Crux: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 2)

by H. E. Trent

“Sounds like an inefficient use of her time. Do you think your sister is that devious?”

  Erin shrugged and took a long, unauthorized slug of Esteben’s coffee. “Oh, sweet manna.” She screwed the lid back on and handed the container to him before she could get carried away. She could drink the scalding hot lot in three minutes flat if left up to her own devices.

  “Maybe Court’s right. I’m an addict.” She made a choked, sobbing sound. “We’re sisters,” she said, getting her grips. “We antagonize each other. We laugh at each other and tease each other, but usually, the poking is all in good fun. The memories become stories we can remind each other of later and laugh at. Owen’s not spared the frustration, either.”

  “And that’s…normal for your family? Jekhan sibling relationships aren’t like that. In fact, they’re almost entirely humorless. Siblings are potential business partners or people who grow one’s network. They aren’t meant to be friends.”

  “Yikes.” Erin cringed. “I can’t imagine not being friends with the people I’m more or less genetically identical to. We know each other’s weak spots. We watch each other’s backs, you know?”

  He nodded once, in such a way that indicated that he understood her perfectly well, but found the convention improbable. His nod had come quickly, though, which gave her relief she’d desperately needed. His response times had been uncomfortably slow when they’d arrived at the farm, and she’d worried about his brain’s recovery from his illnesses. Apparently, she hadn’t needed to, because he seemed perfectly healthy.

  “Anywho,” she said loftily, forcing her gaze away from his always-too-intense one. She always felt like a little girl when he looked at her like that. He was twelve or thirteen years older than her, if her conversion for Jekhan year lengths was accurate. She didn’t know if a Jekhan man of around forty was as mature or more mature than a Terran one of the same age, but she did know Jekhans tended to live much longer.

  “I think other people take us more seriously than we do,” she said to the ground.

  “I find that hard to believe. May I?”

  She lifted her gaze and saw him gesture to the spot next to Erin on the plank she’d been sitting on to keep her butt dry. The ground in that part of the farm, being closer to the stream, was soggier than in previous acreage.

  She scooted over to the edge of the board and rooted through her lunch satchel. If there were even the tiniest sliver of chocolate in there, she’d forgive Court for the coffee slight.

  Esteben settled next to her and crossed his long legs in front of him, placing his own satchel atop his lap.

  Her lungs automatically pulled in a breath as if she’d just forget and stop breathing with him there.

  Maybe I will.

  She set her teeth into her lip and stared unseeing into her lunch.

  She hadn’t been that close to him since he’d tried to attack her after their arrival at the farm. She’d been trying to get a last dose of Marscadrel—a hormone formulation that assisted male immune function—into him at the local Jekhan doctor’s orders. Esteben had seen her coming and pounced. He’d been on top of her gnashing his teeth like a wild animal, and she’d laid there, rolling her eyes and sighing, because the situation was far too much like being back on Earth at work.

  The 911 dispatchers used to send Erin and her ambulance partner into the most high-risk neighborhoods of Boston just because Erin was a McGarry, and that was how people treated McGarrys, and her partner was just an asshole no one liked. Erin and Curt got along just fine, though. Together, they managed to find themselves on far too many unpredictable calls. She’d lost track of how many meth heads had jumped them.

  Ever since Esteben had last attacked her like a wild man, she kept her distance. She couldn’t remember having an actual conversation with him since, although she’d tried.

  She’d wanted to talk to him because of the way he’d clung to her after Trigrian had found him in the riots. He’d clung to her like he’d needed her, and she’d thought they’d bonded.

  But he didn’t remember then. When he’d become lucid again, he wasn’t nice. Handsome, but not charming like Murki.

  She had given up. She’d hated that she’d given up.

  There was no chocolate in her lunch bag, but she did find one of Headron’s special dishe cookies.

  Thank you Headron, you Jekhan saint.

