Curvy for Him: The Astronaut and the Alien (Curvy for Him Series Book 6) Read online

  CURVY FOR HIM

  The Astronaut and the Alien

  by

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

  1

  LOCATION: SPACE

  TIME: THE FUTURE

  FRAN

  “Does my ass look big in this spacesuit?” I say to Gary, raising an eyebrow and turning my head halfway towards him.

  Of course, Gary isn’t a “him”—he’s an “it”: An Artificial Intelligence Personality (AIP) that’s been my co-pilot, best-friend, and confidante for the past six months up here in space. I do have fellow human astronauts at International Space Station #42, which is technically my home base, but ever since I got promoted, I’ve been flying these solo missions. Which means it’s mostly just me and Gary now.

  “Your ass looks fantastic in that spacesuit,” says Gary with almost no intonation. “White is your color, Senior Flight Commander Frances Fisk; Age: 33; Marital Status: Single, Never Married; Children: None.”

  I snort and shake my head. We’ve made space our little bitch, but training Gary is like pulling teeth. I swear these AIPs (AIP=Artificial Intelligence Personalities; but I call ‘em Apes . . . yeah, sue me, bitches) are designed by idiots.

  “You don’t need to spit out my vital statistics every time we talk, Gary,” I say like I’m talking to a puppy or a child.

  “Vital Statistics for Senior Flight Commander Frances Fisk,” says Gary immediately. “Chest: 46; Hips: 48; Waist—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Gary!” I shout, my eyes going wide in shock. Why the hell does Space Command know how big my boobs are?!

  “Shutting the fuck up, Senior Flight Commander Frances F—”

  And I just reach out and turn Gary off, plunging my little discovery-pod into silence as I giggle and then settle into my seat and focus on what’s coming up ahead. It’s an abandoned space station a few thousand miles from Earth. It’s probably from the last century, and it broke from orbit a few months ago and has been spinning aimlessly through space. It’s basically space-junk. Cosmic trash. Interstellar garbage.

  “So I get promoted and now I’m the garbage collector,” I mutter as I brush a strand of long dark hair from my forehead and study the readings from my scanner. My mission is pretty simple: Dock with the space station, board it, download any data from its old-fashioned computers, and then vaporize it. (Yes, we can vaporize shit now.)

  My scanners show nothing moving or alive on the space station, and I sigh and glance back up. But then I frown when I see a flash of light from one of the small windows of the space station. I reach out and punch a few keys on my touch-screen control panel, running another scan. Nothing. Dead as a doornail. Still as the night. Dark as the backside of the moon.

  “Must be an electrical thing,” I mutter, squinting even though my eyesight is perfect. “Sparks or something.”

  I grab onto the controls and slowly begin the docking process. My senses are on high alert after seeing that flash of light, but I relax again when I feel my ship snap into place against the space-station’s empty dock. The space station windows are all dark again, and I wonder if maybe I was imagining things. It’s possible the flash of light was a reflection of my own ship’s lights. Maybe there’s a mirror inside that cabin. Perhaps an old computer screen that’s flickering because no one turned it off when they left town.

  I wait in silence as my scanners give me a readout of the temperature, oxygen, and pressure levels inside the space station. Everything looks normal—in fact it’s a little warm, if anything. Strange, but not too unusual. Maybe the last residents liked it hot.

  “Air-locks are functional,” I say to myself, nodding as I look over at my helmet. I could simply walk into that space station in flip-flops and a tank-top if I wanted. But of course that would violate about a thousand safety protocols. I need to suit up, carry reserve oxygen, and a weapon.

  I unbuckle my seatbelt as my ship comes to a shuddering halt, the electromagnetic docking mechanisms locking firmly into place. I glance over at my holstered weapon that hasn’t ever been used outside of a training facility at ISS42. It shoots pink laser-beams. Yes, really. You can also choose a weapon that shoots blue, purple, green, or rainbow lasers. Clearly the weapons-designers have way too big of a budget. Either that, or our society has evolved into a cartoon strip.

