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He turned the corner and ran into his best friend, Kwon.

Rane stepped back in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

Kwon raised his brows and shook his head. “Cowes has been looking for you. You’re in trouble.”

Rane sighed. It wouldn’t be the first time. “You’d better take me to our lord and master, so I can find out what his gripe is.” His art would have to wait but not for long. He always came back to it. It was something he’d never give up.

Chapter 3

The tentacle slid over the woman’s naked body.

Her breath panted out of her, and her nipples grew hard.

As the tentacle slid down to her butt, the moistness made her groan.

Nell grimaced and erased the last line of text. Nothing that was moist was ever going to be sexy. Moist was not a sexy word. Moist was a kitchen cloth that had been left damp and moldering on the sideboard. Moist was the crotch of your pants after a workout. Moist was gross.

She tried again.

The tentacle was flexible, like the innards of a bicycle wheel. It could mold around every curve, leaving a snail trail of dampness behind it.

Yuck. She erased those lines, as well, before tossing it on her couch and hiding her head in her hands.

Maybe it was the late hour that had her struggling to focus or the fact she kept thinking about that freaky Olickie and the way he’d tried to lull her with his humming. Whatever was going on in her head, her writing was terrible.

How would she ever write another book? Alien erotica was all the rage. Everyone she knew and their mothers were obsessed with reading about hot aliens and their ability to turn women into quivering, orgasmic messes.

Nell loved to write. Ever since she was a girl, she’d scribbled ideas. The fictional voices in her head kept her awake at night as they talked about their lives and acted things out. It had sometimes been more real to Nell than the actual world.

Books were her escape. They were a way to help her forget that her real life often sucked.

When she’d started earning money from the romances she’d published on Earth, she was thrilled. But markets change, and so do readers’ predilections for love.

Her last three romances had failed, and she was about to admit defeat. Nobody wanted handholding and first-base make out sessions. All readers wanted was some hotter than hell alien to swoop down in their flying saucer, abduct the feisty yet damaged human, and take her into the stars. They’d face an adventure filled with multiple orgasms and have food replicators that produced delicious cookies that never made you fat.

She slid her hands through her dark hair. She had to get over her repulsion of aliens.

It was why she’d been living among aliens for almost two years. What was it her therapist called it, total immersion therapy? You faced your fear head-on and realized it wasn’t so terrifying.

Nell shook her head. What a crock of crap. Aliens were terrifying. Her therapist had obviously never met the enormous ones with horns. Then there were the ones with claws. Nell shuddered as the image of an alien with a beak and feathers drifted through her thoughts.

How could anyone find that sexy? But, somehow, women did. There was a growing interest in all kinds of aliens, from the ones with feathers and talons to the ones with tentacles they liked to sucker onto your skin and taste you.

No way was that ever happening to her. She’d slap any tentacle that got too close.

When her latest therapist, Doctor Kingsbury, had discovered Nell wrote fiction, she’d suggested she incorporate it back into her life. She considered it a kind of informal therapy. Nell could write her fears away. All she had to do was convince herself that aliens were hot.

That was easier said than done.

Nell sighed and tipped her head back to stare at the white ceiling. She couldn’t be the only one on Prodigy to consider aliens unattractive.

Maybe she was. Nell looked around her living quarters. She couldn’t imagine sharing this space with anyone. She was so used to living alone. Everything was in its place, neat and orderly. She didn’t want some enormous alien striding around and messing everything up or, most importantly, messing her up. Been there, done that, and it wasn’t happening again.

She didn’t even want a human mate in here doing the same thing. Human guys could be as loud and annoying as the next alien.

“There’s only one thing for it,” Nell said softly as she stood and padded over to the cabinet in the corner of the room.

Nell pulled out a long, tall glass. She took out a bag of small, colored stones and poured them slowly into the glass.