Oh, Brandi had tried dating, but the men Crystal set her up with were grabby drunk rednecks and she never seemed to have much to talk about with anyone at the bank where she worked. Dating sites were a bust too. Though Brandi had a pretty face and great hair, she was definitely plus-sized—most potential dates swiped left on that. Besides, men ran for the hills the minute they learned she was a single mom.
Well, even if they hadn’t, Brandi wasn’t interested in bringing home a parade of temporary daddies to confuse Emmie, the way her own mother had done with her before she finally settled down with Bud. (Ivy-Mae still occasionally brought home a strange man but Brandi’s long-suffering stepfather generally just sent whoever it was on his way with a warning not to come back and chalked it up to his wife’s drinking problem.)
All of these dating failures and the difficult life of a single mom with no sexual outlet was hard on Brandi. Earl hadn’t exactly been the world’s greatest lover but at least he’d been a warm body in bed beside her—and a way to scratch her itch. Brandi liked sex—she had from the first minute she’d lost her virginity in the backseat of Earl’s car. It just seemed to be part of her temperament.
It might not be very prim and proper of her but she missed getting laid—or fucking if you wanted to be crude—on a regular basis. You couldn’t really call what Earl did to her “making love”—there wasn’t much tenderness or pillow talk involved and afterwards he had rolled over and was snoring in about two seconds flat. But it was satisfying to Brandi in a way that no vibrator seemed to be able to match. Sometimes she felt so hungry to connect with a male body she thought she might explode! She was ready to do just about anything to finally have sex again—even have it with an alien stranger.
Or so she told herself.
But now, standing in front of the neat little white house with its pink trim in the middle of the off-limits Unmated Males area, Brandi wasn’t so sure.
“I’m telling you, this is the place!” Crystal gestured enthusiastically at the little house. “The place where the fuck puppets live. Come on, quick—let’s get inside before somebody catches us!”
“I don’t know about this…” Brandi frowned but allowed herself to be reluctantly led up the front porch steps. “Maybe this is a bad idea, Crystal.”
“No, no—it’s a great idea!” her cousin insisted. “You’re always complaining about how ‘lonely’ you are—which I know damn good and well is code for ‘horny’—but you’re always so picky when I try to set you up.”
“The men you pick are awful,” Brandi protested. “The last one didn’t even get out the front door before he was trying to shove his hand down the front of my shirt!”
Crystal blew out a breath in frustration.
“I swear to God, Brandi! I thought you wanted to hook up!”
“I do but not…not like that.”
Brandi had a hard time explaining, even to herself. Yes, she wanted sex but she wasn’t willing to just hop in bed with any Tom, Dick, or Harry to get it. If she was that desperate, she could have just given in to her creepy boss. Ugh…just the thought made her shiver with disgust.
To her way of thinking, when a man asked a woman out on a date, he ought to be respectful—not just assume she was going to put out. Besides, Plant City was a small town. If she started sleeping around, word would get out and then she would never find a decent man.
Which was why one-time anonymous sex with a gorgeous handsome stranger had sounded like such a good idea.
Brandi felt another twinge of doubt.
“Crystal, I really don’t think we should be here.”
“Yes, we should,” her cousin insisted. Grabbing Brandi by the hand, she dragged her through the front door and into a nice-looking living room, lined with chairs and couches.
And sitting neatly on almost every available chair and couch, were women.
Tall women, short women, thin women, plump women—women of all nationalities and skin tones just sitting there reading quietly as though they were waiting for someone.
Brandi was taken aback.
“Oh, I’m s-so sorry,” she stammered, looking around. “We didn’t mean to…” She trailed off when she realized not a single woman had looked up when they came in. She tried again. “Um…hello?”
Still nothing. The women continued to read—or at least, Brandi thought—to stare blankly at the books they were holding. Because their eyes weren’t moving and no one was turning any pages. It was like they were in some kind of creepy suspended animation.
“What is this place?” she hissed at Crystal. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing—these are the fuck puppets I was telling you about,” her cousin explained. “All you have to do is sit down and pretend to be one of them and then the next horny Kindred that comes in—bam—instant big-cocked alien sex. And I do mean big.” She giggled and made a motion with both hands in the air. To Brandi it looked like she was measuring an invisible baguette.