Bossed by the Alien (Knotted by The Monsters #2)

1. Bee

Bee

“Bee. Get in here. Right now.”

Loora’s voice cuts through Athena’s glass front door before I even badge in.

My tote slides off my shoulder, my coffee sloshes dangerously close to the quarterly reports tucked against my ribs, and I shove the door open with my hip before caffeine, common sense, or basic self-preservation can stop me.

She stands three feet away, all long limbs, lavender glasses, and panic wrapped in lip gloss. Both hands clamp around my arm.

“The prince is here,” she says.

I blink at her. My brain offers nothing helpful, which is rude considering I fed it coffee less than ten minutes ago.

“The Ak Layn,” she hisses. “Skylor Ak Layn. Alien royalty. Corporate executioner. Cheekbones registered as a public safety hazard. He is here, in this building, on the forty-seventh floor, right now.”

I set my coffee on the edge of my desk before I wear it. “Good morning to you too.”

“Did you not get my message last night?”

“I got it.” My bag lands on my chair. “I was buried in those quarterly reports Todd called me about at nine p.m., because apparently reasonable human beings wait until bedtime to discover numbers exist. I was up until three fixing his math. Again.”

“Forget Todd. Forget the reports.” Her eyes drag over me from my curls to my flats with the grim focus of a surgeon assessing a very ugly wound. “What is on your body right now, Beatrice?”

“Clothes, Loora.”

“Barely.”

I look down at myself. Black slacks. White blouse.

Cardigan the color of printer paper after it jams. Comfortable flats that have survived rain, subway stairs, and one office holiday party where Todd made everyone play team-building charades.

“I came to work. Not audition for intergalactic wife number six.”

Her mouth twitches. “First of all, nobody has confirmed the wife rumors.”

“That sounds like something wife number five would say.”

“Second, you’re going to be in the meeting.”

Everything inside me stops. The copy machine whirs behind us. Someone laughs near the art department. Farther down the hall, Todd’s office door clicks shut with the particular smugness only Todd and expensive coffins can manage.

“No,” I say.

Loora’s chin lifts, proud, satisfied and a little dangerous all at once. “Yes.”

“The meeting is for the editor.” I grab my coffee again because my hands need a job. “Todd goes upstairs, smiles his expensive little smile, and I sit at my desk pretending I don’t know this magazine is on fire.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before Skylor Ak Layn’s assistant called down and asked for the editor and the assistant editor responsible for the quarterly analysis.”

I stare at her. She smiles. It is not comforting.

“Oh my God,” I say. “Loora, what did you do?”

“I told the truth.”

“Which truth? There are several, and most of them could get us sued.”

“I told his assistant that Todd didn’t compile the reports. You did.”

My lungs forget their employment contract. “Loora.”

“Don’t use that tone. You know I’m right.”

“I know you’re insane.”

“Also right.” She grabs my shoulders and turns me toward the mirror taped to the back of the supply closet door. “But right now we have a larger crisis. What are you wearing?”

A tired woman stares back at me. Copper-brown skin.

Curls with an agenda. Eyes that have seen too many deadlines and not enough sleep.

A blouse with a faint coffee dot near the hem that I absolutely pretend not to notice.

“I didn’t know I needed to present myself to alien royalty.

I thought I was coming in to write copy about fall boots and pretend Todd’s expense reports don’t look like crimes. ”

“You are not walking into that room dressed like a tax apology.” Loora shrugs out of her blazer.

“No.”

“Take it.”

“Loora.” I give her the look. “You are six feet of legs and bad decisions. There is not one garment on your body that will fit around these hips, and I am being generous calling them hips.”

She winces, then laughs, bright and unashamed, because Loora has never met an emotional land mine she couldn’t tap-dance over in cute shoes. “You’re right. And I would kill for your body.”

“You probably would.”

“Don’t sound so smug.”

“I’m not smug.” My mouth gives me away before I can stop it. “I’d trade you for controllable hair any day of the week.”

Her eyes drop to my curls, and a very bad light enters them. “Sit.”

“No.”

She pulls a hair tie from her wrist like she’s been waiting for this moment since birth. “Sit.”

“Nobody tames these curls. I have been fighting them since junior high. Products, silk pillowcases, a very expensive YouTube tutorial from a woman in Atlanta who promised me definition and gave me betrayal. Nothing works.”

“Sit.”

I sit. She works fast, fingers separating, pulling and coaxing the chaos into something that at least looks intentional.

In the mirror, her mouth firms with the same focus she gets when she believes in a story.

