Joan and the Juggernaut: A SciFi Alien Romance (Alien Abduction Book 10) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Other Titles

  About the Author

  Joan and the Juggernaut

  Alien Abduction Book 10

  Honey Phillips

  Copyright © 2020 by Honey Phillips

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author.

  Disclaimer

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Maria Spada Book Cover Design

  Edited by Lindsay York at LY Publishing Services

  Chapter One

  Joan stood against the wall of the small dining room, watching anxiously as Overseer Ukhaan took the first bite of his meal. He grunted, and her body relaxed. It was a small sign of approval, but it meant she was unlikely to feel a blow from his enormous fist. Tonight.

  The Zameetans, the race of aliens in charge of the mines of Drahana, were all large, but Ukhaan was exceptionally so. Though the majority of the guards spent hours working out, Ukhaan didn’t bother, and his stomach strained against his heavily decorated black uniform. Dark grey skin with the sickly green iridescence of an oil slick covered a wide head that sloped down into thick shoulders and a shapeless, slug-like body. But she had learned early on not to be fooled into thinking that his size made him less fast, brutal, or quick to punish.

  Waiting silently, she watched him eat—a disgusting sight as he shoveled mouthfuls of food into his gaping maw. The Zameetans didn’t have teeth. Instead, they had hard ridges that ground the food between them as they chewed, a good deal escaping in the process. But despite his appalling table manners, Ukhaan had a surprisingly discerning palate. She’d gone to bed with bruises every night for the first few weeks, until she managed to figure out not only how to use the strange kitchen equipment but how he preferred his meals.

  Since cooking for him was the only thing that had saved her from becoming one of the females awarded to a slave who beat his daily quota in the mine, she did her best to please him. Only the fact that his previous cook died as a result of Ukhaan’s rage just as the ship containing her and the other slaves landed had saved her from that fate.

  He had stormed into the hangar where the cages were being unloaded and barked at the guard.

  “I need a cook.”

  The guard, a small green alien, looked nervously at his companion. “That wasn’t in the procurement request, Master Ukhaan.”

  “It is now.”

  The two males exchanged glances, then Ukhaan gave an inpatient grunt and began inspecting the new arrivals. On one side of the space, a large cage held a number of aliens, mostly small and inoffensive looking. The two exceptions were huge, brutal looking males confined in individual cages. Her side of the room held two other females, each of them by themselves, and a variety of smaller animals.

  Ignoring the males, Ukhaan stopped at the first female’s cage.

  “Can you cook?” he barked.

  The thin purple female just stared up at him, her whole body trembling. He grunted and moved on, stopping in front of Joan and repeating the question.

  “Yes,” she said truthfully. “I won the prize for zucchini bread at the state fair and—”

  “She’ll do.”

  The aliens exchanged a doubtful look. “But, sir… We were contracted to provide three female slaves for the reward system. This will leave us one short.”

  “Not my problem. You’ll have to find another.” He gestured at the group of smaller males. “Or designate one of them. A lot of the miners don’t care as long as they have a hole to fuck. Now get her out of there.”

  Grumbling under his breath, one of the green aliens released her. He started to put cuffs on her wrists, but Ukhaan stopped him.

  “Never mind. Can’t cook with those on.”

  “But, sir… What if she tries to escape?”

  “Where’s she gonna go? The surface is unlivable and she doesn’t look stupid enough to prefer being a gift female. Are you stupid, girl?”

  “No. Sir,” she added hastily when he glared at her.

  “Good. Then as long as you can actually cook, you’ll stay out of the mines. Follow me.”

  She’d been cooking for him ever since.

  “Acceptable,” he said finally, pushing his plate away.

  That was the most praise he ever bestowed, and she made a mental note to add this dish to the roster.

  “I am expecting a guest for dinner tomorrow,” he added.

  She had a hard time keeping the shock off her face. He almost never dined with anyone else. The transport supervisor came once a week to report on production levels, and a company representative came once a month, but he’d had no other visitors since she arrived.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I think perhaps the geflin fish.”

  She bit back a groan. The small fish required hours to clean, even to make a portion large enough for one person. “Yes, sir.”

  He fastened beady little eyes on her. “This could be important for my future. Everything must be perfect.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With a last glare, he nodded, then trundled out of the room. She sighed and started clearing the table. Everything had to be spotless after each meal. She wiped down his chair, polished the tabletop, and swept the floor before moving to the kitchen to continue her chores. A huge room, it contained a variety of cooking machines as well as more primitive options such as the open fire.

  By the time she was through, she was exhausted. In addition to preparing three full meals a day, plus numerous snacks, she was also responsible for laundry and general housekeeping. Almost everything was either made from scratch or done by hand, and the work never seemed to end. When the kitchen was restored to its usual pristine condition, she cast a longing glance at the fire before retreating to her small room.

