“I’ll be the judge of that.” A Blood Kindred doctor in a white coat came into the exam room as the nurse left. “Now then, it appears you’ve just come in with my colleague, Dr. Lathe, from BleakHall prison. Knowing the reputation of that place, I expect you’ll be physically run down—possibly even malnourished.” He was studying a tablet as he spoke but when he looked up at Slade’s massive, muscular bulk his eyes widened. “Well,” he murmured, making a note on the chart. “Perhaps not malnourished then.”
“The only thing I’m starved for is sex, Doc,” Slade said bluntly. “I’ve been locked up for six years now with no female companionship, if you know what I mean. If you’ll just point me the way to the Pairing Puppets I’ll be healthy and happy both.”
“Well…” The doctor’s pale blue eyes widened. “Direct, aren’t you, Brother?”
Slade shrugged his broad shoulders.
“It’s the only way I know to be. Now could you point me in the right direction, please? I’ve got a six-year itch that needs scratched.”
“I’m afraid the Pairing Puppets’ House is closed for the evening,” the doctor said, frowning.
“Fuck,” Slade growled in frustration.
“Not until tomorrow, I’m afraid,” the Blood Kindred doctor said dryly. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll check you out of the med center and get you assigned to a guest suite for tonight. Why don’t you rest and shave and shower—get a good hot meal and a good night’s sleep. Then you can be at the Puppet House first thing in the morning when they open to, ah, scratch your itch.”
It sounded like the best offer Slade was going to get.
“All right.” He sighed. “I’ve waited six years—I guess I can wait another six hours.”
“That’s the spirit.” The doctor clapped him on the shoulder. “Now let’s get on with this exam. I have to look you over before I can release you and have you assigned a suite.”
With a resigned sigh, Slade submitted to the exam. He would take the doc’s advice. A hot meal of decent food, a shave and a shower—not to mention a good night’s sleep on something besides a mattress thinner than a bergrath’s shadow—would be welcome after so long in the hole at BleakHall.
And tomorrow he would find her—the pretty little Pairing Puppet of his dreams. The one with wide hips and big brown eyes.
She was waiting there for him—Slade just knew it.
Chapter Two
“Come on, Brandi—live a little! It’ll be fun!”
Brandi frowned at her cousin and crossed her arms over her chest. How many times had Crystal gotten her into trouble with those exact words?
Come on, it’ll be fun! Just try a drink—Peach schnapps is the best!
Come on, Brandi—it’s only one little pill and I promise it’ll make you feel amazing!
Come on, girl—nobody cares if we take one or two things. Everybody does it—just don’t let the clerk see..
And probably the worst one of all…
Come on, Brandi—you have to go with me on this date. Dwayne has this really cute friend called Earl and he wants to come too but we need a date for him. Come on, please?
That last request had landed Brandi is more hot water than all the rest combined. The double date had included waaaay too much to drink and had turned into sex in the back seat of Earl Duckworth’s car which had led to an unplanned pregnancy, the loss of her college ambitions, an unhappy marriage and an even unhappier divorce, all before she hit her mid-twenties.
The only good thing to come out of the whole sorry situation had been Brandi’s daughter—Emmaline.
“What are you namin’ her such a fancy name for?” Brandi’s mother, Ivy-Mae Dixon had demanded when Emmaline was born. “You oughta call something normal like Daisy-Mae or Mary-Grace or Cindy-Lynn. Something pretty like that.”
But Brandi had no intention of naming her daughter anything common. She’s always been a reader and a thinker. In fact, despite occasionally getting dragged into her cousin Crystal’s shenanigans, Brandi had gotten excellent grades at Plant City High School and had been on track to get a modest scholarship before her disastrous date with Earl.
Of course, having Emmie changed all that. She’d had to drop out of school and get a job since Earl’s occasional stints of work at several of the local mechanics shops didn’t exactly make for a steady payday. Then later, after he got busted for dealing and went to jail, she’d had an even harder time making ends meet.
