Assistant for the Alien Prince by Tammy Walsh
Jessica
I squirmedon the floor against the bonds that bound my wrists and ankles.
The knots were tight and I couldn’t seem to find any give in them.
I lay on the floor of the front room as the two men who’d broken in rifled through the drawers and shelves, filling sacks they’d brought with them.
The one who’d answered the door, whose name was Kenny, whistled a merry tune to himself as his accomplice, Daryl, danced a merry jig to a tune no one but him could hear.
I gagged on the oily rag they’d shoved in my mouth.
Though it curled my stomach to do so, I thrust my tongue against it to try and dislodge it but the tape over my mouth was not budging.
My breath struggled to fuel me with enough oxygen, so I rubbed my cheek against the abrasive carpet to curl one corner of the tape off my mouth and again tried to poke the rag out.
It worked, and I had a pinhole to suck fresh oxygen through.
I rubbed my mouth over the carpet to open up the hole further and succeeded in drawing it back.
Now my mouth was unrestricted and I could shout for help if I wanted to but there was no way I was going to do that with no neighbors within hearing distance.
I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid to think someone living nearby would have seen the Ev’vat shuttlecraft deposit me at the house.
There were no other houses within that distance who could see the house!
The nearest house was a farm twenty miles away!
Idiot, idiot, idiot!
This was what happened when you allowed yourself to trust strangers.
Now, what was I going to do?
There was no gorgeous hunk to save the day this time.
Maybe I wouldn’t need to shout for help with how much noise the thieves were making.
It was possible they would alert the officials all by themselves!
It was then I noticed how quiet it was.
A shadow fell over me and I immediately knew I was in trouble.
“What do you think you’re doing down there, girly?”
I threw my head back and yelled:
“Help! Somebody! Help!”
I had nothing to lose by shouting now.
The thief bent down to grab my arms as I kicked and flailed to spin around and strike at him, but with my legs tied together, it made my movements slow and cumbersome.
“You don’t want to be doing that, girly,” Kenny said. “The last thing you want is to get my blood boiling. You know what happens to a man when a female gets his blood boiling, don’t you?”
The threat of that made me turn as stiff as a board.
“Please,” I said. “Don’t hurt me. Take whatever you want, but don’t hurt me.”
“We have no intention of hurting you,” Kenny said, pulling out a fresh length of tape. “We want to get on with our job and then we’ll leave you be. We have nothing against women. We’re great fans of them, but we won’t take you with force—not unless you make us.”
“Please—” I managed as he shoved the oily rag in my mouth and taped it back up again.
“You’ve already proven we can’t trust you. You’ll just have to put up with it until we’re done here.”
He dragged me into the next room and sat me in the middle of the study as he and his buddy continued their activity.
How did I get myself into these situations?
Hadn’t I been through enough already?
Wasn’t I owed a little peace and quiet?
My heart was still bruised from the day’s exploits and disappointments.
I wished this day would finally come to an end and I could forget about it and shove it from my mind.
Anything was better than this.
Anything.
Even hiding away from the world and avoiding the giddy highs.
Wasn’t this what Zai had warned me about when it came to living alone and far from anyone else?
That there would be no one there to help or protect me if things went wrong?
How right he was.
Thump, thump, thump!
“Did you hear that?” Kenny said.
The sound came again.
Thump, thump, thump!
“Hey. Quit it for a second!” Kenny said, blocking his cohort from his noisy ransacking.
Daryl glared at him until he too heard the sound:
Thump, thump, thump!
“Someone’s at the door,” Kenny said.
He turned to me.
“Expecting anyone?”
I shook my head vehemently and wished now my mouth was free and clear so I could yell a warning to the stranger.
Kenny pursed his lips and nodded toward the door that led into the hallway.
“Go see who it is.”
“Me?” Daryl said. “Why do I have to go? You should go.”
“We take turns in answering the door, remember?”
