Page 6 of My Big Alien Bodyguard

“I don’t know what her problem is,” he says. “This stuff is absolutely delicious.”

“I don’t think she has the temperament you’re looking for,” I tell him. “This tour is going to be chaos.”

“When are they not,” he says, taking another long raspy lap of sauce from his mane. “You’d better go after her, make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid. And get her back. We have other shoots to do today.”

Igo, not to get Lyric back to work, but to ensure that she is not harmed in any way. She and I may not be on good terms, but I will do anything up to and including risking my own life to keepher safe. That is my professional vow, and I take my professional vows very personally.

I find Lyric smoking in the stairwell, stamping down the stairs in her more customary clothing of dark leggings and heavy boots. She’s wiped half the makeup off her face, leaving the other half more or less on. The effect is uncanny in the extreme. I see half a sweet starlet, and half a pissed off woman who is starting to consider herself to have very little to lose.

“Asshole!” She shouts the word at me and indicates toward me with the cigarette, in case I don’t know who she is calling an asshole. In spite of that, I still don’t get the impression that it’s really aimed at me. It’s more of an exclamation than an accusation.

“It’s time to get back in there,” I say half-heartedly. “Or not. Whatever.”

“You’re not going to drag me back?”

“There’s no present danger to your safety, so, no. But…” I do reach out and snap the cigarette out of her fingers, crushing it beneath my toe. “These will kill you.”

“It’s not real,” she says. “It’s just a deep breathing aid. Or it was. You owe me another one of those.”

She pulls a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket and lights one. These are not breathing aids. These are pure tobacco, which is not the worst thing in the world, but it’s also not the best, and I have no intention of letting her smoke while I’m here. Again, I pluck the cigarette from her fingers.

“Hey! Cut it out!”

She pulls another paper cylinder from the packet and lights it defiantly. The paper and leaf material catches and begins to smoke. I predictably reach for it again, but this time she tries to snatch it away, and in the process, brings the lit tip all the way up to her chin and burns herself underneath her jaw. Her head jerks back, and I see a bright red flash of round flesh.

“Argh! Fuck. Why did you do that?”

“Come with me,” I sigh. This woman is more of a menace to herself than any psychotic fan. In the very, very short time I have known her she has brought nothing but pain on herself.

Lyric utters a fantastic string of expletives as she comes up the stairs with me, clutching at her face. Cigarette burns are not pleasant on human skin, which is so thin and delicate it offers little in the way of protection. It is merely a bag to help contain their internal organs, which I have heard described as rich and tender.

“What’s she done?” Simon Scowl notices her injury as soon as I bring her in the door. “You know your job is to stop harm from coming to her.”

“Pretty hard to stop her from accidentally jabbing a lit cigarette into her face.”

Simon Scowl growls, his claws flexing into the carpet with irritation. “She better not have damaged her face. We have promo shoots to take for the next product.”

“Fuck you,” Lyric curses.

Simon Scowl gives her a vicious glare. “Don’t mouth off to me. You’re the meat, and there’s a thousand more where you came from.”

I do not like the way he speaks to her. At the same time, there’s nothing he’s saying that is particularly untrue. She has become little more than a sentient possession, something to be used in return for money. It’s a shameful, humiliating arrangement, and if she is annoyed at the proceedings of this day, she will be even less happy with what happens on many of the alien worlds, which will require much more of her.

“If there’s a thousand more of me, replace me, dickhead. You think I can’t go back to being a pole jockey? You think I’m afraid of being poor, or hard work? You’ve picked on the wrong girl, buddy. I’ll fucking…”

Simon Scowl lunges, but instead of cuffing her weak skeletal frame and crushing her rib cage, sending splinters of bone through her delicate lungs, his massive paw hits my chest instead.

Lyric

Zayne bumps me and I go flying, stumbling across the rug on the hotel floor. I land on my forearms and roll. I know how to go down hard. I also know that it is very important to get up again as quickly as possible. Snapping up to my feet behind Zayne, I see my big alien bodyguard take the predator’s punch for me. I hear the impact of paw on scaled skin, a loud, slapping, concussive sound that indicates the sheer power that was going to be unleashed on me.

Zayne flinches slightly as Simon Scowl curses and I realize that I only barely avoided death in this moment. My manager legitimately tried to kill me, and would no doubt have replaced me, just as he threatened.

“That wasn’t meant for…” Simon shakes his mane and looks at me with primal viciousness slowly fading from his eyes.

I’d be terrified of him if I didn’t have Zayne here with me, ready to bleed for me even though he barely knows me. I have never been so intensely attracted to any creature before, ever. I owe him my literal life. My entire existence could have been erased from the universe if not for him.

I don’t care that he spanked me anymore. He can spank me all he wants if he’s prepared to cash the checks my mouth writes for me. He can do anything he wants to me if he’ll look after me the way he just did.

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