Arden Green was dreaming of peach trees.

In the dream, she was trespassing again.

Most days she managed to keep her head down in the lab. She documented every conceivable action of her charges from sun up to sundown with quick breaks for lunch and dinner.

But now and again the endless indoor routine got the best of her and instead of eating her lunch she slipped out the back, across the field and past the rhododendron hedge to the farm on the other side of the lab.

It was no surprise that was where her dream had taken her.

Arden peered around the hedge.

Just as when she visited in her waking hours, there was no sign of life on the other side. Not only in the orchard - there were no sounds of people or machinery coming from the rest of the farm either. Arden sometimes wondered how a farm could be run with so little activity.

But for today, she was grateful for the opportunity to convene with nature for a moment.

She stepped into the orchard. The air was rich with the scent of dewy grass and loamy soil.

The wildly gnarled branches of the trees overhead were at odds with their prim, perfectly spaced rows. Feathery green leaves trembled lightly in the breeze.

Prunis persica - the common peach tree. It was not native to North America. Like the men Arden cared for and studied, it had been transported from far, far away.

Arden lifted her hands and let the leaves tickle her palms as she walked between two of the rows.

Feel the sun on your face, taste the summer in the air.

These things are timeless pleasures.

Compared with them, Drago is a passing thought.

But when she closed her eyes to soak in the sunlight, it was his fingers caressing her hands, his smile warming her face.

Suddenly she was aware of the breeze against her skin.

In the dream, she opened her eyes.

And Drago was there.

He stood just down the row of trees from Arden, his hands outstretched to mirror hers. Sunlight glinted golden in his hair.

Arden gasped.

He wasn’t supposed to be out of the lab.

Drago’s blue eyes blazed into hers as he took a deliberate step forward, and then another.

Arden froze, waiting for him. Her heart pounded as if she had just run a marathon.

They were alone. She had never been alone with him.

He moved faster now, his jaw rippled with tension as if he were angry.

But Arden knew better. She could feel the sizzle of lust that hummed in the shrinking space between them.

Her own body ached in sympathy. She needed him too. Burned for him to wrap his arms around her, tear off the clothing that separated them, and possess her in the way they both had wanted since the first time their eyes met.

He stopped just in front of her.

Arden gazed up at him, pleading mutely.

Drago pressed his palms to hers.

Something powerful passed between them, a current that electrified her blood and made her bold.

Arden went up on her toes to kiss him.

There was a sound in the air, as if the breeze had strengthened and was sending the leaves of the peach trees into frenzied applause.

But Drago brought his mouth down to claim hers and Arden forgot everything but the warmth of his mouth and the feel of his hard body pressing against her softness.

She pressed back, stifling a moan.

Drago cupped her cheek with one big hand and gripped her hip with the other, as if he were afraid she would try to get away.

She kissed him back, drunk on the taste of his mouth, the feel of his big body in her arms at last.

He broke the kiss to gaze down at her.

“Arden,” he whispered, his eyes tender now instead of fierce. “Arden.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but something was wrong, she couldn’t speak.

“Arden,” Dr. Bhimani’s voice crackled as it came through the intercom.

Arden blinked and the orchard faded away.

She was back in her bunk, tangled in the sheets, dreaming about one of the men she’d been brought there to observe.

“Yes, Dr. Bhimani,” she replied, hoping her voice didn’t give away that she wasn’t fully awake yet.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Dr. Bhimani said. “I wondered if you might be able to visit me today during your dinner break.”

“Of-of course,” Arden stammered, hoping she wasn’t in trouble.

“Thank you so much, Arden,” Dr. Bhimani said. “See you at the lab.”

There was a crackle and the intercom went silent.

Arden grabbed her phone. It was still early, but she might as well get up. After all, she certainly wasn’t going to be able to sleep again.

She headed for the showers, grateful no one else was around.

Most of the lab techs left for the weekends, so Arden and two of the male techs were the only ones around. She got some extra pay, and she had no place to go over the weekend anyway. Her family was all out west, in the suburbs of Glacier City.

Once she was showered and dressed, Arden felt more like herself. She buttoned a fresh lab coat over her clothing and pulled her hair back in its usual ponytail.

She walked across the field to the lab, trying to ignore the scent of peaches in the air. It was just the fragrance in the shampoo she’d bought at the grocery store in town, not real peaches. It was too early in the season for there to be any fruit on the trees yet. The shampoo was likely the reason she’d dreamt of the peach orchard next door in the first place.

