Abducted Read online

  “Yeah, right, whatever,” I muttered, feeling like a scolded child. “I guess we did. But we had no idea there were aliens looking to abduct us as mail order brides!”

  “How could you not?” Bambi asked in his piping voice. Now that I’d been watching him for a while, I realized he looked different from the other Commercians—his wormy hide was a slightly lighter shade of blue. “For the past fifty to seventy Earth years or so we have been testing our transfer equipment by abducting one or two Earthlings every year and then returning them,” he informed me.

  I looked at him in horror. “So all those stories about being taken by aliens are true? Not just crazy people saying crazy things?”

  “I am afraid so. We had to test and perfect our equipment, after all.” Bambi shrugged—or what I assumed was his version of a shrug. His wormy body rippled with the gesture.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered. “But in all those stories—or most of them—the abducted people get…get probed.” I looked at Sarden quickly. “You’re not going to…I won’t let you! I’ll fight every step of the way if you try to stick something up my…”

  I trailed off, finally registering the look of amusement on his sharp features.

  “No, no—please go on.” He made a sweeping gesture at me with one big hand. “Where exactly did you think I wanted to, ah, probe you?”

  “Never mind,” I said grumpily, seeing he was laughing at me. Clearly some of the crazy abduction talk was just that—crazy.

  “The captured Earthlings were probably referring to our sensitivity tests,” Bambi informed me, making me feel nervous all over again. “We are required to run certain examinations to be certain that our subjects are healthy and that the transportation process did not injure or mutate them in any way.”

  “Mutate them?” I looked down at myself, wondering if I had grown a third nipple or an eleventh toe or something awful like that.

  “Don’t worry,” Sarden rumbled, giving me that annoying, sardonic smile I was beginning to really dislike. “You’re fine.”

  “Technically we cannot say that for sure until she is tested,” Bambi pointed out.

  “No—no tests!” I insisted, trying to keep my chin up and my voice strong. But the awful reality was, if they wanted to test me—to probe me—they could. There were too many of them and I was just one naked, unarmed Earth girl.

  God, what I wouldn’t give for the little canister of mace I carried around in my purse right now! Or maybe Charlotte’s taser—she was attacked once, back in college and now she doesn’t play around. She will straight up taze a guy if he comes at her in any kind of threatening way. I wished she was here with me now to taze the big, red son of a bitch alien who was smirking down at me.

  Speaking of the red son of a bitch, he seemed to read my mind.

  “No need to fear, little Pure One—no one will be probing any part of your lush body. Though I confess it’s a tempting idea,” he murmured. “You’re safe enough while you’re with me. Of course after I trade you, I can’t say.” He shook his head. “You’re even more beautiful than your image on the viewer. It’s a damn shame to trade you to Tazaxx.”

  The way he was eyeing me made me realize I was exposed—my arm had slipped and one of my nipples was peeking out at him. I readjusted quickly, but I was damn tired of feeling at a disadvantage just because I was naked.

  “Listen, you’re going to have to stop talking like that because you can’t buy or trade what’s not for sale,” I said, glaring up at him. “Now give me some clothes and let me go home because you’re not trading me to anyone. Read my lips—you don’t own me and I am not going with you!”

  It’s hard to make a point sitting down while the other guy is looming over you. I started to struggle to my feet—not easy with one arm locked in a death grip over my ta-tas and the other shielding my lady-bits.

  “Here.” Sarden reached down a hand to help me up. My impassioned little speech didn’t seem to have fazed him at all. Not surprising since he apparently thought he held all the cards. Well, to be honest, he pretty much did, I had to admit to myself. But still, I’m no quitter! I wasn’t going to let him just steal me away and march me off to some Godforsaken planet where—

  My thoughts cut off abruptly when his big hand made contact with my skin for the first time. I felt a shock of something like electricity go through me—a jolt that seemed to sizzle through every nerve in my body. It raised chill bumps over every inch of my skin and made my nipples into two painfully tight points.

  “Ah!” I gasped, stumbling back from him and nearly falling.

  “Gods!” he growled at the same time, jerking his hand away. Whatever the weird jolt was, clearly he had felt it too.

  “What…what was that?” I gasped, standing shakily, still trying to cover myself.

  Sarden didn’t answer me. Instead, he looked at the blue wormy Commercians.

  “You didn’t tell me when I picked her that she was a La-ti-zal! Quick—get an inhibitor on her—now.”

  “A what?” I demanded but the wormy little aliens were already snapping some kind of bronze metal bracelet around my wrist. I looked down at the band and saw it had a little window on it that had glowing, incomprehensible symbols jiggling across it.

  Great, I was wearing the Alien version of a Fitbit.

  I could imagine the readout now—You’ve already gone three hundred miles today, just a few million more into outer space and you’ll reach your abduction goal! Har-har, very funny.

  The strange jolt I’d felt was still making me tingle in the most uncomfortable places. And it appeared to be affecting my captor too. Sarden was pressing his thumb and fingers to his closed eyelids and rubbing like a man trying to drive back a migraine.

  “Gods, the colors I saw,” he muttered. “Whole spectrums of light…” Looking up at me he said, “Your hair—it’s the color of flames. And your eyes…I’ve never seen anything so blue.”

  “Um…okay,” I said carefully. “Are you just now noticing all that? Look—what just happened anyway? What was that word you called me before you jerked away like I was a hot stove?”

  “A La-ti-zal,” the proper butler voice informed me and the golden dragonfly fluttered on Sarden’s shoulder. “One especially bred by the Ancient Ones to have extra gifts. They are very rare and valuable. A tingling sensation during first contact between such a gifted one and one of another of the Twelve Sentient Peoples she is sexually compatible with is normally the sign of a La-ti-zal. Which is, I believe, how Master Sarden ascertained your abilities.”

  “Which is good. It means Tazaxx will have to make the trade. He won’t be able to resist her.” Sarden straightened up and I saw for the first time how truly immense he was.

  Earlier I’d thought that he just looked big because I was sitting and he was standing—but it hadn’t just been a trick of perspective. This alien was huge. He had to be seven feet tall at least, I estimated. In fact, the top of my head barely came up past his elbow and his shoulders were easily twice as broad as mine. He was muscular too but not in a gross, over-the-top, ropey-veiny way. He just looked incredibly cut and intimidating, standing there in his tight black trousers and his black sleeveless t-shirt looking thing.

  With his incredible abs, neatly clipped mustache and goatee, and those intense golden eyes he looked positively mouthwatering. If you’re into Devil worship, that is, which I most certainly am not.

  But hot or not—and he was, most definitely huge and hot—I didn’t like the way he thought he’d bought me and he was already planning to trade me away.

  “She’ll do,” he said to Bambi who was watching, his stalk eyes wide. “I’ll take her back to my ship at once since our transaction is completed.”

  “Negative,” Bambi protested in his piping voice. “You paid only enough credits for a standard Pure One—an Earth basic female. The charge for an elite La-ti-zal is much higher.”

  “Then you should find a way to test the females