Her dreams of full-time college were gone but she had managed to get her GED and take a few night courses here and there, after the baby was born and before Earl went away—mostly because her stepfather, Bud, was good with kids and willing to babysit. Her mother, Ivy-Mae, was more interested in being a barfly than a grandmother so she was out. And Crystal was too much of a party-girl to trust with Emmie.
But Brandi was intent on bettering herself. She’d managed to land a job in Tampa as a secretary to the branch manager of the Bank of Tampa’s downtown location. True, she had a boss who tried to play grab-ass with her on a daily basis but at least it was better than waiting tables at a dive-bar, which was what Crystal did or working at the Dollar General like her mom.
Despite her status as a single-mom who came from a low-income family, Brandi was determined she was going places—she just didn’t know where or how yet.
But she didn’t always feel so hopeful.
Who am I kidding saying I’m a single-mom from a low-income family? she asked herself grimly, on nights when she was feeling low. I might admit what the rest of the world sees—I come from trailer trash and without a degree it’s nearly impossible to get out of the damn trailer park!
It was true and Brandi knew it. Call it what you wanted—trailer trash…white trash…redneck…Florida Cracker…any and all of those described her family and her lot in life. Sometimes a pessimistic little voice in her head whispered that she was never getting away from it—never getting out of Plant City whose only claim to fame was that they held the annual Strawberry Festival there every February.
You’re stuck here forever, whispered that little voice, and you’re never getting out. And sometimes when it had been an especially bad day of trying to keep away from her groping boss and her mom was drunk and shouting at the neighbors and Crystal was calling to ask to borrow ten bucks for gas money and Emmie asked for the thousandth time what had happened to daddy and why he didn’t live with them anymore…sometimes Brandi almost believed it.
Which was why it had been so surprising when Crystal of all people offered her a way out—at least temporarily.
“I got these tickets to tour the Kindred Mother Ship,” she’d told Brandi excitedly, about a month before. “I won ‘em on an on-line poetry contest. You have to come with me.”
“A poetry contest?” Brandi hadn’t even tried to keep the disbelief out of her voice. The only reason her cousin had passed remedial senior English had been because Brandi had tutored her and had practically written most of her papers. Crystal didn’t know grammar from a graham cracker and Brandi, who was a confirmed book lover herself, doubted her cousin had read so much as a comic book her whole life.
In other words, Crystal was no Sylvia Path.
“Yeah, a poetry contest. Think you’re the only one who can write?”
Crystal arched an eyebrow and put one hand with its long, manicured fingernails on her bony hip. She always seemed to have money for fill-ins on her nails even when her gas tank was dry and there was nothing but month-old curdled milk in her fridge.
“Well, you have to admit—” Brandi started but her cousin cut her off.
“I saw a little flower
Open to the sky
The bloom was oh-so-pretty
It almost made me cry,” she recited. “That was my poem. There’s more—I talked about the clouds and the sun some too—but anyway it won. It won, Brandi! And now I got these tickets and you gotta come with me!”
Brandi had tried to put her off. She’d sworn to herself to s
ee less of her cousin if possible—where Crystal went, trouble always followed and Brandi had had enough trouble to last her a lifetime. But Crystal had begged and pleaded and eventually Brandi had given in. Not because she was wild to see the Kindred Mother Ship—although it did sound interesting—but because Crystal finally wore her down.
Also, it turned out that her cousin had used Brandi’s name and information to enter the contest in the first place.
“Crystal!” she had exclaimed. “That’s freaking identity theft! What other information did you give them?”
“Nothing important,” Crystal protested. “Only your address and phone number. Oh, and your email address. But I didn’t give your real one—just your work one, okay?”
Brandi had been hard pressed to hold back a sigh.
“So that’s why I’m suddenly getting so much spam e-mail at work! I swear, Crystal, I keep getting these mails about penis extension pills and sex toys and crap like that. The other day I clicked on one by accident and my boss, Mr. Grabbar, saw it!”