  The saint she shouldn’t have touched. She’d pounded the head of her hammer against her thumb three times while tacking wires, thinking about what she shouldn’t have done to him.

  Shit.

  Her mind was a mess. She was sitting next to a man who made her nervous just by looking at her while thinking about another one who made her nervous just by liking her.

  While she’d been tugging Headron off, she’d convinced herself that she was being chivalrous, but the truth was that she’d been so close to climbing onto him, pinning his wrists, and riding him until his dark eyes rolled back into his head.

  She couldn’t let that happen. Headron wouldn’t tell her no, and he had to because he wouldn’t be able to keep her.

  She sighed, and then stuffed the cookie into her mouth.

  “What has you so contemplative?” Esteben asked.

  “Caffeine deprivation,” she lied, and straightened up a little.

  Get it together, McGarry.

  “So, why do you find it hard to believe that the McGarrys don’t take themselves seriously?”

  “You have a certain reputation,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes and opened her sandwich container. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can’t say the name McGarry around here without people clutching their pearls. That’s why two of my brothers changed their last names. They wanted to be able to get jobs and not be harassed.”

  “But Owen didn’t.”

  “He didn’t have to. He moved to the middle of Montana and didn’t have a neighbor for ten miles in any direction. Nobody bothered him out there.”

  “Montana? I’m not quite certain where that is.”

  “Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t. It’s far north in the United States. Shares a border with Canada and gets colder than a witch’s clit.”

  He raised a brow.

  “Ignore me. I say crazy shit.”

  “As does Courtney. I believe I am becoming accustomed to your use of English slang, even if I don’t quite grasp the meanings at first listen. Were you not harassed on Earth?”

  “Of course I was. Court, too. We’re just so…” She shrugged and brought a corner of sandwich to her mouth, saying a quick prayer that the bread was made of wheat and not a Jekhan grain that didn’t develop gluten. She needed gluten. Chewy bread made her happy. “Recognizable,” she muttered.

  “Mm.” Esteben caught his finger in the remnants of a curl hanging over her ear, and she reflexively held in her breath.

  Why is he touching me?

  She didn’t mind him touching her, but she didn’t like being unable to predict people’s motives. Esteben may as well have been a complete stranger.

  “Less so now, I’m sure.” He released the curl.

  She breathed.

  “Uh…I don’t know,” she said through a mouthful of turkey and Jekh-cheese on whole wheat bread. She planned to kiss Headron on the mouth when she saw him.

  No. Air kiss. From across a room. No touching. Abso-fucking-lutely no touching.

  “Folks would probably do a double-take, but they’d recognize me quickly enough. People back on Earth were always stalking members of my family. Reporters and investigators and shit like that, trying to dig up dirt, but there wasn’t any dirt. We were just trying to live normal lives.”

  “But you couldn’t possibly be normal, right? You’re McGarrys. That name means something, even here.”

  “And that’s crazy to me. You gotta understand that from my perspective, the attention we get is insane. We don’t see where Granddad did anything unusual. He was just being Granddad, and we backed him because he was always a safe bet.”

&
nbsp; “Tell me what happened.” Esteben wasn’t touching his food. He had his forearms propped against his knees and was staring intently at her.

  He had a stare she couldn’t meet. Too deep. Too intense.

  She was usually better at looking men in the eyes. There were few men she couldn’t do that for, but she knew what they were and they knew what she was. She was too headstrong to make a good submissive, but every now and then someone figured her out. Esteben didn’t know her like that. He had to be wigging her out for some other reason.

  She set her sandwich back into its container and straightened her legs in front of her. If she stared at the dishe crop in the distance, she wouldn’t have to look at him. There were always animals needing to be chased out of the dishe. Watching it was expected, and the perfect reason to avoid eye contact. “Where does one begin in telling the story of Owen McGarry Senior?”

  “Did you not know he was interacting with Jekhans when they visited Earth?”

