Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Other Titles
About the Author
The Naked Alien
Exposed to the Elements
Honey Phillips
Copyright © 2021 by Honey Phillips
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author.
Disclaimer
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover by Maria Spada
Chapter One
The sensation of a cold, damp nose exploring her neck penetrated Jane’s slumber, and she bit back a groan. Mr. Tiddles, her roommate Amanda’s cat, had found his way into her bedroom again. Amanda liked the idea of having a cat more than she liked the reality of it, and she had a tendency to pawn him off on Jane whenever she could. Normally Jane didn’t mind, but they were in the middle of tax season, and it had been a very late night at work.
“Just let me sleep a little longer,” she muttered, her eyes still closed. “I’ll play with you later.”
Mr. Tiddles responded by poking her cheek with a determined little finger.
Wait a minute. A finger?
Jane’s eyes flew open. The warm weight perched on her chest was most definitely not Mr. Tiddles. She had never seen anything like the creature staring back at her from enormous black eyes. Pink and gold streaked fur covered a small round body with an oversized tail striped with pink and gold. The soft morning light revealed the delicate tracery of pink veins in the huge, tufted ears.
Too shocked to react, she froze. The creature poked her again with a small, pink finger, chittering expectantly. The movement released her from her stupor and with a startled scream, she sat upright. The little creature squawked in response, scrambling back across the clearing and clambering up a long vine with lightning speed.
Clearing? Vine?
Her familiar bedroom had disappeared. Instead she was surrounded by a rainbow array of vegetation, none of which looked remotely familiar. Candy colored vines dripped from huge trees in deep shades of magenta and purple, while feathery vegetation in a startling variety of blues and golds provided contrasting undergrowth. Her slightly worn mattress had also vanished, and she was sitting on a huge velvety leaf in a deep shade of purple.
With a horrified gasp, she realized the reason she knew that it was velvety was because there was nothing separating her from the leaf. Her pajamas too were missing.
She was completely naked. And alone. And in the strangest place she’d ever seen. What the hell had happened to her?
Was she hallucinating? Could someone have drugged her?
As usual, Amanda had been entertaining when Jane finally dragged her way home last night. She had accepted a small glass of wine in a hopeful attempt to be social but, again as usual, she just felt out of place. After standing awkwardly next to Amanda while her roommate flirted with a skinny hipster, she drained her glass, muttered an excuse, and fled to the safety of her room.
She supposed it was possible that there had been something in the wine, but she knew that most of Amanda’s friends considered her drab and uninteresting. Why would anyone have bothered?
More importantly, this didn’t feel like a hallucination. The air was thick and heavy with humidity. The giant leaf beneath her felt soft and velvety to her touch, and the small creature who had awakened her had been warm and alive. The rich smell of growing things surrounded her, lush and fertile and underlaid with the sweet scent of flowers. The air was full of sound—leaves rustling, the chirps and squawks of what she assumed was some kind of insect life, even a distant growl that made her shiver. This felt all too real.
But if this was real, where was she? Her surroundings were beautiful and exotic and… alien. As if she were no longer on Earth.
Nonsense!
She hastily dismissed the idea. Just because this type of vegetation was new to her didn’t mean that it didn’t exist somewhere on Earth. It was probably just some sort of exotic jungle that she had never seen before—she certainly wasn’t an expert on wilderness areas. No matter how strange it might be, the fact that she was here meant that someone had to have brought her. And if someone had brought her here, they could just damn well return her to her safe little life.
Despite her determination, she could feel panic hovering just beneath the surface. It didn’t help that she had absolutely no idea where to start looking for whoever had abandoned her here.
A soft chittering sounded from across the clearing and she saw her earlier visitor peering at her from between two of the giant leaves. It was a cute little thing and it seemed harmless enough. It would be nice to have a friend…
“Hello there,” she said softly. “Did I scare you? You startled me too.”
She held out her hand and clicked her tongue encouragingly. The big dark eyes stared at her for a moment, and then it cautiously emerged from the undergrowth, hovering uncertainly on the other side of the clearing.
“That’s right. I won’t hurt you.”
Now that it was more clearly visible, she could see that it looked like an odd cross between a monkey and a cat. Its body was monkey-like with small, sturdy looking limbs and paws that looked like miniature hands, but it had the flattened muzzle and facial structure of a feline. She clicked her tongue again and those enormous ears tilted to catch the sound. It advanced slowly across the clearing as she continued to encourage it, then covered the last few feet in one big jump, landing
