Page 37 of My Big Alien Bodyguard

“Step away from the lion!”

Police announce their presence in booming voices. And they are not in an understanding or even particularly curious mood. Their weapons are leveled at Zayne, and their fingers are just a hair away from squeezing the triggers.

Zayne steps away, leaving the remnants of Simon Scowl on the floor. Police rush in, cuffs out — and arrest Simon, or at least what is left of him. None of us expected that to happen, butZayne is by my side now, afraid to touch me in case he worsens my wounds, but steadfastly there.

“Help me!” Simon protests weakly. “These brutal criminals are attacking me! I've been forced to defend myself.”

“Save it!” One of the officers points to the camera installed on every single courier vest, including the one Zayne has been wearing this entire time. “That’s been transmitting from here to the interstellar web since he came up here. We’ve seen it all,” the officer says. “And so has everybody else.”

“Oh shit,” I whisper as the ramifications of that revelation sink through my pain-addled mind.

“It is your turn to be hunted now, Simon. Your turn to be afraid of what is to come, and your turn to hide.”

I couldn’t have said it better than Zayne does as he gives Simon one last kick and finally comes to my side.

“I am so sorry,” Zayne says, cradling me ever so carefully. “I failed you.”

He’s not entirely wrong, but I don’t know what else he could have done. I was clear from the outset, I didn’t want this to be about me. I didn’t want to return to stardom. I just wanted something good to come from all the bad. I wanted his people to be free. And judging by the papers sticking out of his pocket, I think I’ve finally achieved something that actually matters for once.

“Should have known not to trust a courier to turn up on time,” I groan.

He makes a broken sound that is nothing like a laugh.

“Where’s the patient?”

I hear officious, caring voices. Medics are here. I am going to be put back together again. I don’t have to be brave anymore. I don’t have to be strong. I can let myself go. I can slip into blessed unconsciousness. And that is exactly what I do.

14

Lyric

I am standing on a volcanic plane with Zayne by my side. My wounds have healed, though some scars remain. I try not to dwell on the weeks it took to recover, even with the best surgeons and the most advanced regeneration techniques, what Scowl did to me was almost unsurvivable. And yet I have survived.

The air shimmers from heat, the landscape molten red and dark gray in turn, marked here and there with bright, shimmering purple, blue, and green iridescence from rocks and liquid flows. This is a world that shines through the rich steams of its still-settling tectonic plates. It is a place in flux. I sense danger here, but I sense something else too: freedom.

Much has happened in the time I was in the hospital, most especially here on the Thrakin homeworld. It has been freed. Zayne’s ownership of the deed to his lands, along with all the intergalactic publicity that came with the revelations of my survival has brought intense diplomatic pressure on those who occupied these lands. As a consequence, they have beenreturned to the native Thrakins who have dwelled here since they evolved here. I can see abandoned mining structures, great machines that no longer pound the rocks of this world into mineral dust for far-off businesses. There is a peace to this wild place. It feels as though the entire planet is slowly exhaling after having held its breath in pain for so many years.

“This is what you bled for. This is what you were broken to save,” Zayne says to me. “I am so sorry.”

He has not stopped apologizing for what he considers to be his failure, but I know all too well that if I had not been hurt so badly and so publicly we would never have gained the publicity to free his people. The freeing of the Thrakin required a blood sacrifice, and the blood happened to be mine.

“Stop saying sorry,” I say. “This was worth it. Every bit of it.”

“You are absolutely amazing,” Zayne says, embracing me tenderly. There is much to be done. There is a world to explore, and a family to meet. This is the beginning of the happily ever after.

“So. Are we meeting your folks, or…”

“Later,” he says. “I have wanted to do this since I met you. My first thoughts of you were having you in this place, making you my own on these lands.”

A tingle of excitement sparks inside me. He is looking at me with such possessive desire, and on this world, his shimmering scales take on a new iridescence. This is where he was made to be. This is where he is at his most powerful. The deeds he took from Simon do not only free these lands. They make him master of them, and he has never looked so incredibly masterful as hedoes now, the blue of his scales turned steel by the vapors of the environment.

Zayne scoops me up and carries me over rough, ashen ground to what he calls a den. It is the entrance of a cave that runs back into one of the many tectonic mountains of this world. In the shimmering dark of that sacred space, he lays me down on soft furs and spreads my thighs and feasts on me, his tongue hot and wet between my thighs until I spiral into pleasure and beg for something harder and longer, thicker and stronger.

I get what I want, because for once I am not in trouble. For once, I have been a very good girl, and for once I am being rewarded for my deeds with pure pleasure absent of any punishment at all.

We make passionate, intense, romantic love in the glimmer of the dark, the walls of the cave shining with the fluorescent glow of the alien rock. I spread for him and am filled with long, languid strokes. We have all the time in the world now, he and I. There are no more concerts, no more contracts. There is nothing but Zayne and me, my alien master and I.

EPILOGUE

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