Stolen By the Alien by Ashlyn Hawkes

1

Hannah

It’s a beautiful night, just gorgeous, with thick, fat snowflakes falling down all around me as I walk along the sidewalk. Christmas will be here in two weeks, and I haven’t figured out what to get Luca.

Luca Russo.

My fiancé.

He's only the hottest guy I've ever met, and sometimes, I have to pinch myself. How can it be that he's with me? That he picked me to be the woman he loves for the rest of his life? And he has a massive cock that doesn't hurt matters. A massive bank account, too, but I'm an independent woman. I never let him buy me hugely expensive, extravagant things, and even though he has an eight-figure bank account, he doesn't walk around with the latest watches, high-end suits, or a fancy car. Well, his car is fancy. So very amazing, and when he upgraded to it, he sold me his old car. I made him not give me a discount either. Independent. Momma didn't raise no gold digger.

But seriously, what do you get the guy who has everything he wants and the money to buy anything he didn't want?

So I enter and exit so many different stores, but I can't settle on anything, and I'm not going to do that—settle. It has to be perfect because Luca is the perfect guy for me. He deserves something amazing.

Something glitters in the darkness. My engagement ring. The rock is huge. It’s the only thing I allowed Luca to get me that is extravagant. I mean, I didn’t have a say in the ring that he picked out for me. Actually, I think he picked the stone and the setting. It’s a huge diamond with sapphires encircling it and then more diamonds in a circle all around that. Sapphires. His birthstone, not mine. Mine is December, but I’ve never liked the shade of blue of a blue topaz. Sapphire is so much prettier, and it makes the ring feel more like ours than just mine.

My walk brings me closer to the edge of the shopping district and nearer to the residential area. My best friend, Brea O'Sullivan, lives near here. She'll be home at this hour. I'll swing her way. Maybe she'll have an idea about what I can get Luca.

In five minutes, I walk up to Brea’s house. It’s a small half-a-double, a cute starter home. I so wish she would find her Luca already. We’re both twenty-three, and we’re ready to take the world by storm and make our mark on it. We’re going to change the future.

Brea and I both have keys to each other’s places. Luca and I have been together for four years now. For three and a half of those years, he begged me to move in with him. I finally did half a year ago, after he proposed.

I’m still independent, though. You don’t have to worry about that.

I use my key to let myself in. “Brea?” I call.

She doesn’t answer. The light is on in her kitchen, but she’s not in there either. Hmm. Her car is parked out front, so she’s somewhere around.

Maybe she’s taking a shower.

I head toward her bedroom when I hear a faint sound and then another. A very distinct sound. Moaning.

Brea’s seeing someone? Since when?

I halt there, caught between surprise and elation. Brea and I have known each other since grade school. We've been either best friends or best enemies all of our lives. I had a boyfriend first—Greg Jensen—but then Brea stole him away. She dumped him a week later. That had been in the sixth grade, and it took three years for us to become friends again. Her boyfriend at the time had cheated on her, and she had been a wreck, a complete wreck. She called me up, drunk as a skunk—yes, at thirteen—and I biked over to the party she'd gone to and walked her home. We became best friends again, but then during our senior year of high school, she begged me to let her cheat off of me for a final. I wouldn't let her. She failed as a result and had to go to summer school to graduate, but she dated a guy she met at summer school, so she forgave me quickly. We went to college together—both of us going for business—and we've been best friends ever since. We've sworn to never fight over anything ever again.

We all make mistakes, and she’s grown and changed so much over the years. So have I. We need each other in our lives to push each other. During college, we had been competitive, and as a result, we both graduated with honors, her failing back in high school a distant memory.

She moans again, and I go to leave when I hear a grunt.

A familiar grunt.

A grunt only I should hear for the rest of his life.

No. No, I must be tired. I’m hearing things.

But then he grunts again.

I’m not a confrontational person. Even when I stood up to Brea and wouldn’t let her cheat off of me, I almost panicked and let her just so that I wouldn’t lose a friend.

But I stood firm, and I’m so glad I did.

And fuck that shit. I’m going to stand firm now.

Er, walk firm.

I march over to Brea's bedroom door and shove it open. In the blink of an eye, the image of my best friend riding my fiancé's cock, his one hand reaching behind to grab her ass, maybe even having a finger shoved up it, is seared into my mind, and I just stand there with my mouth open.

It’s one thing hearing them.

It’s another to see them.

The door slams against the wall, and Brea and Luca jerk.

“Hannah,” Luca starts. His brown hair looks curlier than normal, and his green eyes pierce through me. He has a boyish face and a ready smile that isn’t visible right now.