  I giggle as I glance at the stack of old-fashioned comic books on the empty co-pilot’s seat. I read ‘em all as a nerdy kid: Everything from Sabrina the Teenage Witch to Catwoman. Obviously I loved the kick-ass female superheroes. But my secret favorite was Flash Gordon. A swashbuckling space-cowboy with big biceps, a massive chest, dreamy locks of hair, and a massive . . . gun. Yeah, it was kinda cheesy and sexist (it’s from the freakin’ 1930s!), but nobody needs to know that Senior Flight Commander Fran Fisk reads that shit.

  “Right, Gary?” I say, flipping my AIP back on as I rise up and groan. My legs are stiff from all this sitting. I need to spend some more time on the treadmill. Get the blood pumping. Maybe knock a couple of inches off those vital statistics.

  “Preparing to turn right,” says Gary as he comes to life and I remember he’s just a machine and can’t actually read my thoughts. This is the future and we can vaporize stuff and kill each other with rainbow-lasers, but we haven’t figured out mind-reading yet.

  “Probably a good thing,” I mutter as I turn Gary off again and stretch my arms out wide, clench my buttocks tight, breathe deep and exhale slowly as my big chest rises and falls. “No way I get promoted if anyone could read my filthy mind.”

  Indeed, my body has been running wild over the past few months, and my mind has been following along. Maybe it’s a hormonal thing now that I’m firmly in my “dirty thirties” or perhaps it’s some weird reaction to spending all this time in space, but I’ve been having dreams so vivid that I wake up sweating and panting, my sheets soaked, my body humming with arousal so strong I think I actually came once in my sleep! The fantasies have been bleeding into my waking life too, and I had to go back and erase some on-board video of me absentmindedly touching myself as I flipped through an old Flash Gordon comic-book! Now that’s filthy. Imagining myself being taken from behind by a 1930s cartoon character with biceps the size of my boobs? Shit, maybe I shoulda had more sex in college. Or less sex in college.

  I giggle again as I shake my head and slowly get suited up. I’ve always been comfortable with my body, my sexuality, my needs as a woman. I had my fun in college, and I have no regrets. As for the next ten years? Maybe some regrets . . .

  I close my eyes and exhale as I look down my fingers. No rings. There could’ve been a ring. All I’d have had to do was say yes.

  But I said no. I chose my career over marriage back when I was just twenty-three. I’d just been accepted to the PhD program in Astrophysics at MIT, and I desperately wanted to be the youngest female astronaut to lead a space mission. I knew that starting a family would delay all of that, and so I passed on the proposal and turned my eyes towards the stars. There’ll be plenty of time later, I’d decided. There’ll be other men. Other chances to fall in love, have babies, get my happily ever after.

  But the chances were few and far between, I realized as I left the social environment of university life and blazed down the demanding path of becoming an astronaut. Yeah, space technology is at the point where you don’t need to be fit like a triathlete to fly into space—hell, even seniors who can’t walk are taking tours of Mars now—but nothing’s changed about the focus and dedica
tion needed to rise up in Space Command. And that comes with a price.

  I narrow my eyes and snap on my inner liner gloves, forcing myself to focus on the mission. I remind myself that focus is everything up here. Up here we live by protocols and checklists, and you never consider a mission “safe” until it’s over.

  I pull my hair back and position my helmet over my head, snapping it into place and running through my checklist. Minutes later I’m at the air-lock chamber, and I flip Gary back on in my helmet-headset as I make my way into the empty space-station.

  “Artificial gravity is functional,” says Gary, and I nod and sigh. Artificial gravity is a drag—literally. Part of the reason I became an astronaut is so I could float like a fairy or an angel. But nope. Other than the occasional space-walk, everything is now grounded just like it is on Earth.

  The air-locks close behind me, and suddenly I’m plunged into darkness. Pure black. A flash of a panic whips through me, and I gulp and force myself to breathe deep, using my diaphragm to pump my lungs so my body gets the signal that there’s no reason to be on high alert. It’s just silly old instinct to panic when there’s suddenly no light.

