Page 12 of Matched to the Alien King
I had ninety-six million.
Fuxx. Did that mean she was leaving me?
My heart did a dangerous leap toward my feet and stayed there. My next breath burned. I looked toward her, but her focus remained on the jungle, all of our voices soundless to her static-filled ears.
I’d only spoken to her for the first time a few days ago, but I felt like I’d known her since I’d seen her on TV ten years ago. She’d shown then how big her heart was, and how ravaged it was, and I’d never forgotten her. Not once.
And now that I knew her inside and out, I’d never be the same without her.
“All of us are accounted for, sir,” the nervous crewmember told Umo.
“Fine,” he groused, literally brushing his hands of the whole thing. “It must just be some unlucky native, then. Not our problem. Pete, you with me?”
Not our problem? That seemed harsh.
“Yeah, I’m with you,” Pete said, still eying the jungle wall skeptically. Then to himself, he added, “You bag of limp, orange dicks.”
My sentiments exactly, Pete. Astonishingly accurate too. But now I’d never look at Umo the same again.
“Then let’s pick up where we left off,” Umo called on his way off the platform. “No more interruptions. Start where you left off. I’ll be in the crew’s beach house going over numbers.”
“And…action,” someone shouted.
The hoverchair slammed into the backs of my knees and dropped me down into it. The Killian’s too.
Not the goddess Nera, who neatly sidestepped hers and fixed it with a death stare before noticing the camera drone practically stuck to her face.
She looked around, saw everyone in their seats again staring expectantly at Pete, and with a cocked eyebrow, she dropped into her hoverchair. Her dress hid the secret place she hid her gun, and when she saw me looking, imagining,salivatingabout where she could possibly keep it, she shot me a wink.
I groaned and shifted in my seat, my pants uncomfortably tight. I’d never been so jealous of a fuxxing gun in my life.
“Now,” Pete said in a low, dramatic voice and tapped the viewscreen behind him, “let’s find out what the viewers think of all of you. We’ll start with the males.”
The names and numbers rearranged themselves with only the highest number on top showing for now.
Me.
“King Maxx,” Pete said, whirling to face me. “Ninety-six million beings all across the universe voted for you to stay onAlien Love Island. An astronomical amount. How does that make you feel?”
I had no idea how to answer that since all my emotions were currently tied up in Nera and keeping her safe. So I decided to sidestep with the grace of Nera and go instead with a humorous musing about the other female who ruled my heart. “It makes me feel that my daughter, Roxxanne, had something to do with it. Like she bribed the millions of her friends.”
Pete smirked and then forced a chuckle. “That would be quite a feat for Roxanne to bribe that many.”
“You don’t know my daughter.” I must have said it like a threat because Pete’s snarky expression dissolved in seconds.
“And something tells me that’s probably for the best.” He shot me a grim smile. “Would you like to hear some of the comments our viewers said about you?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I’m going to tell you anyway. One called you a KILF, or a king I’d like to…” Pete waved his hand in the air. “Well, you know. Several others formed the XXXenoxx Lay Squad, spelled with three Xs. Another said that your ass is, and I quote, ‘the finest slab of man meat I’ve ever seen,’ and she’s been around for over two hundred fifty years.”
The other contestants laughed. Not Nera though, who was reading Pete’s lips with a frown of…disgust. Maybe she was as much of a fan of objectification as I was, meaning not at all.
Leaning forward, I caught her eye and smiled.
At her. No one else. For no one’s benefitbuther.
When she smiled back, something deep inside me soared, like great feathery wings stretching and taking to the air for the first time in years.
