Princess of the Void: An Alien Abduction Romance

Grant exhales as Sykora pushes the plunger.

"There we go," she says. "It's supposed to start immediately." A teal drop beads at the tip of the empty applicator. She sets it on the nightstand.

Outside their suite's picture window, the golden sky of Ramex has dulled to a deep burnished bronze in the evening. Pillar candles sit on the furniture and the bedside. A bubbling warm-jet bath of sabsum, ready and waiting, fills the room with its paradisiac scent. Low ambient tones lilt from the room's unseen sound system.

The candles dance in his wife's carnelian eyes. The shadows play across her body's soft swells, softer still thanks to their all-day relaxation in the balmy pools and crisp chill of the Ramex air. The shiny silk of her short robe terminates halfway to her knees. "Can you imagine wanting this?" she asks. "Even a cycle ago?"

"I really can't," he says. "And after tonight I won't again. But I just want to try it. Just this once. And if it's you, I'm not afraid."

"Does it feel all right?" She kisses the mark the compound 70 syringe made. "You're not hurt or anything?"

"No." He shakes out his arm. "I think it's fine." He squints into the dancing flame. "I don't feel different."

She crosses her legs and sits across from him on the saffron-colored bed, which is almost (but not quite) as massive as the nest she's furnished aboard the Pike. "Are you ready to give this a try, then?"

He cups the back of her head and stares, nose-to-nose, into her eyes. "Yes," he says.

Sykora takes a deep breath. Flash. "Look into my eyes."

The world becomes two crimson pools.

They've magnetized him. It's like control has been taken from him in a video game, like he's caught in an unexpected cinematic. He can't tear his face from hers. Her eyes are heavenly mana. Her eyes are every beautiful thing about existence, distilled. The reason he was born was to look into these eyes.

Flash. A little noise comes from his throat.

A voice like the universe creeping up behind him and whispering into his ear: "Kiss me, Grant."

Yes. Yes, he will. He'll kiss her and everything will be solved. The firmament's final puzzle piece will click into place.

When he moves, it's as if a dozen invisible Sykoras were all around him. As if he was nested in a luxuriating pile of them. He doesn't even need to tell his body to do a thing. He just drifts on them. He can almost hear their purring in his ear, their warm little hands tracing his skin, their cuddly bodies pressing against him as they lift him, with infinite gentleness, into a sitting position. They take his arms and wrap them around their one visible body. A tender caress tilts his head to one side. His lips find his wife's.

Her textured tongue caresses his for a moment before she leans away. "Is it working?"

He is so light. So taken care of. He wants to stay between her legs for the rest of his life. "It's working," he breathes.

Her material fingers join the invisible ones running up his spine. Flash. "How does it feel?"

Answering her question becomes the goal for which he has strove his entire existence. Don't think, just speak. "Amazing," he says, and the act of saying amazing submerges him in another wave of that beautiful comfort. And even though Sykora is only three feet tall, it's as though she's cradling him, as though he's snuggling into a Sykora the size of a house, and her heartbeat on him is a triple-tap the entire firmament is pulsing to.

She smiles. God, her smile. He wants to live in it.

You do live in it, Grant. This woman is your home. Your warm hearth.

It strikes him with such staggering revelation he gets choked up. Beneath her, nothing can touch him. Nothing can hurt him.

"Mo—Sykora." Jesus. No wonder Taiikari men are so readily submissive. He almost just called his wife mommy. Focus, Grant. "Is this how it always feels?"

Her giggle is the crackling of a fireplace on a snowy night. "I don't know, dove. I've never felt it either, remember. Hold on." Her fingers light on his wrist. She pushes down on the pale patch of skin under his palm and he feels the cool air tingling back across his skin. "This is supposed to help get rid of the afterwarmth."

He shakes his head rapidly to clear away the last of the compulsion's sweet curling haze. "That worked." He rubs his forehead. "God. It's like you were big-spooning my brain. It's sexy. It can't always be this sexy, right?"

"It broadcasts, somewhat," Sykora says. "What the compeller's feeling influences how the compulsion manifests. I wish I knew more, but, well. I've never compelled a lover. More first times, eh?"

"What are you feeling?"

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I'm feeling… happy. I feel in awe of the trust you have placed in me. And I feel the need to honor it. And to keep you safe. To make you as happy as I am. Is it coming through?"

"Oh, yeah." He shivers. "It's coming through."

"Do you…" She snuggles into him, and their sizes shift back into reality as he becomes the shelter rather than the sheltered. Her chin lights on his sternum as those eyes—those eyes—zero in on his again. "Do you want to try compulsion sex?"

"We have to, right? We're never getting this chance again."

"Okay." Her embrace tightens. "The usual word, right?"

He nods.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

He nods and her eyes flare again and yes. Yes. It's back. The warmth.

"Lie down." Her voice phases all around him, quiet and close and sending sensory chills down his spine. That warm, voluptuous force presses him lovingly onto his back. She slips down with him. Her hair pools and flows across his chest.

Flash.

"Undress me," she says.

--content omitted--

He deflates. He knows a kinship with those bee drones who orgasm so hard into the colony queen they die.

