Stowaway (Star Line Express Romance Book 1) Read online

  The ship seems to right itself, and First Officer Handsome Fuck takes his body slowly away from mine, but not before I catch a hint of his arousal. A uniform—a garment designed to depersonalize its wearer—can hide only so much, and when someone is pressed against you like he was pressed up against me, some things cannot be concealed.

  Like a rock-hard, thick, throbbing erection.

  Pretty difficult to keep that a secret under those circumstances.

  He opens his mouth to speak and the ship lurches again, throwing us both in different directions, I’m disappointed to report.

  I’m not disappointed to report, however, that Niklas the Lusty has, during the latest upheaval, managed to have his head smack into the leg of the cell’s cot and he’s now out cold.

  My day has just gotten much better . . . until the lights go out.

  Niklas

  Why the hell did I come to the Chorynean stowaway’s cell? I’m off-duty. This isn’t on the way back to my quarters, and I want to take her there and do with her things I haven’t even thought about for the last seventeen months. And three days.

  Yet I’m lying here on the deck. What the fuck? My hand automatically goes to the back of my head, where a large lump is forming. Damn everything. I was thrown here and must’ve been knocked out.

  I shake my head awake. It hurts like a thousand black shifts gone bad. And what did happen to cause the ship to lurch like that? The only other time this happened was when . . .

  But then I look across the cell and notice that my Chorynean captive is slumped into the corner and appears to be unconscious.

  “Get up,” I say.

  She’s pretending, I’m sure. Because there’s nothing on that side of this small room that could’ve knocked her out. Not like me, banging my head against the cot’s too-sturdy leg like I did. Damn. The lump on the back of my head is getting even bigger.

  She doesn’t respond.

  I’ve heard a lot of rumors about Choryneans—and of course I’ve seen Joston a few times, including just last week. The vid is quite entertaining, and last week I had a lot of free time during the stay on Choryn, which, as always, I avoided like the plague.

  Because the place is a plague. A nest of thieves, schemers, and diseases. I stayed on the ship even though others took shore leave. I think Chlo has some friend on that depraved planet, but I wasn’t paying attention when she told me about it.

  “Get up,” I say again to the Chorynean on the other side of the cell.

  I’ve decided to think of her as the Chorynean instead of as Aymee. It’s less personal and will help me do my job. Will keep me remembering what she is and not what she could be, with her sinuous body in my arms, with her gray-green eyes staring at me with need and want, with me inside her, filling her, filling myself with her alluring scent, like an exotic, intoxicating perfume.

  She doesn’t move.

  I go over to her and touch her shoulder. That’s when I notice the open wound near her hairline—and the blood leaking down from it. I put my hand on her forehead and wince for her, since she’s not able to.

  Just about then the ship lurches again, and the inevitable sirens go off. Because, as I’d suspected, we’re either under attack or have struck something, which are the only reasons other than a severe equipment failure that the ship would’ve lurched.

  “First Officer Arca, report to the bridge,” says the announcement through the resonating plate in my temple.

  Damn it! What am I going to do about this knocked-out Chorynean? I can’t just leave her here in the cell. She could die, then I’d be in trouble for having my prisoner expire under my watch, and I’d be in even more trouble since I never entered her on the report as Salana or any other name. And Chlo would be in trouble too, for bringing rations to a stowaway—an undocumented stowaway.

  Here, in this corridor of the ship, everything is quiet. We’re nowhere near the bridge, near the engine facilities, near anything of any importance, really. Which is why this cell is here. It’s isolated.

  “Get up!” I say to the Chorynean Aymee, who doesn’t even shift a little in her unconsciousness.

  So I pick her up. Her body’s surprisingly, and pleasantly, dense and solid, her musculature smooth and firm under my hands. Yet she’s light. I’m a foot taller than she is and she’s easy to handle.

  “First Officer Arca, report to the bridge,” says the insistent announcement that fills the inside of my tender cranium.

