Page 26 of Decadence

As she looked out across her small kitchen, with its sleek skylight and gleaming steel surfaces and neatly arranged pots and utensils, she fell into a calming rhythm. This was her sanctuary; her domain.

She was back.

Away from the chaos and terror of space.

And the Kordolians had assured her she would never have to worry about being abducted by aliens again.

Strangely, she hadn’t seen a single sign of the silver-skinned aliens since she’d arrived at her small skybox apartment on New York’s Lower East Side.

They whole manner in which they’d returned her had been weirdly anticlimactic. Along with Kyuri and several of the other girls, she’d boarded a sleek black ship that had transported them back to Earth. In addition to the Kordolian pilot and crew, they’d been accompanied by Zyara, Riana, and that stone-faced and fucking scary-as-hell warrior called Kail—who was actually Riana’s mate.

They’d landed in the middle of a barren desert in the deep of night. Sienna had been so tired and disoriented she hadn’t even been able to figure out which continent they might be on. From there, they’d said quick, disbelieving goodbyes to one another before being ushered to private flyers—human made, of course, although they were manned by quiet, serious, black-uniformed and discreetly armed Kordolians.

In the early hours of the morning, they’d arrived at a small private airfield on the outskirts of the city, and the Kordolians had bundled her into a nondescript black driverless car that had taken her all the way to the underground entrance lobby of her apartment building.

After that, she’d never seen the Kordolians again.

The AI at the security entrance had read her bio-sig. She’d stepped into the elevator and zoomed up to the seventy-first floor, where she’d entered her apartment and found everything exactly as she’d left it.

Even the half-eaten bowl of spiced apple porridge that she’d left on the kitchen counter was still there, although it was now over a week old and growing a thin blue film of something furry and funky.

Aside from that small detail, it was as if she’d never been away at all.

She’d showered and slipped into her bed and stared up at the white ceiling for a while, feeling raw and troubled as memories of the last few days flashed through her mind like snippets of a surreal nightmare.

A strange kind of emptiness had filled her; after experiencing the vastness of space, she couldn’t help but feel like there was supposed to be something more to all this.

That’s… it?

Eventually, she’d fallen asleep, waking just a few hours later when her Sleep Assistant chimed to alert her to the start of the new day.

With some trepidation, she’d gone in to work, slipping in through the back entrance of the Whisk and Pin to find her staff already hard at work preparing for a busy day ahead.

Her barista-by-morning and sommelier-by-night, Cleo, and Emmett, the waiter who worked the morning shift, had encountered her in the kitchen.

The looks on their faces had been priceless.

“Oh, my god, Sienna. Where the hell have you been? Are you okay?” Cleo exclaimed as she greeted her with a firm hug.

“I’m completely fine,” she’d replied awkwardly, wanting to get the conversation over and done with. “I know this must seem strange, but I swear I’ll explain it all later. Can I just ask that we not talk about it right now?” The last thing she wanted to do was relive all that crap.

Emmett looked her up and down, his blue eyes filled with concern, and for a moment she’d feared he could see the hot mess beneath her carefully composed outer shell. But then he simply stepped forward and pulled her into his big bear hug. “We can wait, hun. As long as you’re okay. Stars, we were worried sick about you. If you don’t want to talk about it right now, that’s fine. You know we’re not going to intrude on your space like assholes. Besides, we’ve got work to do. I didn’t expect to be offering the full menu today, but if you’re okay with it, I’m going to surprise the regulars.”

“Are we stocked?”

“Not fully, but I can have a drone delivery from the Central Markets here in ten minutes.”

“Do it. Order extra eggs. I’ll do a shakshuka as a brekky special.”

“Amazing. It’s so good to have you back.”

“I don’t care where you’ve been or what the hell you’ve been up to,” Cleo said gently, “but if you need to talk, you know where to find me. On one condition.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Wine. I’ve got a ’14 Krondorf Chardonnay I’ve been saving for something like this.”

“You got me,” Sienna said, feeling a great rush of relief at the way Cleo and Emmett simply accepted her back—with no judgement or interrogation. “We’ll talk later, and I’ll tell you all about how I was abducted by aliens.”

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