Alpha Star: Big Sky Alien Mail Order Brides #1 (Intergalactic Dating Agency): Intergalactic Dating Agency (15 page)

“We can’t do much on a closed planet like this,” Sin warned. He grinned fiercely. “But we can do enough.” He pulled the large cell phone type thing from his pocket and studied it. “I want a full review of any system the techs accessed and then finish the external visual check.
Then
we’ll go hunting.”

The drakling’s red hair rippled straight up and smoke curled from his nostrils when he laughed. He glanced at Zoe. “He’s been angry since he got his hand blown off. Now he’s fun again. You’re good for him.”

Stuck where she was, Zoe could only snort. “So glad you approve.”

“I’ll be more impressed when you win the rest of his mating rings. If you’re brave enough.” Honey slanted a sly glance at Sin. “Unless you have the fourth one already?”

“Get out.” Sin pointed, the exposed mechanical bits of his hand glinting, though not so bright as his blue eyes. “Don’t speak to me again until my ship is star-worthy.”

Honey sidled past him with one last look at Zoe. “Huh. Apparently he’s still a little angry. See what you can do about that. Maybe that fourth ring…” He ducked when Sin took a swing at him. His mocking laugh trailed him out the door.

Zoe rolled her eyes to Sin. “He’s your second in command?”

“Would you believe he’s the most responsible one on this ship?”

“I guess that’s what you get with a name like the
Sinner’s Prayer
. But what about that other one on the bridge? Ivan?”

“He’s vrykoly. They’re the best navigators and pilots in the universe, born for the darkness between the stars. But he would not do well overseeing the edible crew.”

A shiver rippled down her spine. “Edible?”

“Ah, not-funny joke. Never mind.” He strode back to her side.

“Vrykoly,” she repeated slowly, testing the exotic words. “Drakling. Fifth moon.” She peered at him. “What does that mean?”

“It’s a Jaxian designation for metal-lord offspring. The First-Moon son is primajor and inherits the clan’s fortune. The next is also considered First-Moon although he is called priminor. He serves the primajor in all things, taking his place if he dies. Second-Moon sons join the Jaxian galactic guard and earn their honor there. Third-Moons are sent to the judiciary, scholastiary, or the monastery, to serve the rules of law, science, or the gods. Fourth-Moons and after get…nothing.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“A galaxy seems endless, but it’s not.”

“So you went even farther, to the whole universe.”

“The
Prayer
was the first thing that was ever mine, the first place that was ever my own. And her crew… They were like me, with nowhere else to go in that whole universe. Until Gre-Gre offered me a solar system.”

She let out a soft whistle. “Your own solar system. That’s so wild.”

“It
is
wild. Terraforming has been mostly completed but there’s still so much to do.” His lips twisted. “And I have more experience destroying than forming.”

The glimpse of his uncertainty made her want to reach for him again. “You’re fixing me,” she pointed out.

His dark lashes veiled his eyes. “True. And you should be almost”—the scanner chimed—“done. There we go.” He swung the ray-gun away from the table and helped her slide off the table.

The change of position from reclining to upright made her head spin. “Stop the ride. I wanna get off.”

When her knees wobbled, he caught her against his chest. “Careful. The med-scanner energies flex the stretched and broken nerves back into place and help break down the inflammation, but it’ll take a bit for your body to integrate.”

She cupped her hands around her eyes and peered at him through the makeshift tunnel. “I’m not sure I see a difference.”

“You might not, not right away. Rest and don’t think too much for a little while and see how it goes.” His blue eyes were pensive. “Healing from old wounds can be its own kind of damage.”

Though her legs seemed to be catching up with her, she braced her hands on his chest, calming herself with the steady beat. “What are you going to do about your brother?”

He sighed. “I don’t know yet. The grand-matriarch of my clan has many systems in her control that she uses to control us. I guessed he wouldn’t be happy about my inheritance, but a frontal attack isn’t like him.”

“Well, in all fairness, he did try to sabotage you first.”

Sin grunted. “You heard that? Yes, a convenient catastrophic depressurization while slipping through a wormhole would be more his style.” He looked down at her. “I’m sorry you were frightened.”