  Carrying the Chorynean over my shoulder, I rush out of the cell and sprint down the corridor, my pace picking up speed with every meter I cover.

  Luckily for me, my quarters are between here and the bridge. If they weren’t, I’d put them between here and the bridge, because my quarters are the only place I can think of to deposit the stowaway and not have her noticed by anyone else. Until her presence—and her criminal infractions—have been properly recorded, that is.

  But there’ll be time for that later.

  Assuming we’re not under attack. Assuming we haven’t been hit by a Trenz-order asteroid. Assuming any of us will be alive to care about the disposition of a stowaway Chorynean criminal.

  I put her on my bed—she looks like she belongs there—run into the lav and wet a cloth, throw some antisept on it, go back to the bed, and wipe down the stowaway’s forehead. She’s not bleeding too much now, and I’ve ensured that she won’t get an infection.

  There’s nothing else I can do. I have to report to the bridge.

  “First Officer Arca!” The announcement is much louder now and between that and the sore knob at the back of my head, I’ve just about had enough.

  So I lean over and, in a near-instinctual gesture, kiss the unconscious Chorynean on the side of her forehead where the wound isn’t.

  “Rest and I’ll be back,” I say, and I flee the room.

  Because if it weren’t for the siren, the persistent summonses, and the fact that Aymee is unconscious, my starved-for-sex body would be in that bed with her right now.

  Well, perhaps I’ll work on that later.

  Assuming the ship’s still in one piece . . . and assuming I’m still alive.

  Chapter 5

  Aymee

  “Lasson,” I say, “be reasonable. You don’t care about me and I don’t care about you. Isn’t that enough to convince you that this shouldn’t happen?” I’m nice and don’t mention that I don’t even like him.

  Lasson runs his hands back through his short, dark brown hair and lays his dull blue eyes on me.

  This is the third time we’ve met and it’s even worse than the first two times.

  This time, unlike the first one when we were at Café First along with five other first-time couples, and unlike the second time, when we went for our match interview at City, we’re at his house, which is so spectacular that I’m surprised I can even bother looking at him. The house is so much better. Huge, open, airy rooms, the entire rear opened to the view of the ocean, and . . .

  “Reasonable has nothing at all to do with this, Aymee,” he says. “And you know it.”

  “I don’t know it,” I say. “It’s just what makes sense to me.”

  “What makes sense to you,” Lasson says. “Did you run those calculations through your talented mind and come up with that conclusion?”

  “That’s actually a good idea,” I say, and start my hypercalculations.

  It’s not as easy with something not directly involving numbers and quantities, but I immediately assign numbers and quantities to every element in this equation—me, Lasson, attraction, distaste, immediate dislike, cumulative effects of day-after-day cohabitation, the law, the unbreakable contract, etc.—and start to work.

  “Stop it!” Lasson says. He’s fuming now. “You can’t reduce everything to some formula or equation or whatever it is you prodigies do.”

  “See?” I say, feeling relieved. “That’s what I keep telling you. There’s another element here, Lasson. The element of, well, I guess you could call it attract
ion. And you and I have none of it. So I valued that at minus ten to the trillionth.” I’ve given him a break here, putting such a lowball number on our lack of mutual attraction.

  “This is the law, my dear Aymee Desryx.”

  “I’m not your dear anything!”

  “It is the law and you’re going to have to abide by it.”

  “But not you?” I say, trying to get some traction here.

  “We both have to abide by it,” Lasson says, and I detect a slight note of regret or unhappiness or misery in his voice.

  “We do not,” I say. “Just let me leave. It’s nothing, really. So what if we don’t fulfill the contract?”

  “So what?” Lasson laughs with a bitterness that makes him seem almost like someone who someone—someone else—could care about. “We’ll both be class-one felons and suffer whatever the current penalty is. Beheading, I believe.”

  “You’re overdramatizing,” I say, thinking how I might rather be beheaded than have to mate with Lasson, no matter how sympathetic he might be trying to come across as right now. And he is overdramatizing. I don’t think anyone has ever been beheaded just for refusing their match.

