ROMANCE: MY ALIEN KING: Scifi Alien Invasion Abduction Contemporary Romance (Paranormal Fantasy BBW Alien Contact Anthologies & Collections Book 1) (11 page)

              Seeing and hearing all this, Stacey went pale with horror.  "You can't take him!  My parents are lawyers!  I'll call them!  You can't take him off of Mars!  I won't let you!"

              The officer with the cuffs gently but firmly moved Stacey to one side.  "If your parents are lawyers," he said, "they'll recognize interplanetary due process when they hear it.  We're doing our job, miss."

              Stacey covered her mouth with one hand and hugged herself with the other.  Pain twisted up inside her at the sight of the officer with the cuffs putting Tavos's hands behind his back and securing his wrists.  Tavos looked sadly over at her and said, "I am sorry, Stacey.  Sorry that I lied, and that I will not have the chance to do what we spoke of my doing for you—and that I relaxed my guard at the wrong time.  What befalls now is upon me alone."

              Taking down her hand and choking back a sob, Stacey blurted out, "But... but..."  The cop with the pistol took Tavos by the shoulder to lead him off the terrace and to the police skimmer, and everything she did next happened before Stacey was even fully aware she was doing it.  On adrenaline and impulse alone, she reached for the bottle of hot oil on the heating disk and grabbed it.  Her arm lunged forth, hurling the contents of the bottle into the air, right into the face of the cop leading Tavos away.  His skin suddenly, shockingly spattered, the officer released Tavos and staggered back, dropping his weapon, shouting, wiping frantically at his face.  His partner, furious at Stacey's interference, drew his own weapon and advanced on her.  Terrified both at the shock of what she had done and the consequences—to say nothing of the thought of her parents' reaction—Stacey again did the first thing that entered her mind.  She grabbed the heating disk, which had cooled enough to handle after bringing the oil to the temperature at which it was ordinarily most pleasurable, and flung it like a discus with all her might, catching the advancing cop right on the forehead, over his eyes and under his helmet.  It was an amazing shot—and, Stacey realized with a fright, a costly one.  The officer dropped to the terrace floor, stunned.

              Tavos whirled around, still cuffed, and fixed Stacey with a look both impressed and bemused.  He was accustomed to thinking fast to make a getaway, but he could not have taken down these two lawmen better himself.  "Take my bag and let us go!" he called to her.

              Stacey grabbed his bag from the terrace floor and the two of them stepped over the fallen lawmen, the one with the oil in his face still rubbing at his eyes.  Stacey had just enough presence of mind to snatch her body suit from the chaise before the two of them dashed into her suite and locked the door behind them.  As soon as they were inside, Tavos told her, "In my bag there is a weapon.  You must use it to blast these cuffs from me.  And hurry, they are about to recover."

              As he told her, reached into his bag and pulled out his pistol.  She eyed the weapon worriedly.  "Are you sure this won't hurt you?"

              "I keep it set to stun at all times. I do not wish to be a murderer as well as a deserter."  He turned his back to her and presented her with his cuffed wrists.  "Quickly now.  Aim as well as you did when you threw the disk; you can do it."

              Breaking into a sweat, her face etched with fear, Stacey aimed the pistol and saw a point of red light appear from its sights on the surface of the electro-cuffs.  Wetting her lips and steadying her hands, she squeezed the trigger.  A popping sound accompanied a pulse of light from the pistol, and in a second the cuffs flew, sparking, into pieces.  Tavos spun back to face her and held up his freed hands.  "Get your clothing and some shoes; we must run," he said.

              Quickly, fighting back her growing panic, Stacey gave Tavos the pistol, took her body suit from the floor and a pair of shoes from near the bed, and Tavos had his bag in hand once more.  They were out of the room just as the men on the terrace outside came back up on their feet.

