Kazan Read online

  For all the good that did me. My jaw hit my chest as soon as ‘Miss Ashby’ entered the room.

  “Kazan, this is Elle Ashby. Elle, this is Colonel Kazan.” With a nod, she was gone and the door slid shut.

  I hadn’t seen very many humans in my time, and this one was unlike anything I could have expected. She was lean, and not so short that I would have to crane my neck down to kiss her. Not that I was thinking about kissing her!

  A generous spill of rich, dark hair fell down around her shoulders, framing out a pair of green eyes that sparkled with rancor. This was a creature used to maintaining her composure, but all my training showed me that she was just as infuriated by this whole thing as I was, maybe even more.

  Those eyes had an almost furtive flicker about them, and I wondered for a moment if I was the first of my kind she had ever seen. If so, it would have been a shock to her. If all of her kind were as fine boned as she was, someone as tall as I am could be pretty intimidating. Not to mention the horns.

  She drew in a sharp breath, an ample pair of breasts swelling against the flowered dress she wore. It clung to her curves in a way that I couldn’t help but drink in. No doubt she saw my eyes wandering over her, but I felt pretty certain hers were doing the same to me. The dress seemed incongruous with her bearing, which was no-nonsense to the point of near regality.

  “Um…”

  I wanted to say something, but it was as though I had forgotten how to speak. My tail tingled with excitement, and began to twitch. Hopefully, she didn’t know the ways our kind betrayed lust. Some things you couldn’t help.

  “Um…” she said back.

  Neither of us were going to get very far at this rate. Maybe we just needed to wait for the initial shock to wear off. The beautiful woman in front of me was a stark relief after the squat figure that had ushered her in.

  The notion started to come to me as we took each other in—maybe the next thirty days wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  Elle

  I followed the stout little woman into a room that seemed to be someone’s idea of a matchmaking suite. As she moved aside, I saw a red alien-man, even larger than the ones I had met before, although obviously of the same race. He had the same smooth tail, and horns curling out of his forehead. The horns on his head had a stately look that accentuated the lines of his face. This one stood tall and was even more muscular than the other Jorkan men I had met. His shoulders looked strong and melted into huge biceps I could almost imagine squeezing in delight. Above his cut chest was a face so handsome I was caught off guard. Was I really thinking of squeezing this red lizard-man?

  I realized I was letting my apprehension show in my eyes for a moment. I reeled my cool, steely self back in, trying to notice anything I could from his face. He had a strong, square jaw and full lips tinged a delicate pink color. Their beauty made it all the more jarring that the rest of his face was a deep red, covered in tiny scales. His eyes were full of fire, a deep-seated anger that must be about this bizarre situation. Oh, so he really did not want to be here. Good. I could work with that.

  My mind was trying to take all the new information in at once, and finding its processing speed slowed down. I was still chewing up all the information I had learned earlier: I was on a space station orbiting Pluto, an outpost for this Jorkan civilization; aliens were a real thing; I was genetically matched to this red-skinned alien.

  It was too much.

  How could our tiny Pluto not be Earth’s Pluto? How could it be one of this Jorkan race’s bases of operations? And a base of operations meant for human-Jorkan matchmaking, no less? I mean, alien slash human love? It was hard not to think of myself as in the middle of some reality TV nightmare on channel 1147.

  In the background, the stout woman was introducing us rather curtly. Yes, I was Elle Ashby still, thank god. And this man was…Kazan? What a name. I felt like it suited him. Then I was back in my reverie.

  Just yesterday I was in my real job, in my real life, pulling down clients and gunning for partner. Now I was playing dress-up for this scaly, strikingly beautiful creature? How could any of this be real? I wished that pinching myself was a real thing that would work and suppressed an urge to try it.

  I was pulled out of my own thoughts by a sound. “Um…”

  I reciprocated.

  “Um…” But then I thought I would show him a little of what I was made of. He would underestimate me, as men always do. I liked that…it set me up for victory.

