Power: BBW Alien Lottery Romance (Chosen by the Karal Book 3) (3 page)

“Hi. Tea?” she asked.

His face darkened. He opened his mouth to refuse, but then he paused, perhaps hearing the rain on the roof, and then said, “Yes.” Although she imagined he was saying yes from a need to drink rather because he wanted to accept her hospitality.

She turned and placed the tea bags in the cups and poured on water. Stirring them, she smelt each cup to try to gauge the strength. The tea bags were laced with chamomile, a treat she saved for special days. This felt like one of those days, or maybe she wanted to impress him. Just as he impressed her.

“Here,” she said, turning to pass him a cup, but he had moved across to the other side of the warehouse.

Taking the two cups, she watched him as he looked at her paintings. She wanted to say
admired
them, but she wasn’t sure; his expression was flat and unreadable. Placing the two cups down on the table next to her new paints, she impulsively picked up her sketchpad and began to draw him.

He was as close to perfect as she had ever seen. His posture strong and upright, his muscles toned but not bulging as some of those stupid fake shirts made men look. With dark features, he looked brooding and when another shiver travelled through her body, she acknowledged she found him almost menacing. Perhaps being here alone with him might not be such a good idea.

However, a rumble above told her they were trapped together, unless she wanted to hand him a death sentence. She thought of the boy and the old woman under the arches, and knew there was a good chance that tomorrow she could go and reclaim her coat from the dead woman’s body. If other scavengers hadn’t already beaten her to it. The market was going to be thin on traders if the storm swept rain down to fill the tunnels.

Realising she was staring, she ducked her head and pencilled in some more lines to complete the rough sketch. When he left she would fill in all the details and keep it as a reminder of the day she played host to an alien, for that was most definitely what he was.

The paintings were breath-taking. Full of life and colour, all the more extraordinary because he knew that hardly any of either were left on this Earth.

“I like your paintings.” He should have been more human and told her how he admired the way she captured the very soul of what she had painted. Especially the sorrow of the elephant, he thought that was what the extinct creature was called in human tongue. It was like the arundas that roamed his planet in large herds, only arundas had long necks for eating the treetops.

He saw pictures of humans too, their expressions happy, a stark contrast to the scenes of desolation which filled the canvases behind them. And then there were pictures of mountains and trees, an image of an Earth long gone. But so similar to Karal. He flicked his attention over to her. She sat scribbling for a moment before placing the paper down and getting up to stand near him.

Too near. His heartbeat quickened as he caught a wave of emotion. It didn’t sweep over him, it hit him square in the chest. Almost imperceptivity he reached out his hand, trying to catch hold of the wave and read it. He wanted to place his hand on hers, to feel everything she felt. Emotions so strong, so powerful and vibrant. How could a spirit be so strong, so powerful, in amongst such desolation?

“When I was a child, my father used to show me pictures of all the life that used to live on Earth. He was one of the last conservationists. Ironic really, because already most of the wildlife had gone from our land. But he campaigned so hard to save what little habitats were left. He gave me dreams, dreams I learned to turn into paintings.” A wave of sadness swept over her and out to him; he caught it, revelling in the depth and strength of her passion.

She stirred up sensations in his body and emotions deep in his brain, feelings that he never thought himself capable of experiencing. It resonated with the paintings in front of him. Passion. Pure and raw, and it made him want to experience life on her level.

However, he could not be open to so much. Only by shutting down his emotions, could he deal with his people. If he could not switch off all the emotions Karalians experienced, it would exhaust him, drain his very soul from him. It had taken many years for his father to teach him how to shut other people’s emotions out at will; he could not abandon that training now.

“You love your father.” He wanted to examine her, interrogate her, to find out how she could cope with being this passionate in every moment.

“Loved. He … died.”

More sadness and loss. “Died?” He wanted to push her, to make her open up the wound that had never healed. He wanted to put his fingertips to her pain and experience it with her.

