When She Dances: A SciFi Alien Romance (A Risdaverse Tale) Read online

  When She Dances

  A Risdaverse Tale

  Ruby Dixon

  Copyright © 2020 by Ruby Dixon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Photo: Depositphotos.com

  Cover Design: Kati Wilde

  Editing: Aquila Edits

  Errors: Mine. :)

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  When She Dances

  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

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Want More?

  When She Dances

  I never expected to spend my days as a dancing girl…but it beats the alternative. In the window of a filthy space station cantina, I gyrate my hips and hope for better days.

  When I’m bought by the most intimidating alien on Three Nebulas Station, those better days are on their way. Zakoar of the Broken Back is a cyborg who deals in black market prosthetics. He’s terrifying to look at, with a metal jaw and a fearsome demeanor. He intimidates everyone in the galaxy…except me.

  Zakoar doesn’t want my name. In fact, he doesn’t want anything from me…except a little bed sport. In exchange for my willingness, he’ll take me to a human-friendly planet where I can live unafraid.

  Love isn’t part of the bargain, but every moment that I spend with him, I learn more about the male beneath the metal…

  …and I’m suddenly dreaming of a very different happy ever after for myself…

  1

  TESSA

  Sometimes, when I'm dancing, I fantasize about a different life.

  I don't dream of Earth or returning home—that's too unrealistic, even for me. So I fantasize about different things. I dream that some hero is going to storm into the cantina, demand to buy me from Abuar, unhook the chain at my ankle, and then carry me away from here. Heck, in my fantasies, we even leave Three Nebulas Station. We leave the crowded, humid halls, the dark rooms and slightly run-down apartments. We leave behind the taste of recycled air and the constant whirr of engines and we go someplace new. Someplace with sunshine and light, and the air is fresh and clean.

  These are the things I dream about. It's those dreams that carry me through another day of the same irritating music that drones on and on, songs that I grew tired of dancing to months ago. It's the dreams that keep me going when yet another alien customer shows up at the edge of my stage and tries to grab me. I kick away one of the tentacles and point at the sign that's been installed at the edge of the stage. I can't read it, but it's written in several alien dialects and tells customers not to touch me, that I bruise easily and anyone that bruises me will be fined.

  That part is certainly true. I do bruise easily. Always have. It's genetics. And because my skin is so pale from being inside the cantina, those bruises show up livid against my skin. It's why I dance in the window of the cantina instead of working in the back rooms like the rest of the slave girls. A naked, gyrating human brings them in the door, and by the time they have a few drinks in them, they no longer care that I'm the only human here and they can't buy a few hours with me.

  So…dancing's not so bad. The chain on my leg is for my own protection—so no one can carry me off while Abuar is distracted. That's happened before—hence the chain. I'm too valuable to lose, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Probably good, because no one that steals me ever has pure thoughts in mind. Bad because it means I'm stuck here forever, dancing in this shithole of a station, aliens of a dozen different worlds leering at my naked, shaking ass.

  At least I get a window. I press my palms to the glass and swing my hips, and as I stare out the window at the crowds, I see a familiar face.

  The robot guy. The cyborg.

  He's watching me again.

  A shiver runs through my body and I swing my hips with a little more enthusiasm. He always seems to come out of his shop at least once a day and watches me for a few minutes. He never comes into the cantina. Never talks to me. Just stares from afar. It happens every day, just like I'm in this window every day. And because he's a regular occurrence, he features in my fantasies.

  Sure, he's scary looking. He's inhuman, and the metal parts woven all through his body don't help that particular aspect. But he's big and strong and he never shows up at the cantina to drink and paw at me, so sometimes I fantasize about him. I dream that he's going to be so taken with lust for me that he shows up and demands to buy me. That he's gentle and kind despite the brooding, terrifying exterior and he bridal-carries me out of the cantina and into a new life.

  It helps to have a healthy imagination, I tell myself. It's the only way I stay sane in this garbage dump that is my existence. So I press my nipples to the glass, letting them bead up against it as I sway, my eyes on the man with the silver jaw in the distance.

  Come and save me, I tell him. Come and take me away from all this.

  He never does, though. And after a few minutes, he disappears back into his shop and my fantasy fades. With a sigh, I turn back toward the cantina, run my hands down my body, and give a little smile to the gathered customers at the edge of the stage.

  Just another day.

  My feet hurt by the time the cantina closes for the night. They always do. It's twelve hours of standing on the stage with only a break long enough to eat and drink something, to take a quick pee, and then I'm back in the window, listening to shitty alien music and dreaming about getting away from this place. No shoes, of course, since that'd ruin the whole “naked dancing girl” look, and so I grimace when the bartender arrives with the key to unlock my cuff.

