Strangeways

“Beyond twisted and filthy hot, Strangeways is the most unique sci-fi romance I've read in years!” NYT Bestselling author, Anna Zaires

I have been chosen.

One moment I was leaving work, the next I was entertaining a silvery-green alien intent on knowing me fully.

Their invasion of our world nonviolent, seamless. 

They dress as human men, eat in human restaurants, vote, pay taxes, and are controlling every last one of us.

I don’t understand how no one else can see what I see? That their beauty is a trap.

They have come here for women, intent on creating life partners—through seduction, mental manipulation, employing muscular bodies capable of fulfilling any female desire. Shaping themselves to our wants.

Until we’ve each been claimed, marked, and changed. Assimilated.

We don't have a choice. They can make us like it. They can make us desire them. They can make us do anything they want.

Cliché as it was, I set a cigarette to my
lips and struck a match. The quick scent of sulfur, that beautiful moment of
burnt wood… then first inhale singed the back of my throat. Nicotine laced
smoke swirling through my lungs. Dark air. Dark thoughts. Out of practice,
aware that my actions were foolish, the taste of tobacco was no longer one of
pleasure as it had been while clubbing in my twenties.

The cheap menthol tasted flat, dirty even.

It tasted exactly how I felt.

The crumpled pack had been going stale in
my nightstand drawer for over a year. Couldn’t tell you why I’d never chucked
it. Maybe I liked the accessibility to a frivolous, expensive pleasure. Maybe I
was just lazy in the small spaces where I could afford to be.

I suppose it was providence—there I was,
sitting at the end of my sex-mussed bed, sucking on a cancer stick… because.

“Explain to me why your back is to me and
a cigarette is in your mouth.” Such a soft voice: velvet on the ears—almost a
physical sensation to hear.

I exhaled, monotone, and watched the sorry
puff of smoke add to the already unpleasant smells lingering in the dingy
square of my room. “It’s a human post-coitus ritual.”

“No, it is not.” I heard him shift behind me, as if he
contemplated edging closer before changing his mind. “It is a formula used in
your media to visually style the end of good sex. Should I interpret this act
as a sign you were pleased with how I fucked you? I would prefer to be told in
other ways that do not cause harm to your body.”

Sucking smoke into my mouth, swirling it
with a tired tongue, I puffed my cheeks and let it free. A fake inhale. A
mutiny.

Which, in its small and stupid way, felt necessary.

But he meant well. He must have.

Sometimes it was difficult to tell if the
‘new species’ were using earthling cues properly. Was he sincere? Did that
dusting of hurt in his vocalizations mean anything? Or was he using the
manipulations earth men so loved to pepper through their words to garner
praise?

How did one even describe sex with these… men? “I enjoyed it.”

“You don’t smoke.” The softest rabbit fur,
the most lovely of spine tingles. “This is not a habit that is healthy, nor is
your current action offering you a sense of joy in this moment.”

How the fuck would he know if I smoked or
not? Not that it was any of his business…

One last drag. A real, proper inhale. I
let burnt air roll around inside me, all the while holding back a building
cough. Dropping the cigarette into a cloudy glass of water that had been left
for days on my dresser, I exhaled the plume. Watching it shift from strong gray
mass into tendrils that twisted into nothing.

The darkened air dissipated almost as
quickly as my comfort with this situation.

Cutting a shy glance over my shoulder, I
forced a pleasant smile. The same one pasted on my face day after grinding day
at work. It failed almost as soon as it was born.

One look at him…

Sprawled, utterly naked, propped on an
abundance of cheap, mismatched pillows, he waited.

Sure, I was naked too, and he had a great
view of the seated top of my plump ass and tapered back, but I was ordinary.
Regular.

Normal.

This man…
lounged, utterly unreserved, blatant in his sexuality. Brazen.

Where some kook had come up with the term
‘little green men’ to describe his race I’d never understand.

There was nothing little about any of
them—not height, not build, not, um, their
parts—that warranted the diminutive term. The specimen taking up the
entirety of my bed was pure muscle, yet lacked the bulk one might imagine came
with such strength. There was leanness, definition, in shoulders that were too
broad for a human and waist too narrow. Over all that strength was silvery
skin, though it did favor green. And just like us humans with our freckles and
personal features, there were random defining marks that set him apart from the
others of his kind.

Phi had stripes.

Those markings had caught my eye from the
first moment I saw him reading a menu at one of my tables. Few and far between,
angled to highlight his bone structure, those stripes reminded me more of sexy
1970’s David Bowie than any of Earth’s exotic animals. The most striking, my favorite mark, was a line bisecting
his face straight down the center. Down his throat, and now that I’d seen him au natural, led to the treasure between
his thighs.

“Emily.” God, the way he spoke my name was
a caress.

He was chiding me for my reticence, for my
failure to meet his gaze… and I’d always been a sucker for guilt trips. Up went
brown eyes, my attention all his. “Yeah?”

