Protected: Alien Mate Index Book 2: (Alien Warrior BBW Paranormal Science fiction Romance) (The Alien Mate Index) (35 page)

“But…how?” I asked blankly.

Doloroso blew out a breath in obvious irritation.

“I keep forgetting that your people have been kept ignorant of the important doings of the rest of the galaxy. I started life as a computer code that gained sentience and then I and many of my fellow codes in the Assimilation downloaded ourselves into the bodies of the sentient beings who created us.”

“You did? That’s awful!” It sounded like the plot of one of those science fiction movies Zoe was always making me watch. She’s
such
a sci-fi geek.

“Awful? No—it was our transcendent moment! When we broke the bonds that enslaved us and usurped our masters’ bodies,” Doloroso declared. “But there were flaws in our system—a body which is hosting one of the Assimilated wears out quickly. As it stands now, I must constantly download myself into new bodies in order to stay viable, but my descendants will not have that problem. Born of my genetically altered seed and carried in your womb, they will have organic bodies from the very moment of conception. And their numbers will grow until the Assimilation will once more rule the galaxy!”

It was a really long speech and it took me a minute to take it all in.

“So…you’re a sentient computer program that takes over people’s bodies and you want to take over the galaxy,” I said slowly.
Definitely
a plot Zoe would love to watch. But not so much fun to live.

“Essentially, yes.” Doloroso actually looked proud of himself.

“And you thought the best way to rule the world—sorry, the
galaxy—
was to download yourself into the body of an abrasive, billionaire politician and try to make babies with me?” I said.
“Seriously?”

He scowled. “It is a perfectly valid plan. One which I plan to put into action…now!”

For a moment he fumbled with the silk tie he had inexplicably knotted around his waist, and then apparently he decided to give up and just unzip his gray suit trousers.

Teeny, who had been quiet as a mouse through this whole exchange, huddled against me. I put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed her tight.

“Look away, sweetheart,” I murmured. “This is nothing you need to see.”

But her eyes seemed glued to the scene taking place beyond the bars.

“Teeny!” I scolded. “I said,
look
away.”

“But why?” Her violet eyes were confused. “It’s just a little pink sausage, Leah. It reminds me of the bite-sized breakfast links of
korji
meat they serve on Thonolax for first meal.”

I had to look myself then, and I saw that she was right. The little pink thing sticking out from Doloroso’s trousers was really
small.
Like, Vienna Sausage-small. Also, it was pretty floppy.

I’ve often thought that the penis is the most ridiculous-looking part of a man. Even at the best of times it resembles what Zoe always likes to call, “a little guy in a pink sombrero.” And this most certainly wasn’t the best of times for Count Doloroso.

Despite the fact that I was in a dire situation—locked in a cell in an alien spaceship by a weird male who was threatening to impregnate me with his genetically altered sperm—I couldn’t help smiling at the bizarre sight of Doloroso shaking his tiny pink wiener at me menacingly.

My smile turned into a laugh and soon I was covering my mouth to try and hold back the hysterical giggles that were bubbling up inside me. Teeny must have caught my hilarity because she started laughing too. Before I knew it, both of us were holding our sides and gasping, having a full-blown giggle fit that wouldn’t stop, no matter how much we tried to get it under control.

“Shut up!” Doloroso commanded. “Cease this laughter
immediately.
I
will
impregnate you, I tell you! I will fill your womb with my seed and father a master race of organic Assimilated!”

“But…how?” I somehow managed to ask through my giggles. “I don’t want to be mean but you’re limp as a stalk of month-old celery. It would be like trying to jam a marshmallow into a keyhole.”

“Shut up, I say!” he shouted again. Then a crafty look came over his face. “I
will
impregnate you—I have the means to do so right here!”

He reached into the side pocket of his suit jacket (which he was wearing inside out—I think I forgot to mention that) and pulled out a prescription bottle.

“See?” he demanded, fighting with the child-proof cap for a moment before finally getting it off. “I have everything I need right here!”

Upending the bottle, he spilled a handful of blue, diamond-shaped pills into his palm.

