Stowaway (Star Line Express Romance Book 1) Read online

  Now, to convince the Chorynean Guard. That’s the trick.

  I start adding up and creating equations and rearranging all the possibilities and am in kind of a trance of hypercalculation when the very first officer I’m scheming about—well, Choryneans are not all schemers, but, you know, this is a good scheme—and—

  “Take off that shirt,” the demanding first officer says as he bursts back into the room—his room, no doubt. He’s pointing at me, sitting on the bed, on his bed, wearing his shirt, and working up a scenario that involves him and his cooperation.

  Take off that shirt? That’s how the Big Worlders do foreplay? Shouting at their lover? Am I supposed to shout back? And why am I thinking about foreplay and lover?

  “Take off yours,” I say as I stand up.

  I will not be pushed around. Even if I am a prisoner on this ship. Even if I actually want to take off my shirt—his shirt, which shirt is further stimulating my already overstimulated nipples, which seem to clench into swirls of need every time I see this guy—and even if I’d rather be with Niklas Arca than with Lasson Birtak, my official husband. Sort of official husband. Unconsummated official future husband. Although the contract was in force. I think.

  “You damned Chorynean,” he says. “I should’ve known from the moment I found you in the hot box that you were up to no good.”

  “I should’ve known from the moment I saw your ugly face”—what a liar I am—“that all you wanted from me was sex.”

  “Sex?” he says. “Sex?!” He laughs a kind of strangled sound, like the noises are caught in his throat and he has to force them out.

  “I wouldn’t have sex with you if you and I were the last two beings left alive in the Seven Galaxies, Aymee Desryx!”

  His chest is heaving again—only this time with anger, not with laughter. What must his flesh look like under that uniform shirt? I try hard not to stare at him, and I can’t see through the shirt anyway.

  But, wait. Wait. He said something. What?

  Damn! Aymee Desryx.

  Oh hell. He knows my name. This means only one thing: he also knows that I’m a wanted criminal. He doesn’t know that I’m an innocent wanted criminal, but he knows who I am.

  He doesn’t want to have sex with me. He wants the wanted criminal to give him back his pure, good shirt. He wants the filthy, tainted Chorynean to remove his sacred garment.

  I cross my arms, pull up on the hem of the shirt, rip it off, and throw it on the floor.

  “Satisfied?” I say, standing there with my erect nipples giving away the fact that I myself am very far from satisfied.

  Niklas

  “Get your own shirt and put something on. Immediately,” I say. Because if she doesn’t do it quickly enough, I will have sex with her, even if there are hundreds of billions of beings left alive in the Seven Galaxies.

  Yet the only one I’ve wanted in a long time is this escaped criminal—wanted for high crimes, according to the bulletin I saw when I went back to the bridge to talk with Zav.

  Aymee Desryx, an escaped felon from a rotten, corrupt planet known mostly for its thieves and liars.

  What the hell did she do that they think she’s a criminal? I shudder to consider the possibilities.

  And, as if all that weren’t bad enough, I’m now pretty sure she’s here sabotaging the Centreale. Which, despite Cole’s two idiot assistants having finally shown up in the engine room, is still lurching about like it’s drunk too much Sircean brandy. And no one knows what’s causing the lurching.

  Zav has Elna going over the manifest to see why anyone would want to sabotage our lackluster vessel, carrying nothing out of the ordinary, as far as I know. Carrying nothing worth sabotaging.

  Unless fifteen hundred dozen crates of Chorynean oranges is worth sabotaging an intergalactic freighter over. Which I doubt. They’re not even that good. But they are protected from all this jostling about, as is everything. The Centreale does take care of its cargo even if it can’t take care of itself.

  “I threw it away,” the hellcat is saying, still standing there with her nipples looking like they want nothing more than my mouth to cover them and my tongue to lick them while my . . .

  “Unthrow it away,” I say.

  “Impossible,” she says, making no move at all to cover her chest. Her hands are on her hips. My gray off-duty shirt is lying in a puddle on the deck at her feet.

