Trapped with Her Alien Mate: Holiday Starrs Read online

  Trapped With Her Alien Mate

  Holiday Starr

  Kate Rudolph

  Starr Huntress

  Published by Kate Rudolph

  Keep in touch

  Want more sci-fi romance? You can get a free, full length novel by joining my reader club.

  Sign up now!

  What to read next:

  The Alien Reindeer’s Wild Ride

  Find out more!

  About the Book

  Last minute holiday shopping should be a breeze…

  That’s Jody’s thought as she walks into the store. Then she spots the hottest alien she’s ever seen.

  But any fantasy she might have is interrupted when the next guy walks in.

  He looks like Santa.

  Evil Santa.

  And he’s got evil toys to keep her and the other shoppers locked in the store so he can do evil things to them.

  Jody’s determined to get out, and hot alien, Aldyn, is determined to help her.

  And if they can defeat Evil Santa, she might just find a hot Detyen male in her life and under her tree.

  Contents

  Keep in touch

  About the Book

  1. Jody

  2. Jody

  3. Aldyn

  4. Jody

  5. Jody

  6. Aldyn

  7. Jody

  8. Aldyn

  9. Jody

  10. Aldyn

  11. Jody

  12. Aldyn

  13. Jody

  14. Aldyn

  15. Jody

  16. Jody

  What’s Next

  Also by Kate Rudolph

  Ready to become a superfan?

  About Kate Rudolph

  1

  Jody

  I did this every year.

  I left Christmas shopping to the last minute. I know it’s a bad habit. And I’m sure if my parents were still around, they’d say something about it. Of course, they haven’t been around since I was about three years old. And none of my foster parents were big on Christmas. So no one was going to call me out.

  Today I needed to get gifts for my fellow teachers at school and a couple decorations for the classroom. In and out of the store in ten minutes. I could do it. And if I was lucky, I wouldn’t even need to listen to the holiday songs I hated.

  I wasn’t going to get distracted.

  Oh! Shiny.

  Okay, I did not need a unicorn covered in sparkles and lit up with glowing lights. I really didn’t. And it wasn’t my style.

  But it was so shiny.

  Discipline.

  I had to teach it to my preschoolers. And the best way to do that was to lead by example.

  But it was so shiny.

  I tore my gaze away from the unicorn and looked into the store. It was huge. One of those big box stores that carried a little bit of everything under the sun. Did I need camping equipment? Lawn furniture? Cooking supplies? Groceries? I could find it here. But what I really wanted was gifts.

  The store seemed strangely deserted. Then again, it was kind of late and they were probably going to be closing soon. I should have looked at the sign on the door, but they would kick me out when they had to.

  It was so deserted that I thought I was alone for a while. And then I spotted Santa and his elf sitting on a little bench at the center of the store and I couldn’t help but smile.

  He wasn’t really Santa. I didn’t believe in Santa; well, I don’t think I ever believed in Santa. Right now I was just looking at a man in a red suit and a woman in green tights with curly shoes.

  But at least I wasn’t alone. I wandered down an aisle, but kept glancing back at the door, wondering if someone else would enter the building. It felt a little creepy when it was this deserted. My eyes strayed over the various gift displays, but when I heard the tinkling bells over the door, something jauntily holiday-themed, almost a song I recognized but not quite, I looked over and had to bite my tongue for making a noise.

  Damn.

  He was an alien. A lot of them had started moving to town over the last few years. Ever since those Detyen warriors showed up and protected us from a violent alien who tried to destroy our planet. Earth had gotten quite… intergalactic all of a sudden. It was cool.

  But the alien at the door didn’t make me think of warriors. He made me think of bed.

  No. I wasn’t doing that anymore. That was a long time ago. Anonymous nights between the sheets were a thing of the past, and I wasn’t going to break my own rules.

  It took more effort than it should have to tear my eyes away from his glistening golden skin. He even looked good under fluorescent lights. How was that possible? He was wearing a bulky coat, but his pants were tight enough that I got a view of his ass that left little to the imagination. My fingers itched to touch.

  Instead, I jammed them into my pocket and forced myself to turn away. My resolve lasted for all of thirteen seconds, I counted. But when I looked back he was gone. Clearly he hadn’t seen me.

  Or, he hadn’t been interested in a mousy preschool teacher. Not that he knew I was a preschool teacher. But the mousy thing came through. I couldn’t help it.

  Christmas gifts, I reminded myself. In and out. Just find something.

  I had made it to the end of the aisle and turned so I was almost completely out of view of the door when the bells chimed again. I tilted my head at just the right angle and spotted another Santa.

  Or was he?

  No, he was an alien. A shiver ran up my spine and I tried to ignore the immediate hit of revulsion. I didn’t know anything about him. It wasn’t cool to make judgments. But there was something about his face that I didn’t like. It looked evil. He looked like an Evil Santa Claus.