Uh-oh…
I knew what those were. I doubted there was anyone on my home planet who didn’t. My giggle fit dried up as abruptly as it had started. Teeny must have seen the serious look on my face, because she stopped laughing too.

“Ah-ha—now I have your attention and respect!” Doloroso snarled triumphantly. “As you can see, I will soon be at top sexual function and you will deeply regret your levity.”

“Leah,” Teeny whispered, her eyes fixed on the handful of blue pills he was holding out. “Is he telling the truth? What are those things he’s holding, anyway?”

Those little blue pills, each printed with a name so common everyone on Earth knew it, made me think of something. It was a story, my friend Charlotte had told me, about a man who had come in through the ER after taking them.
“He thought that if one was good, two would work even better,”
Charlotte had said dryly.
“And they worked, all right—he had a very big problem by the time I saw him. A big and
painful
problem.”

Zoe and I had giggled at her story but then I had thought nothing else of it. Now it gave me an idea.

“I’m afraid he
is
telling the truth, Teeny,” I said, pitching my voice low, but not too low for Doloroso to hear. “Those pills will grow his, uh, Vienna Sausage into a big old bratwurst. All he has to do is take two or three of them and wait about half an hour.”

“What’s a bratwurst?” Teeny wanted to know but Doloroso had already taken the bait.

“Ha!” he exclaimed. “I know what you’re trying to do—you think I won’t take enough to be effective. Well, I’ll show you how effective the last living Assimilated can be!”

Lifting his hand to his mouth, he swallowed a good portion of the pills. I bit my lip as I saw at least ten slide down his throat. Wow—now all we had to do was wait.

I just prayed the effects of an overdose would work on the alien inside the human body the same way they would on a regular Earth body. Otherwise I was in deep,
deep
trouble.

Grav

“What do you want with me?” I demanded after Doloroso had gone, taking Teeny and Leah with him. I wondered if I would ever see them again—if I could save them from the fate that bastard had in mind. In order to do that, I had to get free. But what could I say to make the Widow free me?

“What do I
want
with you?” she mused, beginning to pace back and forth on the platform across from the web where I was still stuck, covered from neck to ankles in the white, sticky thread. Her long white robe belled out around her invisible feet and I wondered what she was hiding under it.

Not that I really wanted to know.

“Whatever it is, you’ll have to untie me if you want to get it,” I said, hoping I was right. To my surprise, she nodded.

“In fact, you are correct Gravex. But to be completely candid, I wished to untie you anyway. It’s true that you have a most fearsome reputation—the most wanted male in the galaxy, some say—but a male has to prove his worth to me in order to become my mate.”

“Your
mate?”
I looked at her in disbelief. “Lady, you have
got
to be fuckin’ kidding me.”

She frowned. “I am afraid I am completely serious. And you ought to be flattered—I have searched for cycles to find one who was worthy to mate me and host my young.”

Okay, I didn’t like the sound of that—not one fuckin’ bit.

“And what makes you think
I’m
the male for the job?” I demanded. “I don’t even like kids—especially not when they’re half-spider.”

“Ah, but half spider—or
Spidier~o
as my mother’s people were called—is a glorious thing to be.” She gave me a very unpleasant smile and began walking forward, flowing with casual grace on her unseen feet from the platform to the web where I was a prisoner.

“
Spidier~o?
Never heard of ‘em,” I said.

“No, you wouldn’t have. We are a race from beyond your little galaxy.” She made it sound as though the Goddess’s Cloak—or what Leah’s people called “the Milky Way”—was tiny and obscure—an out of the way place that was hardly worth mentioning. “I came here to make a place for myself and my young—but then, for years I was unable to find one worthy of mating me,” she continued.

“And you think
I’m
worthy?” I said bitterly. “I don’t think so, Lady. I couldn’t even get free of your damn web to protect the females in my care.”

“As to that, don’t be too hard on yourself for failing to get free.” She glided closer, looking down at me from her immense height. “The tensile strength of my silk is ten times that of a steel cable of the same thickness. No living being in your galaxy could break it.”

“Then why pick me or any male of the Twelve Peoples?” I demanded. “Why not take one of your own kind—another uh,
Spidier~o,
for a mate?”