  “I threw it down that chute,” she says. “The one that probably leads to the mass disintegrator.”

  She’s defiant, and I can’t say I’m not attracted to that in her. Much too attracted.

  Then a picture of Minda flashes into my head and I’m instantly furious. Is this my fate? To fall for women who are either natural betrayers, like Minda, or natural thieves, schemers, and liars, like Aymee? Like the Chorynean, I mean. I have to stop thinking about her by name. And looking at her.

  “Pick it up,” I say, pointing at my shirt. “And how dare you go through my things. Just like a Chorynean. What did I expect?”

  She bends down and picks up the shirt. As her flowing black hair brushes across her back, I see a cluster of stars on her left shoulder blade, and this somehow innocent, odd, and not-sexy thing raises my libido to untested heights.

  She’s standing up now, holding the shirt, but still as defiant as she was. Maybe more so. And she’s not putting on the shirt. She’s just holding it.

  I put my hand in my pocket to hold on to myself. Because my anger has done nothing to lower my lust. In fact, it’s fueled it.

  It’s like this damned Chorynean stowed away on the Centreale to prove to me that I can still want someone so much that I don’t care about the consequences. That I don’t even care about what happens to the Centreale. Or to me.

  Because I don’t.

  Chapter 7

  Aymee

  If this self-centered, horribly demanding, blond, Big World specimen doesn’t touch me sometime in the next two seconds, I’m going to go mad with desire.

  I throw the shirt back onto the floor.

  The hell with First Officer Sex. If he won’t do anything about this, I will.

  And anyway, what the fuck? I’m going to be locked up for the rest of my stay here on this antique ship, which stay could be months or years—I didn’t have time to check their schedule before I stowed away on the first ship I could find—then sent back to Choryn, where maybe they will behead me but they’ll at least imprison me for life, and if I don’t have sex right this very now, I may never have the chance to find out what’s so damned wonderful about it that beings have given up their lives in order to have some of it. At least in some of the vids I’ve seen they do.

  Since I’ve never done this kind of thing before—I never even so much as touched my husband, if he is my husband, Lasson—I search my memory for images from Helmsman’s Mate, which has some of the best sex scenes of any show ever, which is one of the reasons why I don’t understand why no one seems to like it anymore.

  I undo my pants and let them fall to the floor. Undressing usually works in a circumstance like this, I think. There’s no substitute for nudity.

  I step out of my pants. I’m naked now, and the tall, Big World male is staring at me, at my hips.

  Then I start laughing, which, weirdly, only makes me more aroused.

  “You think I have that slot? You stupid Terran!”

  He goes over to the room’s portal and does something on a panel. Is he locking the door?

  He’s pulling his shirt out of his pants, only it’s not working out right, so I laugh some more. Might as well have all the fun out of this one-time-only sex. Make it as memorable as possible. I’ll have a lifetime to feast off these memories that I’m about to make. That we’re about to make.

  Finally, in frustration, he rips off his shirt, and I’m treated to the sight of an extraordinary male chest, his nipples as hard as mine, his pecs something close to ideal, the hair down his midline a shimmery honey blond, and an incredible set of abs. Doe
s he work out two hours every day or are Big World Terrans just built like this?

  His sculpted hipbones reach down into territory I’m dying to lay my eyes on. And my hands. And my . . .

  “You understand what’s about to happen, don’t you?” he says to me while he undoes his pants, an operation he seems to be more adept at than the shirt removal, which shirt he destroyed while he was ripping at it.

  “You understand that I have no slot on my hip,” I say, still laughing a bit. “And no hidden weapons.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you have or don’t have,” says Niklas Arca.

  He’s smiling now, as I would be if I’d had that bulging cock trapped in my pants. It must have been unbelievably difficult keeping it restrained. Now that it’s free, I notice that it’s getting even larger.

  “But I see the rumors about Big World Terrans are all true,” I say, staring at the wet droplets forming on the tip of his thick shaft.

  “I’m not disappointed by you, either,” he says, “you Chorynean criminal mastermind.”

