Forced Mate
Forced Mate has been described as the ultimate Beauty and the Beast story, and as an outrageous take on the traditional abduction romance.
He has found the mate of his dreams—
The last of the Djinn god-Princes of Tigron, Tarrant-Arragon takes on his heredity and a notorious past. After his first love cheated on him, he realized that—because he is a “god”—girls go to bed with him for many reasons, but he will never know what it is like to love and be loved in return.
The fate of an Empire is at stake. He must beget true-Djinn heirs. Owing to a fatal flaw in the male genes, Royal Djinnkind is almost extinct. By law, he must marry a virgin, but there are no Djinn virgins to be found in his vast Empire. His last hope is hidden on a sanctuary planet: a half-Djinn daughter of a clairvoyant Englishwoman.
She hates him.
Too dangerous to be allowed to leave Earth unwed, the unwisely named Djinni (“It’s Jinny,”) longs for a chance to bring her father’s enemy Tarrant-Arragon to his knees—to prove that she is worthy of her Saurian Knighthood—before she settles down to raise enlightened Djinn children with Tarrant-Arragon’s rival, the unknown Djinn Prince Djetthro-Jason, whom she calls J-J.
The Djinn, also called jinn, are not the biddable genie of human wish-fulfillment myth. They are an alien royal family who rule the Tigron galaxy and exploit their advanced technology and mastery of illusion to pass themselves off as gods or demons.
Saurian Knights are the extra-terrestrial equivalent of NATO, the UN, and the Freemasons. The Saurian Knightly Orders were formed by democratic alien superpowers to protect developing worlds like Earth from (further) interference by the Djinn. The Saurians’ elected leader is the Saurian “Dragon.” Unknown to anyone except his immediate family, the present wearer of Saurian Dragon’s headmask is a vengeful rogue Djinn...and Djinni’s father.
Earthdate: 3/30/1994, Cambridge, England
A secret handshake; a ritual greeting; a toast to the Saurian Dragon. Thus the Djinn-tall alien persuades Djinni that he is a Saurian Knight in need of help. He isn’t. He is Tarrant-Arragon.
He knows that Djinni is too honorable to use her psychic gifts to read the mind of “a brother Knight.” He must seduce her before she guesses who he is, because—as a Saurian Knight—she has sworn to thwart Tarrant-Arragon or die in the attempt. The murder-suicide ramifications are not lost on Tarrant-Arragon.
Conducting his love-life like a military campaign, the warrior prince assumes that the sooner and the more thoroughly he makes love to Djinni, the less trouble he will have with her.
He is wrong. Djinni is bound by a one-sided chastity clause in an arranged marriage contract to a Djinn throne-contender (J-J) who is almost as sexually daunting and feudally jealous as his cousin, Tarrant-Arragon. Djinni has been told that if she loses her virginity to the wrong male, and thus cannot pass the Imperial brides’ purity test, her life may be forfeit.
Meanwhile, in the An’Koori patrolled sector of the Tigron Empire, J-J is ready to send for Djinni. He has infiltrated Tarrant-Arragon’s Star Forces, assembled a private army of Saurian agents aboard an Imperial warstar, and is waiting for a good excuse to overthrow the Imperial heir apparent, Tarrant-Arragon.
If he breeds with Djinni, J-J’s children will be truer Djinn and have a stronger claim to the Imperial throne than any Tarrant-Arragon could sire with a non-Djinn. J-J vows that if Tarrant-Arragon ever goes near Djinni, he’ll kill him.
Back on Earth, Djinni uses her wits to keep her abductor out of her bed. Because of his size, and the way he behaves as if he has a right to her, she suspects he is her jealous fiancé. If J-J presumes to test her chastity, she intends to pass his test.
Virile and extremely dangerous, Tarrant-Arragon is not used to being denied—in bed or anywhere else. To his surprise, he enjoys the bedtime battle of wills and rises to the challenge of making an intelligent girl fall in love with him.
After a clumsy proposal of marriage and two foiled escapes, Djinni challenges her captor to a duel and assures him that she never injures a male in a place she wouldn’t want to kiss better. He responds with a risqué pun and finds he’s made a promise he’s never kept in his life: to keep his weapon to himself.
In this gentle, loving spoof of Historical "bodice rippers", every stock situation is given a humorous spin as alien and human cultures collide.