  I put out my hand for a handshake, as if he were a competing lawyer. “You can call me Elle. I take it I can call you Kazan?” The fire in his eyes turned to hesitation. I realized he did not know what to do with my outstretched hand.

  Feeling generous, I decided to show him. “Like this,” I said, placing my right hand in my left and shaking it firmly. I stretched out my hand again.

  “Colonel Kazan,” he said sharply, as if correcting my pronunciation.

  He grabbed my right hand and shook it vigorously. I held on, squeezing tightly. I knew he simply did not know how handshaking worked, but somehow, it felt like a challenge. I always rose to a challenge. As we shook, I noticed his tail swinging abruptly. He was trying to hide its movement, and doing a mediocre job at it. We let go of each other’s hands awkwardly, but I felt like I had asserted myself. I wondered why he might be trying to hide the movement of his tail.

  “You expect me to always call you Colonel Kazan? Fine by me, Colonel, you may address me as Elle Ashby, Esquire,” I replied haughtily.

  Then Kazan started to blush, turning a faint pink underneath his red scales. He was trying to hide that, too, the poor man. I decided he wasn’t used to intrigue and manipulation. He must be a full warrior type, hack and slash and no nonsense. Perfect. He would appreciate my honesty. Staring into his eyes, I suddenly realized the fire there wasn’t just fury at the situation. I read the desire there, and put that together with his tail…which must be… he was attracted to me, and he resented it. A dangerous combination. I was glad to have caught him off guard this way.

  “I didn’t mean to…I mean that…” he spoke haltingly, trying to regain control.

  Oh, poor man.

  I’d let him stew on that.

  I noticed the booze and walked over to the table near the couches. I started pouring myself a glass of wine. I absolutely needed one. “Do you mind if I have some wine, Colonel?” I asked absently, sitting down on the couch, glass full and already sipping. I smiled to set him at ease.

  “That’s a great idea. I’ll join you. We both need a drink.” He paused, finally catching on to the joke. “Elle Ashby, Esquire.” I let a silence hang in the air. He relaxed. So easy. “What does that mean, Esquire?”

  Now it was my turn to be caught off guard. I laughed easily. “It means I’m a lawyer, Colonel. It means I studied my cute little butt off for seven years, then worked six more years to become partner, only to be kidnapped and brought to space to meet you on my big day!”

  He surprised me with the gentleness of his response.

  “I’m sorry this is happening to you. We’re the same, you and I.” He leaned back after taking a shot. “I don’t want to be here any more than you do. And you can just call me Kazan.”

  I surprised myself even more by being drawn in to his story.

  Maybe I could use it somehow. “What did they pull you away from?” Hmm, if he was an unwilling participant as well, then I could use him somehow. Great. One less opponent on the gameboard to worry about, just a pawn.

  “Training my team. They have some,” he paused, deciding what word to use, “knucklehead, full of bravado, filling in for me. I’ll have to undo more of what he does than anything else.”

  “You can say it.” I gave him my most charming smile. Yes . . . it would be more effective to bring him over to my side. All that brawn had to be useful for something.

  “Say what?”

  I tilted my head. “What you mean. Sounds like a real asshole.”

  He laughed
, and I saw his tail flicking at his side. He might think I wasn’t noticing, just because I was human. The raw power of the movement, his face, his body language, everything was a dead giveaway. He was really interested in little me, despite what he said about work. It was time to squash that feeling.

  “So, you’ll be happy to hear my plan.”

  “Your plan?”

  “Yes, my plan. I’m not going along with any of this.” I gestured widely to the room and took a big sip. Okay, a gulp, of wine. “They said the thirty-day period was a trial period. Well, I intend for the trial to be a big, whopping failure.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “I’m glad you agree. We’ll spend the time together, hating every minute, and the moment the time is up, I’ll be smooth sailing back to Earth. You clearly care about your career, so you understand. I simply will not be letting this farce get in the way of being partner at my firm. I’ll have to come up with a deadly illness I miraculously recover from in a month but, by God, I’ll make it up and sell it.”

