Conway Smith treasured every minute of his ride from Baltimore to Las Cruces. It might be the last trip he ever took. He’d had a few peaceful days to contemplate everything that was good about America. He’d found so many reasons why he needed to follow through on what would surely be a suicide mission, from kind people to beautiful landscapes, from good food to human monuments, to the uncomfortable sightings of alien spaceships traveling so fast that he could only catch them from the corner of his eye as they passed overhead. The Krinar built their small, sleek ships at will, purpose-made. He hadn’t seen one since he reached New Mexico, nor had the places he’d stopped to eat or sleep attracted the tall, beautiful beings who looked so much like humans, just better.

His tires crunched on gravel as he turned into the parking lot at his destination. Blue sky, lightly shrouded by wispy clouds that hung flatly over the endless rows of mostly empty parking spaces in a large, double-sided strip mall with third-rate businesses. Conway bypassed all of it, on the hunt for one particular building. He spotted it in the far corner, a squat, reddish-painted rectangle, as if it was trying to be adobe on the cheap. A couple of sycamore trees promised shade next to the dumpsters on the left, the only objects of notable height other than the telephone poles and lines stretching down the street behind the bar.

What a depressing spot. He couldn’t even see the mountains from here. But then, he was trying to join the Resistance, not attend a picnic.

He parked his second-hand BMW F800 GS motorcycle, freshly painted stark black, in the parking space closest to the trees. Roots had buckled the pavement to the left, and the dumpsters reeked. Outside the scarred wooden door leading to the bar, a garbage can with an ashtray insert was full of butts. No sign of the healthy lifestyle the aliens wanted humanity to embrace here. Not a surprise. The owner of Cloud Bar appreciated no part of the alien-espoused health culture and attracted those with the same attitude.

None of the stench or ratty exterior of the place mattered after Conway pushed open the door and saw her, spotlighted under an overhead lamp, an oasis in the dim, cool space. An image of beauty straight out of New York Fashion Week, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, or his most memorable dreams. For a moment it all receded—the miserable strip mall, the aliens who had invaded Earth like a plague of vampire locusts a few years ago, his mother’s death.

His blood rushed south as he took in the siren’s curves, making him forget why he’d come. It was a bar, where anyone would go to meet someone for an anonymous hookup. She was the kind of prize who wouldn’t normally be found at a dump like this. So what was she doing here?

***

Venus Cloud hadn’t expected Conway Smith to look like this, to have a full-body effect on her as strong as a jolt of electricity. A couple of inches over six feet, he had thick wrists and large hands, the only part of his body exposed other than his face. A helmet dangled from one of those hands. He wore a leather jacket, very sleek and without details, and fitted jeans. His heavy black boots could be used as weapons. She suspected they were steel-toe. Not a bad choice for this rough crowd. She thought she saw a tattoo wrapping around his middle finger on that hand, but couldn’t make it out. His dark hair plastered thickly against his skull from the heat. More important, he had the mouth-watering musculature of a mixed martial arts fighter. Yummy.

He was expected to make contact that day. John, one of the leaders of the Resistance, had let her father know the newly radicalized firefighter from Baltimore decided to join up after meeting with him in New York. John had suggested Jupiter Cloud’s group provide the recruit with weapons training. Not only that, John knew her father had the manpower to take down the man if he didn’t surrender the stolen Krinar technology he claimed to have. People had started to suspect that the immortal alien invaders had the technology to make humans live forever too, but they weren’t sharing. Conway Smith had a dose of the nanocyte serum they used, stolen from a Krinar who’d left him alone in one of their houses in their Lenkarda base after he’d been brought there to say good-bye to his dying mother, one of their sex slaves.

Venus stared into his eyes, their bright blue visible even in the shadows of the bar, and felt something click deep inside herself.

While she’d been asked simply to keep an eye on him, seducing him wouldn’t be a chore at all.

***

Conway hesitated. His dick told him to head for the woman, but he needed to make contact with Jupiter Cloud’s outfit. He imagined what it would feel like to step into a cold shower and shook his head, trying to clear his mind. After three days of hard riding, he didn’t have much brainpower left, but he needed to focus.

What had John told him? His contact would be wearing a blue bandanna. He glanced at the woman and almost did a double take when his gaze slid north of her perfectly displayed cleavage and focused on the thin blue silk scarf, no longer than a bandanna, tied around her delicate throat. Below that, she wore a baby blue leather bustier and black leather trousers that cupped her ass like a lover’s hand. He couldn’t see how the trousers closed in the front, but he hoped for crossties. Sexiest thing ever.

