Alien Enforcer’s Target: A Sci Fi Alien Romance

By Liz Paffel

Ava

That crazy television show Naked and Afraid? It's a cakewalk compared to the sick game my alien abductors have planned for me--one that humans apparently never survive.

I spent so much time hiking after my mom and sister disappeared from Earth that I became a wilderness survival expert. I know how to keep myself alive in any situation… except on this hostile planet, everything, even the water, is trying to eat me. 

My captors gave me a coach to help me prepare. He’s huge, scary, and sexy as hell. Turns out he’s an undercover alien cop with a mission. One that includes his crazy idea that I’m the key to solving a crime…that involves my missing family.

Khryz

My human target doesn’t know what’s coming for her, but I do. 

As an elite Cosmic S.W.A.T member, I took an unbreakable oath to protect human life. Human females are precious. The one I’m undercover to protect is worth more than the riches of all the wealthy slime who come to watch the game she needs to survive. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Jul 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781094460758

Liz Paffel

Liz Paffel traded a twenty year career in emergency medical services to write about strange lights in the sky and things that go bump in the night. She's the author of science fiction romance and paranormal romance and lives in the Midwest, USA with her family.

Book preview

1

Ava

My feet are burning.

Sparkly white flakes fall around me, touching my face with gossamer gentleness before floating to the ground. I blink to clear the particles from my lashes as reality comes to me in sluggish increments. I glance down as I shuffle away from the heat. The flakes build around my feet and ankles; the heat getting stronger as I stare dumbly at the ground. My legs are bare. So are my breasts and belly.

I’m… naked.

Cupping my breasts in shock, I pat my palms over my body, not quite believing that I’m completely unclothed. Something stings my arms. Ash has gathered along my forearms, quietly burning my flesh while glinting beautifully in stunted rays of light.

I wipe the flakes off of me, then run my hands again over my exposed flesh to dislodge any ash that has settled there. It’s a useless attempt. The stuff keeps landing on me. A sob bubbles up from my throat. I barely recognize the sound as my own, but I clearly recognize my confusion and fear. I’m not sure what’s happening. Where I am. Anxiety trembles through me, pushing me to the verge of panic.

Just breathe, Ava. Just breathe. I pull air in my nose, out of my mouth. In. Out. In. Out.

Memories rush at me like they’re racing through a tunnel straight into my brain.

I was readjusting the straps on my hiking pack near Conner’s Beach where a Fourth of July party was going on. People were partying it up, acting like scientists and government officials hadn’t been using words like, ‘imminent doom,’ ‘planetary collapse.’ I’m not good with change, confrontation, or stress. Facing the end of days cooped up in my aunt’s humid one bedroom was too much to deal with, so I did what I always do when life gets overwhelming. I went hiking.

No better place for me to get snuffed out than on my favorite hiking trail, surrounded by the rain forest of the Pacific Northwest. I’d packed enough for a month, just in case Earth lasted that long. My aunt pulled herself from her standard drunken stupor long enough to remind me to lock the door behind me as I left to spend my last hours alive the way I liked to do everything: alone.

But then I’d spied the massive party going on at Connor’s Beach, and I stopped to watch with a pang of envy as people my age danced around in bikinis and swim shorts, tossed back shots and numbed reality with alcohol, grilled hotdogs, and for the couple near the campfire, a little public sex on the beach.

I should have at least attempted to be like the couple by the campfire.

I’d bent down to fix a strap on my hiking pack when a blast of light shot straight down from the sky. A laser, maybe? Whatever it was suctioned to my back and pulled me into the sky, so high up that the beach goers looked like specks of dirt. It teleported me inside a spaceship and into a hold filled with other humans. People dropped in one by one, hitting the metal floor with the crunch and pop a body makes upon landing after a free-fall. The same people I’d envied on the beach plummeted in, their screams and cries pulling me from some sort of stupor. I realized then that I’d hit my head and was bleeding all over myself. A woman with a strange face put her sleeve over the wound. She wasn’t human, either. Her face was too animal-like… like a mixture between a woman and a deer.

I never saw her again. I never saw any of them again. Gas floated down from the ceiling and filled the room, and I don’t remember anything after that.

Until now.

Ouch! I pull my feet from the piles of ashy stuff and sidestep to get away from it.

The ground seems to shift, and I lean uncontrollably to the left. My brain kicks in. I’m losing my balance! I’m going to fall and there’s nothing to hang onto. Glancing down, my heart leaps into my throat. I’m standing on a ledge about eight feet wide along the side of a mountain or cliff. I can’t see the ground thanks to the amount of snow-like particulates falling around me. The more I stand here, the more the ash burns, and my brain has fully registered how much it hurts. Pressing my palms against the rock face for balance, I pick my way along the ledge as my feet sink into the lofty build up.

I can’t run or I’ll lose my balance and careen over the side. I have no choice but to carefully pick my way along and try not to fall.

This can’t be real.

This can not be real.

This isn’t real.

I’ll wake up and my mother and sister will be there. Not mysteriously missing the way they have been for the past six years. I’ll be on the hiking trail with them close behind me. Earth will be healthy and fine.

I rub my eyes to clear away this bad dream. My left foot slips and I go spread-eagle as my feet slide apart in the ash. I bend one leg as I split, thankfully keeping my crotch out of the burning flakes.

Shit!