  I paused, to stop myself from monologuing about work, and as I paused, realized I didn’t miss work as much as I should. I felt naked in this dress, without my armor of a suit, the comfortable pressure of a jacket around my waist. Even though I knew I was winning this interaction—yes, all interactions have winners and losers—I felt like I was missing something. But not work.

  Anyway, it was time to seal the deal.

  “I’m so glad we are on the same page about this. It is a travesty of human…and Jorkan rights that we’ve been taken away from our lives to play this silly game.”

  He was looking at me with a side eye, taking in everything I was saying. It helped that he agreed with me. That meant I didn’t have to reject him outright, in so many words. Men do hate rejection. It was the quickest way to leave a deal on the table, reject a man’s idea. Still, I could tell he was conflicted.

  Now he was pouring himself a drink to sip instead of shoot. He went for straight whiskey, the cheapest kind on the table, poured over a haphazard pile of ice. I bet he usually drank it straight and warm, but was trying to seem a little more sophisticated for my sake. Even though there was no chance for him, I appreciated that he was making the effort. No matter what my plan was, we did have to spend a month together. And I wanted him to be intimidated by me every moment of it.

  “I’m thinking about everything you’re saying, and have to say you’re right.” He seemed caught between being at ease and having his hackles up. I was grateful to have such an easy challenge before me. Just enough to stay interested, keep me from being bored, but not so cunning as to be a threat. I wondered what he really thought of my plan.

  Did he know how interested he was in me? And how could I use that to my advantage?

  Kazan

  I’d give that little spitfire one thing for sure—she had more backbone than nearly anybody twice her size. How anyone could fit that much grit into her tight little frame is beyond me, but she knew how to carry it. She knew it, too. And there she was, poured onto the couch like she was born to sit there, making short work of a glass of wine.

  She drank. In point of fact, she could really drink. That was going to make the next thirty days a little easier to handle. It was nice to think that I wouldn’t have to leave all the partying to my team. I took some private satisfaction in the thought that some of that steel might melt out of her spine after another glass or two.

  Ice in hard liquor—or whatever this brown drink was—had never really been the way I preferred to operate, but she had managed to get me a little off my center. The way she had poured herself that wine put me in a place where I felt like I wanted to class myself up a bit. Especially after she had laid out such a clear case for wanting nothing to do with me.

  To be honest, it stung a little. Why was she so sure I wasn’t for her? She was a thoroughly attractive little package, and it was clear that she had been sizing me up the same way I had been her. So, why was it all a foregone conclusion?

  I was a little surprised at how vehemently she’d thrown her gauntlet down. Maybe I was just wounded at thinking I would be harder to resist.

  “Honestly?” I said as I eased back down beside her—just a bit closer this time. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re as opposed to this whole thing as I am. You’ve got your…lawyer work, and I would far rather be with my team. We both have obligations that we would prefer.”

  “Exactly.” She raised her glass in my direction. I was unclear as to what the gesture meant, but didn’t want to give her the upper hand, so I copied her motion. She very nearly laughed in my face and leaned closer to clink her glass to mine before taking another hearty gulp.

  When she leaned over with that glass, she gave me an ample view of all the goods she had secreted away. As tactical as everything about her had been, I wondered if this generous flash of cleavage was a strategy to keep me off my footing. Well, for whatever it was worth, that’s exactly what it did.

  “Still, it would be a shame to waste this opportunity.”

  “Opportunity?” She studied me, a flash of something crafty in her gaze.

  “Sure. I never get a vacation, and I imagine that being a lawyer doesn’t give you much of a chance either, does it?”

