Princess By Mistake

Despite the early hour, not quite even eleven a.m., Jory Wilson was ready to declare this day officially the worst one ever. It had started with an early meeting, necessitating leaving her comfy home office to commute into the city. Instead of her usual fleece sweatpants, she had donned pantyhose that required way too much effort, along with a neat pinstripe pencil skirt that always made her rounded butt look a little too bubbly for her tastes. En route to the meeting, she had stepped down from a curb and broken the heel off one of her new shoes, while also twisting her ankle, though not to the point where she couldn’t walk on it.

She had taken the train, fighting her way through the crowd to find a spot, not lucky enough to secure a seat. She had clung to the strap as usual and endured the close crush of people around her. As she’d neared her stop for the office, some bozo had squeezed her butt, pinching hard enough for her to squeal.

In a huff, she had stormed off the subway, glaring at the other passengers as she tried to identify the ass-grabber. The mystery remained unsolved, and she had rushed up the stairs of the platform to street-level, crossing the last two blocks on her broken heel with an awkward gait.

Upon arriving at the office, Jory had discovered she was called to the meeting under false pretenses. Ostensibly, it had been to discuss her future with the company, and she had expected the raise and promotion she’d been promised more than a year ago. Instead, she had learned her job was being outsourced to India, and she was expected to train her replacement via telecommuting at a reduced rate of pay.

Jory had stared at them in surprise and more than a little anger. They didn’t seem to understand why she was upset about training her replacement and losing her promised promotion. Unable to control her temper, which was often a failing of hers, she had let loose on her boss, his boss, and their boss. It had been an ugly meeting and left her no doubt she wouldn’t receive a good reference from the company when she began job hunting again.

Fortunately, Jory had a side gig editing and writing for an independent magazine, and she had been saving her money for a while, so there was no rush to find a new job as a corporate drone. That was little consolation for having lost the promotion for which she had slaved for the past year.

By the time she arrived home—hot, frazzled, and in no mood for more irritations—finding the door partially open was the last straw. It wasn’t the first time her strange roommate, Chiara, had left the door unlocked, but it was the first time she had left the apartment in such disarray. It looked like a tornado had blown through, and Jory stared in shock. Housekeeping was not her favorite thing, and the idea of having to pick up all the mess irritated her.

She strode through the clutter, too focused on delivering a piece of her mind directly to Chiara to worry about taking off her broken shoe. She wished she had the luxury of evicting the other woman. With the recent status change to unemployed, and the fact Chiara always paid her rent on time—strangely enough, the first time she had tried to pay rent with a handful of diamonds—Jory knew she was still stuck with the other woman. That didn’t mean she couldn’t lay down a few laws and make it plain what was and was not acceptable behavior.

For example, inviting strangers to sleep on the sofa was unacceptable. Jory stared at the large form currently sprawled across her small sofa. He was a behemoth of muscles even in a supine position. Long blond hair trailed across his shoulder and down his chest, and she found herself drawing nearer him to examine his features more closely. He had a strong brow, straight nose, and lips that were just a shade too full. The kind of lips that invited kissing.

Jory blinked at that random thought, abstractly amused that she found herself contemplating making out with the stranger who was asleep on her couch. More than likely, the man was just as strange as Chiara, and even more likely, he was with her roommate in a romantic sense. Not that the other woman had ever brought back boyfriends or dates to the apartment, but then again, Jory didn’t often do so either. Men tended to avoid her curvy frame, quick temper, and smart mouth. It was a dynamite combination prone to sudden explosion, as her mother liked to say in a teasing fashion.

As Jory bent over the form of the sleeping man, preparing to shake his shoulder to wake him, his eyes snapped open. She drew in a halting breath at the beautiful purple irises, rimmed by darker purple rings. She’d never seen anything so stunning or strange in all her life. They had to be colored contacts, right?

Blinking aside her temporary mesmerism, she forced herself to sound brusque when she asked, “Who are you, and what are you doing in my apartment?”

The stranger sat up abruptly, forcing Jory to scramble backward and almost land on her butt. She caught herself at the last moment, teetering on the uneven heels, and glared up at him. Way, way up. The man towered over her by at least a foot-and-a-half, and she wasn’t exactly short at five-six. Jory stretched her neck backward in an effort to meet his gaze, and her eyes widened at the sight of a device flipping up above his eye. “What is that?” There had been nothing on his face a second ago.