  Although, come to think of it, I don’t know anyone who’s refused their match. The Chorynean laws are very strict. So, maybe . . .

  “Aymee,” Lasson says, sighing. “Let’s just get it over with. I’m sure we’ll come to tolerate each other, which is more than I can say for a lot of matched couples.”

  Then he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder, which is twice as muscular as it looks like it might be.

  Lasson has narrow shoulders, I’m sure, yet I seem to fit. I feel him breathing underneath me and it’s arousing something inside me. Something I didn’t know I felt for Lasson. Something I’ve never felt for Lasson.

  He takes me on a journey. We walk through a silvery forest with ice sparkling in its trees and end up in a sparsely furnished room, where he puts me down on a firm bed. He places something on my forehead. It’s cool and wet. His hands are large and reassuring.

  Then he leans over and kisses me and I want to melt into him.

  “Rest and I’ll be back,” he says, not in Lasson’s voice but in the deep, resonant tones of the Centreale’s heartthrob first officer. The Big World’s finest specimen.

  Ah, I think as I turn over. I’ve been dreaming. But I’m not sure which parts were the dream, because I’m pretty sure the third meeting with Lasson was real.

  And I’m equally sure that the kiss was also real and that it was from the despicable yet dreamy Niklas Arca, not from my legal match, Lasson Birtak.

  Niklas

  “Don’t ask,” Captain Zavl’yn says to the command officer. “Just get the answers.”

  I’ve finally made it to the bridge and everyone’s scurrying about, trying to find out what the hell just happened.

  “Niklas, glad you could join us,” Zav says.

  “Asteroid?” I say.

  “You wish,” Zav says. “But it’s not an attack, either. Or, if it was, the hull hasn’t been damaged. I can’t get Cole to respond.”

  That’s my cue to pivot and go down to the engine room, which is neither a room nor does it house anything like an engine, but the fiftieth-century names have stuck, and anyway, if there were an intergalactic transport with an engine in a room, the Centreale would be that ship.

  I purposely avoid the route that would take me by my quarters even though my body wants to go that way. But my body has gotten me into a lot of difficulties and unhappinesses in the past and I’m not letting it do that today.

  When the ship lurches again and my shoulder slams into the wall, I get a nice reminder of what the hell I should be concentrating on right now. Not the Chorynean stowaway. Not what happened seventeen months and three days ago. But what’s happening right now. Hell, we could all be dead in a minute. Or taken captive. Or . . .

  Chlo meets me at the entrance to the engine room, which is actually an entire tiered section of the ship, much bigger than room would lead you to believe.

  She grabs my wrist and pulls me toward the place where Arbin Cole’s usually stationed. He’s the ship’s engineer and he’s in charge of all the workings of this big, complex place. He has a couple of crew members, but both of them must be off-duty, since I don’t see anyone else here. In fact, I don’t see Cole here.

  Did the devil-may-care bastard not show up for his duties? Is that why the ship’s lurching and throwing its sorry-ass inhabitants to and fro? The hell with this. I let the petite Chlo pull me along, thinking how she spent her entire leave on Choryn and wondering about that “friend” of hers. And not thinking about the Chorynean tucked away in my quarters.

  “I hope he’s not dead,” Chlo’s saying, when I stop to listen to her. I’m so surprised by the sight of Cole lying on the deck that I must’ve gone deaf for a moment.

  “I’ve been trying to revive him since I got here,” Chlo says.

  She crouches down and presses on the slight earthling’s chest. Looking up from her odd ministrations, she says, “I remember this from the multiphysiology class I took in med school.”

  I stare at Chlo—our all-purpose, unassuming crew member’s a doctor?—and at Arbin Cole, who doesn’t seem to be breathing.

  “Did you contact the engineering crew?”

  “Of course I did,” she says between her pumps into the poor guy’s chest. As tiny as Chlo is, it looks like she’s going to break all his ribs with her powerful, maybe even violent, pushing and thumping.