She sauntered toward him, a half smile hovering across her pale pink lips. He could imagine biting that soft, full lower lip, then licking his way over her upper lip with its pronounced Cupid’s bow center. Her hair swung long and glossy. Almost as dark as his, except she had bronzy streaks in the front.

“You don’t belong here, desert flower,” he said when she paused in front of him. “I wish I had the time to take you somewhere more suitable.”

“Ha, funny.” Her lower lip pressed out when she spoke, giving her a sleepy, sexy appeal. “My father owns this place.”

A warning bell sounded, distantly, over the rushing of his blood. “You’re Cloud’s daughter?”

“Yes.” She hooked a slender brown finger into his half-zipped jacket and tugged at it. “But you can take me somewhere private. Your hotel room, perhaps?”

His eyebrows lifted. “I’ve got business here at the bar.”

Her other hand went to the scarf around her neck. The voice lost its sensuality. “Blue bandanna, Mr. Smith. What should I call you?”

“You can call me anything you want,” he said without thinking. She was the contact? For a Resistance cell? He checked out her arms. Like the rest of her body, they were slim and perfect, but her shoulders were well-defined. Her beauty hid a warrior’s strength. “But the only nickname I ever had was ‘Melrose.’ ”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “It came out of a fire on a street of that name. Couple buddies got caught in a fire and I managed to get them out.”

She tilted her head, her bandanna shifting on her throat. “So you’re the hero type.”

He had the sense that she considered the word distasteful. Didn’t she think her father and his crew, trying to rescue Earth and humanity from the Ks, were heroic? “Just loyal. Can’t leave a man behind.”

“I can respect that.” Her lips curved, but her tone remained dry. “But I’m going to call you ‘Conway.’ ”

Her deadpan delivery was amusing as well as sexy. He found himself liking her style. “Fair enough.” He moved closer. Her hand stayed between them. “Your father going to have a problem with you going off with me?”

“I’m a little wild.” She smiled, but her eyes didn’t crinkle at the corners. “I do what I like.”

“Not sure I like the idea of a wild child in this kind of outfit,” he said. “I’m not expecting upstanding, honest folk exactly, but loose lips sink ships and all that.”

She moved in until the still-unseen front of her leather leggings touched his crotch. Heat zinged him. Long legs, this girl. “Don’t you want to trust me? C’mon, let’s go.” She stepped to the side and tugged at his jacket.

Instantly, he flicked her fingers off his jacket. He wasn’t about to be led around like a leashed pet, not even if it was a sex thing.

At her look of surprise, he handed her the helmet. “Put this on, desert flower. Wouldn’t want to get bugs on that pretty face.”

“What about you?”

“We don’t have far to go.” He laced his fingers in between those on her free hand and pulled her out of the bar, still not having made eye contact with anyone but her. For now, he’d best remain a stranger.

Outside, the ninety-degree heat hit him right in the face. He helped Cloud’s daughter onto the bike, then climbed on in front of her and turned on the ignition. Before he’d come to the bar, he’d checked into a dirtbag hotel a few blocks away. Figured a place like that, probably crawling with drug deals and pay-by-the-hour hookers, wouldn’t care what he was up to.

Once his companion had wrapped her arms around his waist, he pulled a pair of sunglasses from a saddlebag and slipped them on, dimming the bright midday glare.

He drove out of the parking lot, glad to have the bike between his legs, and wished he could drive them both out of this town. Somewhere up into the mountains, maybe. Find a place to set out a blanket, get to know each other, far away from the threats of aliens and the governments that bent over and took it from them.

“You must be broke,” was the first thing Cloud’s daughter said when her feet hit the pavement. She wore studded black boots with two-inch heels. A beautiful badass, she didn’t fit in at a one-story motel where the room doors opened right off the parking lot. Down the cracked sidewalk, Conway saw an obese woman, around thirty, corralling two little girls with ice cream–covered faces into their room. She looked furtively around, then seemed to relax when an old pickup drove into the parking lot. Her dealer, probably.

He unlocked his hotel room as the truck spit gravel behind them, then pushed open the door. “Miss Cloud?”

***

“It’s Venus,” she purred, walking past him into the room. She recognized the whiff of bleach and faint incense, the scent of cheap blankets washed too many times, as the aromatic landscape of her childhood. A hundred places just like this had been her home during those couple of years after her mother had left her father, before he’d gotten custody thanks to her mother’s substance abuse battle.

