Kragen Read online

  KRAGEN

  Alien Hunger

  Chloe Cox

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Club Volare: Private Dancer

  1

  The day that Andie Knowles’s life changed forever was like any other day, except for three things: her grandmother’s test results still weren’t back yet, her new coworker at the Interspecies Mating Service was the actual worst, and, for some reason that Andie didn’t understand, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about sex all freaking day.

  That last one felt like the universe was just taunting her for the hell of it. Andie had long since sworn off the kinds of guys who could actually get her off. She’d learned the hard way that dominance and love apparently didn’t come in the same package, and she had decided that she would rather be single than be treated like garbage. Enter the world’s longest dry spell.

  And she’d been fine—sort of—until today.

  But worse than the constant warmth between her legs and her weird awareness of her own nipples was the fact that new coworker Bruce—a.k.a. Bruce the Gross—was totally picking up on it.

  She bent over to pick up a pen and heard him grunt appreciatively. Again.

  Definitely a grunt meant to be heard around the world.

  “Did you say something?” Andie said.

  Bruce leered at her from his desk, but he didn’t bother to answer her.

  Between braving the pissed off Humans First protestors outside the lab and drawing blood for twelve relentless hours, it had been a long day even before Bruce had started with the creepy noises. She didn’t mind everything else—not even the Humans Firsters who had definite opinions about the Interspecies Mating Service where she worked. The work was important, she liked it, and Andie had learned not to care about people who screamed obscenities at her back in high school. Plus, it was, you know, a job, and Andie really needed one of those.

  But the grunting was not part of the deal. Especially not on a day when Andie felt ready to burst. Her pent-up sex drive was apparently also protesting, just like the Humans First maniacs outside, and since she wasn’t getting laid, instead she was getting a headache.

  Andie stood up straight and nailed Bruce the Gross with her coldest look.

  So about lukewarm, then.

  “You’ve been making those sounds all day, Bruce,” she said. “You feeling ok? It could be something serious. Want me to call your wife for you?”

  Bruce’s leer melted into something more like a sneer.

  “Learn to take a compliment,” he said as he walked away, probably to disappear into the break room again. “Uptight bitch.”

  Andie rolled her eyes. Men. She knew they weren’t all the same, but sometimes it felt like enough of them were really damn similar. Made it hard for a girl to trust anyone. Bruce wasn’t even close to her type—was Bruce anyone’s type?—but Andie in particular had an incredible talent for finding a certain type of jerk: dominant, alpha, bad-boy types who turned out, in actuality, to just be selfish and cruel. Basically, if she was attracted to a man, it was probably because he was secretly terrible. And she did not need reminding of that fact. Especially on a day when, for no reason she could figure out, she just couldn’t seem to sit still.

  So she was relieved as hell to see her best friend, Kat Gale, waiting by her desk as she turned the corner.

  “Rough day?” Kat grinned. Kat worked for the Interspecies Mating Service, too, but on the research campus outside of town. Without Bruce the Gross.

  “You don’t even know,” Andie said, but she couldn’t help but smile. Kat tended to have that effect. She was somehow relentlessly cheerful. “But I am super glad to see you, and not just because it means my shift is almost over.”

  “Eight at night is too late to get out of work,” Kat said, shaking her head as she hauled her medical transfer box up onto Andie's desk. When she looked up, the glint in her eye was definitely mischievous. “When exactly are you supposed to date?”

  Andie gave her some studied side eye.

  “I mean, my type doesn’t exactly keep regular hours, so theoretically it shouldn’t pose too much of a challenge,” she said.

  “Plus, you swore off ‘your type’ until, and I quote, ‘I get a brain or they get hearts,’” Kat said. “Your words.”

  Both women were single, but Kat wasn’t afraid to admit that she didn’t want to be.

  “I have,” Andie said. “Totally sworn off of them, I mean. Completely. One hundred percent. But I’m human, and…”

  “It’s been a while?” Kat grinned again as she began stocking up her medical case with the vials of samples that Andie had taken that day. “Lady, I know you own a vibrator. I’ve given you at least one as a gag gift.”

  Andie blushed all over again, and, though she’d been trying not to all day, she stole a glance at one of the Leonid posters they had up on the walls here at the Interspecies Mating Service. She did, in fact, own a vibrator. She also owned the memory of the very first time—the only time—she’d seen a Leonid in the flesh.

  Leonids. Actual, real-life aliens. Every once in a while, Andie would be struck at how literally out-of-this-world insane it was that an entire race of alien warriors had come to Earth looking for mates, but it had really happened. It had been almost two years since alien ships had appeared on the fringes of the solar system. Satellites had picked them up near Pluto, and the ships had defied physics to take up orbit around Earth two days later. Two weeks after that, there were aliens in Washington, D.C. The Leonids had been connected with all of Earth’s governments since then via the Alliance, and now the whole world knew their story: no one knew why, but there hadn’t been a female Leonid born in almost a hundred years, and now there was an entire generation of males who needed mates or their species would die out. So the Leonids had taken to the stars to find their mates, and Earth was the first planet they’d found with promising females.

