Strangeways, p.1
Strangeways, page 1
Strangeways
Addison Cain
Praise for
STRANGEWAYS
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“Beyond twisted and filthy hot, STRANGEWAYS is the most unique sci-fi romance I’ve read in years!” –NYT bestselling author, Anna Zaires
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“A wonderfully original, scorching hot sci-fi romance. The fantastical world is fully immersive and beautifully written. I devoured this delicious story, and I’m already hungry for more!.” - USA TODAY bestselling author, Julia Sykes
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“Addison Cain has a way of bleeding on the page like no other. Addictive. Captivating. Worthy!” –USA TODAY bestselling author, Alta Hensley
©2020 by Addison Cain
All rights reserved.
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No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Cover art by Simply Defined Art
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
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“Twisted and perversely hot!”
- NYT Bestselling author Anna Zaires
1
Cliché as it was, I set a cigarette to my lips and struck a match. The quick scent of sulfur, that beautiful moment of burnt wood… then first inhale singed the back of my throat. Nicotine laced smoke swirling through my lungs. Dark air. Dark thoughts. Out of practice, aware that my actions were foolish, the taste of tobacco was no longer one of pleasure as it had been while clubbing in my twenties.
The cheap menthol tasted flat, dirty even.
It tasted exactly how I felt.
The crumpled pack had been going stale in my nightstand drawer for over a year. Couldn’t tell you why I’d never chucked it. Maybe I liked the accessibility to a frivolous, expensive pleasure. Maybe I was just lazy in the small spaces where I could afford to be.
I suppose it was providence—there I was, sitting at the end of my sex-mussed bed, sucking on a cancer stick… because.
“Explain to me why your back is to me and a cigarette is in your mouth.” Such a soft voice: velvet on the ears—almost a physical sensation to hear.
I exhaled, monotone, and watched the sorry puff of smoke add to the already unpleasant smells lingering in the dingy square of my room. “It’s a human post-coitus ritual.”
“No, it is not.” I heard him shift behind me, as if he contemplated edging closer before changing his mind. “It is a formula used in your media to visually style the end of good sex. Should I interpret this act as a sign you were pleased with how I fucked you? I would prefer to be told in other ways that do not cause harm to your body.”
Sucking smoke into my mouth, swirling it with a tired tongue, I puffed my cheeks and let it free. A fake inhale. A mutiny.
Which, in its small and stupid way, felt necessary.
But he meant well. He must have.
Sometimes it was difficult to tell if the ‘new species’ were using earthling cues properly. Was he sincere? Did that dusting of hurt in his vocalizations mean anything? Or was he using the manipulations earth men so loved to pepper through their words to garner praise?
How did one even describe sex with these… men? “I enjoyed it.”
“You don’t smoke.” The softest rabbit fur, the most lovely of spine tingles. “This is not a habit that is healthy, nor is your current action offering you a sense of joy in this moment.”
How the fuck would he know if I smoked or not? Not that it was any of his business…
One last drag. A real, proper inhale. I let burnt air roll around inside me, all the while holding back a building cough. Dropping the cigarette into a cloudy glass of water that had been left for days on my dresser, I exhaled the plume. Watching it shift from strong gray mass into tendrils that twisted into nothing.
The darkened air dissipated almost as quickly as my comfort with this situation.
Cutting a shy glance over my shoulder, I forced a pleasant smile. The same one pasted on my face day after grinding day at work. It failed almost as soon as it was born.
One look at him…
Sprawled, utterly naked, propped on an abundance of cheap, mismatched pillows, he waited.
Sure, I was naked too, and he had a great view of the seated top of my plump ass and tapered back, but I was ordinary. Regular.
Normal.
This man… lounged, utterly unreserved, blatant in his sexuality. Brazen.
Where some kook had come up with the term ‘little green men’ to describe his race I’d never understand.
There was nothing little about any of them—not height, not build, not, um, their parts—that warranted the diminutive term. The specimen taking up the entirety of my bed was pure muscle, yet lacked the bulk one might imagine came with such strength. There was leanness, definition, in shoulders that were too broad for a human and waist too narrow. Over all that strength was silvery skin, though it did favor green. And just like us humans with our freckles and personal features, there were random defining marks that set him apart from the others of his kind.
Phi had stripes.
Those markings had caught my eye from the first moment I saw him reading a menu at one of my tables. Few and far between, angled to highlight his bone structure, those stripes reminded me more of sexy 1970’s David Bowie than any of Earth’s exotic animals. The most striking, my favorite mark, was a line bisecting his face straight down the center. Down his throat, and now that I’d seen him au natural, led to the treasure between his thighs.
