Page 28 of Matched to the Alien King
Pete stepped his bulge closer directly into my line of sight. “Ladies, ladies, mind sharing with the rest of the class about what’s so important that you can’t listen to your most excellent host explain the next game?”
And suddenly I was transported back to my days in military school where I always got into trouble. Every day. No matter what. Especially for breathing wrong.
“I…was just telling June here that this dress has snack holes.” I opened up a little pocket at the side of the sparkly champagne-colored dress which I’d stuffed full of M&Ms—courtesy of Oreo and Smitha who were starting to spoil me—plucked one out, and popped it into my mouth. “See?”
Lucy had coined the phrase, or maybe she didn’t, but it had always made me laugh. A sharp pang splintered down my heart at the thought of her laughing and twirling and showing off her snack hole pockets in the pants she’d outgrow in like, a month.
“Did you just say…snack holes?” Pete moved in closer.
Then he immediately backed off with his hands raised, his worried gaze aimed at the male contestant side of the stage.
Specifically at the imposing Xenoxx king who’d stood and looked like he wanted to rip Pete’s throat out.
June was mid laugh. So was everyone else, contestants and crew alike, except for Maxx, Pete, and me.
“What?” I said, tapping June on the shoulder. “What did he say?”
“Your royal boyfriend said for Pete to keep away from all your snack holes.”
I snorted a laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, which caught the attention of my “royal boyfriend.” The way those amethyst eyes raked over me was a physical caress that pebbled goose bumps over my arms and chased a tremble deep into my lower stomach.
He could look at me like I was the embodiment of sex and sin and the center of his universe all he wanted.
But it wouldn’t change that I was still mad at him for not telling me the truth sooner.
Still, even he deserved a treat from my snack hole.
I tossed him an M&M underhanded. He easily caught it, and with his eyes on me, he slowly snaked out his scaled purple tongue where he then placed the candy. He chewed, his jaw muscles pulsing and clenching and gyrating.
There was something so sensual about it all that mouths dropped open, legs parted, and chests heaved. And that was just Pete.
Just kidding. That wasn’t Pete. That was all me.
Before Maxx sank back down in his hoverchair, he winked.
I might have melted a little. Damn me and my stupid lustful hormones.
Then I offered one to everyone else, but no one took me up on my selfless offer.
Grimacing, Miekil shook his horned head at me and patted his naked, bricklike abs. “I’m trying to cut back on food from holes.”
I shrugged. “Your loss.”
“This is without a doubt the strangest show I’ve ever hosted,” Pete muttered to no one in particular.
“Careful, Pete,” I told him. “It could probably get stranger. Best not to jinx yourself and the rest of us by default.”
He grinned then, a real one this time, or as real as I’d ever seen on him. “Let’s focus on a different type of hole for this next game. No, you sexy perverts, not the types of holes I know you’re thinking about, but the ones inside of each of you, and your favorite person here onAlien Love Islandwho helps fill it up.
“Now, I’m sure you’ve all seen the various art supplies behind me on the table. Your job is to draw your favorite person here, or the person you’d most like to be matched with. If our audience picked the same person you drew, you are automatically saved from the next episode’s elimination. Questions, comments, or cookies from various snack holes?”
He paused for dramatic effect, and to fill more time in the forty-four minute episode, and when no one said anything, he bellowed, “Begin!”
I hauled myself up to the table and grabbed some holographic paper and a box of Crayola magic e-markers, while Maxx, with a secret smile on his face, took some acrylic paints, a brush, and a holographic easel. There was no way I could do his chiseled features, chin dimple, and shimmery purple scales any justice with my customary stick-figure drawings.
Which was fine. I planned to use this time watching my fellow contestants as well as the crew. Was one of them an assassin like Emjay? Maybe one of them stole Bling’s dagger during the first episode? Did one of them poison my food or write the note on the leaf in the game called Baggage Between Buns that blamed me for starting the Faid War?
I had no idea, but a way to whittle the list of suspects down was to see which hand, or in some cases hands, they preferred. Why? Because the Ts in the note from Baggage Between Buns were written by a left-handed writer.