  Like everywhere else in the mine headquarters—other than the kitchen—it was cold and damp, and she shivered as she crawled under the thin blanket without bothering to remove her dress. The shapeless garment had been in the room when she arrived, and Ukhaan hadn’t objected when she nervously started wearing it. Unfortunately, it only helped a little to stave off the cold. She’d tried sleeping in the warmth of the kitchen, but Ukhaan caught her and it had taken two weeks for the bruises to fade.

  How had she ended up
here, she wondered, as she did every night. How had Joan Hunter, an ordinary housewife from Topeka, Kansas, ended up as a slave to an alien mine owner?

  The morning she was taken, she had been out for a reluctant jog. Her divorce was finally official, and she was determined to move on with her life, starting with an attempt to get back in shape. As she had puffed her way through the park, she caught a whiff of a horrible smell, then something sharp pricked her neck and the world went dark.

  When she woke, she was naked and confined in a small cage, one of a long line of cages curving away in either direction. The cages were filled with assorted creatures, none of which she had ever seen before, in a mind-bending array of colors and scales, of claws and fangs. Her mind had been unable to process what she was seeing, and she spent the first period of her captivity huddled in the corner of her cage, trying to convince herself that it was just a horrible dream.

  But then a guard showed up—a guard with blue skin and red eyes and a cruel sneer—and it became all too clear that this was her new reality. He had filled the two bowls attached to her cage with water and some type of pellets and told her to be quiet. She had obeyed. A lifetime of living with a domineering husband had taught her that it was better not to argue. And as long as she gave the appearance of obedience, she could sometimes find a way to accomplish what she wanted.

  However, an alien spaceship and a guard with a shock stick were not in the same category as an arrogant but oblivious husband. Ex-husband, she reminded herself with a sigh of relief.

  The next few days passed in a monotonous blur. She drank the water, forced down a handful of the tasteless pellets, and reluctantly made use of the channel of liquid flowing beneath the back of the cage that served as the only sanitary facility. A guard came by periodically to fill up her bowls. One of them usually ignored her. The other tried to provoke her with increasingly obscene or terrifying comments, but she stared at the floor and refused to answer him. It pissed him off just as much as it had pissed off Kevin. But unlike her ex-husband, while she suspected the guard wouldn’t hesitate to retaliate, her lack of response apparently wasn’t sufficient justification, and he would snarl and walk away.

  She spent a lot of time thinking about what was going to happen next. It seemed fairly obvious that she was going somewhere to be sold. But where and for what purpose? Of course, the possibility that she would be sold for sex occurred to her, but she was just an ordinary person on the wrong side of thirty, not some sexy young girl like the one who had finally lured Kevin into agreeing to the divorce. If they were going to come all the way to Earth to kidnap sex slaves, she would have assumed they’d snatch someone like Mindy rather than her.

  She was sitting on the floor of her cage, trying to decide if she could use the pellets the same way she would use bread and make stuffing out of them, when both her guards came rushing by.

  “I don’t like this,” one complained.

  “Shut up, Muu. It’s perfectly legal to sell slaves for a work contract.”

  “Legal slaves,” Muu said, glancing at her.

  “What? You want to change the way we do business just because the new Emperor is besotted by a former slave? The new laws won’t last.” He nudged his companion. “These humans are going to make us a ton of credits. We should never have sold that first one so cheaply. Think how much profit we lost just because Captain Fabii thought he saw an Imperial Patrol ship.”

  “Better not let him hear you say that, Asgii. You’re lucky he didn’t dock your share for damaging the other one.”

  Asgii shrugged. “It was worth it.” He cast a dissatisfied glance in her direction. “This one never gave me a fucking excuse.”

  They both stopped to look at her. She dropped her eyes, her face as impassive as she could make it.

  “Maybe it’s not too late. Any hole is better than none, eh?” Asgii dropped his hand to his groin and began stroking a rapidly growing cock.

  Muu shoved him. “Forget it. We have to get all of them unloaded. There isn’t time.”

  “Doesn’t take me long.”

  “No wonder you have to fuck a slave.”

  Asgii snarled and shoved Muu back. Joan watched from under her lashes, hoping they would come to blows, but Muu threw up his hands and backed away.

  “Forget it. Look, let’s just get the cargo unloaded. How about on our next trip, we pick up a human just for ourselves?”

  “Captain wouldn’t like it.”

  “If we do it right, he doesn’t need to know.”

  Asgii laughed, and the sound sent an icy chill down Joan’s spine. “I like the way you think.”