“Emily.” God, the way he spoke my name was a caress.
He was chiding me for my reticence, for my failure to meet his gaze… and I’d always been a sucker for guilt trips. Up went brown eyes, my attention all his. “Yeah?”
His toes—well, they were similar to toes—brushed my thigh. “Come here. Human women are to be attended to after they have been mated. It is mentally unhealthy for you to draw away.”
It wasn’t intentional, but I smirked. Phi had a knack for making me do that. “Is that what you’ve been told?”
Like running water, his tone could be so smooth. Placid, welcoming, urging. “We’ve observed your species for many years.”
Shifting onto a hip, I lost my train of thought, a new one smashing in so hard my eyes clenched, my mouth went into a line. I grew tense.
Incredulous, I asked, “You observed humans fucking?”
“How else were we to assure we satisfied? Human females are far more frightening than the males. You must be conditioned to find us enjoyable, or we might be overpowered.” As if utilizing a practiced expression, he winked. Hand to God, the alien winked.
And heaven help me, I giggled. I even put a hand over my lips like some sad flirt at a club.
But amusement faded in an odd and unmerciful way. I grew uneasy with the way he stared.
Mouth dry as a smoke-scarred desert, I fought my tongue to say, “You forgot to mention that we find you overwhelming and scary.”
Phi blinked his second eyelid, a quick flash of horizontal movement snapping shut over fully black eyes. Like the shutter of an old camera snapping away, those peepers were always active.
Click, click, click, click, click.
There may have been no sound, but when he looked at me, I felt as if he was cataloguing, memorizing every twitch with a mental snapshot. Those upturned eyes seemed a mechanical afterthought of evolution.
Designed to be alluring.
After all, the entirety of him was enticing—the smoothness of his skin, the silvery-green coloring, the slightly oblong skull, even his practically human mouth. But the eyes… they made me feel as if I was a human living on a planet swarming with aliens that should not have been there.
Phi might look mostly human, but shit like that was a quick reminder that these new citizens were not one of us.
Like a languid stroke upon a treasured pet, his voice passed over and through me. “Do not feel fear toward me, Emily.”
And with easy words from a lounging tiger, I didn’t.
It dissipated just like my last exhale of that disgusting cigarette, fading into calm, steady air.
Still, I spoke of why. “Your kind just showed up here—legions of you—and no one said a thing. Our government, which I will openly admit is populated by warmongering idiots, just stood there, smiling, waving, as if they’d sent out invitations to tea. You live in our cities, you even dress like human m ales now…”
Phi finished my thought, the entirety of his expression gentle. “And the males of your own species are wasting away—have been dying off for generations. The majority cannot survive past forty Earth years and soon will be gone.”
Exactly.
And how was it that such a phenomenon was something everyone noticed but nobody talked about? “My brother, he’s thirty-eight. He started coughing last year… Tony won’t make it to forty.”
And while my brother could no longer work to support his family, I was here, having just let an alien fuck me until I’d come so hard I’d torn my cheap covers to shreds.
No longer willing to wait for me to lie beside him, Phi leaned the glory of his upper body forward and reached for me.
Pulled into the cradle of warmth, a defined and powerful chest to my back, I found his touch far more soothing than I should have… considering he was practically a stranger.
His ribs expanded in a great breath, arms closing more firmly around my much smaller frame. He even pressed his forehead to my crown before he said, “Settling on this planet was done peacefully. Not one of your species was harmed. There has been no violence. So, sweet Emily, please tell me the basis of your fears so that I might erase them.”
My concerns were so straightforward I could not believe I had to explain. They should have been the concerns of every human. Even thinking of that day their ships blackened the sky, I felt my heart pick up speed. “The atmosphere burned, a wave of massive ships emerging from flame to land where they would. Everyone stood there like lemmings, silent, when you stepped off those creepy things. I saw it on the news, in the streets. It wasn’t normal.”
Exactly! I felt it in my very marrow at that moment those words crossed my lips. It wasn’t fucking normal! It wasn’t normal, yet we all acted as if it was.
Phi, muscled arms wound around my middle, rubbed his cheek to mine. It was smooth and lovely. It smelled of fresh air and stiff breezes. Of open places outside of city smog.
I took a greater inhale than I had of my cigarette and let it linger just as long in my lungs.
Engulfed by the man breathing at my ear, cradled, being treated more sweetly than any living human had ever treated me, my alarm deflated.