  “Where the hell are they, then?” I say as the ship lurches again.

  Obviously, something is very wrong, and knowing nothing about engineering, I’m helpless here. Ship’s architecture is my forte, with a sidelight in first officering. Which is one of the reasons why it’s easy to see why I resent being on the Star Line Express’s lousy freighter Centreale instead of on a real . . .

  “Yes!” Chlo says as she leans back onto her heels. She’s stopped pushing on Cole, who looks no different from the way he looked when I got here. Except then I notice a slight rise and fall in his chest.

  “Cole,” she says, leaning over again. “Can you hear me?”

  Cole twists his head in a motion that should be no, but in this case it must be yes.

  I crouch down so the earthling can hear me. “What happened?” I say.

  “Grumb,” says Cole. Must be some Earth word I’ve never heard before.

  “Explain,” I say.

  “The gr-rumb-bb,” he says.

  “What the fuck?” I say, and Chlo says, “He’s been out for a while. I don’t think he’s coherent.”

  “Then you don’t know what a grumb is, either?” I say to her.

  She shakes her head as the ship lurches again, and the three of us are hurled across the deck. By the time we come to a rest, Cole is out again.

  “Where the hell are the two other morons on the engineering crew?” I say, even though, deep down, I don’t think this is an engineering problem. I think we’re under attack, even if Zav says there’s no damage to the hull.

  But there can be damage inside this beast as well.

  Done by a saboteur.

  Like that Chorynean stowaway.

  Chapter 6

  Aymee

  I used to be in a prison cell—after I was in the so-called hot box—but now I’m in a pretty spacious room. It’s nice here. It smells good. Like something familiar, although I can’t quite place it. But it’s a smell that’s both comforting and exciting.

  Today’s been dreamlike, I think, then I remember that I had a dream about Lasson, except it was more a reliving of what actually happened than it was a dream. Although, when he kissed me—that was nothing like anything that actually happened.

  And didn’t someone carry me around?

  My head is quite foggy, and I when I look at myself in the mirror in the bathroom—needing said bathroom is why I woke up—I see a wound on my forehead. I splash some water on my face, then see the com
pact shower behind me.

  I strip, step into the shower, and wake up some more. While I’m drying off, I look around this neat, shipshape bathroom, then go back into the room. It looks like what I imagine the quarters of a ship’s officer would look like.

  On Helmsman’s Mate the first officer has a place very similar to this.

  Oh, fucking hell. It’s First Officer Niklas Mr. Big World and Loving It Arca’s room!

  He’s the one who carried me over his shoulder. He’s the one who put something on my forehead. He’s the one who kissed me. He’s the one whose aroma is both comforting and exciting.

  Niklas Arca. Not Lasson Birtak.

  Too bad that they can’t switch places. I think this ludicrous and unhelpful thought as I wander about the room, toweling off my hair, opening doors and drawers—everything is so damned neat and well arranged that I’m afraid to touch it—and stretching my legs.

  Then the ship lurches yet again. What the hell? Are we under attack?

  Oh hell! We are under attack! No wonder Arca’s not here. No wonder he left me alone. He’s probably on the bridge fighting some big battle or something.

  So he won’t mind that I’ve taken one of his shirts.

  I may’ve been afraid to touch what was in all those unnaturally neat drawers, but I wasn’t so afraid that I didn’t procure a nice, clean, soft, Niklas Arca–smelling shirt for myself. I’ve been wearing the same top for a while now, sweated it to a dripping mess in the hot box, and the feel of it was starting to disgust me.

  Putting on this plain gray pullover is more of a sensual experience than a getting-dressed experience. It’s as though I’m wrapping myself in Niklas’s arms, like he’s surrounding me with softness and affection and something more that I refuse to think about.

  But, really. Why couldn’t Lasson and Niklas change places? Has anything like that ever been done before? That would solve the entire problem. Well, my entire problem. I wouldn’t have to marry Lasson. I’d marry Niklas instead. And Lasson could be with someone he liked as well.