He didn’t bother to answer, but a shutter on the apparatus spun open, revealing a small red dot that grew to a beam barely thicker than a pencil. Jory gasped with outrage as the light scanned her from head to toe. It didn’t hurt, but it was a violation of some sort, and just plain freaky—like Chiara and all the other oddities that had come with having the woman as her roommate for the last seven months. Job or no job, money or no money, Chiara was going to have to leave if she persisted in bringing home weirdoes like this guy.

Jory racked her brain, trying to remember if there was some kind of convention in the city that would draw the cosplayers and tech types like this guy. He had to be wearing some kind of strange costume, and she was more convinced than ever when the light around him sort of flickered, and a flash of magenta seemed to superimpose itself over his skin, giving him a red-pink tinge, before another flicker restored his normal appearance.

She shook her head. “What is going on here? Where’s Chiara?”

The man stared at her for a long moment, still silent, and leaving her wondering if he could actually speak at all. She supposed with lips and eyes like that, he didn’t have to talk much to get the ladies’ attention, but she was more concerned about his intentions than how attractive he was at the moment. “Answer me. You know what, it doesn’t matter who you are, or what you’re doing here. Just get the heck out of my apartment before I call the police.”

The man lifted his hand, as though about to check his watch. At the last moment, Jory realized it was like no timepiece she had ever seen before. The cuff looked like a combination of plastic, metal, and some shiny skin—perhaps lizard, though she couldn’t think of any lizard that was naturally a blue-violet shade.

Another one of those strange apparatuses popped out of it, but this time it didn’t emit a red light. Instead, a sickly yellow cloud of gas erupted from his wristband, surrounding her in a millisecond. Before she even had the thought of holding her breath or trying to escape the miasma, it had entered into her lungs, nose, and mouth.

A giddy, lightheaded sensation, similar to the first wave of euphoria from nitrous oxide at the dentist, swept over Jory. She started to fall and let out a little cry of alarm.

Teetering on the broken heel, she grasped desperately for something to break her fall. To her surprise, it was the solidly muscled arms of the stranger who had just gassed her that enfolded her, keeping her from hitting the floor. Even as unconsciousness swept over her, she couldn’t help noticing how well-built the stranger was. It was a strange thought, to be admiring or appreciating anything about her attacker.

***

Zandar hefted the princess over his shoulder with no effort at all. She looked different from the photo he’d been given, but he liked this softer, rounder version of Chiondri. Most women on Gentarres and Karadis were built like athletes or warriors—either lean or muscled, but almost exclusively tall. He could see why the prince so admired this woman from the Royal House of Cardiff. If he had the opportunity to bed such a female, he wouldn’t hesitate.

Already exhausted from the urgent speed at which he had moved upon receiving this assignment, his thoughts were on the muddled side. Even the small nap he’d risked taking at the princess’s Earth dwelling hadn’t restored him completely. He had to nip such thoughts about the royal over his shoulder in the bud before his diminished state led him to do something disallowed by his contract. His mission was to return the princess to her affianced and collect his bounty, not seduce the next queen of his father’s home planet.

Even knowing he shouldn’t admire the princess couldn’t keep his pants from growing uncomfortably tight as he switched her to a more comfortable position so he could reach the transporter button on his wrist cuff. Still holding her, he stepped out onto the balcony and into his waiting pod. Cloaked by advanced technology, the vessel was invisible to NASA or other agencies that might be able to detect spacecraft orbiting Earth.

The tiny pod was just big enough for the two of them, and she had to sit on his lap. It was a damned shame, he thought with a grin, as her curves melted against him. Like the pod, the larger vessel had the same cloaking technology, and they docked with it and stepped aboard without any of Earth’s officials being any the wiser to the shuttle’s presence.

In his opinion, it was a heap of junk, but he’d been forced to accept it as part of the assignment to retrieve the princess. What the harbinger-class ship lacked in defense, it made up for in speed. He couldn’t deny it was faster than his own ship, but he was still not happy about having to use the royal vessel.

Once on the bridge of the small ship, designed to be manned by one person, he shifted his hold on Chiondri once more and strode down the hallway to the small room that passed for a medical bay. He didn’t expect there to be any long-term side effects from gassing her, but it was as good a place as any to dump her—and hopefully out of sight and out of mind.

He couldn’t allow himself to dwell on the tempting curves of the princess, or the sweetly rounded face whose skin was so soft when he gave in to the impulse to stroke a finger down her cheek. Framed by a long fall of chestnut-brown hair, it was a classically beautiful face.

Her lips were full and soft when he ran his thumb across them, and he contemplated bending to taste her. His pants grew tighter still, but he forced himself to resist the urge, not just because she was the future bride of the Royal Prince of Gentarres, but also because it was more than a little disturbing to admire her this way while she was out cold.