  Gary flips on my helmet-light, and I exhale and slowly walk towards the main body of the space-station. It’s nowhere near as big as ISS42, but it’s still pretty sizable. I’d say it was designed to house about thirty astronauts at one time. Now it’s just me on a retrieve-and-destroy mission.

  I feel myself relax as my helmet-light sweeps over the empty mess-hall. The tables are clean and shiny. This isn’t some scene from a 1980s alien-attack movie where the abandoned ship has half-eaten food on the tables and half-eaten bodies on the floor. This space-station was abandoned simply because they’d built a new, better space station. Nothing to see here. Get to the control room. Plug into the mainframe. Download any new data that wasn’t transmitted back to the main data center on Earth.

  A hissing noise from my left distracts me, and I snap to attention, freezing in place, my hand dropping to my weapon, eyes flicking wide open. I hold my breath as fear floods me again. Slowly I turn my head towards the left, blinking as I wonder what’s waiting for me.

  Nothing. No movement. No more sound.

  I look up at the projected readouts that show on the inside of my helmet. “Thermal imaging sensors on,” I whisper, knowing that there are like a hundred different sorts of readings that my in-suit technology can pick up. Thermal imaging is one of the oldest ones, but it’s very effective for picking up stuff that other technology missed. It’s especially effective for picking up signs of life. Life as we know it, that is.

  I wait and then slowly exhale. Logically, I shouldn’t be expecting anything. After all, I scanned the shit out of this place before I boarded. If anything was alive, warm, with a beating heart and pumping blood my scanners would have picked it up. And yes, even cold-blooded life-forms show up on thermal imaging. Even a snake’s cold heart gives off a heat signal.

  All my senses are still on high alert though, my eyes so wide I wonder if they’re going to pop out of my round face and hit the inside of my helmet. I remind myself that there’s nothing and no one but me. That hissing noise sounded like air-movement, like someone breathing deep after holding their breath. But it was probably just something mechanical. There are all kinds of gizmos (yes, that’s a scientific term . . .) on a space-station, and it was probably just something whirring or clicking or beeping.

  Beep! goes my thermal scanner suddenly.

  “What the hell?” I mutter as I glance back at my readouts and almost fall down right on my ass.

  Because as I watch, the thermal readouts starting picking up a signal, generating an image from the heat-map, an image that’s forming before my eyes, like it’s only just coming into existence, coming to life, coming to . . . me!

  It’s the outline of a human.

  A human man.

  Tall like a tower.

  Broad like a bridge.

  Naked as the morning.

  “It can’t be,” I whisper as I realize the heat map is telling me the man is in the next room, standing still and upright, like he’s at attention or something. The heat-map is getting clearer, pulsating with red and yellow, showing that the heat signal is rapidly getting stronger, like this man’s heart only just started to beat, like his body was cold and dead and only just fired to life.

  But that’s impossible, I tell myself. Just straight up fucking impossible.

  My breaths come quick and shallow, and I hurriedly glance at the readings of my air-tank. Sometimes if there’s too much nitrogen in the air-mixture, you can hallucinate. But my oxygen-to-nitrogen ratio is just fine. Though if I’m hallucinating, how can I trust that I’m reading my scanners correctly?

  “Gary, alert Space Command Central,” I whisper as I face the dark doorway to the next room. “Gary? Gary?”

  But there’s no response from my AIP, and as I blink up at my helmet-screen, I realize it’s gone blank! My technology’s just been shut down! I don’t know how or why or what. All I know is that suddenly it’s just me in a goddamn space-suit.

  Just me . . . and him.

  Him.

  I pull out my weapon and hold it ready, my breaths coming in short bursts as I prepare to fight. My helmet-light is shining directly at the dark opening, but for some reason the room isn’t lighting up. It’s almost like the light itself is being blocked, just like my AIP and scanners suddenly got blocked.

  And then I see light, but it’s not coming from my LED bulb. It’s coming from inside that room. It’s coming from him.

  A fresh wave of raw fear washes through me as I see movement in that doorway. And then I’m looking at him, at this man I instinctively know is not a man. Not human. Most certainly not normal.