“Hey, Arden,” one of the male techs said as she walked in.

“Hey, Tom,” she replied.

She could tell by the sounds in the lab that the first session of the morning had started early. Tom held an empty box in his hands, and their colleague, Russ, was already halfway down his row.

“You got an early start, huh?” Arden asked.

“We’re going into Philly tonight,” Tom said, waggling his eyebrows. “Hitting the Stackhouse. You want in?”

“No thanks,” Arden wrinkled her nose.

She had no interest in spending her free time, or her meager stipend, at some casino. Knowing how much they made, she doubted Tom could really afford to be a high roller either. But she supposed everyone needed to blow off a little steam from time to time.

“Suit yourself,” Tom shrugged.

Arden grabbed her own box of VHS tapes from the shelf at the end of the lab.

The titles popped out at her garishly.

Frontin’ the Booty

Flashpoint X

A Clockwork Orgy

Much as she tried to view her job as scientific, some parts of it were easier than others.

She made her way to the first booth and tapped on the frame.

The curtain moved aside and a masculine face greeted her.

“Good morning, Arden,” the man said.

He was as stunning as an underwear model, and wearing nothing but a terrycloth robe. But he had an innocence about him that made things a little easier.

“Hello,” Arden replied. She wasn’t supposed to make small talk at this point in the experiment.

She stepped into the booth and put a tape into the small TV/VCR combo that was the only thing in the booth besides the man, a plastic specimen cup, and a container of wipes.

“You know what to do,” she said.

He nodded, his hands already eagerly tugging at the sash of the robe.

She moved on to the next booth, and the next.

Sounds of pleasure were echoing through the laboratory, the keens and cries of a hundred porn stars begging for five hundred movie orgasms.

On her first day Arden had been red in the face and convinced she would quit by lunchtime. She couldn’t really be expected to hand out porn to a bunch of men like she was slinging burgers at a diner.

But these weren’t really men.

They were visitors from the planet Aerie.

At home, the citizens of Aerie were gaseous forms, floating among the crags and living on starlight.

But they had received welcoming transmissions from Earth in the 1980s, transmissions that were sent from the observatory next to the lab, right here in Stargazer, Pennsylvania.

After studying the movies and culture of the planet during that era, the scientists of Aerie had designed human bodies and transported the men into them so that they might visit their Earthly friends.

And they had designed those human bodies very carefully.

Each man’s form was perfectly crafted to inspire lust in the women of Earth. Each of them seemed to be taller and more muscular than the last.

Once they arrived, if the men clicked into the human forms they became human forever.

So far, the only way to do that seemed to be through the mating bond. The first three aliens to arrive had come in secret, and had been allowed to interact with human women outside the lab. They had fallen in love and each had clicked when he bonded to his mate.

Now Earth’s government and Aerie’s wanted to know if it could be accomplished without relying on something as unpredictable as love.

So Arden’s job was simple.

She helped the aliens try to click on their own, using nothing but good old-fashioned pornography.

At first they had used modern porn, but the men had been overwhelmed by what they saw. When Dr. Bhimani sent Tom to the old video store in town for VHS tapes they had turned a corner. Now these 80s and 90s movies were the soundtrack to Arden’s mornings and evenings.

She had grown used to it - as used to it as she could be.

Except when it came to the last booth in her row.

She approached it now, tapping timidly on the frame.

The curtain opened slowly.

Drago gave her a slow smile.

Something swarmed in her chest, like butterflies made of fire.

“Good morning, Arden Green,” Drago said, his blue eyes glittering dangerously. Somehow, this one lacked the innocence of his brothers.

“Good morning,” she said quickly, grabbing a tape at random from her box.

Drago chuckled.

She looked down at the cassette in her hand.

Weird Science XXX: Starring Kelly LeKnockers

The cover showed a woman with long brown hair in a ponytail and a lab coat. She looked oddly similar to Arden - except that Kelly LeKnockers’s lab coat was unbuttoned to reveal a pair of enormous bare breasts. A big blond man knelt at her feet, hands outstretched as if to touch them.

Horrified, but too embarrassed to back out, Arden leaned forward to insert the tape into the VCR.

Instead, she dropped it on the floor at Drago’s feet.