“Your father is Jupiter and you’re Venus?” he asked, closing the door behind him and setting each of the three locks. “Those real or nicknames?”

“Real. Family tradition. My grandmother was Hestia. Her father was Hermes.”

“Italian?”

“Yeah, I guess. My family isn’t much for history. We moved around too much to collect boxes of papers in our attics.”

“I hear you.”

She trailed her finger over the long chest of drawers. Above it a TV was bolted onto the wall. “Did your mother keep any of your stuff when she went to Lenkarda?” she asked.

“No. She wasn’t one to look back either.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” She hesitated. While she knew she needed to connect to him at any level she could, this was meant to be a search operation. She had orders. Locate the nanocyte device; get an idea of what he wanted. “This is a big turning point for you.”

“We can’t let the Ks turn our women into sex slaves,” he said. “Why is there all this outrage when human groups kidnap women, but no scandal when the aliens do it?”

She catalogued his agitation as he tugged down the zipper on his jacket and shrugged it off. He threw it in a corner, then sat on the bed and pulled off his boots.

“No tattoos?” she asked. From what she could see, his arms were unadorned.

“Just one. Unlike you, I bet.” He flashed a sly grin. “Saw one on your finger. Where else?”

She rubbed down her arms, suddenly chilled. The quick bike ride had just about frozen them while she suffocated in the helmet, but she’d warmed up in the parking lot before coming into the room, where the air conditioning was blasting in a wheezy way. “One on your finger, too. You divorced like me?”

“Nope. Just my fire station number.” He held out his hand to her and she had the strange feeling he had become the seducer, instead of the other way around.

***

She had that little-girl-lost look all of a sudden. “Come here.”

She sat down next to him and splayed her fingers on his thigh. “There’s the tattoo.”

He lifted up her hand and investigated. “ ‘Love,’ ” he read out loud. “On your middle finger?”

She laughed. “It died.”

“What else?”

She turned to the side, and flipped her hair to the opposite shoulder so he could see a tiny figure of Kokopelli, the Hope trickster spirit. He stroked his finger along the figure’s flute. “Nice. That all you’ve got?”

“You have to undress me to see the other one,” she purred.

“Is that part of the cell’s initiation? Taking you to bed?”

She pulled away. “Really? Was I imagining all that zing when we first saw each other?”

He shrugged. “Could have been an act. I don’t know you.”

She swallowed hard. “Look, I’m sure you get hit on all the time, Mr. Hot Firefighter. No one’s going to take the time to make you buy them dinner and a movie. You’ve got that, you know. That thing.”

“So do you.” His words softened. Maybe she really did like him. He didn’t want to have sex with an actress. “You’re dressed to make an impression.”

She glanced down at her corset top. “I was in New York, modeling, before the insurrection failed.”

“You came back because of that?”

She quirked her lips, exposing a dimple on her left cheek. “My father thought, with the help of the Krinar who didn’t want to be here, that they’d be successful getting all fifty thousand of them off planet.”

“But it failed spectacularly.”

She lifted her hands. “It didn’t work out, and he said things were going to be worse than ever and he wanted me home. Still, this is the wardrobe I arrived home with. Castoffs from fashion shows and such. Anything to get the blogs interested in me as a model and the clothes for the designers.”

“Young designers hoping you’ll be photographed in their stuff?”

She nodded. “A designer from Albuquerque made this top. Gave it to me hoping I’d be seen around locally.”

“Fits you like a glove.”

Her hands stroked down her sides and she smiled at him. Good. She’d relaxed again. He liked women with a bit of vanity.

***

Sharp, this Conway Smith. Did he really want to join a failed insurrection? Still, if he wanted to get the Ks off the planet, what other group of revolutionaries was there? She wished they’d completely severed ties with John. He’d trusted the human traitor Mia, a Krinar sex slave, or charl, who had been part of the Resistance and inadvertently given everything away to her Krinar lover, Korum, thereby dooming their attempt to remove the aliens from the planet. Still, the Resistance was the best bet Earth had to be controlled by humans again.

She noticed Conway’s gaze had drifted down her torso, stopping at her thighs, then jerked up again. “What are you looking at?”

“Just wondering how those pants close at the top. Your corset is covering them.”