“Mr. Grabb-ass, you mean?” Crystal had smirked at her. “What did he do about it?”
“Threatened to write me up, of course.” Brandi sighed. “Of course, he implied that if I let him feel my ass the write-up could just magically ‘go away.’”
“What a jerk!” Crystal said indignantly. “I hope you told him to fuck-off.”
Brandi sighed again. “Of course I didn’t say that, Crystal. I need this job and I worked really hard to get it. I managed to put him off but it wasn’t easy.”
“Well, just say the word when you’re tired of dealing with that dick-head and I’ll get Ricky down at the club to hire you,” her cousin offered. “He keeps a loaded shotgun behind the counter and don’t let nobody grab our asses.” She giggled. “Not unless we want ‘em to, anyway. I swear, I had the cutest customer the other night…”
And she was off and running.
Brandi had suppressed another sigh. The #MeToo movement had passed her cousin by completely. Not that Crystal cared. She was happy with the life she lived and she never seemed inclined to try to do or be more.
That was probably the real reason Brandi had agreed to go with her cousin. Maybe, just maybe, a trip to the Kindred Mother Ship would be the one thing that finally made Crystal start questioning her choices and looking for more, the way Brandi was herself …
Right…keep telling yourself that, whispered a voice in her head as she faced her cousin in front of the restricted area on the Kindred Mother Ship they were not supposed to go into. It sounds really noble and self-sacrificing but tell the truth and shame the devil, as Grandma Ida used to say. You didn’t come to the Mother Ship for the noble purpose of broadening your horizons or helping Crystal gain a new world view…you came up here for the men. And for the possibility of no-strings-attached sex.
And that was the ugly truth of it. When Crystal had told her she knew of a place on board the Mother Ship where a girl could have one-time-only, anonymous sex with a Kindred, Brandi had finally relented and agreed to come with her on the tour.
Brandi supposed that might sound awful to an outsider—somebody who didn’t know her life. But she hadn’t had sex in literally years. Not since Earl had been shipped down the river and the good Lord knew, Earl hadn’t been much in the sack department to start with.
Oh, Brandi had tried dating, but the men Crystal set her up with were grabby drunk rednecks and she never seemed to have much to talk about with anyone at the bank where she worked. Dating sites were a bust too. Though Brandi had a pretty face and great hair, she was definitely plus-sized—most potential dates swiped left on that. Besides, men ran for the hills the minute they learned she was a single mom.
Well, even if they hadn’t, Brandi wasn’t interested in bringing home a parade of temporary daddies to confuse Emmie, the way her own mother had done with her before she finally settled down with Bud. (Ivy-Mae still occasionally brought home a strange man but Brandi’s long-suffering stepfather generally just sent whoever it was on his way with a warning not to come back and chalked it up to his wife’s drinking problem.)
All of these dating failures and the difficult life of a single mom with no sexual outlet was hard on Brandi. Earl hadn’t exactly been the world’s greatest lover but at least he’d been a warm body in bed beside her—and a way to scratch her itch. Brandi liked sex—she had from the first minute she’d lost her virginity in the backseat of Earl’s car. It just seemed to be part of her temperament.
It might not be very prim and proper of her but she missed getting laid—or fucking if you wanted to be crude—on a regular basis. You couldn’t really call what Earl did to her “making love”—there wasn’t much tenderness or pillow talk involved and afterwards he had rolled over and was snoring in about two seconds flat. But it was satisfying to Brandi in a way that no vibrator seemed to be able to match. Sometimes she felt so hungry to connect with a male body she thought she might explode! She was ready to do just about anything to finally have sex again—even have it with an alien stranger.
Or so she told herself.
But now, standing in front of the neat little white house with its pink trim in the middle of the off-limits Unmated Males area, Brandi wasn’t so sure.
“I’m telling you, this is the place!” Crystal gestured enthusiastically at the little house. “The place where the fuck puppets live. Come on, quick—let’s get inside before somebody catches us!”
