Talson Temptations 4: Talson's Match

Talson’s Match

Marie Harte

Book four in the Talson Temptations series.

Romec Talson is the last of his brothers to find a mate, and
he’s in no hurry. So it’s a relief to check on the strange progress of one of
the family’s shipping terminals on Earth, away from the manipulations of his
happily mated siblings. The last thing he expects to encounter at Port Chase is
the sexy woman of his dreams. A supposed human glaring at him with dark eyes—Otra,
alien eyes. And then there are her accusations that Talson Shipping is running
an illegal drug trade.

Tara Drake has no idea why the stranger at her door makes
her hot and bothered, but if he works for the Talsons, she wants no part of
him. Unfortunately, her body has a will of its own. Learning she’s not human is
just the beginning of the surprises coming her way. Because love has no rhyme
or reason in the face of fate, Tara must make a choice to accept her destiny or
deny herself true happiness.

Chapter One

Port Chase, Earth 2112

“Oh for God’s sake,” Tara Drake sputtered as she stared
across the way into the neighboring yard. “That’s every night this week! Jonah
Trotter, you have to be the horniest man alive.”

She stared through her open window outside, through the
oppressive heat, into the setting glare of Port Chase’s surprisingly beautiful
sunset over a run-down, dirty section of the city. Once the reigning queen
among southern Florida’s great communities, Port Chase had steadily declined as
age, drugs and vice crept through its people like a wasting disease.

Fanning the collar of her thin cotton t-shirt against her
sweaty chest, Tara couldn’t help staring at Jonah Trotter as he stood outside
one of the large warehouses. An Otra—a species of alien who’d landed on the
planet hundreds of years ago—Trotter had the trademark black hair, olive-toned
skin and dark eyes that flared to silver on occasion. Rumor had it the Otra
were psychic, that they had differing abilities, which she found intriguing.

She’d never seen an ugly Otra, and Trotter was no exception.
Yet the contrast of the handsome man in his designer clothes, backed against a
scum-laden wall in the shipyard while Sheila, a local prostitute he routinely
bullied, went down on him both fascinated and repulsed her. How could a man so
beautiful be so vile inside?

She couldn’t help hearing his animalistic groans and grunts
of encouragement, despite the fact so much distance lay between her house and
the shipyard. She had a feeling Trotter somehow enhanced the sound, so she
couldn’t help but hear him.

“That’s it, Sheila, suck it harder. Yeah, baby, that’s a
good whore. Take me balls-deep. Shit, yeah,” he gasped and began instructing
all over again.

You’d think he’d just shut up and enjoy it.
She
snorted with laughter, wondering when Trotter would stop these evening
amusements. From what she’d noted, he had the stamina to go several times a
night, seven days a week, and he showed no signs of slowing.

It promised to be a long, long summer.

Jonah Trotter ran Port Chase’s shipyard, and since the
Talsons had taken over the dilapidated shipping service nearly six months ago,
the area had only seemed to grow worse. More crime, more drugs, less order.
Talson Shipping sat far enough from her home that she had some semblance of
privacy. But lately, Tara could hear more and more commotion from her noisy
neighbors. And when she peeked out her windows, she’d actually seen men moving
furtively in the dark, exchanges of money and drugs right before her startled
eyes.

The woman on her knees between Trotter’s feet moaned loudly
and brought Tara’s attention back to the amorous couple. She watched, curious
to see how tonight would end.

“Ah, the pull out,” she murmured, as he whipped his cock from
the woman’s mouth and came over her face.

Disgusting, but Trotter seemed to get off on it. The
prostitute acted as if she loved it, no doubt earning her another gram of
Majesty, Port Chase’s latest drug du jour.

Glancing around at her meager belongings, Tara wondered why
she just couldn’t make herself leave and join her brother uptown. No matter how
many times she’d tried boarding up the place and moving out, something within
her wouldn’t allow her to go.

Too much hurt, probably. A magnet for pain, Tara had never
been able to avoid it. The negative energy seemed to attract her, stirring the
psychic power within her to heal. For years she’d been secretly curing lesser
ills, making excuses to prolong physical contact until she could heal her
unsuspecting patients. Lately, she’d been experimenting on plants and small
animals. Lo and behold, she now had the greenest grass in lower Port Chase, as
well as the healthiest tomcat in town.

Chuckling at the thought, she met the nearby
meow
with a bowl of buttermilk.

“Come on, Romec. It’s time to drink your dinner. Payment for
that third rat you brought down today.”

