Page 22 of My Big Alien Bodyguard

“I know, but for now all that matters is helping you get well again. I’m here, Lyric. I’m always going to be here.”

At this point, she is sobbing and white uniformed medics are entering the room, ready to move her to a stretcher. Everything is happening professionally and properly. She’s in the best of hands. She’s also in the worst of clutches.

Lyric

I have fucked up big time. I have fucked up bigger than I thought it was possible for me to fuck up. The memory of falling keeps playing through my head. The sound the stage made as it fell, and the sounds of the people it fell on. I know I will not be the only one going into surgery now. I’ve hurt the people I claim to care about most, and I did it for the pettiest, brattiest reason possible.

I am ashamed. Deeply ashamed. And I am scared, because I know I don’t deserve to be okay. I definitely don’t deserve to have Zayne beside me. It almost felt a little better when he said he was mad. He should be mad. I’m mad.

He walks beside my stretcher, his tail arching out around me, laying over me like a comforting fifth prehensile limb.

Someone gives me something. I feel the prick and I slide gratefully into the warmth of sedation. It’s all going to be okay. It has to be okay.

When I wake, I hurt. A cry rises involuntarily from my lips as I wallow in the sudden curse of consciousness. The amnesia of surgery does not last as long as I’d like. I can’t remember the details, but the guilt comes immediately and swiftly, wrapping itself around me and sliding down my throat.

“Shhh,” Zayne purrs softly. “I’m here. You’re okay. The surgery went well, and they say you’ll be back to your old self in a matter of days. The bones are already knitting, and your flesh is well on the way to regenerating.”

I reach for him. I want him to scoop me up and hold me, but I don’t know if he can. My arms remain outstretched anyway, begging him for forgiveness and comfort.

There’s a cast on my leg, but it’s not as heavy as I expected it to be. Alien medical technologies are vastly superior to human tech.

Zayne scoops me out of the bed and into his lap. He’s careful not to pull the IV that is running into my hand. I’m trying to ignore that. I feel sick and gross and sorry and so very needy. I bury my face in his neck and shoulder, breathe in his strong alien scent, and feel tears pricking at my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m going to apologize to everybody. I need to make an announcement to my fans. Now. Do you have a holophone?”

“I don’t think now is the best idea,” he purrs softly. “You’re barely recognizable without all those performance cosmetics. And there’s no need to make any official statements now. Simon has taken care of everything.”

There’s an odd edge to his voice when he says Simon’s name. I’ve noticed that before, a slight inflection of something like loathing. But he works for Simon and seems to have worked for him for a very long time. They get on, or they seemed to at first.

“What’s happening to me?” I whimper. “I never used to be this much of a mess.”

“You never had this much pressure on you before,” he says, his arms wrapped snugly around me, and his tail acting as a third limb, stroking up and down my back.

“I think I want to quit,” I cry.

“You can’t,” he says. I hear a certain cracking in his voice, as if he wishes we could both quit, but it can’t be done. Simon Scowl’s contracts are notoriously air-tight. Even death isn’t enough to get me out of my obligations for the next three years.

All we can really do is hide away in these brief moments of true intimacy, when we’re real with each other because I’m broken and raw, and he doesn’t have any prying eyes forcing him to act the role of professional protector. I feel a surge of need for even more intimacy, a drive for sex, but not filthy debasing, punishing sex. I want him inside me, so I don’t have to be me anymore. I want to be the Lyric I am when he holds me and makes me his. Iwant to hide. I want to run away. And I want him to be the one I run to always.

“Take me,” I whisper, lifting my eyes to his beautifully elegant dragon features.

“Where do you want to go?”

I answer him as if I wasn’t begging him for sex. “I want to go to where you come from. I want to stay with you. I want to be good for you.”

“The drugs must be very effective,” he says with some amusement.

“I mean it. I need to be someone else, somewhere else. I need for…”

“My world is a desolate, destroyed place. It was sold to Scowl’s tribe many generations ago. It is for that reason I serve him. My service to him provides my people with the right to live in their ancestral lands.”

He speaks haltingly, as if he is trying to pick his words carefully. I don’t think he wants to sound weak, or oppressed, though he is obviously telling me the story of oppression.

“But you are so strong…”

“Yes. We are. My kind is strong. And it is that strength which has seen us repeatedly exploited by those who have advantages that undermine strength and decency.”

“What advantages? You mean like better tech? More advanced weapons? Huge invading forces?”

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