I grit my teeth against the pain as ash eats along the insides of my tender, naked thighs. My chest aches, my throat constricting as a sickly sensation climbs inside me.

Panic. I can’t panic!

Getting my feet under me again, I bite back tears and continue to pick my way along the ledge. It widens considerably and then slopes harshly down, but I can’t see where it leads through the ashy haze. I test the slope and my foot slides dangerously down the incline. With a gasp, I steady myself before I go tumbling out of control.

I’ll have to slide down the slope on my butt.

I have miles of backpacking experience behind me, but nothing has prepared me to coast through burning particulates into a vast unknown from the top of an alien mountain. Naked.

Gritting my teeth, I lower to my haunches, put my hands behind me and start an awkward crab walk down the incline. I don’t get far before my feet slide out from under me and I fall on my ass, slipping down as I desperately try to control the speed and force with my hands. I keep my butt mostly off the surface, through the craigs and juts of pointed rocks cut into my buttocks, palms and soles of my feet as I slide.

I halt at the bottom. Panting, I glance around me. The ash is thin here. I’ve landed on a bed of rocks where slender blades of grass peek between the craggy masses. Carefully pushing to my feet, I assess my injuries. I do a double take at my hands. My palms and the pads of my fingers are shredded and bleeding. Nausea hits me hard and I wish that I hadn’t looked. I need shelter and water.

I have to keep going.

I pick my way down until I reach a plateau. There’s more grass here, and colorful specks that look like flowers. The air is warm, and it’s a comfort to my bare skin. Blood from my feet makes it difficult to traverse a small rocky patch that leads to an expanse of grass. The softness of it is heaven on my soles. I sigh in relief and run the backs of my hands over my eyes and face.

I’d give anything for a pool of water to sink my aching body into right now. I spy what looks like an indent or gash in the side of a cliff to my left. Shade is cast before it. Perhaps the soil there is cool enough that I can stop the burning sensation in my soles.

Sweat runs down my face as I pick my way to the cliff and find a shallow entrance. My heart flips as I cautiously approach. It is cooler here, the ground soothing to my skin, and the desire to roll around on the flat, dirt-covered spot nearly overwhelms me. But I listen for any sound of predators from the entrance, holding my breath and focusing my hearing. Peeking inside, there’s just enough light to see it’s deep enough for two people to stand shoulder to shoulder. I could easily sit inside and even lie on my side in the shade. Satisfied there’s nothing inside that will eat me, I crouch beneath a rocky overhang and step in.

The sand is miraculously cool beneath my feet. I let out a hard, grateful breath and crouch. The sand gives way a bit as I bury my feet. I dig my wounded hands into the coolness. I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything so welcome.

I have to lie down.

I lower to my side, but my left foot is suddenly pulled deeper into the sand with a forceful jolt. My breath catches as I go still. Is something wrapped around my ankle? I can’t tell. I try to pull my leg from the sand, but it’s trapped.

Don’t move!

The male voice comes out of nowhere. I gasp and move my hands to push myself up, but they’re stuck in the sand, too. What the hell?

A wide, dark shadow casts over the entrance, the sound of footsteps beating fast like my heart.

Stay still.

My eyes go wide as a man takes up the entrance with his enormous body. The front of him is full of shadow and I can’t get a good look at him. Acutely aware of my nakedness, I try to shrink into myself but my baser brain kicks in, screaming at me to forget about being naked and run.

There’s nowhere for me to go.

Something touches my foot from deep within the sand. I jerk on instinct, but I can’t pull my leg free. Then I feel it clearly, distinctly. Fingers wrapping around my toes…

I open my mouth to scream. I’m pulled from beneath, sinking to my chest. The scream gets painfully trapped in my throat.

The man grabs my shoulder.

But he’s too late.

I catch a flash of his strange blue eyes as something pulls me under.

2

Khryz

She’s not supposed to die on the first day.

With a sigh, I plunge my hand into the sandpit, grab the human by the hair and pull. I wince as every strand of her hair pulls hard at the root. I don’t mean to cause her pain, but I have to act fast. The krakeel pulling her from beneath has a more forceful grip than I expected. The armored vermin lure prey inside these shaded, cool sandpits while waiting deep below for an unknowing victim to burrow into the soothing sand. Normally, they are quick to give up when challenged, but this one is hanging onto its meal.

This human didn’t know any better than to avoid the sand. She won’t make this mistake again. Not if she values her life.

I reach deep inside the pit with both hands and grapple for her shoulder, an arm, anything that has more stability. I find her upper arms and grip them hard as the krakeel pulls her hard. With a huge pull, I birth her out of the pit, pulling so hard the krackeel’s vine-like arm comes up still attached to her ankle. Drawing my long knife, I slice it free at the wrist. It shrivels back into the pit with a screech loud enough to filter up from below ground.

The human coughs and vomits sand. Her long hair tangles around her face as her body racks with spasms. I move some of it back, so it stays out of her mouth. She’s so focused on clearing her airway, she doesn’t seem to notice me. Sand falls off her naked form, revealing the poor condition of her feet and an array of bruises and cuts over her backside and spine.

She’s already in rough shape after only a few hours on this planet.

I hope she heals quickly. I have three sparse days to train her before she’s dumped into the center of this formidable jungle and left to her own defenses as a participant in the Emperor of Orin’s, twisted