“I don’t know about this…” Brandi frowned but allowed herself to be reluctantly led up the front porch steps. “Maybe this is a bad idea, Crystal.”
“No, no—it’s a great idea!” her cousin insisted. “You’re always complaining about how ‘lonely’ you are—which I know damn good and well is code for ‘horny’—but you’re always so picky when I try to set you up.”
“The men you pick are awful,” Brandi protested. “The last one didn’t even get out the front door before he was trying to shove his hand down the front of my shirt!”
Crystal blew out a breath in frustration.
“I swear to God, Brandi! I thought you wanted to hook up!”
“I do but not…not like that.”
Brandi had a hard time explaining, even to herself. Yes, she wanted sex but she wasn’t willing to just hop in bed with any Tom, Dick, or Harry to get it. If she was that desperate, she could have just given in to her creepy boss. Ugh…just the thought made her shiver with disgust.
To her way of thinking, when a man asked a woman out on a date, he ought to be respectful—not just assume she was going to put out. Besides, Plant City was a small town. If she started sleeping around, word would get out and then she would never find a decent man.
Which was why one-time anonymous sex with a gorgeous handsome stranger had sounded like such a good idea.
Brandi felt another twinge of doubt.
“Crystal, I really don’t think we should be here.”
“Yes, we should,” her cousin insisted. Grabbing Brandi by the hand, she dragged her through the front door and into a nice-looking living room, lined with chairs and couches.
And sitting neatly on almost every available chair and couch, were women.
Tall women, short women, thin women, plump women—women of all nationalities and skin tones just sitting there reading quietly as though they were waiting for someone.
Brandi was taken aback.
“Oh, I’m s-so sorry,” she stammered, looking around. “We didn’t mean to…” She trailed off when she realized not a single woman had looked up when they came in. She tried again. “Um…hello?”
Still nothing. The women continued to read—or at least, Brandi thought—to stare blankly at the books they were holding. Because their eyes weren’t moving and no one was turning any pages. It was like they were in some kind of creepy suspended animation.
“What is this place?” she hissed at Crystal. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing—these are the fuck puppets I was tellin
g you about,” her cousin explained. “All you have to do is sit down and pretend to be one of them and then the next horny Kindred that comes in—bam—instant big-cocked alien sex. And I do mean big.” She giggled and made a motion with both hands in the air. To Brandi it looked like she was measuring an invisible baguette.
“How do you even know about this place?” she demanded. “It’s not on the official tour.”
In fact, they’d had to sneak away from their tour group to get here in the first place. Brandi hoped they hadn’t been missed.
“I work with a girl at the club who has a sister who knows a girl that has a friend who did it,” Crystal explained. “She said she got the ride of her life! And she ended up with a Kindred who could turn into a dragon. My hand to God—a real life dragon!”
“That doesn’t sound like any kind of Kindred I ever heard of,” Brandi said doubtfully. “Aren’t there just three main types? The Blood Kindred have the fangs…the Twin Kindred come in pairs…”
“And the Beast Kindred have a big old swole-up place at the bottom of their dicks that’s supposed to rub you just the right way,” Crystal finished for her. “Yeah, I know all that but the girl I heard about got a guy who turned into a dragon.”
“But—” Brandi started to protest but her cousin was losing patience.
“Look, don’t worry about it! It doesn’t matter if they have fangs or twins or dick-knots or what. The main thing is, these Kindred are hung like bulls!”
Well, that would certainly be a nice change from Earl’s rather skinny member, Brandi had to admit. But standing here in the room full of quiet “fuck puppets” as Crystal called them, she began to lose her nerve.
“I’m just not sure,” she said uneasily. “I mean, if you’re pretending to be one of these, uh girls, you can’t exactly ask the guy to wear a condom.” Having unprotected sex just once had changed her whole life—she wasn’t looking for a repeat. “I’m not interested in catching some kind of space venereal disease or giving Emmie a brother or a sister,” she pointed out.