Tamed By The Alien Barbarian by Celeste King
Jaxil
There’s not enough bourbon on this planet to clear my head, I thought as I emptied the bottle from my office’s mini-bar into my well-used glass. Maybe in the galaxy.
I tossed back another sip. I could barely feel the alcohol. Maybe someone had been sneaking into my office and drinking it and replacing it with water? It was a trick I heard human kids did now and again.
Humans. Dammit it all. Now I’m thinking about her again.
It didn’t matter what I did, it seemed. All mental roads somehow led back to that spanking that had took a turn for the weird.
Oddly, it wasn’t the humiliating photos of me with a raging erection, now scattered all over intergalactic newsfeeds, that had driven me to drinking and brooding. To be honest, I’d gotten more fuck requests in the few days since that photo appeared than I have in a while. Let’s face it, my cock looked huge.
No, the thing that had driven me to drink was her. That girl. The so-called entrepreneur. The ex-stripper who was also my so-called competition. Candi.
More than that, the thing that had sent me scrambling for the bar yet again was the lingering thought of how attracted I was to her.
But that wasn’t possible, was it? For me to this attracted to my rival? First of all, what is there about her that could possibly turn me on, other than how hot she was and how she seemed to enjoy my spanking her? Because, first and foremost, she was The Enemy. Her company needed to be crushed. Which, by extension, meant that she needed to be crushed.
And I can think of a million places where I’d like to crush her sweet little body, I found myself thinking.
“Stop it,” I heard myself saying aloud.
I tossed back the rest of the drink. I still didn’t feel any effect from the booze. Instead, I still felt captive to a swirl of emotions that set my horns tingling and my wings fluttering.
I turned my glass over above my mouth and got a few more little drops of bourbon. I was determined to squeeze every bit of booze out of that glass as I could. It was all I had, since I couldn’t squeeze what I wanted out of her.
Looking away from my glass, I caught sight of myself in the reflection of my office window.
Look at yourself. This is no good. This has bad news written all over, Jaxil old buddy, I thought.
“Sir?”
I spun around and saw my assistant, Dae’ish, standing inside the door.
“Dammit, Dae’ish, don’t you knock?” I chastised him.
“I did. Lots of times. And said, ‘Sir? Sir? May I come in?’ A bunch.”
I stared at the empty rocks glass in my hand. Maybe the alcohol had hit me harder than I thought.
“Well, what do you want?” I asked him, setting the glass down and feeling generally annoyed at everything.
“The heavy rigs are on Mars,” Dae’ish told me. “And we are ready to commence drilling!”
He announced it like a gameshow host. That was something the Sanax never had before. But since arriving on Earth, Dae’ish had become obsessed with human game shows. I worried about Dae’ish. Enjoying human strip clubs was one thing. That made sense. But their television?
I decided not to chastise him for sounding like a dope. The fact that the rigs were ready to go made me feel like maybe the day was going to take an up-swing. We were getting the drop on just about everyone. Today, the drills would hit dirt and the deeper down they went, the harder I was going to climb up.
“Let’s go,” I said to my assistant.
We took a side-door out of my office which led to a personal elevator which dropped into a basement that was actually the nerve center of my company.
The room was big and cluttered. One whole wall was a curved, several-stories-high computer board, full of live video feeds, Martian weather reports, personnel life-signs data, equipment readouts and the like. On the main floor, there were three rows of computer terminals manned by Sanax and human alike.
Leaving the elevator, Dae’ish and I joined the Earth-side managers of my company’s Mars operation. We were on a little deck overlooking the whole operation in the control room.
I’d been here many times before. It still gave me a smile and a chubby. Goddamn, being a rich and powerful miner was fun. Fuck, this is going to be a good day, after all.
Then the power went out. For a moment, the entire room was dark. I thought I heard something, then realized what I was hearing was the absence of sound. The absence of all the computers humming and keyboards clacking and radios murmuring. It was like the entire universe had just blinked out of existence all at once.
A split second later, the emergency lights powered up. That made the room seem even eerier than the darkness had. The big board and all the unworking computers, all of which had seemed so impressive a moment ago, were now blank and stupid-looking. We were all just a bunch of dopes staring at a giant wall.
“What. The. Fuck?” I growled, lowering my head and pointing my horns at everyone.
“I… I uh…” said one of my managers. He gulped and looked at one of his partners. Who moved his mouth but couldn’t even make any sounds. He gulped and turned to another partner, who just passed out.
Having nowhere else to direct my rage, I reached out and grabbed ahold of Dae’ish’s shirt front. I was about to lift him over my head when a member of the security team on the control room floor below me stood up.
“We’ve been sabotaged,” the tall, thin human woman called out.
“Well, no shit!” I called back. “You think I spent my fortune on all this and it would be built just to short out? I’m a Sanax, woman, not some cheap human!”
To her credit, the human security woman didn’t wither in the face of my rant.
“We’re back-tracing the bug right now,” she said. Her voice only trembled a little.
“Hang on!” a tech on the other side of the room called out. “I’m getting something.”
Of all the computers in the room, his was suddenly the only one on. I raced down the metal stairs from the deck to the main floor.
“Are you getting something?” I asked as I arrived at the tech’s station. “Do you know who did this?”
The tech was pointing at a flashing word on his screen. “MESSAGE” it said.
“Well?” I asked. The tech reached out a trembling finger toward the touchscreen. He was shaking so much, however, that he kept missing hitting the word. I swore and shoved him out of his seat. I reached out for the screen and found that I, too, was shaking. Though from a rush of rage-adrenaline rather than fear.
I managed to collect myself enough to tap the word.
The screen went blank a second. Then, an image of a human woman’s ass clad only in a thong appeared on my screen.
Over that, there was a message in large, bold print.
“HOPE YOU LIKE GETTING YOUR ASS BEAT BY A STRIPPER.”
It took me a minute to process the message. But only a minute.
“What a weird message,” mused Dae’ish, suddenly appearing at my shoulder. I shoved an elbow at him, brushing him back.
Then I focused on the message again.
There was no fucking doubt who had sent this message. Who had somehow managed to get past my security, get through my firewalls and get under my skin.
“Candi,” I said, clenching my teeth around the word like it was her very bones being ground between them.
She had been the one to sabotage me.
This would mean war.
