Bridal Pact
Leora Gonzales
Poppy is boredto tears with her dead-end job and dull life, so when a species of alienwarlords arrives on Earth, seeking women to help repopulate their race, whywouldn’t she sign up? She doesn’t care who she’s matched with—until she meetshim. Sexy, long-haired and leather-pants-wearing Wheaton.
DiplomatWheaton expected a cultured Earthling to help in his mission, not somecrazy-haired woman named after a flower and whose speech baffles histranslator. Pardon my French? Knock it off? But Wheaton is soon smittenand eager to turn Poppy’s good-morning kisses into an all-day affair. Doingthe nasty? Bring it on!
But Poppy mustdo battle with the slimy councilor Demascus, and an extremist groupopposed to the Pact. And that’s before a glitch in the Bridal Pact programmakes all existing matches invalid, and glossy Hannah, the perfect politician’swife, arrives on board. Her match:Wheaton.
Reader Advisory: This story has graphic sexual language andscenes—no closed bedroom doors (or other rooms) here!
Anadult science fiction romance from Ellora’s Cave
Bridal Pact
Leora Gonzales
Dedication
I would like to give thanks to my family and friends whohave been supportive while I stumbled through writing my first book.
Special thanks to my friend Andrea. A bumper sticker broughtus together but wonder twin powers keep us going strong.
Tina, you have become a close friend and I will never getbored talking to you. Your talent, life experience and generous heart make youan amazing woman. Plus, you get bonus points for putting up with Richard…that’skind of a big deal.
Most importantly, I want to dedicate this to my husband. Iwas lucky enough to find a man who is super smart, loving, hilarious and alsodiabolical. When I said that I wanted to write but had no computer, I had noidea he was going to surprise me with a new laptop. There went my list ofexcuses. Touché, Richard. Touché.
Chapter One
Poppy Williams jerked awake at the sound of police sirens.Sitting up in bed as if she’d been electrocuted, she looked around for aminute. What the hell was going on? Confused from sleep, Poppy blinked a fewtimes to focus her eyes. The amount of sun streaming through the window couldonly mean one thing.
“Holy fucking shit!”
Not only had her alarm not gone off but she’d apparentlyoverslept by more than an hour. Scrambling from under her comforter, Poppystumbled and ending up face-planting on the floor by her bed, landing in a pileof shoes.
“Motherfucker!” Now she was not only going to be late forwork, she’d have a shoe imprint on her forehead.
Snatching her phone from the nightstand, she hit the icon tocall work. When all she got was a busy signal, she tossed it onto the bed andran to her closet to find some clean clothes. After getting dressed with aspeed she thought would impress the Flash, she moved to the bathroom to cleanup her face.
The only way to tame her curls would be to start over with ashower and since that wasn’t an option she pulled her hair back and piled itinto a bun on top of her head. As she brushed her teeth, she tried to smoothdown some of the curls around her face.
“Stupid hair,” Poppy muttered. She actually loved her longcurls but only when she had enough time to tame them. Glancing into the mirrorone last time, she took in her image. Standing at five foot three, she had someserious curves. Poppy normally weighed herself every morning out of habit andknew the one hundred and eighty pounds that showed on the scale would make mostwomen cringe. She however had decided long ago to accept what seemed to be her“normal”. No, she took that back. She not only accepted herself, she likedherself.
Leaning forward to make sure she didn’t have toothpaste onthe side of her mouth, Poppy took a second to clear the sleep from the cornersof her brown eyes. Another good thing was that she appeared closer totwenty-three than the twenty-seven years she was pushing.
She’d wasted enough time in the bathroom and raced to thedoor where her other shoes were. Slipping them on as she walked caused Poppy toalmost fall for the second time this morning. As she redialed the office, shenoticed the time at the top of the screen. Well shit. Why weren’t theyanswering?
In her hurry to get out the door, she barely missed slamminginto the man blocking her path to the stairs. She brushed by him at the lastminute, narrowly avoiding knocking both of them over. She stopped dead. Somethingwasn’t right.
Work forgotten, she saw almost all her neighbors werestanding on the open-air staircase. That was when she remembered what hadoriginally woken her up.
Sirens.
Walking back a step to the man she assumed was her loudnext-door neighbor, she asked, “Is one of the buildings on fire?”
When he didn’t answer her but instead simply stared acrossthe parking lot, Poppy turned around to see what had everyone in a trance.
“What the fuck?!”
Not believing her eyes, she blinked a couple times and thenpinched her arm for good measure.
There, hovering in the sky, was a strange plane. Studying itclosely, she realized, no, that wasn’t a plane. It was some sort of ship. Abright, shiny silver ship like something straight out of the movies. Justfloating in the air as if it were guarding something, it cast a shadow over afew of the buildings it hovered above.
Poppy jumped when a hand clasped her shoulder hard frombehind.
“Didn’t you see the news?” Her neighbor was still staring atthe ship with a panicked expression on his face.
“What? What news?” Shaking her head to clear it, she blinkeda few more times and whispered, “What the fuck is going on?”
“It’s aliens. There are aliens…aliens…”
As his voice trailed off in disbelief, Poppy lookedfrantically around, trying to figure out what was happening.
Every single neighbor on her floor was out on the stairswatching the strange ship hanging in midair over the buildings in front of her.Some people were whispering, quite a few were crying, but most of them werejust staring in shock at the ship.
Poppy tried frantically to unlock her phone with fingersthat were now slippery with sweat. Finally getting to the screen she needed,she punched the icon