              The two fleeing youths—a Sarmian lad in a thong, carrying a pistol and his supply bag; and a human girl in a sheet—turned every head they passed on their way down the hotel corridor and into the lift.  Inside the lift, Stacey hurriedly pulled on her body suit, pointing out to Tavos, "We didn't even have a chance to get your clothes."

              "At the moment, that worries me the least," said Tavos.  "I have resigned myself to being on the wrong side of the law.  I did not wish to bring another to the wrong side with me.  I am sorry for what my plight has done to you, Stacey."

              "You didn't tell me to attack two cops. I did that myself."  After a pause laden with dread, she added, "I threw hot oil on that patrolman.  Oh no, I actually did that.  I wasn't thinking.  I must have hurt him."

              Tavos said, "The oil that you splashed on him was no warmer than what I rubbed onto you for the massage.  He was not hurt; it gummed up his eyes more than anything."

              "But still, my parents are officers of the court and
I attacked two cops!
"

              "And now it may have marked your life.  You did this for me.  Whatever befalls me, I shall regret what helping me has done to you."

              "What do we do now?" she asked.

              "Do you have a vehicle here?"

              "Yes. I rented a skimmer."

              "Then we must take it from here and use it to put some distance between us and this place, and then abandon it."

              "Abandon it?"

              "Yes.  The authorities will take your name from the hotel's manifest and cross-check it with all vehicle registrations in Nirvana.  They will trace us that way.  We cannot keep the vehicle.  We must take it somewhere and run."

              Stacey sighed at the enormity of what she was doing as it finally caught up with her.  In mere minutes she had gone from debutante to fugitive.

_______________

              Reaching the ground floor of the hotel, they crept into the backstage area of the entertainment complex and into the wardrobe room.  Here, Tavos ransacked the compartments of men's costumes until he found an acrobat's pants, a pair of boots, and a tank top similar to what he had worn for the appointment, and quickly put them on.  Stacey, holding the pistol again until he took it from her, could not help but feel a little sorry to see him dressed once more, in spite of their dilemma.

              "What now?" she whispered. 

              He whispered back, "In my bag is my access to the money that I have earned since I have been here.  We will get to a spaceport somehow and I shall bribe someone to look the other way when I board the first ship off Mars."

              "And you won't even know where you're going 'til you take off."

              "That is my life, Stacey," he said with a tinge of sadness.  "On Sarma I would have been compelled to be a warrior.  Battle, combat, and conquest are our reputation on a dozen planets and more.  Across known space, when beings think of war, they think of Sarma.  And yet, not all of us desire such a life, in which we must do battle and face taking lives or perishing ourselves.  I looked ahead at that life, at what it would do to me, at what it would cost my very soul, and what I would become.  Better to choose this life, I decided, than spill blood or have my blood spilled in a life that others would have me live."

              Stacey touched his beautiful, muscular arm.  Understanding him, her heart broke for him.  She wanted to cry.  "I'm so sorry, Tavos.  That's a beautiful name—Tavos."

              "I did not wish it to be the name of a killer, or a casualty," he said.  He gazed deeply and meaningfully into her eyes.  "I wanted very much to
shadaal
you as Rovan.  I still wish that I could as Tavos."  He half-leaned and half-lunged for her, seizing her lips with his.  In a moment of amazement and suddenly unfettered desire, Stacey found herself locked in her first kiss.  As the lawmen had bound him with their cuffs, she clasped him with her arms, drawing all the passion from that one incredible moment.  It was another regret for both of them when they slowly pulled apart, lingering another moment yet in each other's arms.

              "Is it not ironic," Tavos asked at last, "that in Earth's myths Mars was a god of war?"

              "I'll bet your people could have taught him a thing or two," Stacey said.

              Tavos pulled back, keeping his eyes gently on the human girl.  There were so many things he had wanted to teach her about what a man does to a woman he desires, and has her do to him, when he takes her to bed.  He envied the one who would show her those things.  Softly, he said, "We must go."