She rises from him, and opens wide, sticking her tongue out with evident smugness. She closes her lips and swallows one last time. She beams down at him. "Good boy."

Grant nearly faints.

His wife curls catlike between his legs and licks his stomach, where some of his climax splashed back onto him, making another little throaty noise like she can't get enough of his taste. The heat radiating off her is the first sun of summer warming his skin.

Her exfoliating tongue retracts from his belly. She delicately plucks a dark hair from her mouth. "You know something, dove?"

He lifts his ringing head. "What?"

"It took an experimental blacksite interrogation drug," Sykora says. "But I finally got you to cum in my mouth."

He vents the scant air he's recouped into a ragged laugh.

"That was fucking transcendent," he says. "We can never do it again or I'm going to become a strung-out addict."

"Now you're making me want to try."

"Sykora." He puts a hand on her shoulder and stills her. "I really don't think you should. This stuff is fucking dangerous."

"I know. I know." She kisses his wrist. "It was a silly joke. We're through with it from now on, I swear. It was nice to try once, though. To finally know." Her thumbs knead the skin on his stomach. "Was it good?"

"It was astounding," he says. "It was amazing. But you're in huge trouble next time I'm in charge, for the shit you put me through."

She snickers. "I'm counting on it."

"What about you?"

"Did I or did I not squirt on you, dove?"

"Fair enough."

"Although I did think—I don't know." She tilts her head pensively. "I thought I'd be more satisfied, finally using all that training and controlling you like I'm supposed to. And it was good. Of course it was. But I think now that I've experienced it both ways…" She sighs heavily. "I think I'm a sub, Grantyde."

"Oh," he says. "How about that."

"Don't be insufferable." Her tail thwaps him on the pec. "Has it worn off?"

"I don't know," he says. "Compel me."

"Pick your nose."

A playful little compulsive nudge and his finger's in his nostril.

"Gross," she says, delighted.

"Okay." He removes his finger. "Maybe we're done."

"Can I do one more?"

"One more."

She holds her hands out. Her eyes flash. "Pick me up and carry me to the tub."

"Yes, your Majesty." He scoops her off the bed. "Dude. You're dripping on me."

"I'm dripping you on you."

"That makes it worse."

She boops his chin. "This is exactly why I drew a bath."

They settle into the warm whoosh of the tub. Sykora in Grant's lap again. Her small body going pliant in his big hands. He suds her hair and she purrs like a cat, and they're drifting back into the comfortable indulgence of their usual dynamic. His Batty is his again.

But there's something…

He clears his throat. "Will you do one more compulsion for me? If it's possible?"

She tilts her head back and looks up his nose at him. "What's that?"

"Can you compel the memory of killing Thror out of my head?" Grant eases back. "The way he just—dropped. Can you take that out?"

"Oh, love." She sighs. "I wish I could. But it only works on fresh memories. You're already baked in up there."

"Right." He tries to relax his jaw. "I figured. Just thought I'd ask."

"When you remember it, I want you to remember me, okay?" She sloshes a turn so that they're face to face. "And how you saved my life. And how indebted to you I am. And how deeply I love you for all the ways you have changed for me. And changed me."

He tugs her against him. "I will."

They let the water gently buffet them in comfortable silence.

"Are you happy?" Sykora murmurs.

He rests his chin on her head. "Of course I am."

"I hope you are. I thought I finally had you all the way there. And now I know you're still hungry for something, and now I worry again. I want you happy."

He tips further back. "I'm crazy happy. But you married a Maekyonite, and apparently we're rebels. And we're always hungry for something. That's just how we are."

Her quiet laugh drifts over the water jets. "I'm going to keep trying anyway. Show you Taiikari can be stubborn, too."

"Well, it's a hole in your happiness also, the no-kids thing," he says. "I'm not about to allow that."

"It's a bit terrifying that I genuinely believe you'll figure out a way. You're so good at annoying Taiikari noblewomen."

"Steve Jobs said the only way to do great work is to love what you do."

"Who's Steevjobs?"

"A dead Maekyonite. Invented that communicator you stole from me."

"Ahhh." She turns back around so they're front-to-back again. "It was a very fancy communicator."

"It was. But I don't miss it." He buckles his hands across her stomach. "I don't miss much at all from Maekyon, to be honest. I've got my guitar and my books. That's all I really needed to live."

"Well, if you think of something, tell me," she says. "And I'll steal it."

"I will. Promise." He kisses the little lump where her horns grow out. "But the things I want, they aren't there anymore." He looks out at the glowing firmament. "They're out there. Out there and in here."

Her hands find his where they lay across her stomach.

They rest their sex-sore bodies and listen to the low musical pulse, the bubbling water.

"Someday," she whispers.

He lowers his head to hear her better.

"Someday," she repeats. "Not soon. But someday. It won't all wash away. Someday a piece of you will stay in me. And I'll keep it warm and safe while it grows." The sweet warmth of the bath swims in their heads. The humidity beads on his wife's sky-pale skin. "A little bit of you. A little bit of me. Someday. Something new."

His heart beats against her spine. Its elegant span reminds him of the Pike. Graceful and indestructible.

She wraps his arms further around her. Her jewel-tone eyes drift shut. "Someday I'll have our babies."

End of Volume 2