  And they were here for females.

  In exchange for the right to hunt for mates, the Leonids would refrain from conquering Earth, and they’d give Earth governments some advanced technology. It seemed like a good deal. It was definitely a deal Earth couldn’t refuse, anyway.

  The whole “hunting for mates” thing might be less appealing if the Leonids themselves weren’t, um, hot as fuck. In Andie's official estimation, anyway, and judging by the reaction of most of the female half of the planet (and some of the male half), she wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

  They were human-like—two eyes, two arms, two legs, and everything else in the right place—only somehow they were also…more. None of them fell short of six and a half feet tall of solid, cut muscle. Their shoulders were so broad that Andie would be surprised if they could walk through doorways without turning to the side. They were supposed to have the strength of at least ten human men, and there were…other rumors, about their abilities. And they had fangs.

  But that wasn’t what captured you, the second you saw one of them. It was the eyes.


  The eyes that seemed to almost glow with a heat that sliced right through you. That could just hold you in place with the strength of their stare. Some people said they could make you do things, just by looking at you. Andie didn’t know how that was supposed to work, exactly, but she did know that they were superhumanly, panty-quakingly sexy.

  Which was exactly what had happened the moment she’d locked eyes with a real, live Leonid: magnitude-ten panty quaking. It had been right after the Alliance had set up the IMS facility outside of town, when a Leonid delegation had come to tour the place. She’d gone to the public ribbon cutting, just like everyone else in town, and that was where it had happened.

  One of the Leonids had looked right at her.

  A nearly seven-foot-tall blue-skinned beast with yellow eyes and silver hair had locked eyes with her, and, honestly, she hadn’t been the same since. So Andie knew there was at least something to those rumors about the Leonid “abilities,” because she had freaking felt it. Those eyes had seen through her. She had felt…something brush up against her mind in the most intimate way. And then he’d looked away.

  The weird thing was she hadn’t wanted that particular Leonid, and when she thought about Leonids when spending some quality time with her vibrator, it wasn’t the blue-skinned, silver-haired Leonid who’d touched her mind that occupied her thoughts. It was just…she wanted that, somehow. She wanted that raw power on her. In her.

  And it wasn’t just the power. It was…

  It was the dominance.

  Those were the rumors that got to Andie. No one really knew what a Leonid mated relationship was like, but there were those rumors. Hell, you didn’t even need rumors. The BDSM and kink communities on Earth had been losing their collective minds ever since the Leonids showed up, because those towering, powerful males set off every sub’s Dom alarm at once. Seeing a Leonid male was like seeing the very idea of dominance in the flesh.

  No wonder the men of Humans First weren’t big Leonid fans.

  That, and the whole ‘noble warriors who mate for life’ thing. Sometimes Andie had to remind herself that they had no actual proof of the whole “noble” thing, but they did know that Leonid warriors were perfectly capable of conquering the whole planet. No human alphahole Dom could ever come close to that, and human alphaholes had already screwed her up plenty. She did not need to graduate to the alien variety. Even if her panties got to quaking every time she looked at one of those damn posters.

  Which was why, despite the protests of her libido, Andie Knowles had not and would not submit her own sample to the Interspecies Mating Service in hopes of being genetically matched with a Leonid. No point in opening that can of worms.

  No point at all.

  “Earth to Andie,” Kat said, her voice interrupting Andie's decidedly non-PG thoughts. “You lost in your own little world? Maybe a world full of naked Leonids?”

  How was it that best friends always knew what you were thinking, sometimes even before you did?

  “No! Yes. Shut up,” Andie laughed. “Besides, no more knuckle-dragging dominant alphaholes for me, remember?”

  “Well, hopefully some lucky lady is going to get a knuckle-dragging, Leonid alphahole,” Kat said as she finished packing up the last of the vials. “Or we’re all in trouble.”

  “Still no luck with the matching, huh?”

  It had been months since the IMS had started collecting samples, and thousands of women had volunteered, but they hadn’t announced a single Leonid-human match. It was still early days, but the longer it went on, the more tense things became for the Alliance.

  “I think they’re getting closer to figuring out what genetic markers to look for,” Kat said. “But…”

  “If the Leonids say we can match, they’re probably right,” Andie said. “Right?”

  Kat shrugged. Neither woman said anything, but they both knew what they were thinking. The Leonids were being nice now, but what would happen if they didn’t find mates through the matching program?

  No one really knew.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Kat said suddenly. “You ok?”

  Andie looked up to find her best friend giving her that Look.