_______________

              Quietly, carefully, they stole out of the entertainment complex, letting their attire identify them to passersby as entertainers who had been working on one of this evening's shows.  Tavos tucked his pistol into the back of his stolen gymnast’s pants.  They avoided eye contact with anyone and everyone.  Stacey felt a clammy, prickly heat on the nape of her neck and wished she had thought to grab a pair of her sunglasses on their way out of her suite, or that they could get a couple of pairs in the hotel lobby now.  The need for escape was their only priority at the moment, and as it occurred to her that her rented skimmer would respond only to her thumbprint, she would now have to be a fugitive's moll, driving the getaway car as if this were some 20th Century Earth melodrama.  Her parents were going to disown her for this, she just knew it.

              Nevertheless, the two of them soon stepped out from the hotel proper into the enclosed guest hangar with its rows of skimmer vehicles, ranging from models just big enough for one pilot to long floaters that could take a pilot and a dozen riders.  Tavos took Stacey's hand in his and said, "Lead the way."

              They took a few steps on the pavement and Stacey realized, "Oh, Tavos, I should have gotten my linker out of my suite.  It can pick out my skimmer from where I parked it.  I can't remember."

              Tavos stopped both of them in their tracks, fixed his eyes earnestly on hers, and said, "Please, Stacey, you must try."

              The clamminess on the nape of her neck now broke out all over her skin.  With a dire tremble she said, "A-all right."  They started forward again and Stacey let her mind roll back to yesterday, when she’d checked in.  All she needed was to remember the number of the queue and the assigned letter of the dock, and they could just climb in and take off.  With a deep breath and a squeeze of Tavos's hand, she called up the combination and led him off among the queues.  They walked briskly and as calmly as they could.  It was an effort not to break into a run and invite the attention of anyone else who might be arriving or leaving, but in minutes they were at the side of Stacey's rented skimmer.  Tavos helped her into the pilot's seat and then climbed into the passenger's seat.  Her thumbprint in the ignition engaged the drive and she pulled the skimmer up and off the dock, and out of the space.  Peeling out, they floated smoothly over the paving between the queues and were off.

              At once they came to the vehicle pathways on the hotel grounds.  Sunset was on the way, the Martian sky outside the dome of Nirvana growing dim.  The time of day made no difference in Nirvana Planitia; the place was always lit up.  Gliding the skimmer along the pathways, Stacey felt a forlorn wish that Nirvana were not quite so gaudy and ostentatious.  She would feel better about trying to be inconspicuous in a place where everything around her wasn’t as conspicuous as it could be.  She got the craft right to the end of the main pathway, when all at once their surroundings were as filled with sound as with light.

              The noise of the blaring, wailing sirens drowned Stacey's shocked and panicked outcry as she lurched the skimmer to a halt, floating over the ground just at the boundary of the hotel property.  She and Tavos together looked up and around to find their surroundings coming alive with inbound police craft, their lights flashing, their sirens at full blast.  One patrol skimmer dropped in front of them, two more swung in from either side.  They felt their own craft lurch and Stacey found the controls suddenly inoperative.  The Martian Colony troopers had engaged magnetic locks onto Stacey's craft, pinning it in place.

              Stacey's shoulders slumped.  She fell back in the pilot's seat, helplessly.  She looked dead ahead at the pair of officers, a male and a female, climbing out of the patrol vehicle in front of them, and barely felt Tavos's hand on her thigh.  She did not turn to look at his reassuring expression; it would do nothing to reassure her anyway.

              With weapons drawn, the approaching officers reached Stacey's skimmer, one of them on either side.  The female commanded, "Get out of the vehicle and keep your hands where we can see them.  You're under arrest for resisting arrest, assaulting patrol officers, and fleeing from extradition."

              Only now did Stacey look into Tavos's eyes and see the resignation on his face.  They might have slipped away from her suite, but now they were surrounded and outnumbered.  There was nothing to do but obey.  Stacey's senses were so filled with the imagined sound of her frightened heart pounding and her heated blood rushing, she could barely hear the recitation of their rights.