With a decisive nod, he turned away from the table where she lay to return to the bridge, trying to block out the memory of her vivid green eyes as he sat down behind the navigation console. It didn’t take long to disengage the autopilot and set them on a course for Gentarres. He would have the princess returned to her eager groom within days, thanks to the speed of the harbinger-class.

That meant three days of being around the temptation of the sweet princess, who seemed anything but sweet from the few moments already spent in her company when she was conscious. His mouth quirked as he recalled her outrage and her continuous questions he hadn’t bothered to answer.

It shouldn’t be a shock to her that her fiancé had sent a bounty hunter to collect the woman. Their marriage had been arranged since before either was born, and there wasn’t one thing either Chiondri or Kendrick could do to escape their union. Zandar still didn’t know why the princess had pulled a runner just days before the royal wedding, and he knew Kendrick was just as baffled as he was about the turn of events.

He briefly wondered why Kendrick hadn’t moved up the wedding just so he could indulge in the taste of his new bride. Her sweetly rounded ass would be a perfect fit for the size of his palms, and he could easily imagine holding her against the wall and sinking his cock into her slick heat.

Suppressing a groan, he reminded himself why that couldn’t happen and returned his attention to more mundane matters, like piloting the ship that barely needed any sentient assistance once the route was programmed. He waited for the princess to awaken, dreading the next confrontation with her, fully expecting her to demand he return her to Earth or some other backward planet so she could hide from the royal family of Gentarres.

She would probably plead, cajole, threaten, and offer money. She might even put forward her sweet curves to manipulate him into doing her bidding. His brow beaded with sweat at the thought, and he firmly told himself she didn’t have a chance in hell of convincing him to abandon his duty, no matter the incentive. He would just have to make that clear to her—and himself.

Jory slept better than she had for a long time. The fact was she couldn’t remember ever feeling so rested when she stretched and yawned before opening her eyes. It took a moment to realize she wasn’t staring at the plain white walls of her apartment, and there was no sun streaming through the window as there should be.

When she turned her head to the left, she could see vast darkness all around her, highlighted by streaks of blue-white. It reminded her of the documentary she had seen of electric jellyfish floating in the darkness of the ocean, their tendrils trailing behind them as they floated along. Something shimmering obstructed her view, and it was like peering through a lenticular puzzle. As it dawned on her she was looking out into space through some strange material that kept her separated from the vacuum, she shook her head.

Panic overwhelmed her, making it difficult to breathe, she panted as she tried to draw in a deep breath. Finally, when her chest felt like it would explode, she was able to inhale and then exhale raggedly. Once lung function had been restored, a piercing shriek escaped her as she mentally rejected what she was seeing. In seconds, the strange man burst into the room, his hand at his side, resting on a holster that presumably held some sort of weapon.

She couldn’t believe what was happening to her, and the most likely explanation was the gas he had used. “What did you do to me?” Her head spun as she sat up on the metal table, gesturing toward the wall-like membrane separating them from the illusion of space. It had to be illusion, after all, because nothing else made sense. It was simply some strange hallucinogenic hangover effect from whatever gas he had poisoned her with earlier that day. Was she dying? “What did you do to me?” she demanded again.

“Calm down, princess. You can save the hysterics for Prince Kendrick. I’m not being paid enough to deal with them.” His hand fell away from the gun at his side, as he stared at her when he crossed his arms over his massive chest.

Jory stared at him in confusion, deciding she had to relegate the space hallucination to the back of her mind and focus on whatever was unfolding before her. She could indulge in panic later. “I just don’t understand what’s going on here. Who are you? What do you want with me? Why have you kidnapped me?”

The tall large stranger shook his head, his too-full lips quirking with a hint of amusement.

It was then that Jory realized the hallucinogenic effect had spread beyond the imaginary walls of this make-believe spaceship to the man himself. Where before he’d had golden-brown skin and blond hair, his skin was now a shade of magenta, and his long hair was more silver than blond. Instead of making him look old, the gorgeous color had the contradictory effect of being vibrant and sexy. His purple eyes were still the same as they had been back at her apartment, ringed with deep purple that made her heart rate accelerate even under the circumstances.

As he turned slightly to the side, she gasped at the sight of a tail extending from the back of his pants. It snaked around his thigh and rested with just the tip vibrating, almost the same way as her cat’s when he was really excited. Or about to pounce.

Feeling woozy, Jory slumped against the table again. “What is going on?” She stared up at him, surprised to see a trace of sympathy in his expression. “What did you give me, you hulking behemoth? Why am I seeing things? Will this effect wear off?”