  “Mostly I’m just tired,” Andie said.

  Which was a lie. She was the opposite of tired. She was wired, and her whole body felt…alive. And the only male around to appreciate it was Bruce the Gross.

  She clenched her teeth and smiled as Bruce waddled past, tossing his lab coat into the laundry. She watched him badge out, and didn’t stop watching until the door swung shut behind him.

  “Bruce the Gross strikes again?” Kat said. Her thumbs twirled the many locks on the metal case, keying in a code of roughly one bazillion numbers until the case sealed with a smooth hiss.

  “I can handle him,” Andie said. “I’m just distracted, I guess. The doctor still hasn’t called me about Gramzy’s latest labs, and I’ve been trying not to freak out.”

  Actually, Andie felt pretty weird about the fact that she wasn’t thinking about Gramzy all this time. Hard to do that when your body had different ideas. But it was there to worry about, every time she remembered.

  Maybe that’s why I’ve been so agitated all day?

  But Kat would understand. She had been Andie's best friend since they’d both terrorized the local kindergarten, so it was Kat, with her nursing degree, who was helping Gramzy get through dialysis.

  “I’ll call Dr. Fisher as soon as I drop these off.” Kat took a few layers of foam out of the locked case and started packing in samples. “The lab’s probably just backed up. I mean, you think we fall behind? At least we’ve got a buttload of funding.”

  “You’re still the voice of reason,” Andie said. “God, what does that say about me?”

  “It says you’re the fun one. And I’ll still call Dr. Fisher and get on his case,” Kat said right back. She turned the medical case around so Andie could see it. “On that note, check the manifest against what I’ve got here and I’ll get on out of here so you can go off looking for a Nice Guy somewhere.”

  Andie stuck her tongue out, but she did her job. Even if she’d never put her own hat in the ring, some lucky Earth woman should get to experience Mating.

  With aliens.

  Dominant, powerful, ruthless aliens.

  Yup, it still seemed crazy. Well, crazy and hot. Ok, crazy, hot, and dangerous.

  “Promise me you’ll let Rob walk you out?” Kat said as she gave Andie a receipt of transfer.

  Andie made a face. Kat worried about the Humans First guys, but Andie mostly thought they were losers. Still, they were not shy about the fact that they did not approve of any woman who considered mating with a Leonid, and recently they had gotten sort of…intense about that objection. That was the whole reason they’d hired a security guard for this sleepy little IMS outpost, even if Rob was not the most intimidating guy.

  And Andie had forgotten all about it. Every time she started thinking about Leonids, she forgot about the rest of the world. At the moment it felt like she was on the verge of that tingling sensation on every square inch of her body.

  I really do need to get laid.

  “Eh,” Andie said. “Rob doesn’t come in until eight on the dot, and if I hurry I can get out of here early. I hear the nice guys all go home before the sun goes down, and I want to get some nice-guy hunting in.”

  “Liar.” Kat smiled as she turned away. Then she stopped and looked over her shoulder. “But promise you’ll give me details if you find one?”

  “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  Kat’s laughter trailed down the hall. “That’s because you don’t kiss.”

  “And that’s because they’re all frogs.”

  Andie could practically hear Kat’s eyes roll as she walked out the door, and she smiled as she got down to her paperwork. Normally she liked being alone; she could get so much work done. But today…

  She just couldn’t get the Leonids out of her over-sexed mind. She’d let them in, and now t
hey weren’t going anywhere. Like her mind obeyed vampire rules.

  “Maybe I can get a Leonid-themed vibrator,” she muttered, and looked out the window at the last of the dusky light. The night in Silver Creek was cool and breezy, and Andie could see the lights from the movie theater glowing in the distance, and felt the familiar ambivalence twist in her gut. She loved her hometown, but it didn’t always love her. And she hated the memories she had from high school.

  That was why Andie had thought about getting out, going somewhere else to start a life. But then Gramzy had gotten sick, and Andie wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but by her grandmother’s side.

  Except tonight. Tonight the cool evening breeze didn’t calm her. It blew in through the open window and caressed her skin, stoking her need to…to move. To get up. To go somewhere.

  Andie just didn’t know where.

  Out of nowhere, she shivered. But she didn’t feel cold. In fact, the warmth she’d felt building all day was still simmering, threatening to boil over into…what?

  She looked up at the clock. Somehow fifteen minutes had passed, and she hadn’t gotten a damn thing done. The need to get moving, to do something with her body, was getting worse, like an itch that just wouldn’t go away. The wind picked up again, gusting through the open window, and Andie blushed from head to toe.

  Suddenly the wind gusted around her, and it was like being touched.

  This was freaking weird. She was almost…aroused? For literally no reason, except that she was finally alone with her thoughts and that damn Leonid poster that she refused to look at again.

  And she needed to go somewhere.