But she moved away, and the connection dulled. She picked up her cup and sipped the hot tea, wincing at the heat as if she hoped to cauterise her hurt. “He was killed when he tried to protect the last of the ancient trees. The bulldozers went right through the trees … and the protestors.”

As she spoke she shut down her emotions, becoming unreadable to him, and the room seemed darker somehow. She was a light, a beacon in this depressing world. And he wanted her, wanted to possess her. To take her to his world and give her life and colours, and allow her to be happy and heal.

Lytril, Hier Ruler of Karal, turned from her and went to see if the rain had stopped. He had to escape her and the power she had over him. In two days’ time he would leave this awful planet with his lottery winner, breed with her and then send her away. Then his life would return to normal.

However, as he heard her moving around behind him, he knew that she had taken normal away from him and it would never be his again.

Vanessa had not thought of her father for so long, it was easier just to push him out of her mind, out of her memories. He had taught her how to dream, how to see the beauty in everything. Encouraging her to paint, to use her art to show the world what they were in danger of losing.

And then it was all lost, her career pointless. There was nothing left to appreciate, and for Vanessa there was nothing left to love. Her mom had died when Vanessa was only six years old, so her father had become her world. They had travelled together under the dull skies, as he tried to show her what was left of the planet.

When he died, a part of her was lost forever. The only thing she had left was her painting, a thing she had put away, unable to even think about colours and life when death surrounded her.

Then the dreams had started. Nights where she woke up hot and feverish, where the only escape was to get out of bed, drag her easel out and paint. The first painting had been of the trees and her father; it had purged the loss from her mind, replacing it with an almost irrational urge to paint vibrant colours and life, mostly at night. In some way, she thought her father connected to her in those twilight hours and planted the pictures in her head.

It was the thing that had kept her sane as the rest of the world slipped further into madness. Madness fuelled by the arrival of the aliens, the Karal.

“What’s your world like?” she asked, turning to where he stood.

His hand pressed against the door, as if hoping to keep out the flood which must be flowing down the street. But she had seen worse and knew the warehouse wouldn’t leak. Although, as a protective measure, most of her paintings were stored on the next level. Everything else on the ground floor could be moved quickly upstairs if needed.

He whirled around to face her, and at first, she thought he was going to deny who he was. Then as his face darkened. She wondered if instead he might simply kill her to keep his identity a secret. After all, why was a Karalian walking past her home on a night like this? He had a secret. One he could keep. She wanted no part of him, only for him to give her new dreams, new life to paint.

“Alive,” he answered simply.

“Will you tell me? About your world? I’ll find some food, it won’t be much, and you should drink your tea before it gets cold.”

“I do not need your food,” he answered, but he came back towards her.

“You probably wouldn’t want to eat it anyway.” She smiled, hoping he would still tell her about his world. The lights flickered and she moved to light the candles; the dark spells became longer than the light as the power faded from the grid. “Here, help me with these.”

He hesitated and then took the unlit candles from her and she showed him where to place them while she lit each in turn. The flickering electric lights gave the whole apartment a strobing effect, disorientating her. She should be used to it by now, but she never was. She hated the dark; it reminded her of how her life felt when her father died.

As they lit the last candle, the electricity finally flickered out for the last time. Vanessa went to the switches and turned them off; she had known fires break out when the electricity surged back into old wiring. She didn’t want to risk anything happening to her paintings.

“Is it always like this?” he asked.

“The lights? Yes.” She went to the table and sat down on one of the sofas surrounding it. “You might as well make yourself comfortable; it will be hours until it’s safe to go outside again.”

“How do you live like this?” he asked, disgust lacing his voice.

“Because there is no other way to live.” She tried to collect her thoughts and explain it more clearly. “We all cling onto a hope it will get better. Although we know it’s not going to. Or at least that’s what people believed before you came. Now they cling to the hope that you are our saviours.”