Not likes it. Believes in it. That look is why she’s the best research coordinator in the building, even if Todd keeps calling her “creative support” like she’s a decorative pillow with a laptop.

“Lipstick,” she says.

“No.”

“Not a question.”

“I don’t wear lipstick.”

She digs in her purse and produces a bullet of deep purple.

I stare at it. “That is purple.”

“Plum.”

“That is the color of a nightclub bruise.”

“It’ll work with blue skin.”

“His skin. Not mine.”

She considers me, then the lipstick, then me again. “Fair.” She rummages deeper and comes up with a gloss. “Fine. Warm brown. You’re welcome.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“You rarely do before I save you.”

She tilts my chin and swipes gloss over my mouth before I can protest. It smells like vanilla and ambition. When she steps back, my reflection still looks like me, just louder. Not prettier, exactly. Not changed. More difficult to ignore. The sight makes a tight ache press behind my breastbone.

“My hair doesn’t matter,” I say. “My mouth doesn’t matter. He’s here for Todd. He doesn’t know I exist. Besides, he won’t even be that handsome in person.”

Loora freezes. “Excuse me?”

“We work with models constantly. They never translate the way a camera makes them. He probably has one good angle, aggressive lighting and a publicist who sold their soul to Photoshop.”

Her smile turns slow. “Careful.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m hearing a bet.”

I should not take that bait. I have taken worse bait from men with business cards and loafers, so this is at least on brand. “Fine. If he is as handsome in person as his pictures, I’ll buy you lunch.”

“Not lunch. Sushi.”

“Absolutely not.”

“And dessert.”

“You’re abusing a woman under corporate duress.”

“And coffee from the good place.”

I narrow my eyes. “If he’s not as handsome in person, you buy me sushi, dessert, and coffee from the good place.”

“Done.” Loora sticks out her hand.

I shake it, because apparently sleep deprivation has eaten the part of my brain in charge of legal review. “Easy win.”

Loora puts both hands on my shoulders, and for once, her face goes still. “The king of Layn sent his Ak here to fix this magazine. If anyone in this building can tell him what Athena is supposed to be, it’s you.”

I look away. That lands too close to the soft place I keep covered.

Athena saved me before I ever worked here.

Sixteen years old, presenting Omega in a high school bathroom stall with my thighs shaking, my skin too hot, and three girls outside the door laughing because my body had dared to become more body.

More hips, more breasts, more scent, more everything they could point at.

Later that afternoon, I found an old issue of Athena in the guidance counselor’s office.

A cover model with thick thighs and a gap-toothed smile.

An editor’s letter from Soleia Ak Layn about beauty not being obedience.

A profile of a scientist who built prosthetics for girls who wanted to dance again.

I read that magazine until the pages softened at the edges.

For one afternoon, my body was not homework assigned by people who hated me.

That was before Todd turned Athena into celebrity divorces, detox rituals, and ten ways to make an alpha notice you without seeming desperate enough to want anything.

Loora squeezes my shoulders once. “Nobody else reads it like you do. Nobody else cares like you do. So get up there. Take your notes. Rock that room. Then come back and tell me what I want on my sushi platter.”

“He won’t be that handsome,” I mutter.

Her smile says she has already tasted the spicy tuna.

The elevator opens on thirty-two, and Todd steps in. Of course he does. The universe has never handed me a clean nightmare when it could add a man in a charcoal suit and too much hair product.

He looks at me the way he always looks at me, like I’m a smudge on his desk he hasn’t gotten around to wiping off yet. “I see you weaseled your way into this meeting.”

“Good morning, Todd.”

“I would say the same, but for you it probably won’t be.”

My jaw tightens. Forty-seven floors is a long way up. “I didn’t weasel anywhere. If the Ak Layn wants both editors present, I’m happy to be useful.”

“That’s rich.” He straightens his lapels. “Just remember when we get up there, you keep your mouth shut. He doesn’t need to hear from someone at your level.”

“If he’s already talking to you,” I say, “then he’s already talking to someone at my level.”

His eyebrows climb. The elevator glides upward, so smooth it makes every ugly word inside the car feel polished and expensive.

“My, my,” he says. “Aren’t we full of sass today.”

“If you paid attention, you’d know I’m full of sass every day.”

The doors open on thirty-eight. A courier boards with a stack of padded envelopes and the desperate expression of a man who has lost a fight with Midtown traffic. Todd waits until the doors close again, then leans close, dropping his voice into the hiss he uses when witnesses are inconvenient.

“Where is my report?”