He frowned, looking confused. “Seeing things? What kind of things?”

She laughed, and it held a sharp edge of hysteria. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

He arched a silvery blond brow. “Try me, princess.”

With that same hysterical laugh, Jory pointed to the wall, or what passed for a wall in her hallucinogenic state. “For one thing, it looks like we’re in the middle of space in a see-through ship.” She waved at him, pointing to his thigh area. “And for another, you’ve turned reddish-pink and sprouted a tail. See how crazy that is?”

His frown deepened. “I should run a diagnostic on you, princess. You shouldn’t have these kinds of side effects from the gas, but you’re clearly confused. Or a good actor,” he muttered under his breath, but just loud enough for her to hear.

She glared at him, irritated he could think she was making this up when he was the one who had kidnapped her. Somehow, Jory made herself sit still while the apparatus above his eye flicked into view, having been invisible just seconds before. That same light scanned over her again. After a moment, he nodded, looking satisfied. “Well?” she asked when he didn’t speak.

He shrugged his large shoulders. “You’re in perfect health, Chiondri. I don’t know why you feel confused or dazed. Perhaps it’s the adjustment of space travel after being on Earth. The radiation levels on that planet, coupled with the oxygen content, air pollution, and chemical residue, are enough to alter anyone’s brain functions. I know it played hell with my holo-suit, and I’m sure my human holographic projection flickered a couple of times around Earthlings.”

His lips curved into a mischievous smile. “I ran across the path of a woman in leather and piercings, who took one look at me and screamed, so I assume she must have seen my true form.”

Her head pounded ferociously at his words as she tried to make sense of them. “Wait, are you trying to claim you’re some kind of space man?”

Slowly, the man stood up straighter and took a step toward her. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, princess, but there’s no need and no point. I won’t be manipulated, and I have a mission to complete. Once I dump you back on Kendrick’s lap, you’ll be his problem and not mine. In the meantime, save the head games.”

“Why the hell do you keep calling me princess? I’m not a princess. I’m about as far from a princess as you can get. I’m probably more like a serf.” The man was clearly out of his mind. Not that she had doubted that anyway, because sane people didn’t go around kidnapping other people and gassing them and…well, doing whatever was he was with this production.

He laughed. “Nice try, princess, but you can drop the act. I don’t know why you didn’t want to marry Kendrick, and it’s not my concern. All I have to do is get you back to the palace, and you can work it out with him—though I wouldn’t expect any kind of resolution besides ending up as the Royal bride if I were you. You know how these treaties and marriage contracts work between royal houses and warring planets.”

Jory drew her brows together. “I’m not playing any game with you. I don’t know what’s going on here, or what kind of setup you’re preparing for, but I want it to end right now. If you want ransom of some sort, you’ve taken the wrong girl, because I come from what you would call humble roots. My mom is a baker, and my dad is dead. There aren’t any rich grandparents or anyone else to scrape together millions of dollars to rescue me from your insanity.”

A ferocious scowl compressed his features. “I don’t know what you hope to gain by this, but I’m done with your shenanigans, princess. You can sit here in the medical bay playing head games with yourself, or you can move about the ship, but stay out of my way.”

With that pronouncement, he turned on his heel and strode from the room where he had left her. It was getting harder to pretend hallucinogenic side effects of the gas were responsible for what she observed around her. If this was all a set-up, he had gone all-out to make it seem authentic. Her head whirled with confusion as she tried to comprehend that this could really be happening to her.

As she leaned against the metal table, she realized it certainly explained a lot about her strange roommate, Chiara. The woman had always been odd and seemed completely clueless about social niceties, manners, and customs. Jory had always chalked it up to a strange upbringing or something, because she didn’t have any further information. Her roommate wasn’t exactly the sharing type, so they had remained as roommates rather than friends.

Jory remembered the first week they had lived together when she had walked in to the kitchen to find her roommate scrubbing ice off the side of the freezer and practically inhaling it by the handful. It was strange, but she’d tried to be polite and ignore it. Her roommate definitely had strange dietary habits, like always eating the bones along with the chicken.

Could it be Chiara was really some kind of alien princess hiding out on Earth to avoid an arranged marriage? Even as she had the idea, Jory thought she had gone completely round the bend, though she could find no other explanation for how she’d ended up in this situation.

Supposing she accepted the theory her roommate was an alien, it still didn’t explain why the strange man, whose name she really needed to learn, had kidnapped her instead of Chiara. If ever there was a case of mistaken identity, this had to be it.