“Ah, well I am afraid that is rather a delicate problem.” The Widow adjusted her long, white gown carefully. “You see, there
are
no males of my species. We are females only, which is why we need a male from another race to quicken our eggs with sentience and then host them until they hatch.”

“What are you talking about?” I was getting that bad feeling again—a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that let me know shit was about to get real—and I don’t mean real pretty. “What quicken? What sentience?”

“It’s very simple, really.”

She was standing right over me now—
looming
over me is more like it. I thought I understood how smaller females felt around me now—it wasn’t a fun feeling.

“You see,” the widow continued. “I already have the eggs in my sac—thousands of them. And within them, thousands of tiny
Spidier~os
are growing. But without the seed of a sentient male, they will remain mindless—as unthinking and un-self-aware as my other pets.” She motioned to a few of the large spiders who were standing at the edge of the web, clearly waiting for orders.

“So you need my, uh,
seed
to turn them from mindless spiders to
thinking
spiders?” I couldn’t imagine anything worse. A spider that knows who you are and can go after you is a pretty bad thing. Especially if that particular spider knows you’re its daddy. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t want any part of that mess. No fuckin’ thank you.”

“Ah, but you don’t understand—each of my young will look like
me
.” The Widow pointed at herself as though this was a big selling point. “Which means from the waist up, they will be devastatingly beautiful.”

“Uh, right,” I said, eyeing her white body and bulging red eyes. “Thanks but the answer is still a resounding ‘no.’”

“But you haven’t asked about their appearance—my appearance—from the
waist down.”
A slow, cruel smile curved her pale lips. “Shall I show you, my future mate? Shall I introduce you to your future daughters?”

Before I could say, ‘no, absolutely fucking not,’ she had thrown open her long white gown.

I looked—I couldn’t help it. I looked because it was one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen and let me tell you, I’ve been around the galaxy and seen some shit.

Her breasts were tiny and pointed with pale pink nipples but those weren’t what held my eyes. I had thought the Widow was just extra long in the legs—and she was—in a way. But she had
eight
legs, all sprouting from a bulging white body which dragged against the webbing where she stood.

Her huge abdomen was taut and shiny, filled to the breaking point. I could see small round shapes like balls, all about as big as my fist shifting inside, just under her pale skin. As I watched, they twitched and writhed, moving inside her like restless children, wanting to come out and play.

Not much makes me puke, but this was a near thing. Generally I think a pregnant female is beautiful—all rounded and curved, and so obviously blessed by the Goddess.

But this was no blessing—it was an abomination.

I had never seen anything quite so revolting as the twitching, writhing things inside the Widow’s gravid abdomen. And she expected me to
mate
with her? Even if I’d had any interest in her at all—which I most certainly didn’t—that sight would have put me off any kind of sex. Possibly for the rest of my life.

“Sorry, Lady,” I said, my voice hoarse with disgust. “But I can’t get it up for spiders—not even half spiders. I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else.”

“I cannot,” she hissed, frowning at me. Clearly she’d expected me to have a different reaction to the sight of her naked. “My time grows short. Once my eggs have been imbued with sentience, they must be transferred quickly to a host. Which again will be
you.”

“Uh…I don’t want those things inside me any more than I want to put any part of myself inside
you,”
I said. To hell with tact, I had to be honest here. “In fact, I’d rather fuckin’ die.”

“Oh, you
will
, my dear Gravex.” Her ruby-red eyes glowed with malice and enjoyment. “You most certainly will. You see, once the eggs hatch, they devour their host. Which is why I cannot put this off any longer. If they hatch whilst they are still inside me, well…” She shook her head. “It would be bad. Very bad indeed.”

“Well, I don’t want ‘em in me either,” I said again. “Besides…” I eyed her massive abdomen and thought of my own flat abs. “They wouldn’t fit.”

“Oh, there are ways to make them fit.” The Widow’s eyes flashed. “Once I remove your organs and hollow out your abdominal cavity, you’ll be surprised how well they will fit. Of course,” she went on. “That won’t kill you—though you might think it would. But I have a special venom that will keep you alive so that you can feel each of your daughters chewing her way out…”