“Wondering how to undress me?” Her fingers went to her cleavage. She let her index finger drift south.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” His voice hardened. “I’m in. The Ks killed my mother. No going back from my perspective.”

“I’m not some prize our group gives out to newcomers.” She swayed toward him where he sat on the edge of the bed and shoved his feet apart, moving between his legs. “I do what I want. Fuck who I want.”

“Anyone going to get a hate-on for me because of this?”

“No one owns my sexuality. I’m free as a bird.” It took two hands to undo the hook and eye closures down the front of her top. She undid the first one, then the next two, sighing as her breasts were released from their confinement, though they weren’t yet exposed.

His eyes went to the slopes of her breasts and stayed there. When she glanced down at the front of his pants, she saw the hard bulge extending to the top of his right thigh. Wow. Her mouth began to water.

“You are so overdressed,” she told him. “Let me help you with that.”

He put up his hand. “Not until you’ve taken off at least one item of clothing. Go on, I’m enjoying this too much.”

“Like women don’t undress for you all the time,” she scoffed, undoing another hook.

“Keep going,” he said huskily, denying nothing.

She moved down, down, her fingers fumbling on the bottom, until the molded sides of the corset hung open.

He reached for one end and pulled her close enough that her knees brushed the edge of the bed, then let his eyes drift south. “Yes, crossties. Thank your designer friend for me. Turn around.”

When she obeyed, he pulled the corset off her shoulders, freeing her body, and set the garment on the table. She sat on his left thigh and brushed her fingers over the bulge on the opposite side.

“Cheating,” he rasped.

She laughed and tugged up the hem of his soft gray T-shirt. He bent his head and let her pull it off. His pecs were well defined, with a smattering of dark hair that went down his belly, a thin trail that led underneath his pants. Not an ounce of fat added to the muscle on his abdomen.

“You could have modeled,” she said. “But I just want to bite you.”

“Watch it or I’ll think you’re a K,” he said. “You could almost be one. If you were as tall as me I might have worried.”

“I’m not that tall,” she protested, playing with the medallion that hung on a chain around his neck.

“Short for a model.” He pointed to his necklace. “My mother’s. She was a Buddhist.”

She recognized the serene face of the Buddha. “I’m glad you have something of hers.”

He laughed, a sour sound, and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry. This is the seduction from hell. Let’s talk about my dead mother. That’s sexy.”

She stroked his pec, his hair tickling her palm. “We wouldn’t have met without your tragedy. You’d still be in Baltimore.”

“Yeah. Her cheren, or whatever they call their so-called lovers, wanted to separate us so that she wouldn’t see me age while she stayed forever youthful.”

“I’ve never heard how she died. It wasn’t in the report about you.”

“She drowned. She was never a strong swimmer, and she didn’t know Costa Rica at all. They didn’t protect her, didn’t rescue her. So much for immortality.”

“Are the Ks really immortal?” she asked.

“They can heal from just about everything, very quickly, don’t get ill. But they can still be killed. I don’t know if they can be staked, like in vampire lore, but I think you can chop their heads off.”

“They can be torn to bits.” She glanced at his hands, so gentle on her body. Could they tear apart an alien with vampire tendencies?

“Or blown up. Just like humans.”

“Did you want to be immortal and stay with your mother?”

“Of course not. I have the serum to do it, and I haven’t used it on myself.”

She wondered why. “I never heard how you got your hands on it.”

“Stole it. I was allowed into Lenkarda to gather her possessions. The Krinar are so humane, you know.” He sneered. “I had to take it all, the false grief of her lover, her so-called friends. There’s a woman there who is thousands of years old, picked up by them on one of their scouting missions, I think. She’s managed to stay alive all this time.”

“They don’t know you have the serum?”

“The nanocytes haven’t been activated. And one of their inventors would have to make a tool to track those actual nanocytes. Hopefully that hasn’t happened, but I don’t know.”

“Did you know what you were stealing?”

“Not exactly. There’s a secret university program on the East Coast doing research on stuff like that.” He cleared his throat. “That’s why I had to come out here. If I don’t disappear, you know the Men in Black are going to show up and take it from me so they can do research. But I want to have it weaponized, not studied.”

“So you’re in hiding. But I have to warn you there are university programs like that all around the country.”

“Yep.” He winked at her. “I’m at your mercy. I don’t care that your father is a criminal. I need all of it. Fake ID. Black-market lifestyle. Sex with hot, leather-clad goddesses.”

