Alien's Bride: Lisette Read Online Free PDF Page A

You’ve worked alone for decades.” He
looked at Lisette. “He’s really, really old, you know
that?”
    “ She wants to keep working,
not spend the evening deflecting your advances.”
    “ No. She wants to go out to
dinner with me. Don’t you? Don’t you?”
    “ Oh…um, well—it’s
just—“
    “ Yeah. Exactly. She wants to
come.” He tugged her harder and left.
    Prax-Denay stood quivering in anger. He
steadied himself on a molded shelf, then slammed the sample spinner
on it to the floor. A robot zipped over to clean it up.
    After the anger came dread, such as
he’d never felt before. If Jorenkis coerced her into bed with him
then they were married. Lisette—with that buffoon—and there would
be nothing he could do.
    But then, that was what was supposed to
happen. He had no rights to her. She was not one of his caste.
Jorenkis had claimed her even before she arrived. Prax-Denay placed
his very manhood at risk to ever have any aspirations toward her of
his own.
    And yet, he shouldn’t chide himself for
his anger. The genius human deserved better. Perhaps not him, who
was of the lowest caste of Dak-Hiliah, but certainly not Jorenkis
either.
    No. He could not be with her as a
husband. He still wanted to be with her as a colleague. At least
that. He even felt like he needed her now.
    The final emotion he caved to was
grief. Repugnant self-pitying grief. Tears and snot flowed like
that of a blubbering child. He couldn’t even admit why he grieved.
He was too proud to acknowledge it.
    ***
    Lisette was brought upstairs to what
she presumed was the apartment Jorenkis had mentioned. She thought
it nice to live where she worked. Her heart already ached to be
back in the lab. Her mind was swirling with ideas, some of which
she really needed to write down. She felt as if she floated in a
euphoric haze of specimens and data. Did her room have a bed? A
dresser? If anyone quizzed her later she wouldn’t know the
answers.
    Jorenkis sicked robots on her who
forced her out of her science high. They brusquely went about
dressing her and styling her hair. She kept looking at the door
hoping Prax-Denay would put an end to all and get her back to
work.
    A robot made her stand in front of a
mirror. The reflection of a stranger looked back at her. Yes, she
still had her glasses, but her hair had been darkened and made
glossy. She wore a red dress that barely hid her breasts and
allowed one thigh to show. Her eyes looked like someone had taken a
black marker and drawn circles around them. Her lips looked like
she’d eaten too many raspberries.
    She kept staring trying to find
something to like. The revealing dress was designed for someone
much taller and without a tummy. She was already getting goose
pimples from being too cold and with every movement she’d be
worried a breast would pop out. That’s if she could walk at all.
The robots had her in slippers with heels designed to make her
taller. She felt like she would twist her ankle every time she went
forward.
    She got a moth-eaten sweater out of her
laundry bag and pulled it on.
    “ No!” Jorenkis came in
without knocking. “Don’t wear that ugly thing.”
    Lisette frowned. She felt so much more
decent with it.
    “ Come on! Hurry up and take
it off.”
    She obeyed.
    “ Now you’ve messed up your
hair!”
    As a robot came to fix it Jorenkis
picked off her glasses. She reached for them in protest.
    “ You can go one night
without these, right? We’ll get you into the surgical unit tomorrow
to get your eyes fixed.”
    Lisette suddenly felt like
crying.
    “ Perfect!” Jorenkis hooked
his arm in hers. “Now you’re fit to be seen.” He started down the
stairs with her. “Can you suck in your stomach?”
    Lisette tried to, but then she saw
Prax-Denay standing to the side of the staircase. The whorishness
of her outfit felt amplified by his gaze. She tried to send an
agonized look to him to say, ‘I didn’t want any of this.’ He shook
his head in