  “It does not.” Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned further back from me, folding one arm under that bosom of hers and giving me some notion as to its heft. If I played this smoothly, there was a chance we could each have our cake, and eat it, too.

  “Well then? We’ve been handed thirty days. Since we’ve already made up our minds about the end of it, it seems to me we have two options.”

  “Which are?”

  I watched her closely. Since I’d said the word vacation, the quality of her attention had somehow shifted. “One: we can hate it. We can go through this thing against our will, fight the entire time, and see if we both manage to make it back to our respective lives with our skin intact.”

  “Or?”

  “Two: we can make the most of it.”

  “What exactly do you mean?” She was bristling, so I rose from the couch and turned around to the booze again. It was as much to create distance between us as anything, but some secret part of me hoped it looked at least a little suave.

  “Where we are going is all about pleasure. Wipe that look off your face, I’m not done.”

  She did, grudgingly.

  “What I mean is,” I went on, “they’ll make sure we’ll be comfortable. The rooms are nice, I’m told. Why the hell wouldn’t we take the time out to enjoy ourselves for thirty days? To eat whatever we want and let them think they’re pampering us into doing what they want?”

  I leaned over and poured more wine into her waiting glass, then stood and did my damndest to read whatever was going on in her eyes. They were like stone. Whatever an esquire, lawyer, or whatever her job was did, it was evident that she was pretty good at it.

  “Let me get this straight.” She rose to her feet, and snapped her heels in a tight circle on the floor. If she was trying to give me a good look at her all the way around, she was doing a magnificent job.

  “So, what you’re saying, Colonel Kazan, if I hear you correctly, is that you’re willing to neglect your work. That you are willing to turn your back on your responsibilities and spend the next thirty days drinking and cavorting with a stranger?”

  “It’s my duty.”

  “What about your duty to your men? You’re an officer, what about your duty to your post?”

  “Duty to the Earth-Jorkan Protocols supersedes that. Besides, vacation.” I said the word again, deliberately, and there it was. The flicker in her eyes. She turned her face away. Ha. But she’d revealed herself.

  “Does it?” She was coming around the end of the couch to meet me.

  “Apparently. Because, if I don’t go on this little jaunt, I’m going to find myself in prison.”

  “In chains, is it?” Now, she was right in front of me. When she said those words
, there was a spark of heat behind her eyes that felt suspiciously like a come-on. This wicked little creature was sexy as hell, actually.

  “Possibly.”

  “And tell me, Colonel, what would they do to me?”

  “It’s impossible to say. I don’t know what your end of things looks like.”

  “So, chains are a possibility for me, as well?” What the hell was she doing? If she was trying to get me off center, she was doing one hell of a job.

  I called her bluff. “Not unless you want them to be.” Her eyes widened, and for the first time, she looked a little flustered. “But, I say, why risk it? There are bound to be aspects of this whole ordeal we might be able to enjoy. Unless, of course, you enjoy the thought of chains?”

  Checkmate, I thought. She turned her head and took a long sip of wine. I countered by raising my own glass and indulging in a healthy pull of whiskey, without taking my eyes off her. It was the only power move I had at the moment.

  “So,” her eyes found mine again, the green in them catching the light as she turned. “We can make up our minds now that we can just embrace the time away, embrace the pampering and the luxury, and when the thirty days are up, split.”

  “Like our asses are on fire.”

  I held my glass out, mimicking her gesture earlier, and she clinked.

  “You know something, Kazan? There are things about your proposal that have real promise.”

  “I think it would be better than thirty days of self-imposed hell.”

  “Would we be required to be together all the time?”

  “I’m not sure how it works exactly, but I expect that’s the idea. It would be strange if they left us each entirely to our own devices.”

  “At meals?”

  “Most likely.”

  “When we drink?”

  “It seems so.”

  “At night?” She was very close to me now.

  “Almost certainly.”

  “You’re saying,” her body was so close, those breasts were nearly brushing up against me, “we would share a room?”