She poked him. “Goddesses? How many of us do you think there are?”

He stared down at her exposed breasts. “I don’t imagine there can be more than one, but I was hoping.”

He chuckled before she could poke him again.

“Outlaw with a sense of humor. I like it.” She twisted enough to wrap one arm around his neck and brought his face near to hers, so close that she could see his pores, the way his dark beard was just beginning to pierce his skin. Starting a kiss could be hard if she overthought it, so she just leaned in, closed her eyes, and found his mouth with hers.

His lips were chapped but warm. She traced the seam with the very tip of her tongue. He sighed and let her in, despite his big, hot firefighter outlaw attitude. But he wasn’t patient for long with her careful exploration. He took his turn, sweeping in like an ancient warrior, conquering her senses with his unique flavor. She moaned and gripped the back of his skull.

He took that as a sign, grabbing for her thigh and pulling her into a straddle. Her clit lined up with his belt buckle and lighting flashed through her body. She arched. His mouth dropped to her neck, her clavicle, before he took his hands off her thighs and put them on her breasts, lifting them to his mouth, each one in turn. He lavished attention on each of her nipples until they were engorged, aching with mixed pain and pleasure.

Then, roughly, he pushed her away.

“What?” Her fingers went to her swollen mouth.

“Need them off.” His hands went to her pants, pulling at the black lacing.

“Be careful. Don’t get it tangled.”

He pulled, dragging the bow apart, loosening the front until he could push the material over her hips. He shoved it all down, both the leather and her silky thong.

“No way to get out of these elegantly,” she said, collapsing onto the bed next to him, thinking she could lie on her back and kick them off.

Instead, he dropped to his knees and pulled the material over her feet until she was completely bare. Then he pushed her feet up, bending her knees. He tugged her hips to the edge of the bed, then stood over her, Buddha swaying.

Feeling like the goddess he’d claimed she was, Venus spread her knees, exposing herself to him, her juicy desire evident. His hand went to the bulge in his pants. He squeezed himself.

“You are so ready for me,” she whispered. “Let me see it.”

He undid his belt and pulled it out of the loops. She felt a moment of fear, remembering childhood punishments with her father’s belt. But he tossed it away and undid the top snap of his jeans, pulled down his zipper.

She propped herself up on her elbows to watch the show. That trail of thick hair ended in a half moon of curls as he displayed the fact that he’d gone commando. His cock sprung forward, leaking precum. He was easily as excited as she was.

“Outlaw,” she teased.

He took his sex in one hand and grabbed his jacket off the chair with his other. After fumbling for a minute, he came up with a condom that had been concealed in an inner zip pocket. “Outlaws have to be prepared.”

He got onto the bed, sliding his legs underneath her knees, making her watch as he slid the condom on. “What’s your favorite position?”

***

Venus looked like a fallen angel. From his vantage point above her, her hair spread in thick locks around her like a halo. She had to be young. Her nipples pointed toward the ceiling even without any kind of support, and her breasts felt real. Her hips were rounded and she had a long waist, a perfect model’s body. She didn’t have any hair anywhere on her body and nothing was hidden from him, not her desire, not her scent, not her lust.

She licked her lower lip, shifted her legs farther apart, and reached for a pillow. He helped her shove it underneath her hips and slid off the bed. When she lifted her hands to him, he put his into hers, and she settled his hands on her hips. He squeezed, his fingers digging into the soft flesh. She moaned, lifting her hips until he could notch into her and drive home.

“Yessss.” She went still, and he stopped until she adjusted around his girth.

He stroked his fingers down her hips. “There you go. Yeah, take me deeper.”

She rolled her hips. He slid in another inch. “God, you’re tight. But so wet.” He was finding it hard to stand. He wanted to come down on top of her, make her take his weight so he could feel her skin against his, but then she rolled her hips again and he couldn’t think straight. Just like the first time he’d seen her.

He arched against her and let his body take over, reveling in the sensations. She found his hands again and held onto them as they rocked against each other, crying out so loudly that they could probably hear it on the street, even over the rattling noise of the air conditioner.

Her hips came off the pillow. Her eyes met his, startled, then her head rolled sideways and her body stiffened. He felt her sex tighten around him and he lost control, pumping helplessly into her as her internal muscles squeezed.

He didn’t remember what happened after that. He found himself on his back across the bed, but it didn’t matter. She rotated somehow until she was against him, skin to skin, and he fell asleep, not watchful at all for the first time in weeks.