Chapter 14

"Oh, damn, that is hot,"I murmured under my breath, my eyes locked with Aeson as he stared at me from across the room. There was a heat between my legs burning me up and I squeezed my legs together. The way he handled the whole group of soldiers had started out being absolutely terrifying. He was so strong and fast. If the eight foot tall, muscle-bound supersoldiers couldn't take him, then how would I have any chance if he decided to turn on me? Then he had stopped that one from hitting me, giving me the cheekiest fucking grin I'd ever seen before going back to the fight.

From that moment on, I was on fire.

"You know these guys are going to fixate on Atisari hand to hand fighting tactics for months now," Lorelei sighed. "With proper weapons, it would be a different story but no, that"s not what they are going to worry about. They are not going to settle with losing a brawl. The fighting planetside was so tame for them that they are going to go absolutely nuts over this."

Her words distracted me from eyefucking my husband as he moved towards me.

I hadn't seen her in years and she popped back into my life with a request to house some hot, rich, single, foreign guy who she was willing to fully vouch for - but he turned out to be an alien who swept my friend off her feet and into running an alien marriage agency.

Oh, and then it turned out she was an empress of said alien species and decided to literally conquer the world.

"Lorelei." I put my hands on my hips and turned on her. "What the fuck?"

"What?" she asked, her eyes wide as she looked at me. She jiggled her shoulders a little, like one of those freakin dancing cat elf aliens. "What's wrong?"

"There is no more candy in the gas stations," I said. "And the only gas stations that are still running are in wealthy neighborhoods. Do you know how many people are riding bikes now a days? I saw someone riding a horse. A horse."

"Yeah, well, CO2 emissions are lower than during that whole pandemic where everyone worked from home instead of commuting." She shrugged. "So why don't you sue me? Or get a horse."

"I can't travel 200 miles on a horse." I rolled my eyes at her.

"First off, yes, you can," she replied. "You just can't do it in a couple hours. It would take at least a couple of days unless you"re a sadomasochist who likes to murder animals or you are really good at training that horse for endurance. Second, I've got a whole vehicle production facility set up for electric hover cars and we're training local human workers on it. It will be an employee owned company once it"s all running smoothly."

"Lorelei, you are so full of yourself I can't even stand it," I replied, exhaling my jealousy and the weight of the peanut gallery back on Earth that was entirely focused on her. She had every person on the planet paying attention to everything she did and she didn't give a shit. She did what she wanted.

What she wanted was to change the world for the better.

I love hated her for it so much.

"Full of awesomeness you mean." She flicked her hair and gave me another shoulder wiggle. "Bitch please, you can't even leave this spacecraft if I don't let you."

"My wife," Aeson hissed as he reached us.

I grinned at Lorelei.

"You want to try and stop us?" I challenged, waving my hand at the squadron of soldiers picking themselves off the floor.

She laughed.

Then she pointed her finger at Aeson's chest.

"Next time you're on board, I expect a rematch." She raised her voice so the whole room could hear. "You little kitties better wipe the floor with him next time!"

"Yes, your majesty," Kevrar called out. "We will not fail you."

"Let's go." I turned and walked out the door. I could feel the heat radiating off of Aeson as he followed me.

"Jessica," Lorelei called out.

I stopped to look back at her.

"Insult me again and I'll see you in the ring personally." She pointed back at the mat where my husband had fought her soldiers.

"But you're a stripper." I frowned, forgetting myself for a moment.

I immediately regretted my words.

Being a stripper, she was more likely to need to know how to defend herself, not less. She probably could mess me up even before she became empress.

"I'm the empress of a species of aliens that have a ceremonial fight to the death." She planted her hands on her hips. "I just took over Earth. I vaporized a major shoe producer"s child labor sweatshop yesterday and replaced it with a state of the art school plus lunch program for those kids. You really want to disrespect me?"

"No, I do not." Then I bowed. It couldn't hurt. I wasn't entirely sure if she was actually upset or just throwing her weight around because she could. Either way, even as a stripper, she had earned my respect and I didn't want her to feel otherwise. "I would really actually love to interview you if you have the time. Like an hour exclusive special would be amazing."

She raised an eyebrow at me.

"Your majesty?" I guessed.

"I'll think about it." She tilted her head to the side. "Now get off my ship before I make you my workout buddy."

"Yes, your majesty," I laughed. "Can I be your workout buddy anyway?"

"Like I said." She waved her hand at me. "I'll think about it. Now go away."

Away I went.

Walking back to the ship, all I could focus on was Aeson beside me. He didn't touch me, he just moved, sinuous and focused as his body shifted beside me, the inherent power in his movements anchoring my attention. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. We didn't speak, and the empty space of sound filled with a tension of all the words I wanted to say but didn't know how to.

It boiled down to one simple thing.

Aeson made me feel good.

He made me feel good physically, when his body wrapped around mine, massaging me as he worked absolute magic with his mouth. He made me feel good that he hadn't asked for anything in return. He made me feel good when I was having a panic attack on his ship and he was just there for me, not touching me, just trying to figure out how to help me in the best way. He made me feel good when he took care of shit, scheduling me with a doctor and taking me there so I could get a second opinion that was vastly different from the first. He made me feel good when I watched him fight, when he kept me from harm, when he looked at me after the fight, radiating an animalistic pride in his showing.

What I was experiencing inside my heart was different than anything I had felt before. It was a coiled mess of feelings all tangled together - appreciation, admiration, attraction, anticipation with a little dash of apprehension.

The apprehension was for what was waiting for me back at home.

