I Married An Alien by Emma Daniels, Ethan Somerville Page B

his hand to me, but I didn’t put mine in it, because when he moved, I saw that his shirt had splits in the sleeves, revealing tanned muscular arms. I know most women would have been reduced to a puddle of drool on the floor by now, but I wasn’t a normal woman, and neither was this a normal situation.
    I had to marry this incredible hunk, and then have sex with him! How could I when the sight of that massive bulge in his pants scared the living daylights out of me? There was no way I’d survive a night of passion with a man built like him. And why the hell was he sprouting such a massive hard-on anyway? Surely he should have more self-control than that!
    This was clearly what my traveling companions had been warning me about. And naïve little fool that I was had walked straight into the lion’s den. Not that I’d had much choice otherwise.
    “ All right, what do I have to do to get out of this?” I heard myself asking in a frightened little mouse voice.
    “ It’s all right, Anita,” Dana tried to reassure me again.
    I rounded on her. “No, it’s not all right. Look at him, for goodness sake. He’s going to break this tiny little body in two!” I swept a hand over my borrowed persona. Even as Ruth Clarke, I doubted my ability to accommodate what he had filling his trousers.
    “ No, he won’t. Haven’t you read your notes?” she asked.
    “ No, can I go and read them now?” I demanded. Anything for a reprieve while I tried to work out a way to extricate myself from this insane situation.
    “ This can’t wait,” Mr Demanteena growled, grabbing hold of my hand in his enormous one. It was then I noticed he was trembling. As I glanced up at him in alarm, I saw a faint sheen of sweat on his brow. After nursing my mother for years, I saw the sickness in his eyes right away. Whereas they’d had a healthy silvery glow a short time ago, they were now as dull as those of a dying man. Even his skin seemed to have paled beneath his tan. Why did such a well-built, supposedly healthy man, suddenly look like he was standing on death’s door?
    “ I don’t even know your first name,” I cried, trying to extract my hand from his, but he held it fast. He might look ill, but he was still much stronger than I.
    “ It’s Jordan,” he ground out, as though it was an effort to even talk. His hand continued to tremble as he pulled me closer to him. I became conscious of how hot he felt, much hotter than before.
    “ Jordan?” I squeaked, having expected something unusual and exotic as his surname.
    “ Yes, blame your planet for that one,” he rumbled.
    He hadn’t asked me my name, and I wondered if he even cared to know. Probably not. He’d just want to jump my bones and impale me on that great big rod of his. I cringed inwardly at own overactive thoughts.
    “ No, it’s a perfectly nice name,” I admitted. “I just expected something more, Terron, I suppose. And what’s wrong with you, anyway? You’re sweating and shaking like you’ve got a severe dose of the flu.”
    “ Terrons don’t get the flu,” he muttered, and nodded to the Terron official standing in front of us, who took this as his cue to begin the marriage rites. They sounded exactly like they had hundreds of years ago on Earth, except his accent-less voice made him seem banal and completely disinterested in his job. Perhaps he was. He’d probably read out these rites hundreds of times before, and couldn’t really give a fig what became of all the Earth women who disappeared into Terron’s hinterland.
    As I stood there beside the towering inferno, my ears buzzing and my own body rebelling, I longed for a pair of red shoes I could click together and chant; ‘There is no place like home. There is no place like home.’
    Surely the Prof would have worked out how to get me back by now. He couldn’t mean to leave me here permanently, could he?
    But when Jordan Demanteena said he would take Anita DeBurgh as his lawfully wedded wife, I finally came