  "Long day?" Chaila asks, giving me a weary look. She's an ooli, a froglike, squat race that isn't exactly prized for their beauty. I'm surprised she's one of Abuar's slaves, but she mixes a mean drink and she's utterly loyal, so I guess that answers it.

  I shrug as she unlocks me and holds a hand out so I can hop down off the stage. "They're all long."

  "Well, this one's about to get longer," Chaila says in a no-nonsense voice.

  Immediately, I freeze. She holds a blanket out to me, knowing that I get cold when I stop dancing and the sweat dries on my skin. I don't take it. Instead, I have a bad feeling. "Am I…going back to the rooms?" If so, it's my worst nightmare. I hated the time I spent back there, giving customers a different kind of “service.” Hated how dirty I felt afterward, how they groped me and touched me in places that weren't theirs to touch. That's why I never complain about dancing—because it beats whoring. I'd much rather shake my ass in a window all day long. I'm the lucky one. I know I won't always be so lucky. I know that the day I get too old-looking or my tits drop that I'm fucked. No one wants an elderly dancing girl, and I'm creeping up on thirty. I lie and tell everyone that I'm twenty-six, but Abuar will figure it out when he does the math in his head. Right now, as long as I look good, I'm alive, and I'm in t
he window.

  But Chaila shakes her head. "It's not that. Abuar wants to have a meeting with the staff." Her mouth flattens. "Tonight."

  "Oh." I take the blanket from her after all and drape it around my shoulders. "A meeting right now?" Really? But we're all so tired…not that it matters to Abuar. We're here to serve him, and he might call us “staff,” but we know the truth of the matter. We're all slaves.

  Chaila just walks toward the far end of the cantina, her short legs moving quickly around a puddle of spilled drink on the floor. "He's in a rotten keffing mood, too. More arguments with the syndicate." She makes a sound of disapproval in her throat. "He's going to get us all murdered."

  I bite my lip. The syndicate? Again? I hug the blanket tighter against my frame. The syndicate is a group that controls the running of the station. There are elected officials, but everyone knows that they're completely bought out and you have to pay the syndicate if you want to run a business on 3N. Abuar's cheap—legendarily cheap, actually—and he hates paying the syndicate. There have been times that the syndicate worked out their “discount” on the girls, and I hope tonight is not one of those times. I wish he'd just pay his damned bills like every other business owner around here, but Abuar thinks he's too good for that sort of thing.

  As we cross through the cantina, the tables are askew and still covered in the mess of the final customers. There's mugs everywhere, half-eaten food, chairs sprawled across the flooring, and a pool of vomit at the end of the long bar. I step around all of it, hoping that this meeting doesn't take too long, because I have to help the other girls clean the place up before we can go to sleep.

  Then it's bedtime, and we wake up an hour before opening time, and the next day starts, just like the last.

  Abuar is in his office, and I huddle into the back of it with the other girls. One of them hands me a protein ration, and I give her a thankful look while taking tiny bites out of it. Everyone looks tired…and worried. Not a good sign.

  "We're all here now," Chaila tells Abuar. "We're ready to hear your news."

  Abuar growls at her, snapping his needle-like teeth. An ugly crossbreed of mesakkah and szzt with a face only a mother could love, Abuar is a real pain in the ass to everyone but Chaila, who just puts up with his shit like a long-suffering wife. "Don't rush me, female," Abuar bitches, digging through his cluttered desk. It's covered with bottles of exotic liquors and piles of credits of every type. He pushes aside a data pad and an old, used shock collar, and sighs heavily. "Now I can't find it."

  Chaila moves to his side and nudges a second data pad in front of him, one hanging off the corner of his desk.

  He glares at her and snatches it away, like a child. Tapping on the screen, he glances up at us. "You're all here? All seventeen slaves?"

  "Sixteen," Chaila corrects him. "You sold Ibbi last month when she got sick."

  Abuar grunts, flicking through the data pad's information. "Sixteen. Right. Well. One less to worry about. You should all know that I'm closing the cantina."

  He says it so casually that I'm not sure I've heard him correctly at first. Close the cantina? It's closed right now. We have to clean before we re-open tomorrow at the noon meal.

  I'm not the only one that's confused by his statement. A few of us exchange looks and then Chaila speaks up again. "Closed…permanently?"

  Abuar's thin lips curl, showing needle-pointed teeth. "The syndicate and I could not come to an agreement on credits owed, so I'm shutting down, yes."

  "Are we going to another station, then?" a pretty lithari asks.

  "'We are not going anywhere," Abuar says. "Half of you will be staying with the cantina for when it comes under new ownership. Some of you are going to be sold in a slave auction two days from now because I need the credits."

  I stare at his desk, piled up with credits of all kinds, and his hands, which are beringed and covered with jewelry. His clothing is expensive, too. The bottles and flasks all over his desk? All pricey. And yet he's too cheap to continue to do business on Three Nebulas Station, so we're either going to be sold or be turned over to new owners? "Who's buying the place?" I speak up, afraid of what I'm going to hear.