“But that was to speak to the occupant! Not when someone’s knocking on the front door!”
“What’s the difference? It’s your turn!”
Kenny snatched the sack from Daryl’s hands and shoved him forward.
Daryl glared at him before slinking into the hallway.
Thump, thump, thump.
Kenny crouched beside me and held something sharp under my chin.
“Not a word out of you, if you please,” he said. “The Lord knows we don’t want any unfortunate accidents.”
We heard Daryl’s grumbling as he answered the door, then the slow drawl of someone answering him.
Please, please, please help me!
I whimpered and the knife pressed against my throat.
“Sh, sh, sh, sh,” Kenny said. “Let’s not get too excited.”
The voices stopped and the hallway outside turned silent.
The front door creaked as it was slowly shut and then footsteps came walking toward us.
“Daryl?” Kenny said. “Who was it?”
Daryl didn’t say a word and continued walking toward us.
I felt the knife at my neck tighten.
“Daryl?” Kenny said. “Who was it?”
Again, there was no response and the footsteps continued to pound their way toward us.
Even I was a little scared.
And I was the one who stood to be rescued from all this!
The footsteps never slowed but seemed to take forever to reach the doorway.
It was Daryl.
Kenny almost melted into a puddle of relief.
“You had me going there for a minute! Why didn’t you answer me when I spoke?”
Daryl looked from Kenny to me at his feet, and back again.
“Daryl?” Kenny said, tucking his knife away.
“Because I couldn’t program his voice quickly enough,” Daryl said, though it wasn’t in his gravelly voice but one as deep and smooth as silk.
His eyes flashed purple in the moonlight and he moved faster than I could believe as his arm grabbed something at his waist and fired at Kenny.
He took the bolt full in the chest, knocking him off his feet and spilling end over end in the air before hitting the back wall and collapsing in a heap on the floor.
I just stared at the figure.
With his smooth voice that I knew so well and the flashing purple of his irises, I knew who was wearing the Daryl costume but could barely bring myself to believe it.
“Zai?” I said, though my voice came as muffles through the tape.
He crossed the room in two short strides and disabled his holo-collar.
It flickered to reveal his regular appearance as he bent down and wrapped me in his arms.
“What is it with you and bad boys?” he said, hugging me close.
He eased the tape off me slowly but I wrenched my head to one side to whip it off faster.
“You came!” I wept. “You really came!”
“Of course I came! Did they hurt you? I swear to the Creator himself if they did—”
“They didn’t hurt me.”
He growled before aiming his big broad grin at me and running his lips over every inch of my face.
“Thisis why you should never be apart from me,” he said. “You attract danger to you like floop to besatch juice.”
The moment he freed my hands, I wrapped my arms around him, drawing him to me as tightly as I could.
“I’ve been thinking about it… and I decided to be your fated mate. Is it too late?”
“It’s never too late. You are my fated mate from the moment we met until the day I die. Nothing can ever change that.”
“What happened to the wedding?”
“The groom suddenly took off. But he’ll need to head back and tell everyone it’s off.”
“Why do that?” I said. “There’s no need to waste a perfectly good wedding.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I’ll marry you! If you still want me…”
The smile that curled his lips was a work of art.
“I’ll have to think about it,” he said cheekily. “What happened to living in this house by yourself?”
“I gave it a try but it wasn’t what I thought. I’d much rather live here alone… with you.”
“Technically that’s not alone. But you should know, I can’t live here forever. I have a kingdom to run.”
“I know. But maybe we can come back sometimes. During weekends, holidays… things like that?”
“Will you be okay living in a palace the rest of the time?”
“Sure. What is a palace but a bunch of lonely rooms anyway?”
He grinned and buried his lips on mine.
“I love you, my little human.”
“I love you too, my big Ev’vat.”
He scooped me up and carried me like I weighed less than a feather.
He took me into his waiting ship and told the computer to return to the temple.