The black cat stared at her with gray-green eyes, an almost
human expression of arrogance on his face. He purred under her hand and rubbed
against her palm, then sauntered to his bowl and lapped at the milk.

Romec, like the rest of the block, had adopted Tara the
first day she’d moved into the neighborhood. The area hadn’t always been so
rundown. Before Talson Shipping had moved next door, the prior tenant, the
Barkins, had kept the area fairly busy in trade. Cargo from the alien planets
Werfal 7 and Werfal 6 arrived daily, and the shipping company had needed help
transporting, crating and even selling their goods.

Old Man Rodriguez would sit on his porch sipping rum and
Coke, telling stories about his great-great grandfather growing up in Mexico
when the Otra had first been spotted.

Otra—Spanish for
other
. She scoffed.

“So what that they’re pretty?” she asked Romec, who ignored
her in favor of the milk. “Not everyone likes tall, dark and handsome. And
what’s with that glowing eye trick, anyway?” She’d noticed that on the
occasions when Trotter was getting his rocks off, his eyes glowed as if lit
from within. Silver beacons of greed.

In her entire life, Tara had never seen an Otra until she
moved here. They looked human enough, if extraordinarily attractive. Most
seemed taller on average. She’d never seen an Otra with anything other than
black hair or black eyes, not that she’d seen that many. The Barkins had had a
few working the docs. And though it was unusual to find Otra so far from the
North, where most Otra were accepted and even welcomed, many found success in
the not-so-friendly South.

“And let’s face it, Florida acts like its own little country
anyway.”

Romec’s tail twitched in agreement. She stared at him,
wishing she had as much joy living in the slums. If only she could heal this
sorry little section of town and leave. Lord knew, Mannie had been all over her
to move in with him.

Her foster brother since the time she could walk,
eight-year-old Manuel “Killer” Drake had adopted two-year-old Tara as his
sister as soon as he’d spotted her. An unnamed connection she still felt to
this day tied them. They’d moved together from home to home, from center to center,
until he’d reached an age of independence and took Tara with him. Within two
years he’d made a fortune boxing. Hell, he held the heavyweight championship
three years running.

Just yesterday he’d been pestering her to move in with him.
After healing his hands and his jaw, she’d calmly, irrationally said no. Again.

Tara sighed. “I must be crazy.” The loneliness gnawed at
her, but she didn’t want to infringe on Mannie’s social life. She wanted
someone to love and someone to love her. A man with morals, standards and
physical appeal. For all that men seemed to like Tara, she’d rarely felt a
reciprocal attraction. The few she’d slept with had been duds in bed, and her
failed relationships and subsequent loss of arousal made her feel worse.

A loud banging noise from outside startled her and she
looked out the front window.

The woman who’d been servicing Trotter stumbled across the
porch, waving a gun like it was the Fourth of July. “This shit is so good.” She
cackled, her fading beauty as washed out as the look in her dull, blue eyes.
“Okay, Tara. Come here and die, and maybe he’ll give me another two grams.”

Tara rolled her eyes. “Give me the gun, Sheila.”

“No.” Sheila Farel, once a lovely young seamstress who lived
several doors down, and now Jonah’s newest whore, staggered and aimed an
unsteady hand at her. “Tonight I get the statue. I told Jonah about it, and he
told me to bring it to him. It’s Otra shit, girlie. I told you so.”

Anger spiked through Tara’s normal calm. “That statue healed
you. I thought we’d agreed to keep it between us.” The ungrateful witch. Tara
seethed, realizing she’d made a poor decision to let Sheila see her most prized
possession, a small carved stone she’d had since she could remember. The last
time Sheila and she had met, the woman had been out of her mind in pain,
detoxing and nearly dying because of it. Needing to heal the woman before Tara
went crazy from the psychic itch under her skin, Tara had distracted Sheila
with the alien stone.

Sheila had the grace to look uncomfortable before she
glanced at the baggie sticking out of her pocket. Her eyes hardened as she
looked back at Tara. “Sorry, but I need my stuff. I
have
to have it.”
She teared up. “This Majesty is evil, I know. But it’s so good, too. Like the
devil himself.” She laughed again, buzzing on her high.

“If the devil were Jonah Trotter,” Tara muttered.

Romec meowed again, then hissed when Sheila tripped and fell
near him.

Smart cat.

“Fuck. Just gimme some credits and I’ll leave you alone.
I’ll tell Jonah I couldn’t find you and the statue was missing or something.”

Tara sighed. “Sheila, he knows where I live. My light’s on.
He probably knows I’m here right now.” She paused. “How on earth can you have
sex with him every night?”