I even offered a conciliatory nod when he reasonably explained, “Your film industry has conditioned you to think extraterrestrials only seek out Earth to invade, steal your resources, and commit genocide.”
“Not true.” His words should not have been amusing, but I smirked as if he’d struck the perfect chord. “The alien species in the original Star Trek were all go go-dancing sluts for Kirk.”
“I enjoy the fact that you are humorous.” Phi smoothed his fingers over my sex-tangled curls, tugging playfully to watch a spiral bounce back, and in a way that gave inexplicable pleasure. Then I was enfolded again. Brushing my ear, his lips parted to impart more sweet words. “It was fortuitous that I found you first, Emily.”
2
Found me? Phi hadn’t found me; he’d just walked into a restaurant—like so many people in this dirty, overcrowded, vicious city did. I wasn’t memorable, special, or even that pretty. Who had time to be these days?
I was consistently rumpled, past my prime, and doing all I could to work as many hours humanly possible. Yet this guy made it sound as if I’d been discovered in some epic quest.
As if I were worth something.
It was disconcertingly laughable. Had I been made of sterner stuff, I might have even brushed it off. Instead, I was horribly embarrassed.
Being embarrassed while naked was no fun. Being embarrassed while naked and held by the man who had just fucked you was even worse.
This was where interludes of this sort tended to curve—an awkward pointing out of my flaws, a bored yawn. Maybe even some light ribbing.
Thick ass, bags under my eyes, blemishes, and corkscrew hair that lacked the definition and bounce expensive shampoos might offer.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, I gave zero shits. But in this instance, I really wished I could crawl deeper into myself and pretend everything was different.
But I was no Cinder Girl.
I hated working in service. I also hated the customers, if I was honest with myself. Something I rarely indulged in. Girls like me didn’t live the kinds of lives that allowed healthy introspection—not if they wanted to survive the endless hours, the grueling pace, and the lack of any sort of decent affection.
Girls like me smiled, rolled our shoulders back, and kept our aprons pristine and our cuticles messy.
Girls like me returned to squalor because we were too fucking exhausted to clean up the apartments we lived in.
Serving tables was backbreaking work.
It was thankless.
Yet I was grateful to have a job, showed up on time, and smiled no matter who was speaking to me.
Even if I despised them.
Even when I served aliens and humans alike in my section.
At this point, I was not even sure which I preferred.
The new species had been here almost a year, so of course, I’d adjusted to seeing their oversized forms at my tables. They were decent patrons, even. More polite than humans by far.
Phi was not the first I had seen and certainly not the first I had spoken to. He was, however, the first I had fucked.
Which made my belly flip in a strange and unwelcome way.
I was still not sure how we’d ended up at my shitty apartment in the middle of the day.
Had I found a human man waiting outside my place of business for me to leave, I would have pulled out my pepper spray and called the cops. Instead, I’d walked right over to him, pushed my curls behind my ear, and said hello. My voice had even been coy.
Anyone with half a brain knew better.
Phi had embraced the situation with unbridled enthusiasm. Dared reach out his fingers to brush a sweat-stuck stray curl off my forehead. He’d complimented me—the softness of my dark skin and hair, the almond shape of my eyes, the beauty of my curves.
Internally recoiling, I outwardly smiled. Trained to please all patrons, confused, tired, desperate.
Had a human man touched me like he had, I would have sent my knee flying straight to his groin. But it had been different when Phi put his hands on my body and told me I should take him home. That I required care and he would provide it.
I’d grown wet right then and there.
How fucked up was that?
Calling a car with a simple stretch of his arm, a cab actually pulled to the curb. I could rarely afford one. And in I went, to warmth, to rest for my aching feet, and to my crappy apartment.
I fumbled the key in the lock. He steadied my hand.
I apologized profusely for the mess. Again, he called me beautiful.
Me.
Tired, worn-down, me.
The first time he’d screwed me, he’d marched me through my door by the elbow. The piles of dirty uniform aprons littering the floor had been ignored, the pair of us walking over abandoned pizza boxes and fast food wrappers. Once at my lumpy bed, he’d bent me forward, ass up, still clothed.
He’d ordered me to stay just so.
I’d never had a man talk to me like that… or flip up my skirt, pull my panties down, and inspect me. And that’s exactly what he’d done. Kneeling, he’d leaned up close, tracing his fingers down the shape of my labia. He’d spread them apart to look deeper, and… I should have been mortified.
It’s not like I had expected a tryst. Heck, I was sweaty after the morning shift and wearing an old pair of panties.
It didn’t matter. Phi had complimented my scent, shape, and even posture profusely.