  They proceeded to describe what they planned to do to this theoretical slave in graphic detail as they began picking up cages with a long crane. She kept her eyes down and did her best to try and shut them out.

  Maybe she had been a little too optimistic about her lack of worth as a sex slave.

  Her cage had been next, and after a short, terrifying trip in a freezing transport, she ended up with the other slaves in the hangar. It was the first time she had realized that the ship carried more than just the animals surrounding her.

  And now she was here, literally slaving away for Ukhaan. She hadn’t figured out how to escape yet. All she could do was keep her eyes and ears open and learn as much as she could. It had taken a long time, but she’d figured out how to get away from Kevin, she reminded herself firmly. Just because she was now on an inhospitable alien planet didn’t mean she had to give up hope. Put like that, it sounded impossible—so she decided she wouldn’t put it like that.

  With a sigh, she did her best to push it out of her mind and go to sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

  Chapter Two

  Once again, Joan stood silently by the wall, waiting for Ukhaan and his visitor to arrive. She gave the table a quick glance from under her lashes, checking to make sure that everything was perfect. Perhaps she should have double-wrapped the biscuits to make sure they stayed warm…

  The door opened and she instinctively looked up. Her breath caught in her throat. The male accompanying Ukhaan was not another Zameetan as she had expected. Instead, a huge alien warrior stood in the opening. A head taller than Ukhaan, he showed no indication of Ukhaan’s devotion to food. Dark turquoise skin covered huge, well-defined muscles, clearly revealed by the tight, sleeveless tunic he wore. Short dark hair, almost black in the dim light, covered a well-shaped head with features very similar to that of a human man—a brutally attractive human man. But he was very clearly not human, and from the number of weapons fastened at his belt and the network of fine gold scars that covered his body, he was equally clearly a very dangerous male.

  For a fraction of a second, their eyes met, his a dark, burning gold that went from distant to heated in that one brief interval before she looked away. Dammit, she knew better than to look directly at an alien male. They tended to interpret it as defiance or interest, and she couldn’t afford either.

  Ukhaan led the way into the room, gesturing the stranger to a chair as he sat, pontificating about the profit margin on ore pellets versus smelted metal. She paid little attention as she kept her eyes on the ground and hoped—prayed—that she hadn’t made a costly mistake.

  “Well, well. Get to work, girl,” Ukhaan demanded impatiently, and she jumped, forcing her focus back to her job.

  Her hands shook as she prepared their plates and presented them. As she leaned down in front of the stranger, she could feel the warmth emanating from him and caught a hint of an almost smoky scent, like an applewood fire on a cold night. Would he reach for her—grab her ass or fondle her breast? She already suspected Ukhaan wouldn’t stop him, but to her relief, he simply sat quietly and inspected his plate.

  “This looks delicious,” he said, his voice a deep, rumbling growl that set off an unexpected response low in her stomach.

  Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. He’s an alien. A big, scary alien.

  But her hands shook and she narro
wly avoided slopping gravy onto Ukhaan as she presented his plate. He gave an impatient grunt, but he didn’t retaliate.

  “I do the best I can with what I can get here. This planet is so isolated,” Ukhaan complained. “Of course, if I had a job in one of the inner systems, the possibilities would be greatly expanded.”

  The stranger took a quick, neat bite of the geflin fish and chewed appreciatively. “I’m not sure that anything in the inner systems could compare to this.”

  Ukhaan took a much less restrained mouthful, then nodded. “Definitely acceptable. The girl is learning.” He waved at Joan, who was once more standing by the wall. “She’s my cook. Ugly little thing, isn’t she?”

  The terrifying male studied her, his gaze moving slowly from her head to her feet, and she did her best not to flinch. From the heat burning in his eyes, he didn’t find her unappealing. She felt naked and exposed, and a tiny spark of something that couldn’t possibly have been excitement shivered down her back.

  “She might appeal to a certain type of male,” he said finally.

  “I thought about using her.” Ukhaan was in a jovial mood, relaxed and expansive. “But she’s just so… soft. Like an undercooked sarlan steak.”

  Once again, she had to stop herself from shuddering. Thank God she repulsed him.

  “Besides, a good cook is a lot harder to find than a good fuck,” Ukhaan continued. “But if you promise not to damage her, you can have her tonight.”

  What? No! He couldn’t send her off with this terrifying stranger. It took all of her training to stop herself from objecting. She had thought she was safe from this particular fate, but it seemed that whatever gods had decided to punish her hadn’t dragged her down far enough yet.

  “I might just take you up on that,” the stranger said thoughtfully. “It was a long flight.”

  Ukhaan waved a hand. “Help yourself. Just make sure she’s back in the kitchen in time to cook breakfast. And no permanent injuries.”