“It was a bit too much like when this happened.” She touched the side of her head. Maybe the scar did feel flatter, finer. “Or not. That seems silly to say when it was two spaceships fighting.”

He shrugged. “The violence is the same.”

“Is that why you’re retiring?”

He put his hand over hers where it rested on his chest, and they both studied the refined mechanics. “I risked everything on winning the
Sinner’s Prayer
because I told myself that was the only way I could have a life that wasn’t built of scraps thrown to a lesser son. But then I kept risking everything because…”

She waited but when he didn’t continue she prodded, “Because it’s what you knew?”

“Or because I had to prove I wasn’t lesser.” He quirked his lips at her. “I’m as insufferable as Honey.”

She smiled back. “Hardly. But now that you have another option…”

“I’d be insufferable
and
an idiot not to take it.” He took a heavy breath that raised her palm on his chest. “I wouldn’t have guessed I’d need my merc talents one more time to claim Gre-Gre’s gift.”

“Is claiming a mate one of your merc talents?” She found herself swaying closer to him. Probably because her brain was fried.

His blue eyes gleamed down at her. “No. That’s all me. Or what’s left of me.” He straightened. “Let’s get you out of here.”

She thought he’d take her back to the room with Delaney. Instead he led her down a shorter corridor that ramped up to a single doorway. It parted at a low word from him.

“I’ll send someone to help your friend with the IDA profile, see if we can reset it to her specs. Meanwhile, you can rest here.”

Zoe glanced around the room with its low lights and dark hues. It was simple, unadorned except for a wall hanging that was part painting, part sculpture, with shining threads of metal twisted into a shape that didn’t quite resolve into anything familiar. But somehow she knew… “These are your quarters.”

He nodded. “It’ll be safe and quiet here.”

“Quiet as a meteorite?” She turned to face him. “Hey, I think my eyes are better, a little. This low light would’ve been hard for me before.”

“I can turn it up,” he said. “Lighting—”

“No, it’s fine,” she said quickly. “Kind of nice, actually.”

He tilted his head. “Nice?

“Sexy even.”

He stiffened. “Zoe…”

Blushing, she put her hand over her mouth. “Oh jeez. Did I say that out loud? I can’t believe…”

“It’s the med-scanner.” He took her hand and lowered it, rubbing the backs of her knuckles. “It’ll stir up some of the old symptoms as you heal. With head trauma, you might have headaches, auras, or impulse control problems.”

She laughed. “Impulse control problems. I like that idea.” She shook her head, pleased when it didn’t feel as if she’d shake it loose. She didn’t feel rattled and unmoored this time; she felt… “Free,” she murmured.

All her life she’d been so determined to
not be stopped
. Not by societal expectations of what a girl should be—certainly not a wastewater engineer. Not by her parents’ cozy history of settling down to a traditional marriage so insular that her mother
died
rather than live without her father. Not by her brother’s belief that travel and service were too risky for anyone he loved…while never acknowledging that he left his loved ones behind to pursue his dreams.

And yet one brick had stopped her in her tracks. One brick had ended her adventure and closed her world to a narrow slice of what it had been.

But Sin had blow it wide open again. Oh, not her vision, not yet anyway, although she was hopeful that her clarity even in the low lighting was a good sign. But seeing his sexy self had reminded her that while she might be broken, she was still alive. More than that, he’d opened her eyes to the universe! She’d always concentrated on such mundane problems—hey, let’s put the latrines downwind—that she’d never taken the time to look up at the stars and wonder.

But now she wondered.

She let herself lean toward him. “What you said about not thinking… Maybe I’d like to try that for a little while.”

She traced her hands up the front of his chest. The ripped shirt he’d worn yesterday had been replaced. The new version was every bit as silky and strange as the other, but now she knew why. He was an alien. And yet somehow they’d ended up in the same place, wanting—she hoped—the same thing.

She liked the feel of it under her palm. No, she liked the feel of
him
. Desire throbbed in her, a longing for this new unveiling of her life.

The heavy muscles in his chest jumped under her caress. “Zoe,” he said warningly. “Your body is here, but your brain is slipping through a wormhole of something that cannot be. You told me as much.”

She shook her head hesitantly, then harder. “I wasn’t seeing clearly then.”