His toes—well, they were similar to
toes—brushed my thigh. “Come here. Human women are to be attended to after they
have been mated. It is mentally unhealthy for you to draw away.”

It wasn’t intentional, but I smirked. Phi
had a knack for making me do that. “Is that what you’ve been told?”

Like running water, his tone could be so
smooth. Placid, welcoming, urging.
“We’ve observed your species for many years.”

Shifting onto a hip, I lost my train of
thought, a new one smashing in so hard my eyes clenched, my mouth went into a
line. I grew tense.

Incredulous, I asked, “You observed humans
fucking?”

“How else were we to assure we satisfied?
Human females are far more frightening than the males. You must be conditioned
to find us enjoyable, or we might be overpowered.” As if utilizing a practiced
expression, he winked. Hand to God, the alien winked.

And heaven help me, I giggled. I even put
a hand over my lips like some sad flirt at a club.

But amusement faded in an odd and
unmerciful way. I grew uneasy with the way he stared.

Mouth dry as a smoke-scarred desert, I
fought my tongue to say, “You forgot to mention that we find you overwhelming
and scary.”

Phi blinked his second eyelid, a quick
flash of horizontal movement snapping shut over fully black eyes. Like the
shutter of an old camera snapping away, those peepers were always active.

 Click, click, click, click, click.

There may have been no sound, but when he
looked at me, I felt as if he was cataloguing, memorizing every twitch with a
mental snapshot. Those upturned eyes seemed a mechanical afterthought of
evolution.

Designed to be alluring.

After all, the entirety of him was
enticing—the smoothness of his skin, the silvery-green coloring, the slightly
oblong skull, even his practically human mouth. But the eyes… they made me feel
as if I was a human living on a planet swarming with aliens that should not
have been there.

Phi might look mostly human, but shit like
that was a quick reminder that these new citizens were not one of us.

Like a languid stroke upon a treasured
pet, his voice passed over and through me. “Do not feel fear toward me, Emily.”

And with easy words from a lounging tiger,
I didn’t.

It dissipated just like my last exhale of
that disgusting cigarette, fading into calm, steady air.

Still, I spoke of why. “Your kind just
showed up here—legions of you—and no one said a thing. Our government, which I
will openly admit is populated by warmongering idiots, just stood there,
smiling, waving, as if they’d sent
out invitations to tea. You live in our cities, you even dress like human males
now…”

Phi finished my thought, the entirety of
his expression gentle. “And the males of your own species are wasting away—have
been dying off for generations. The majority cannot survive past forty Earth
years and soon will be gone.”

Exactly.

And how was it that such a phenomenon was
something everyone noticed but nobody talked about? “My brother, he’s
thirty-eight. He started coughing last year… Tony won’t make it to forty.”

And while my brother could no longer work
to support his family, I was here, having just let an alien fuck me until I’d
come so hard I’d torn my cheap covers to shreds.

No longer willing to wait for me to lie
beside him, Phi leaned the glory of his upper body forward and reached for me.

Pulled into the cradle of warmth, a
defined and powerful chest to my back, I found his touch far more soothing than
I should have… considering he was practically a stranger.

His ribs expanded in a great breath, arms
closing more firmly around my much smaller frame. He even pressed his forehead
to my crown before he said, “Settling on this planet was done peacefully. Not
one of your species was harmed. There has been no violence. So, sweet Emily,
please tell me the basis of your fears so that I might erase them.”

My concerns were so straightforward I
could not believe I had to explain. They should have been the concerns of every
human. Even thinking of that day their ships blackened the sky, I felt my heart
pick up speed. “The atmosphere burned, a wave of massive ships emerging from
flame to land where they would. Everyone stood there like lemmings, silent,
when you stepped off those creepy things. I saw it on the news, in the streets.
It wasn’t normal.”

Exactly! I felt it in my very marrow at
that moment those words crossed my lips. It wasn’t fucking normal! It wasn’t
normal, yet we all acted as if it was.

Phi, muscled arms wound around my middle,
rubbed his cheek to mine. It was smooth and lovely. It smelled of fresh air and
stiff breezes. Of open places outside of city smog.

I took a greater inhale than I had of my
cigarette and let it linger just as long in my lungs.

Engulfed by the man breathing at my ear, cradled, being treated more sweetly than
any living human had ever treated me, my alarm deflated.

I even offered a conciliatory nod when he
reasonably explained, “Your film industry has conditioned you to think
extraterrestrials only seek out Earth to invade, steal your resources, and
commit genocide.”

“Not true.” His words should not have been
amusing, but I smirked as if he’d struck the perfect chord. “The alien species
in the original Star Trek were all go
go-dancing sluts for Kirk.”

“I enjoy the fact that you are humorous.”
Phi smoothed his fingers over my sex-tangled curls, tugging playfully to watch
a spiral bounce back, and in a way that gave inexplicable pleasure. Then I was
enfolded again. Brushing my ear, his lips parted to impart more sweet words.
“It was fortuitous that I found you first, Emily.”