  He was wearing a huge red robe, and what I had first thought was a Santa hat was actually some kind of horn coming out of his head. He had a giant white beard, but it was kind of scraggly, and the hair was so thick that I wasn’t sure that it was actually hair. Alien hair.

  I ducked behind a giant display as he walked past. I was more than a few meters away, so there was no way he saw me, but my heart stuttered and my palms sweated.

  I didn’t want him to see me.

  Was it because he wasn’t hot? Was I that shallow? I see one alien with glistening golden skin and I want to wrap my arms around him and tug him to my bed. Another alien that’s not quite as… well-built… and I’m hiding like a monster’s after me.

  Not good.

  Then I looked even closer, careful to stay hidden. Were those tusks?

  He passed between two more aisles and I got half a glimpse of them. Yeah. Tusks.

  There was nothing wrong with tusks. Some aliens had them. Just because humans were tuskless didn’t mean that it was automatically a bad thing.

  But I wasn’t about to walk out into the middle of the store so he could see me. Something told me that was a bad idea.

  I just had to find the gifts and get out of there. It would be fine.

  Or maybe I needed to just get out.

  I walked blindly into the next aisle. It was mostly children’s toys. Cars and space shuttles and little blasters. Not the actual weapons, of course. Some of my kids would love this, but I couldn’t afford to get gifts for all of them. They would be happy with the candies I brought in on the last day before break.

  Maybe I’d shape them like stars. They would like that.

  I was ready to give up on that aisle when a woman’s scream cut through the store.

  I froze, unsure of what to do. What was going on? Was it Evil Alien Santa? Or maybe the other Santa? Or the hot alien? What was going
on?

  A braver person would have run towards the action to figure it out. Or maybe would have called the authorities. I was frozen, unable to do anything but clutch the toy I was holding like it was a real blaster.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  The woman screamed again.

  I had to move. I had to do something. But before I could take a step, a force hit me hard enough to knock the wind out of me and I fell to the ground as blackness swallowed me whole.

  2

  Jody

  What was going on? Where was I?

  My eyes flickered open and any hope that I had collapsed from low blood sugar evaporated. There was something metallic overhead and lights flashed. My body felt weird. Like I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

  Was I on a spaceship?

  I had never left the planet before. I didn’t know what it felt like to be subject to anti-grav. But a quick shift of my head revealed the toys that I had been looking at only a few minutes ago.

  Was it a few minutes? How long had I been out?

  Why had I been out? I had never fainted before in my life. I hadn’t been feeling sick. Had the Evil Santa done something?

  I had no proof. No reason to really think it, other than the fact that he looked kind of scary. But the suspicion made me bite back a groan as I turned over and scrambled onto my hands and knees. I didn’t want to stand all the way up. With the way my stomach was roiling and my vision was fuzzy, I wasn’t sure that I could. And I wasn’t going to risk falling back over and making a noise.

  I had to stay quiet.

  Something was up. I had to figure out what, or there was no getting out of the situation. Or maybe I had hit my head when I fell, and now I was suffering from paranoid delusions.

  Wouldn’t I know if I was suffering from paranoid delusions?

  No. That’s why they call them delusions.

  I was getting sidetracked. Delusions or not, I needed to act, otherwise I was never getting out of the aisle.

  Crawling wasn’t as easy as some of my preschoolers made it look. The floor underneath me was some kind of hard tile, and though it looked clean when I was standing up, now that I had my hands on it I could tell it was filthy.

  I shuddered. Gross.

  I kept my head down. Eventually I made it to the edge of the aisle, where I could peek out and see what was going on. Was I the only one who had collapsed? Was this really something that was just about me? Or had the other people in the store been affected?

  My answer came swiftly.

  It wasn’t just me. The human Santa and his green-clad elf were sitting against a counter and they looked terrified. From the vicious look on Evil Santa’s face, it was obvious why. He had done something. He was saying something. Ranting. But I was too far away to make it out. I didn’t even know if he was speaking English.

  I didn’t have a subdermal translator. They were expensive, and I didn’t really need one in my day-to-day life. So hopefully the alien either had a translator of his own or he spoke English. And maybe he just looked angry. Hopefully.

  Resting alien bitch face. It was a thing. Right?

  Given the way human Santa and the elf flinched away from his latest roar, it wasn’t resting alien bitch face.

  Damn. I crawled back into the aisle before anyone could see me. But not before I saw Evil Santa banging something against the counter. It was dark and small enough to be held in his hand. A communicator? No way to know without getting close. And there was no way I was getting close.

  But that made me think of my own communicator. If something was up… if he was doing something to us… if he wanted to hold us hostage… I needed to get help here.

  I pulled my communicator out of my pocket and pressed the screen to wake it up. Nothing happened. I pressed again and still nothing. And then I pressed the power button, hoping that maybe it had just accidentally turned off.

  Still nothing.

  Completely blank screen.