Sheila blinked and smiled. “That’s the easy part. That man
is pure sugar, sweet and hitting as my Majesty.” She giggled. “A royal cock,
yeah. He tastes so good. I just love it when he lets me swallow him.”

Tara grimaced. “You need me more than you think.” The sour
stench emanating from the woman, in addition to the ailing aura surrounding
her, sickened Tara. The need to soothe, to fix what was broken, crawled over
her skin. Without listening to Sheila another minute, she grabbed the older
woman’s arms and held tight, ignoring the gun now pointed at the floor.

Sheila struggled at first but grew weaker as Tara’s hold
tightened. “That hurts,” she whined.

“I know. But soon the pain will go away. And this time
you’re leaving for good.” Her voice echoed as she focused her energy on Sheila
and on the black, sparkling statue sitting by itself on a shelf in the living
room. Made of black OQ, Otra Quartz, the palm-sized statue had been carved to
resemble a woman, her hands spread out and uplifted, her eyes closed, a smile
of peace on her lips. The object helped her concentrate, and she sifted more
power through Sheila’s infected cells.

Unfortunately, Tara started to feel the aftereffects of
healing too quickly and too intensely.
Crap.
That Majesty really screwed
with her ability.

“Seriously, Sheila.” Tara had to clear her throat to
continue. “No more Majesty. You need to leave here, to never come back. Never.”

She hoped the push would stick. Ordering Sheila to stop
taking Majesty hadn’t worked before. But this time, Tara felt an odd boost in
her power, a spike of energy that felt uncomfortably foreign.
Sexual
.

Oh hell. I hope it’s not a residual from Trotter.
Her
skin crawled.

Trotter was hot. Hell, he was Otra. But evil clung to him
like a second skin. The way he looked at her left Tara feeling raw and dirty.
Weakness filled her limbs and she faltered to her knees just as Sheila
straightened and blinked.

“Go home,” Tara rasped. “And pack.”

Sheila nodded and left without looking back. The door
slammed shut in her wake.

Unable to take much more, Tara toppled to the floor. In the
distance she heard Romec meow, heard Sheila trip and curse in the front yard,
and then her vision grayed before it lit up again in a nova of energy. Two
male, piercing black eyes surrounded by a forest of lashes stared at her in
astonishment, and then she blacked out.

* * * * *

Romec Talson ’Or Fal swayed on his feet and would have
passed out had his brother not caught him.

“Romy? Oh no. Roarke?” Jamie, his sister-in-law, asked with
an urgency he could feel. “What can I do?”

A small sneaker nearly unmanned him, and Romy groaned. “Keep
Michael from castrating me. You sure that kid’s only two? He’s got huge feet.”

Michael giggled. Jamie huffed and dragged his nephew away
before he could do more damage. Romy blinked and looked closely at the controls
of his brother’s personal shuttlecraft, trying to focus.

Roarke growled, “That’s the third time this week. What the
hell’s wrong with you?”

Romy accepted the chair his younger brother threw him into
and tried to regain control of the situation. “You might be bigger than me, but
I’m older than you.” His vision and faculties gradually came back and he
grinned. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“Not the boss of me,” Michael dutifully repeated.

Romy glanced over his shoulder to see his nephew waving at
him.

“Don’t start that again,” Jamie warned and gave him and his
brother a hard look.

“Jamie, I’m handling him.” Roarke coughed to cover a laugh,
his brown eyes twinkling. They waited until Jamie left with Michael for the
back berthing quarters. Then Roarke spoke, “So okay. I’m not the boss of you.
But I’m worried. What’s wrong? I’ve never seen you as off-kilter as you’ve been
lately.”

Romy shrugged, playing off the odd vision of a woman’s dark,
lovely eyes. What the hell had that been all about? One second he’d been standing
at the controls, enjoying the sight of deep space with the sound of his nephew
giggling in the background. And then,
pow
. “Who knows? Weird stuff is
always happening to me. I have a lot of power bouncing around in my genius
brain.”

“Genius? You wish.” Roarke snorted. “Most Otra have one or
two abilities. Since mating Jamie, I’ve been able to share my emotions with her
without even thinking about it.” Jamie was full human, a rare woman with a hint
of
psychei
in her make-up. She’d fallen in love with Roarke—a half Otra,
half human who’d possessed a muted sense of psychic energy. Or at least, he had
been muted, until he’d found his other half. “Funny thing. Michael already
shows signs of a power.” He sounded proud of the fact.

Romy nodded. “He’s a strong little guy. Probably stronger
than you are already, weakling.”