A zany and sexy romance about a woman who finds herself stranded on a far-off planet and mated to the warlord alien king, from It’s not in Blair’s nature to just give up. Not when she’s beamed up to a spaceship and then dropped on an alien planet. Not even when she’s in the middle of a forest fire surrounded by dinosaurs. And But absolutely nothing could have prepared her for finding out that she’s that arrogant King Osid’s Despite recent hiccups, the alien researchers are determined to get their breeding program back on track. With that in mind, Blair and Osid are bundled off to the research center for what they’re told is couples counseling. As they face a series of increasingly dangerous challenges, it soon becomes clear the research aliens may have confused an episode of <The Bachelor< with <Survivor<. Bonding over their common enemy, and shall we say...<encouraged <by love darts, Blair and Osid let down their walls (and take off their clothes). When they discover that there are--somehow--even more secret plans in the works, another hilarious, steamy, over-the-top adventure is in store.

Autorentext

Kimberly Lemming

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

Blair

July 5, 2025, Earth

I loved Porsha, but she made you realize why they put "Warning: contents may catch fire" on a blowtorch. "You stole a bush viper?"

Our drummer nodded enthusiastically. "A spiny bush viper," she corrected. "Isn't she pretty? Look at her coloring!" She held the little snake higher, showing off spiky bright-yellow scales that screamed "I'm fucking venomous." To drive that fact home, the snake locked eyes with me and hissed. "They also had a red one, but it was more of a muddy red, and I figured the fans would be able to see her bright-yellow coloring better. I named her Piper."

I struggled to clip the skull mask to the shoulder of my lucky jacket, but the clasp snapped back into place too soon, clamping down on the end of my finger. "Ow!" I shook my hand. The skull's jaw fell open, as if in shock. I chose to believe the snake was the reason, instead of my inability to hook a mask onto a damn jacket. I could go on without it. But the skull's eyes had a glowing red light that I had programmed to light up during certain chords of our songs. Combined with the jacket's neon-green color and pins from my favorite bands, it always made me feel like a true rock star. I am nothing if not a thematic bitch.

Jackie took pity on me and set her eyeliner aside to hook the skull in place. Naturally, because it hated me, the skull snapped in on her first try. She gave me a look.

I returned it in kind. "Well, I loosened it."

"Sure."

"Anyway, Porsha, my dear friend, my reason for day drinking-"

"Hey!"

"Why?" I asked, abandoning my jacket on the dresser table to face her. "Why did you steal a bush viper?"

Porsha fixed me with an incredulous look as if the answer was obvious. Seeing that I still wasn't picking up what she was laying down, Porsha yielded and said, "Blair, this is the finals! If we want to win this thing, we need a gimmick. You know Stray Planet is gonna come in hard with a crazy light show. If we want any kind of chance of winning against oiled-up
K-pop dancers with strobe lights, then we need this. Besides, we're literally named the Vipers; she's the perfect mascot."

She wasn't completely wrong. K-pop wasn't the usual genre seen at the Emergenza Festival, but Stray Planet came in and dominated with the younger audiences. On stages full of rock, indie, and alternative bands, their group stuck out like a shining beacon. I couldn't even just blame it on the light show or glistening pecs either. K-pop might not have been my usual genre, but I couldn't deny that their music was fire.

"Oh Porsha." I reached out to pat her pretty, empty head, but thought better of it seeing as she was still holding her contraband viper. "I want to know what possessed you to immediately jump to a deadly animal as a gimmick. Where did you even get that thing?"

"Didn't I tell you? My uncle got me a part-time job at the zoo. The snake guy always spends his lunch breaks in his truck, so all I had to do was sneak into his office and snag his little snake grabby thing and one of the portable cages. She didn't even fight me when I picked her up." She held the snake near her face and cooed lovingly at its death glare. "Cause you're a sweet girl, aren't you, Piper?"

The snake hissed, causing Porsha to rear back with a start and all but toss the poor abductee back into her cage.

"See?" I shouted. "She damn near tore your face off. That's what you get for stealing snakes like a damn fool. After the show, you're bringing her right back to where you found her."

"No, come on, Blair, give her a chance. Look, we've been building our fan base for the past two years, and look at where we are. Still no record deal, no major exposure outside of the US, and we're still competing for scraps in every music competition we can afford to enter. If we want to make it big, we need to up our social media game. The best way to do that is with some kind of gimmick. Like how Ozzy bit the head off that bat."

"Ah, uh, no. I'm not biting the head off no damn snake. Porsha, you lost your mind."

"No, no! Nothing like that at all. Just give her a little kiss on the head before the show. It will be just like the bat thing but more humane. That's the kind of thing that will go viral on TikTok!"

"Yes, I can see the caption now. 'Dumbass lead singer dies live on stage after kissing a snake.' I'm sure you and Jackie will make a fortune selling T-shirts with my obituary on them."

Jackie snorted behind me, not even bothering to pause putting on her makeup. "As if anyone would buy a shirt with your face on it."

I met her gaze through the reflection in the mirror. "I hope you get sick."

She snort-laughed into her makeup, causing blush to plume around her face until she was left coughing.

Colton appeared in the doorway. "Vipers, you're on in ten." The stage manager held up a finger when Jackie opened her mouth to speak, pressing his other hand to his earpiece. He left just as quickly, shutting the door behind him.

"It's now or never," Porsha said to me. "Come on, just give her a-"

I cut her off with a wave of my hand. "No, we are not doing the snake thing. We made it this far into the competition without any silly gimmicks. We don't need a light show or a bush viper."

"But-"

"No," I stated firmly, grabbing my guitar. My phone buzzed in my pocket. The caller ID read "Red Car." I blocked the number, then set my phone down on the counter and checked my eyeliner.

"Bad date?" Porsha asked.

"No, they were fine. And we move on."

"Damn, that's cold."

I shrugged. "What do you want me to do, send them a fruit basket? We had some fun in the sun, the pool, Jackie's greenhouse-"

"What?" cried Jackie.

"And now we go our separate ways," I finished.

Porsha shook her head. "Girl, you need to be careful playing with these hearts."

"Excuse you, I'm clean. All my partners get tested."

"I meant attracting crazy people, Blair." Porsha stuck a hand on her hip, glaring at me the way she always did before launching into another true-crime safety briefing. "There was this guy who offered a woman his watch, only to report it stolen and have her arrested. Just so she would be brought back to him and be under his control!"

I rubbed at my temples. "Porsha, darling, sweetheart, that was Alchemy of Souls. We watched it together."

Her mouth fell open before she patted her hair and turned away. "Oh."

"Forget my dating habits. After we win this competition, I'll have enough money to abscond to a beach somewhere anytime I need to get away from a clinger. I haven't met anybody yet that could match my freak, and I refuse to settle for a…