  Then his lips are covering mine and our tongues are fighting for supremacy. He’s lifting me up now, and I wrap my legs around his slender waist. His hipbones feel sturdy and I love how the head of his cock feels pressing into my flesh. I wonder how it will feel inside me, and I’m yearning for it even though I don’t know what really to expect.

  Until a few moments ago, I’d never even kissed anyone. And certainly not Lasson. You’d think I’d be scared, but I’m much too worked up to be scared, and my immediate needs have overwhelmed every single other feeling I have or could have.

  “Niklas,” I say in a voice I didn’t know I possessed. It’s all steamy and throaty.

  “I’ve never had a Chorynean,” he says, and his deep voice is even deeper than it was a moment ago. “And I’ve never had a saboteur.”

  At least I think that’s what he’s saying. A saboteur? Is that what the bulletin about me says? Is that how the Chorynean Guard categorizes the crime of refusing your match? Sabotage? Well, I suppose it is, in a way. I’ve sabotaged the entire match system by showing everyone how unnecessary it is. Good for me.

  “I’ve never tasted anyone like you,” Niklas says. He’s putting me down on the bed and brushing aside my hair.

  “I’ve never tasted anyone,” I say as I straddle his lap and put my hands on the steel rod that’s pulsing between us. Steel sheathed in velvet. I hope he wants me to touch him there, because I can’t keep my hands off him.

  Niklas

  When she climbs up onto my lap I put my head down and am finally able to put my mouth on her taut nipples, first the left one, then the right one. She moans with obvious pleasure, arching her back. I play with the right while I suckle the left, and the Chorynean rubs herself onto me, then grasps my cock in her small but sure hands.

  They must give lessons in sex on Choryn. I’ve never felt anything like this.

  I hope to hell the ship isn’t under attack, because I’m not stopping here until I’m satisfied—until Aymee is satisfied—and if that means the Centreale will be a dust of space cinders because of my negligence, so be it.

  After seventeen months and three days, I’m not letting anything stop me.

  “Niklas,” the Chorynean saboteur says. She’s practically purring into my ear and it’s all I can do not to come into her hand. But even though it’s been seventeen months and three days, I still have some control left in me and I will myself back from the brink.

  I lift my head from her succulent breast and look into her huge gray-green eyes. What message are they sending me? Are they telling me she wants more or are they hiding the truth of her stealthy presence here on the ship?

  “More,” she says, as though reading my mind. And if she can read my mind, then maybe she’s trying to put me off the truth. Although my cock doesn’t seem to care about the truth, or at least about the truth of her reason for being here on the Centreale. All it cares about is the unbelievable sensations she’s causing with her adept hand.

  I put my index finger into her mouth and she gasps in surprise.

  “Taste me,” I say. “You said you never tasted anyone before.”

  She licks at my finger while I brush the back of my other hand up and down against her tight nipples. This causes her to push herself up and down on my lap. I put my middle finger in her mouth now and she starts sucking.

  “That’s right,” I say, thinking what a weak liar the Chorynean saboteur is. She’s never tasted anyone before? She’s doing this like an expert. Between her hand on my about-to-explode cock and her mouth on my two fingers, it’s like she’s a professional at sex. Like all she does between spurts of scheming, plotting, and lying, is fuck.

  The ship lurches again—damn it, when are they going to fix this?—and the lying, scheming, unbearably desirable Aymee Desryx is thrown off my lap and onto her back.

  “Perfect,” I say as she spreads her legs and bends her knees, inviting me into her deepest realms.

  “Yes,” Aymee says, but as I kneel between her legs, pressing apart her knees while wishing to hell she’d put her hand back on me, she says something that makes me stop before I get to bury my cock inside her glistening sex.

  “This won’t hurt, will it?” is what she says.

  “I hear it’s much better if you get on your hands and knees,” I say, wondering what Chorynean sex game she’s playing. Well, fine, I can play too.