“Don’t ‘Hannah’ me,” I snap.

"Why don't you join us?" Brea asks as she has the audacity to start riding my fiancé again. She brushes her reddish-brown hair back. Her pale skin almost glows from the hallway light behind me shining into her dark room.

Join them? Fuck that shit.

I go to yank off the ring, but Luca shakes his head.

“No. I found the pussy I want,” Luca says. “I don’t want to feel anyone else’s.”

My heart sinks. One condition Luca always had was that he wouldn’t go condom-less inside me until we got married. Is he… Is the shithead actually bareback inside of that vixen? That hussy? That tramp?

“You’re leaving me for her?” I scoff. “Seriously? You want to be with someone else, then be a fucking man about it, Luca. You break the shit off first before you wet your cock with some other chick’s pussy, and you, Brea? Fuck you. You stole my first boyfriend away. You’re nothing but a homewrecker, and—”

“You two didn’t have a home together,” Brea says. She moans, still riding him. “Yes, fuck, darling, you know I love it when you play with my ass hole.”

"You two fucking deserve each other," I shout. I yank off the engagement ring. It's not easy to take their keys off my keyring, and besides, I'll need to get my stuff out of his place.

Luca pushes Brea away. It’s only then that I realize he has a glove on his hand. He removes it and tosses it onto the side of the bed away from me. Good because I wouldn’t have tolerated that at all.

My fiancé—er, my former fiancé—eyes me. “Hannah, I’m sorry. I just… I fell out of love with you and in love with your best friend. Can you blame me?”

“Yes, dude, I fucking can, and I fucking do. You want out? Then you tell me. It’s that simple. How…” I swallow hard. “How long have you two been fucking behind my back?”

“Not always behind your back,” Brea admits.

My eyes widen. “You mean…”

“That time when you thought someone broke into your place?” Brea smirks. “I hid in your closet and then had to sneak out. Honestly, Hannah Porter, I don’t know how you could think that anyone would ever see you when I’m right here.”

Luca shrugs and leans back, lounging in my best friend’s bed. I guess, as horrible as all of this is, that it’s better to be here than for them to be in the bed that I slept with him in just last night. “She’s right, you know.”

“Both of you can go to hell,” I fume. “You’re terrible, and to ask me to join you? That’s so very low. You two are garbage. Luca, don’t be surprised if she screws you just for your money, and, Brea, seriously? Did you forget about how you felt when you had been cheated on? You made me deal with your stinkin’ ass with puke all down your shirt, and—”

“If you think I care about all of that,” Brea starts.

“I don’t rightly care what you think,” I declare.

Brea leans forward, and I think she’s going to suck his cock, but she picks up my engagement ring. Laughing, she goes to put it on, but I just turn and walk away because I already know that my fingers are much smaller than hers. There’s no way she’ll be able to put it on.

I march out of there, picking up anything and everything I see that's mine along the way, and then I look at the clothes, the hair stuff, and realize I don't want it. It's stuff I wore around both of them, and I just want to move on, to move forward, so I dump all of it into her trash.

My head held as high as I could, I rush out of there, ignoring the loud moans I can hear from upstairs in her bedroom. I’m so glad I couldn’t find anything to buy Russo, but I would’ve just returned it for my money, and Brea’s gift? I’m going to keep it myself, a fancy perfume she’s been dying to wear. I’m not a perfume girl, though, so I’ll probably return it just to be rid of it.

I walked today to shop because I love the wintertime. Being bundled up, the snowflakes coating everything, making everything so pretty and beautiful. It’s my favorite time of year.

I won’t let them take that away from me. Christmas is my favorite holiday, and I never ever buy myself anything at all.

That's about to change. I saw a brand new bakery not that far from here. I need something sweet and chocolatey and hot chocolate to drink with loads and loads of marshmallows. I need something to perk up my spirits.

The snow is heavier now, and I try to have a bit of a bounce to my step, but I can’t. I just can’t.

The snow falls even heavier, and I pause, inhaling deeply as I lift my chin to stare up into the darkness of the nighttime sky with the swirling white of the snow.

Without warning, a bright light shines down on me. It’s warm, so very warm, making me sweat, and then the strangest sensation washes over me as I start to float. There are other people all around me, but they don’t seem to notice somehow, and then I’m moving far too fast for anyone to see, traveling upward with the beam of light and into some kind of… I don’t know where I am. My vision is a bit blurred, and all I can see is a hulking figure of a muscular man…

With green skin…