  “Look, Granddad was a garbage man by trade. He went to work every day, and then went straight home at night, totally exhausted. On weekends, he hung out at his old Irish guy social club and did community stuff. He was political, sure, but everyone in our neighborhood was. None of us would have suspected he had such strong relationships with people from your Jekhan convoy.”

  “There are few records of what happened in those early diplomatic missions. The people who’d know are in hiding or dead.”

  “Yeah, hunted down like rabid dogs, I’m sure. Honestly, we were afraid when Granddad started speaking out about the government’s proposed strategy for dealing with what they called the ‘Jekh Problem.’ Their philosophy was to strike first before you invaded us.”

  “We had no designs on invading Earth.”

  “Yes, obviously I know that now. As Court so quaintly put it, the only thing you guys would have been invading were a lot of pussies.”

  Esteben scoffed—a stunningly elegant sound.

  Erin hadn’t known such a noise was possible.

  “Charming,” he said.

  “Yeah, I thought so too, when I found out how unbalanced your population is as far as the sexes go. I don’t doubt there would have been plenty of single women who would have thrown open their doors for you.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Oh, hell yes. You fuckin’ kidding me? I swear, convincing them that you guys are still pretty much human wouldn’t have been that hard if the lobbyists didn’t have so much say over what information the public got to consume.”

  “They think we’re not like you,” he mused in a deep, pensive tone.

  You’re not.

  Terran men were nothing like the tall, ruddy men on Jekh who nearly made Erin forget her principles every fucking morning—who turned her dreams into cinematic filth so her body was always at the ready whenever they smiled at her or looked at her in a certain way.

  Esteben gave her elbow a soft nudge.

  She regretted peering over at him. He looked at her in one of those demanding ways that made her body react, because it was a look she could imagine him looking down at her with if she were on her knees.

  She took a breath and willed the mental image away.

  Not going there.

  “That’s the information they’re being fed,” she said finally. “Or that they were being fed. I don’t know what’s being disseminated there now, but Owen and Brenna have been sending lots of data and images back. If their messages aren’t being suppressed, there are certainly some folks back on Earth asking a lot of questions about what the truth is.”

  “I see.” Esteben popped the latch on one of his food containers and Erin stared into the case.

  “Is that the last of the chicken salad?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” He dug a fork out of his bag, and then poked at the creamy white mound.

  “That bitch.”

  “Did you want it?”

  Erin growled and took an angry bite of her sandwich. “She knew I wanted it. I’ve been relishing eating that chicken. That foul little beast tried to peck me to smithereens when I was collecting eggs last week. Followed me around the damn coop like a demon.”

  “Delicious demon.”

  “I hate you.”

  He laughed and held a forkful of the stuff out to her.

  She sighed.

  Tempting. So tempting.

  “Go ahead,” he said in a teasing purr. “You shouldn’t deny yourself your pleasures.”

  No, I should, but maybe that one’s okay. It was just chicken, not a proposition.

  She leaned in and pulled the salad between her lips, suppressing the moan that thrummed in her throat as the stuff touched her tongue.

  “You like that?” he whispered.

  Whimpering, Erin closed her eyes and chewed. She could talk plenty of shit about her sister, but Court had several things going for her that Erin didn’t—one of which was their very Southern maternal grandmother’s hand-coded recipe database. Every dish in it had been formulated by Mimi and repeatedly tested to perfection. Erin had always believed she was the woman’s favorite, but apparently Mimi thought Court deserved the files more. They’d arrived in Court’s last big file download from Earth. After several hours of enraged sulking, Erin had thought she’d figured out why Mimi had sent them. Court had gotten herself in “the family way” and had men to feed.

  Erin hadn’t had a conversation about how, exactly, Mimi knew that Court had more than one lover, but she clearly knew. That wasn’t really something Erin wanted to talk with her elderly grandmother about, either. They were close, but there were some topics not meant to be broached with any mimi.

