky boots, and pulling the throw off the back of the sofa before tossing it over both of them. Dax sat on her other side. For a moment, she felt lucid enough to worry that Malo had been left out. Where he was sitting seemed so far away from the rest of them. But he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seemed to be in a very pleasant mood.
The movie they were watching had always been one of her favorites, but tonight she felt it was especially good on its hundredth re-watch. She was certain she had never been in a better mood as she snuggled under a blanket with Tick like they were a couple who had been together for years, with her feet resting on Dax’s lap.
It wasn’t until halfway through the movie that Tick finally moved his hand underneath the blanket, cupping her thigh. It had been innocent in the beginning, since his hand rubbed at an area by her knee and very gradually worked its way up until it was on her inner thigh, under her skirt.
She didn’t make any moves to stop him. She felt like her breasts were going to explode if someone didn’t touch them soon. She had never been hungrier for touch and attention. She let Tick move his fingers underneath her panties, and he delved his finger into one of her folds, piercing into her wetness. She stifled a groan and then did something she’d never imagined doing: she ran her toe across the bulge in Dax’s pants.
Bound, Spanked and Loved: Fourteen Kinky Valentine's Day Stories Page 53