It hadn't even been a full day since my disastrous livestream, yet I knew that things were likely hitting the fan. If things had escalated online to the point that I got fired only an hour after I flashed my new hubbie's bits online, then it was likely that the scandal was way out of control. I needed to post another video. I needed to edit together a whole thing and make sure my perspective was the front and center of the story.

First, I needed to grab my computer and my meds and get going on my honeymoon.

There was so much for me to do, I doubted I'd have any time to really enjoy the honeymoon at all.

The ride back to Earth was just as quick as the way up, but less eventful. As the door opened and I stepped outside, I noticed we were a block away from my apartment, at a public park. I stepped down into the grass and turned to see nothing behind me but a tall nondescript man. I blinked and stared at him. He had the kind of face that eyes skim over in a crowd. Brown hair, dull eyes, grey shirt and faded jeans.

"Aeson?" I asked.

"I dislike this holographic disguise," the bland looking man said. "But my species hasn't been introduced through the media to this planet yet. I was advised to wear this disguise unless I wanted to risk incidents."

"Incidents?" I asked.

"Human civilians have access to a great number of projectile weapons in your country which have a high rate of unintentional injuries," he replied.

There was something odd about his appearance, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

"Oh." I kept staring at him, trying to figure out what was weird.

The human hologram he was wearing was moving its facial muscles a minimal amount. That was what was weird. It wasn't just that though. It moved enough to match his words, but his words were in his language and being translated into mine. It had taken me a moment to realize the discordance, but now that I figured it out, I couldn't help but focus on it.

"I don't think you should talk to anyone," I pointed out. "We shouldn't run into anyone, but if we do, let me do all the talking."

"Agreed," he nodded.

We headed towards my apartment.

The jacaranda trees were blooming. The sunlight streamed through the purple blossoms, warming my skin as I took a deep breath of the smog filled air of my city. The scent of car exhaust and the constant hum of engines rumbled to one side of me as the cars inched by, moving in surges at the lights turned green. A man walked past us on the sidewalk.

"Oh, shit! What the fuck!" I heard from behind me.

I turned to see the man half leaning against one of the parked cars, his feet up in the air as if he was falling off of an invisible platform. He looked at me, his eyes wide as he repeatedly lifted his feet up and down, trying to find the ground but his feet never made it back down to the ground.

"Are you seeing this?" the man asked me.

"You should probably wait at your ship while I go get my stuff," I muttered to Aeson.

"I will spend the time requesting a public announcement of my species's presence on Earth so I don't need to wear an ineffective disguise," Aeson remarked.

He turned and headed back towards the park. I could hear the sound of his tail moving over the cement, but I couldn't see it.

"That guy just levitated!" The man pointed at Aeson as his hologram floated back down to the ground as Aeson lowered his upper body.

"I don't know what you're talking about." I felt a little bad acting like the guy was crazy just because he had the bad luck to trip over an alien's tail.

"Wait, aren't you that…" The man did a double take as he looked at me, then reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, lifting it up to point it at me as if he was about to start filming. All of the sudden, he shrieked as he was yanked sideways off of his feet.

"AH, SOMETHING'S GOT ME!" the man shrieked as he began shaking his foot like it was covered in ants.

I made my retreat towards my apartment at a quick jog.

It was a little cowardly, I knew, but the last thing I wanted to do was get caught on someone else's camera with my new alien husband. This whole thing could go my way as long as I was in charge of the release of information, as long as I could spin it the way I wanted.

I turned around the corner to head up the hill towards my apartment and stopped in my tracks, spinning in place to duck back out of sight. There was a large group of reporters, including several news vans, waiting in front of my place.

My heart pounded in my chest.

It was worse than I thought.

Those people, they had to be there for me. I knew from that sinking feeling in my gut and the tight pressure in my chest that this was getting out of control. I hadn't been online. I hadn't been posting. I hadn't been doing damage control.

Now the mainstream media had the story in their grasp.

I had a choice now. I could try to push through them while they took unflattering pictures and shouted questions at me, giving them a perfect guilty person of hating the media shop for their one minute new story on the drama llama that was my life. Or I could turn around. Aeson said he had everything I needed at the honeymoon. The only thing I was certain he didn't have was enough medication to get me through several days.

What I had in my purse would only last me till tomorrow at the rate I was going.

If I didn't want to face down the paparazzi storm and give them ammunition to the idea of me as a villain, then my only choice was to try the cure.

I knew my flaws as a person.

I was obstinate and self-assured, good at faking confidence instead of feeling it, and I definitely had a dose of narcissism most people nowadays called main character syndrome. But I wasn't so flawed that I would put my one chance at salvaging my future at risk just so I could avoid doing what the doctor ordered.

It was time to spend some time with my new honey on the moon. The idea excited me, but at the same time, I was apprehensive. I'd agreed to it, but at the same time, the fact that he insisted on sex grated on my nerves like nails scraping down a chalkboard.

My body clearly wanted him.

Despite the differences in our bodies, emotionally and mentally, I was most of the way there as well. The fact of the matter was though in saying that the relationship had to have sex, he was saying that his heart wasn't attracted to me. I knew I shouldn't make assumptions, especially about an alien species, but it didn't feel good.

That wasn't entirely true.

It felt good that he wanted me so bad physically that he was willing to set a boundary to the limits of self control. But that good feeling didn't negate the bad either or the desire that I had to be loved and wanted for what was inside my heart and mind.

Oh, I sure as hell was going to fuck him.

But I didn't know if I would ever trust that he truly loved me.

And it hurt that with one demand, he had taken away that possibility.