  “Niklas,” she says. “First Officer Arca,” she says. “Don’t hurt me. Just . . . don’t.”

  Now my mind goes wild, trying to think if there’s some myth about Big World Terrans hurting their sex partners, but as far as I know the myth goes the other way—that we’re such skilled and capable lovers, so long-lasting, so firm, sturdy, gentle, and magnificent, that none of us could possibly live up to that made-up publicity.

  Even though I could come very very close. Although not, apparently, close enough for a certain betrayer. And not as close as my brother can apparently come.

  It takes only a brief billionth of a second to think all this, and then I say, “Why the hell would you think I’d hurt you?”

  The Chorynean squirms back a bit and now she’s sitting with her head against the back wall.

  “I hear the first time . . . that the first time can be . . . that it is, that it just is,” the Chorynean sex beast otherwise known as Aymee Desryx says.

  I sit back on my heels, my erect, dripping cock making a nice centerpiece to the whole naked portrait of the two of us here on my bed.

  Just as I’m about to say something incredibly witty, arousing, and irresistible, the ship lurches again and this time the sirens start, full force. The under-attack sirens.

  We are being attacked, and as much as I’d like to finish what I’ve started here, I’d better get to the bridge. Or there won’t be any here left.

  Except, in my resonating plate, Chlo’s whispering voice is saying, “Niklas. Wherever you are, get out. Get out now.”

  While I’m pulling my pants back on and trying to stuff my stiff cock—it doesn’t know there’s an emergency—back into them, I say after I activate my transmitter, “Chlo, what the hell?”

  “You’re with Aymee, aren’t you?” she says. Chlo knows me too well, I think. She probably figured it all out between my asking her to take food to the prisoner and arriving at her cell.

  “What about it?” I say. It’s none of her business. I rearrange my unputdownable cock in my pants but it’s not really helping. And Aymee, who’s looking more and more desirable by the second, isn’t helping.

  “They’ve decided she’s the saboteur,” Chlo says in an even lower whisper.

  “She might be,” I say because there’s every possibility that the Chorynean criminal Aymee Desryx is the ship’s saboteur. Despite how much I want to fuck her.

  “But, Nik,” Chlo says, “they think you’re in on it with her.”

  Chapter 8

  Aymee

  Something terrible is happ
ening, and I don’t mean that the only time I’m ever going to get to have sex is being ruined. First by me for asking such a stupid question, because it’s guaranteed to hurt, isn’t it? That’s what all the Chorynean females say. Of course the only males they’ve been with are Chorynean, so I had to check. Maybe the Big World has other methods—or different equipment.

  The Big World Terran equipment is certainly a pleasure to look at and even more pleasurable to touch.

  But my only lifetime stab at sex is being destroyed by the incessant sirens that are going off.

  Damn damn damn! They’re after me! I can see it in First Officer Arca’s face. He’s listening to something—must be the comm device in his head—and looking at me with something between contempt and disappointment, with some lust thrown in there, I’m pretty sure.

  He’s motioning to me now as he puts his shirt on. He’s pointing at the very shirt he ordered me to take off not all that long ago.

  Put it on, he mouths. He points again at the shirt, then at me. Now, he mouths, then snaps his fingers a few times. Is this how Big World Terrans do things? Mouth the words then snap their fingers? No wonder they’re known as such galactic-class shits.

  The sirens are getting louder and more insistent and Arca has now picked up the soft gray shirt and my pants and thrown them at me, still sitting on the bed feeling damned lousy that my one opportunity for sex has been destroyed by some invisible force attacking the unassuming Centreale.

  Couldn’t it have waited until we were done? It doesn’t take all that long, does it? Although I wanted everything else we were doing just now to last if not forever, then for as close to it as possible.

  “Damn your fucking scheming Chorynean soul,” the Big World bully says to me after he’s finished with his important communication and can talk out loud again.

  “Damn your fucking Big World soul,” I say, not really knowing what he means. Soul? What the hell is that?

  “Pay attention,” he says, as though he’s not just the first officer of the Centreale but the first officer of me.