  He’s taller than the doorway, which I know is almost nine feet tall. His chest is lean muscle, broad and hard like chiseled granite. His face is taut, his skin smooth and shiny, cheekbones like ridges of stone, eyes shining dark green with an eerie, almost mystical light. He’s looking right at me with unblinking focus, and I just make a weird gurgling sound as I feel my gaze lock into those eyes like I can’t look away.

  I’m holding my weapon up, but it might as well be attached to someone else’s hand, because I can’t get myself to pull the trigger. This isn’t me freezing in fear or paralyzed by panic, I realize as my mouth hangs open and I stare into his glowing green eyes. Something’s happening to me. He’s doing something to me. It’s doing something to me!

  The nine-foot tall creature steps forward, slowly and gracefully, and as the light catches his full body, I almost faint when I see what the darkness was hiding.

  “That’s not real,” I mutter, trying to shake my head as my locked gaze somehow takes in the sight of his perfectly-packed stomach muscles, tight hips, solid thighs, and a big, hard, thick . . .

  “Nope,” I say again. “That’s not real. This isn’t real. This is one of those dreams, Fran. Wake up. Wake the fuck up. That’s not a penis. That’s a caricature. A cartoon cock drawn by an absurdist artist.”

  I’m still trapped by his mesmerizing gaze, but my peripheral vision can’t miss the way that thing between his legs is standing straight out like a post. It’s thicker than my wrist, longer than my arm, bigger than what can possibly be normal, filled out and hard, curving upwards in a smooth, perfect bend that makes me tighten my buttcheeks and make that gurgling sound again. Now, it’s been a while since I’ve been with a man, but I’m not some innocent virgin schoolgirl. I’ve seen a few cocks in my life. But this thing is . . . it’s just . . .

  The creature steps forward as I stare, moving slowly and somewhat awkwardly, like he’s not used to walking, like maybe he’s never walked. My mind is racing as I try once more to squeeze the trigger and blow this hallucination to space-dust so I can wake up and eat some breakfast. This has to be a dream. There’s just no fucking way t
his is . . .

  And then my thoughts just stop and I blink as this fearsome nine-foot-tall creature walks through the doorway—or rather, walks into the doorway!

  “Um, you gotta duck to get through there,” I whisper absentmindedly as I stare at this green-eyed beast with the cock of a stallion step back and then try once again to walk right through a doorway that’s like a foot too short for him.

  But he keeps trying to walk through the doorway while fully upright, and now I decide that this is definitely a fucking dream. A cartoon dream.

  And in that dream the man cocks his head to the side, his green eyes glowing like emerald-fire as he stares at me like he’s trying to understand what I just said. Then he ducks his head and walks through the door, and my almost buckle when I see him straighten out again and raise his right arm, long index finger extended, pointing right at my face.

  “You,” he says, and I swear I hear the words even though his lips aren’t moving. “Are mine.”

  The voice sounds in my head, and I just stare into those hypnotic green globes that are his eyes. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but I feel like he’s in my head, those eyes somehow looking directly into my brain, searching my memories, studying my secrets, sucking it all out and taking it into him like he’s literally downloading my entire life, learning everything I know.

  Then suddenly he blinks, and my knees almost buckle when he opens his eyes again and smiles at me. A smile that makes him seem almost human, even though I know he’s not, I just know it.

  “You are mine,” he says again, but this time his voice sounds out loud and not in my head. The accent is strange, exotic, something I’ve never heard before even though I’ve heard every accent on the planet after a decade working with scientists and astronauts from all over. All over Earth, that is. “Fran, you are mine.”

  Hearing him say my name throws me for a loop, and I blink as I think back to that eerie feeling of those green eyes something looking into me, into my brain, my mind, perhaps my soul. Scientists believe that our brains store memories and everything else as chemical patterns in its folds of gray matter, and in theory all that information can be read just like you can read data on a computer hard drive. Was that what this creature just did to me? Does he suddenly know everything I know?