“I am not.”

“I know.” They were beyond saving; she might be one of the only humans to realise that as fact. “But you cannot stop people from hoping. Especially when you have given some women the chance to escape, with your lottery.”

“Do you enter the lottery? To escape?”

She shook her head. “No. I will die here on the Earth. It’s my home.”

“Yet you want to know what my planet is like.”

“Yes. So I can paint it. If you tell me, it will fuel my imagination. There’s nothing left on this planet to do that. Only books and pictures. And dreams.” She hesitated.
Weren’t those enough?
“But if you tell me, I can paint it, make it real.”

“I do not wish your people to hope. I do not wish you to paint my planet in case it gives them false hope. The lottery will enable some females to come to Karal, but many more of them will die here.”

“We know that. And anyway, we all die.” She was quiet for a moment. “Please. Just one thing. Describe to me the most amazing thing you have ever seen on your planet.”

“There are too many to choose from.”

She smiled at his evasion. “Pick a favourite. One thing.”

“No.” He folded his arms, reminding her of a little child, obstinate and uncooperative.

Perhaps if she went first, he might be more willing. “Once, when I was five, my father bought home a seed. He had found it while out looking for work. He didn’t find a job, but we didn’t care, because he had found something so much better, he had found potential life.” She looked up to see him still with his arms folded, but he was listening to her.

Taking a sip of her tea, she looked across to her paintings on the wall. She had all of the time in the world to wait. Her father had taught her that patience was a gift to cultivate in the same way they had lovingly cultivated that little seed.

He took a sip of his tea and grimaced, but then took another sip, his face settling to a look of distaste instead of disgust. How different it must be on his planet, with enough food, water and power to live comfortably. So much like the generations who had lived so long ago. The time stretched out between them, and she calmly waited, feeling his impatience growing.

“Did it grow? The seed.”

“Tell me about your favourite thing,” she countered. “And I’ll tell you about the seed.”

“I do not bargain,” he said bluntly.

She got up from the sofa and held her hand out for his cup, which he had now drained. He handed it to her and she went back into the kitchen, feeling hungry. Opening the cupboard, she took out some crackers, dry and probably a little stale, but if she coated them with some synthetic cheese spread, they were edible.

Reaching for a plate, she placed the crackers out, spreading them with a thin layer of cheese. Wrinkling her nose at the smell. Edible. Just.

Going back to settle herself down on the sofa, she offered him one, but he held his hand up, not wanting the food near him. Eating them carefully, trying not to let the crumbs spill everywhere, she ate them while he glanced at her nervously, and then back to her paintings.

With a loud sigh he once more went to the door. The rain could still be heard on the roof. Vanessa waited patiently while he looked outside, shut the door a little hard and then came back to her. His hair was dry now, and it curled around his neck, making him look somehow wild, primal in his bearing.

While she ate, her fingers itched to pick up the pencil and paper once more and sketch him, but she kept her cool while she ate the crackers. He fidgeted more, and she wondered if he had ever had to sit so still, with no entertainment, before.

At last, she finished her crackers and said, “I just realised we have not introduced ourselves. I am Vanessa Roderick.”

His eyes narrowed as if he was trying to work out if this was a new game. “I have no use of your name and you have no use of mine.”

She sighed at the air of superiority he had around him; he reminded her of the ‘pents’ who tried to block out their species’ demise by living high up above the smog, their houses opulent, filled with antiques from a forgotten age of plenty.

Knowing he was a guest and she should bite her tongue, she said, “Do you have no use for manners on your planet either? Now I am beginning to see that living the rest of my life on Earth is probably a happier prospect than any woman who wins the lottery might have. Or are you one of a kind?”

“How long until the rain stops?” he asked abruptly, ignoring her question. She thought he was going to go and look out of the door again, unable to work out why he was so rude and restless. This might not be where he needed to be right now, but his other choice was to brave the rain. Which left him no choice at all.