  "A Ssithri named Nhaoan."

  Everyone in the room groans. We're all quite familiar with Nhaoan. Tall, thin with jeweled eyes, the ssithri have six arms, and all of them are gropey. Nhaoan is the worst of the lot, too. He's all over all the girls and is even more of a penny-pincher than Abuar is. Something tells me I won't be dancing in a window when Nhaoan takes over. I'm going to be in the back rooms, on my back, earning the roof over my head in the most miserable way possible. There's a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  "As for who's being sold…" Abuar flicks through the data pad and then squints at it. "Here's the list." He rattles off a few names, and I'm not entirely surprised that it's the younger, prettier slaves.

  Nor am I surprised to hear my name added in with theirs. The sick feeling in my stomach just grows.

  I don't know which is worse—being sold on the auction block or being left here. Either way, my life is about to grow a dozen times more hellish.

  2

  ZAKOAR

  The human female isn't in the window the next day.

  In fact, the entire cantina is dark.

  Not that I pay much attention to the cantina. I don't drink and I don't buy my companionship. There's not enough credits to make a female smile when she looks at me or to make her pleased with my appearance, so I don't bother. But the female that dances in the window—the one that watches me as much as I watch her—isn't there, and that, I notice.

  I go about my work for the rest of the day, trying not to think about why she might not be there, casting me sly looks with her eyes even as she presses her breasts to the glass and gives me sultry looks. I know it's all part of her act. I know to her, I'm just another strange-looking alien beast…but I'm still fascinated by her. Of all the females that pass through the bowels of Three Nebulas, she never looks at me with horror or revulsion. She doesn't look at me in disgust. She doesn't stare too long at the metal covering my face with a look of pity. She just watches me as she dances, and sometimes it feels like she dances just for me when she's in that window.

  Foolishness. I know what I look like. I know just how much of my body has been replaced or modified, quite a lot of it of my own doing. It's good business to show off what I can do, even if I terrify small children and half the adults that come through the station. I resigned myself to that long ago.

  But a male still has needs. Still has wants. And the human that dances naked at the cantina? She's the one I stroke myself to. She's the one I think about when I take myself in hand in the shower for a quick release. I'll never touch her, but it doesn't mean I can't fuel my fantasies.

  Funny enough, it isn't her teats or glorious ass that make me hunger the most. Those are perfection, but I think about her eyes the most. I think about how she alternates between a playful flirtiness as she watches me through the window…and I think about how, sometimes, she just looks so keffing sad. As if the universe has disappointed her time and time again. Probably has, considering she's a slave. Maybe it's the mesakkah in me, but sometimes I'm desperate to take that sadness from her eyes. I want to see a real smile from her. Not flirting, not teasing, not part of her show. Just a genuine, broad smile that reaches her eyes.

  I doubt I ever will.

  Even so, thinking about the female makes me head to the front of my shop. It's quiet right now. I'm waiting on a shipment of prosthetics that have been stolen from a military base, and my contact is taking a little longer to show up. Until he brings me the goods, I can't contact my clients and let them know that I'm ready to work on them. My shop looks like it's a run-down repair hub, but in reality, I let my partner handle the front end. My business is far more specialized…and dangerous.

  Tikosa gives me a curious look as I head to the front. I lean in the doorway, pretending to be bored and scanning the crowd on Three Nebu
las. The station is crowded—the station is always crowded—but today it seems to lack life. There's a listless energy to things, and even the people that walk past move lethargically, gazing at the clustered rows of shops and booths set up in every spare bit of flooring available. I glance over at the cantina again, but the lights are out, the window empty of a sad-eyed human female. With a grunt, I pace back into the shop.

  "You all right?" Tikosa asks. His nimble fingers—all of them prosthetic—re-wire the back of a fancy data pad that he probably got for cheap.

  "Why wouldn't I be?" I grumble.

  "You're pacing." He's young, Tikosa, but astute. That's why I hired him. The boy finishes his work on the data pad and then snaps the backing into place. He wipes the screen down carefully, and then places it into a box before moving onto the next broken data pad. He glances over at me as he works. "Something bothering you?"

  I run my hand over my metal skull-cap. It feels cool and smooth against my skin, a reminder at how unnatural I look to those around me. I should have a full, thick head of black mesakkah hair, proud, arching horns capped and decorated with the finest of metals. Instead, I'm as cratered and barren as the nearest moon. I rub my hand over the dome of my metal skull again, moving behind the counter. "Just…restless. I don't know. Something's off in the station today."

  Beside me, Tikosa snorts, not looking up from his work. "It's because everyone's sober. They're not used to it." He gets out a small blade and pries the back off of the new data pad, intent on his work. "You heard about the cantina, right?"