Chosen Alien Gene: The Complete Collection (SciFi Alien Menage Romance) by Meg Ripley Page A

entirely sure how to respond.
    “Nice to meet you, too,” she said, licking her lips and reaching out almost blindly for her cocktail glass. She took a quick sip and a deep breath to steady herself.
    “What’s troubling you, Jessica?” Banek asked. Jessica remembered that he had asked her that before—his strangely courteous gesture of kissing her hand had thrown her. She cleared her throat again and focused on the subject of hand.
    “Well,” she said, setting her glass down and spinning it carefully on its base against the bar top, “this has kind of been a week from hell for me.” She felt a short, sharp stab of pain somewhere between her ribs—a pang that she had felt several times in the last few days. Jessica swallowed as her throat convulsively tightened at the thought of what all had happened to her. “First, my boyfriend broke up with me,” she said. Jessica closed her eyes; she could remember all too easily the look on Thomas’ face when he had told her he wanted to “see other people.” “And then my car threw some kind of rod or something, and it’s in the shop until I can come up with seven hundred dollars to fix it.” Jessica opened her eyes. “And to cap it all off, tonight I got a notice from my landlord that if I can’t pony up an extra three hundred a month for rent, he’s going to lease my apartment out from underneath me.” She smiled wryly, glancing over at Banek. The huge guy nodded, his eyes sympathetic.
    “Those are very deep troubles indeed,” Banek said, reaching out and giving her free hand a squeeze. “Would you like me to beat up your former boyfriend? Or maybe your landlord?” Jessica nearly dropped her glass in the process of bringing it to her lips, her mouth falling slightly open in shock at the matter-of-fact way that Banek had proposed “beating up” the two men causing her the most grief. She closed her mouth, licked her lips, opened her mouth to respond, and then closed it again in rapid succession.
    “Did you just offer to beat up my ex or my landlord for me?”
    Banek nodded solemnly. “Or both of them, if that will solve more of your problems,” he said. Jessica stared at him, blinking slowly as she tried to work his words through her mind to make sense of them. It wasn’t the alcohol; she certainly was not nearly as drunk as she would like to be. Jessica steadied her hand and took a long drink of her Long Island, still reeling in shock at the offer that Banek had made.
    “That won’t be necessary,” she said finally, licking her lips of the potent concoction. “My…my ex can just…” she took another sip and laughed ruefully. “I’ll leave karma to deal with him. As for my landlord…” Jessica shook her head again. “I’d rather you didn’t end up going to jail just to get revenge for me.”
    Banek shrugged. “I could also provide you with money to pay for your car repair, or repair it myself,” he suggested. Jessica laughed, finishing off her drink in two more gulps and bringing her hands up to her suddenly warm face.
    “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull,” she said, glancing at Banek furtively. “But I’m not that kind of girl.”
    Banek frowned. “What kind of girl?” he asked. Jessica pressed her lips together; his strange looks in addition to the inflections and accent in his voice made her certain that Banek was as foreign as they came.
    “I don’t want—or expect—a guy to…pay for things for me,” she said quickly, pushing down the other retort that sprung to mind. I’m not a call girl, I’m not a sugar baby, and I can solve my own problems.
    “But it would be easy for me to remove all of your troubles,” Banek pointed out; Jessica had to admit to herself that he sounded sincere—and that unsettled her almost more than the offers themselves had. “I wouldn’t expect anything in return except for your kind regard.”
    “My kind regard?” Jessica raised an eyebrow.
    James came over, attentive to her