His jaw flexed. “And what are you seeing now?”

She slipped one hand up to cup his cheek. “You. Me.” Her glance slid sideways. “That bed.”

“Not exactly interstellar insights.” His nostrils flared.

“I might be just an Earther, and you’re…” She slid one fingertip to his lower lip. “Not. But I think both of us have lived enough to know that sometimes what you can get now is worth more than everything else the universe might tease you with.”

“Maybe.” He anchored one arm behind her back. “Especially if what’s teasing me is within my grasp.” His big hand splayed across her spine. “You would’ve made a fine merc.”

She lifted herself up onto her toes, letting her lips hover over his where her finger had been. “I thought it was just my vision that got messed up, but maybe I lost some of my memories too. Anyway, I forgot who I was. And you make me remember. You found what I lost.” Her mouth brushed his. “And a mercenary captain wants to get paid, right?”

His breath feathered over her lips. “What’re you offering?

“The usual. My body, my—”

“Done.” He swept her up into his arms, his mouth crashing down on hers.

She moaned at the fierce mash that clicked their teeth together and sent a pressure wave through her body, tightening her nipples and cresting deep between her legs. She thrust her hips toward him and he groaned in response.

He tangled his tongue around hers, and the taste of the
singilt
shocked her like the almost metallically lemony zing of the icing on the Twinkle, Twinkle star cookies: sweet and sparkling and sinful. And she wanted more.

She threaded her arms around his neck, holding him close as the kiss went on and on until her vision narrowed only to him, focused only on the passion reverberating between them.

When he finally lifted his head, his blue eyes blazed with that celestial brilliance that she’d thought was unnatural and was only unearthly.

Big sky eyes that darkened with his desire as he raked his hands through her hair. “You make me forget my promises,” he rasped.

She tilted her head into his grasp, closing her eyes. “We’re not thinking for a little while anyway, remember?”

The world—her world—tilted suddenly, and she gasped, her eyes snapping open. Sin had lifted her off her feet, and the room spun as he strode toward the bed.

It was just a regular bed, smaller even than her rented one. “For someone who travels the—what did you call it?—the infinite darkness between the stars, that is a very small bed.”

“I’ve never had anyone else to take up space.”

She bit at the lobe of his ear to get another taste of the
singilt
ring. It tasted of forbidden delights. He shuddered, clasping her tighter to his chest.

And then she was flying.

She landed on the bed with an oomph and rolled, stripping out of her pants as she went. He stalked toward her, shedding layers until they weren’t so different, not a small-town Earth girl and a galactic mercenary prince, just two beings sharing a moment of pleasure while their worlds kept spinning.

She held out her hand to him and he reached back with the alien mechanics and the thick band of shimmering
singilt
. His weight barely shifted the bed even though the cushion yielded comfortably to her body; that was some fine futuristic design. But she wanted to be closer to him, even on the narrow frame, so she angled one leg behind him, leveraging him toward her.

The blue of his eyes was almost midnight dark, shot through with auroras of hunger when he knelt between her thighs.

He grabbed her wrist and hauled her up for another kiss. “Why do you tempt me so, Zoe Nazario?”

“Because you aren’t sure what you want and I’m right here,” she said reasonably.

He stared down at her. “That is insightful.”

“Kiss me again,” she whispered. “That’s what I want.”

They sprawled back on his bed. First she was on top, and she wriggled lower on the ridged washboard of his abdomen—now she knew why he had extra muscles under that unusually smooth skin—to let his erection ride up against her ass. “What’s the weirdest space sex you’ve ever had?”

He rocked against her. “After I won the
Sinner’s Prayer
, the weapons engineer seduced me. I was young and stupid, and even so I knew better than to have sex with the crew, but she was so…strong. And the sex was mind-blowing. Until one time she fissioned.”

Zoe choked on a horrified cough. “Exploded?”

“Not quite. She was an Ofreggen. They procreate through fission, splitting in two.” He shook his head. “I’d never had more than one lover at a time before.”

“You stud.”

He squinted. “Stud? No, as I said, they procreate asexually so they don’t need a sperm donor, not that I would’ve been up to that task without my
singilt
rings. But both of them claimed me as their own.”