Nila Weaver's family is indebted. Stolen, taken, and bound not by monsters but by an agreement written over six hundred years ago, she has no way out.
She belongs to Jethro as much as she denies it.
Jethro Hawk's patience is running out. His inheritance gift tests, challenges, and surprises him-and not in good ways. He hasn't leashed her but he thinks he might've found a way to bind her forever.
Debts are mounting. Payment waiting.
# # #
Choosing Riley
S.E. Smith
Things take a turn for the worse when Riley St. Claire is kidnapped by aliens and forced to choose a mate. The problem is, it would have been better, and safer, for the aliens if they had left Riley back on Earth.
Copyright 2014 S. E. Smith
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
About The Author
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Chapter 1
"Choose," the disembodied voice said.
Choose? Choose what? Riley thought, looking around her in disbelief at the rock walls. Choose to get the fuck out of this crazy nightmare? Hell, yeah. Choose to kill the bastards who put me in this miserable spot? Oh, hell yeah. Choose …
Riley jerked when she felt the ice-cold claw poke her in the back for the third time. Looking around, she followed the arm of the creature standing next to her as it pointed down over the edge of a small platform. She really was trying for that nice stage of being totally zoned out, but the damn creatures who kidnapped her twenty days before had an annoying habit of bringing her back to the unfortunate situation she was in.
"Choose," the nearly eight-foot-tall stick figure said again, this time losing some of the disembodied tone.
Riley couldn't help the little smirk that lifted the corner of her mouth. She really couldn't. After the first week of captivity, she had moved from being mind-numbingly terrified to just downright pissed off at life. She figured if she was going to die, she might as well do what she did best: piss everyone off around her. That was what had gotten her into this situation in the first place-her big mouth and smart-ass attitude.
Okay, maybe she shouldn't have pissed off her boss by telling him what he could do with his wandering hands when he grabbed her ass for the third time that day. Better yet, she shouldn't have broken his nose, his hand, and more than likely his nuts since he had been screaming more than an octave or two higher than a soprano. Yeah, that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. Especially since his daddy happened to be the local sheriff. She was a bail bondsman, for heaven's sake. Any freaking idiot should have known better than to mess with her. Her line of work required she know a certain amount of self-defense.
God, she thought. I really should have never taken that job.
When her boss swore she would never leave town alive after she beat the shit out of him, she figured it was time to get the hell out of Righteous, New Mexico. Of course, the fact her boss owned the local bail bond company and had a somewhat lucrative business going with his daddy should have been her first warning that something wasn't right, she'd thought as she grabbed her purse and a large manila folder full of incriminating evidence against both of them. Finding out that daddy and junior were also running illegal weapons and drugs were definitely her second and third warnings. Of course, the little tidbit of information she had found that morning about the dead guy buried under the storage unit had been the real reason she figured she had made a bad mistake. That information was now safely tucked into the manila folder stuffed in her purse, and it had gone along with her as she left the small town she had been living in for the past six months as fast as her old Ford could drive.
She actually might have had a chance to live a little longer if a series of life's usual little hiccups hadn't been blessed upon her. Again. Of course, if the car had been further than one push to the nearest junkyard it would have helped her great nonexistent getaway plans. It would have been better yet if the damn car hadn't broken down just over the state line on the outskirts of the desert. She knew she should have purchased a new one last month, but she was such a tightwad she wanted to get every last mile out of it. And boy, did she!
Oh, and she couldn't forget her best idea yet-getting in a truck with a guy who had more piercings and tattoos than a model for Prick Magazine instead of walking the three miles to the bar she had seen a roadside sign for.
No, I had to get my fat-Riley sighed. No, my maturely figured ass into the scum-bucket's truck.
Riley sighed again. I really, really should have taken those anger management classes like my sainted sister, Tina, said I needed.
Unable to keep the grin off her face, Riley thought back to the look on the pierced, tattooed guy's face when she shot him the bird as he drove off leaving her in the middle of that godforsaken hell's beach just as it was getting dark.
Give him a fucking blow job if I wanted a ride out of the desert, Riley thought savagely. Not bloody likely.
She showed him! As soon as he pulled over to the side of the road she had been out of the truck cussing him up one side and down the other. Her Grandma Pearl would have been proud of her. She remembered every cuss word her grandmother ever said and a few her grandma probably didn't even know. Of course, he had left her mature ass in the middle of nowhere.
Riley thought she was a goner until she had seen all those little lights coming toward her. How the hell was she supposed to know the fucking aliens had messed up where Area 51 was and ended up in Nowhere, Arizona? Riley had thought she was about to be rescued by a dwarf biker gang riding dirt bikes, not some alien spaceship out for a Monday night cruise for well-endowed women.
"Choose!" the tall creature growled out loudly.
Riley cleared her throat before turning to the stick-figured alien dwarfing her. "Choose what?" she asked, unable to hold back the slightly crazed giggle that had been threatening to escape her.
She giggled again at finally making the creature's blank face break into a frustrated scowl. The creature slowly fisted its clawed hands before its shoulders actually drooped.
"Choose a male," Antrox 785 said wearily.
Riley raised her perfectly arched eyebrows at the creature before turning to look at the selection of men who had been paraded in while she had been reflecting on how her attitude might have played a part in her present predicament. She had been watching haphazardly as a different female-at least she thought they were female-had been led to stand where she was now. She was told-in a rather rude manner if you asked her-that she was being given the last choice because of her being so disagreeable, unpleasant, and downright ugly. She had, of course, taken it all in stride until the last comment and had to be restrained again after she‘d punched the stickman guarding her in what she hoped was his balls. Whatever the creatures had under their tunics, it laid the guy out cold.
Now, she was staring at one eight-foot-tall glob of green, oozing snot, something resembling a two-foot, two-headed lizard, and three six-foot-four or more drop-dead gorgeous hunks. Riley's eyes widened. If it wasn't for the fact that she was thirstier than hell so she didn't have the capacity to produce enough spit, she would have sworn she was drooling.
She could tell by their build and their eyes and maybe the markings on their arms, chest, and shoulders, oh and did she mention their sharp teeth as they growled at the stick-alien, that they weren't human, but man-oh-man did they look yummy! Riley thought dreamily for a moment before perking up again.
"What happens to the males that aren't chosen?" Riley asked curiously, never taking her eyes off the three males.
"They will be used as food," Antrox said with a frown. "Choose! All mated males will be kept to work in the mines. Mated males are easier to control as they are protective of their female. Now choose your male!"
"What if I don't want to choose a male?" Riley asked sarcastically as she turned to face the tall creature next to her. "What if I don't feel like choosing a male? What if I don't even like males?" Riley added.
Right at that moment, she honestly believed she might not ever like any male ever again! After all, it was men who had started this whole hateful series of events starting with her no-good, dim-witted boss. Now, this overgrown toothpick expected her to just pick one of the bastards and mate with him?
That is so seriously not going to happen. Restraints or not, I will beat the shit out of any guy who tries to mate with me, she thought fiercely.