  What the hell? I knew it had been completely charged when I’d walked into the store. It was important to me that I never ran out of battery. I hated the idea of being stranded somewhere with a useless communicator.

  So why was it dead? It wasn’t exactly the most high end device on the market, but it had served me well for the past couple of years. It had never died on me before.

  Could it be something that Evil Santa was doing? He possibly had the power to knock people unconscious without being near them. Could the same go for communicators?

  Bad thought. I did not like the sound of that. And I didn’t want to stick around for much longer.

  It felt risky to go for the entrance of the store. But I was pretty sure Evil Santa couldn’t see the doorway from where he was standing. Besides, he was faced away from the door and yelling at the other humans. Even better, the doors remained all the way open. He wouldn’t even hear the whispering slide as it opened and closed. It was just a doorway. If I could get there I could get out and get help.

  It was risky. Really, really risky. He didn’t know I was back here. I could just stay curled up in a corner, maybe find a display to hide myself behind, and hope that he went away before things got even worse.

  That would save me. Maybe. Only if Evil Santa didn’t start looking around for other people. He would have to eventually. The store was too big to assume that only human Santa and his elf were there.

  What about that other alien?

  I didn’t know where he had gone. And I hadn’t seen him when I’d spotted Evil Santa. Were they working together?

  I had no reason to think that. Just because they were aliens didn’t mean they were friends.

  So could I find that alien? Could he help me? Could he hide with me?

  I was a coward. There were at least two people being held hostage. I thought they were being held hostage. And here I was thinking of staying hidden and letting whatever happened to them happen.

  Not good. I couldn’t do that to them. I had to get help. I was in the position to do it.

  That meant I had to get out the front door. Surely there were other exits in the building. There had to be a back way in for deliveries and maybe an employee entrance. But I was backed into a corner. There were only a few aisles where I was crawling, and if I wanted to get to the rest of the store I would need to go into that central area where Evil Santa was standing.

  My only option of escape was the front door.

  I had to try it.

  I crawled even slower than I had earlier. If this was my one chance of escape I couldn’t screw it up. I didn’t want Evil Santa to see me. But I also didn’t want human Santa or the elf to see me either. I didn’t think they would sell me out. They looked terrified. But they might accidentally give me away.

  I made it to the edge of the aisle and had to stop. This was where it got dangerous. There were a few displays between me and the entrance. I could use them for cover. Could put them between myself and Evil Alien Santa. I had to hope it was enough.

  I wanted to move fast. Wanted to get up and sprint for the door. But speed like that would draw attention to me. Attention I could not afford.

  So I moved slowly. Achingly slowly. So slow that I could practically feel the blood pounding in my veins. Every beat of my pulse sounded like a banging drum. But I made it to the door. I could almost feel the cold wind from outside blow on me.

  Why couldn’t I feel it? I should be able to feel it.

  I crawled towards the opening, but before I could cross the threshold, my body met some sort of resistance. It wasn’t a door. There was no door there.

  It was a force field of some kind. I tried again, throwing myself at the opening. But nothing happened. It didn’t hurt, but I couldn’t go through.

  This was bad. Very, very bad. I was exposed, and if Evil Alien Santa looked my way he would see me. I scrambled back towards the aisle. Something was keeping the door shut. Or rather, keeping a force field in front of the door. That was very, very bad.

 
And I had a feeling it had something to do with the device in Evil Alien Santa’s hand. Or maybe he had another device. Maybe the device in his hand served an even more nefarious purpose. One that clearly wasn’t working.

  Apparently the frustration a person felt at a malfunctioning remote-shaped device was the same no matter the species.

  “Puny human, are you crying? Are you scared?” The sound of his voice was enough to make my stomach turn. He sounded like he was a minute away from torturing puppies.

  “My name is Jeff.” That had to be human Santa. Jeff. And Jeff sounded scared, his voice trembling. I wanted to help him, but I was frozen in place. “And she’s Wendy,” he continued, some of his fear transforming to bravado. “We’re not puny. What are you doing? Let us go.”

  Evil Santa let out a little laugh. It sent a shiver of terror down my spine. “You will be tribute for my brother. He will have a feast unlike any he’s ever known. I will bring honor to my family.” He got loud at that declaration, almost loud enough to make my ears hurt.

  “You’re going to eat us?” Wendy asked.

  I was glad she did. Because tribute and feast were not words I wanted to hear from an evil-looking alien who was holding us all hostage.

  Evil Alien Santa did not respond. Wonderful. My wrists and knees were starting to ache. I didn’t know how long I’d been crawling around. It felt like hours. It had probably been two minutes.

  I had just come here to buy Christmas presents. How did I end up getting held hostage by Evil Alien Santa?

  What was I going to do? He was just one man. He didn’t seem to have any sort of special powers. Except for the whole knocking us all out thing. But I didn’t know if that was a psychic power or if he had used a tool of some kind.