  “Would you like some more?” Esteben asked. “I’ll feed you.”

  And the next thing she’d know, she’d be kneeling contently with her head on his lap with him rubbing her hair as if she were a cat.

  Nope.

  “No,” she said with more conviction than she felt. “I’d like it all, but its yours and you’ve gotta eat. I’d offer to trade you, but my bread has wheat. I wouldn’t want you to be doubled over for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “I see. Perhaps you have something else in your bag worth trading, then.”

  She doubted it. All the same, she rooted through the satchel until her fingers bumped two round things at the bottom. Fruit, probably.

  She pulled the walnut-sized things out and rolled them in her palm. The stone fruits had dimpled lavender skins, but the inner flesh was a soft peach color that tasted something like apricots.

  “Those may be worth the trade.” Esteben’s voice had taken on a sultry timbre, low and what should have been forbidding to an average mortal woman.

  But Erin wasn’t average. She found certain kinds of fear arousing. Sometimes she courted it.

  “Fruits always mean something to Jekhans,” she said. “What would me giving these to you mean?”

  “That would depend on how they’re given.” He set the salad on the plank between them and turned one of his large hands over to show the palm. “Place them on my hand and I’ll assume nothing. Place one against my lips and I’ll assume you’ll be coming to me tonight.”

  Did he just…

  She’d never been slow on the uptake, but she was not only dealing with a Jekhan male who shouldn’t have known how to proposition her, but Esteben.

  She didn’t know how any rational woman was supposed to respond to what he’d said. Not that Erin was exceedingly rational on the best of days, but she tried hard and usually had a brain that worked fast enough to keep her out of any real trouble—such as with Headron earlier. There was no way in hell he’d find a partner suitable for both of them. He’d give up on her and go get what he needed from someone else without her having to dump him.

  She didn’t have the heart to dump him. She wanted him, but he needed to be with his own kind.

  Esteben wasn’t sweet, though. Touching him wouldn’t make her feel guilty.

  Her brain was stuttering and g
iving her feedback that was a whole lot of garbage.

  She hadn’t gotten laid in over a year. For Erin, that was inconceivable. Back on Earth, sex had been part of her routine, like deep conditioning her hair and dusting her ceiling fan blades. Sex wasn’t something she made a big deal of. In her estimation, seeking out intercourse was just what healthy humans did when their hormones balanced a certain way.

  Things were finally settling down enough in her life enough for her to really give her sex life some thought…or rather, it was demanding that she do something. Or that someone do her.

  Sure, Headron had been asking, but Headron wanted more than sex. He wanted permanence she couldn’t give him.

  Esteben wasn’t asking for that. She wouldn’t be looking to Esteben for happily-ever-after. He was the kind of man she’d have sex with sometimes and then leave when the arrangement no longer satisfied the two of them.

  No strings attached.

  She rolled the fruits in her palm once more, and then slowly extended her hand to him. She didn’t drop them into his palm. Didn’t press one against his lips.

  He wrapped his fingers around her wrist, keeping her hand perfectly still, and leaned down. His burgundy gaze locked on her face and she watched entranced as he lowered his head.

  He put his mouth to one of the fruits, and then traced the tip of his tongue around the oblong shape.

  Her breath came out in a strained pant, her body already tightening in anticipation.

  He pulled the fruit away from her between his teeth and, with aid of his free hand, took a bite. “I’d say that’s a fair trade for the salad,” he said.

  Oh. Shit.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Headron headed into Little Gitano after packing lunches for the farm workers, and didn’t remove his hood until he was certain none of the bystanders were unfamiliar to him. The population in Little Gitano was heavily Jekhan, but they were careful whom they showed themselves to. Too many land speculators and bounty hunters from larger cities who were out to make a quick profit passed through town for any of the locals to be completely comfortable.

  Owen nudged Headron with his elbow and gestured toward the open double-door entrance of the meet-shop. “Let me go see if Allan’s here.”