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

by H. E. Trent

“They’re not,” Amy said with a chuckle. “Have you really not picked up the language in all the time you’ve been here, Brenna?”

  “No. I feel bad about that. Courtney knows more than I do, and she’s been here less than two years.”

  Courtney shrugged. “Yeah, I know some vocabulary from watching language tutorial videos, but the grammar is nuts. That’s what makes me want to give up on learning it.”

  “The grammar,” Esteben said, “is heavily Tyneali. They tend to place the subject at the end of a sentence so you’re forced to listen very intently at all times to determine who or what is the crux.”

  “Sounds egotistical,” Erin said.

  “I suppose, but the Tyneali are quite vain and self-flattering that way. Why else would they try to disseminate their genetic material across half the galaxy?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me that,” Erin said. “I don’t understand them. Not even a little bit.”

  As badly as he wanted to turn and look at her while she spoke, he kept his gaze forward and tried his damnedest to ignore the incessant yearning. If he’d never had her, he wouldn’t have craved her so badly. He should have known better than to have propositioned her. Having obtained some distance from the events, he knew he’d used a decided lack of wisdom. But the fact he could recognize that was because he had been with her. Their intimacy had started to reverse some of the hormonal deficit typical of single Jekhan men of his age. A “catch-22,” as the Terrans might have called it.

  The Marscadrel might have kept his hormones almost at baseline, but it wasn’t like the real deal. Being medicated wasn’t like having a woman, and obviously a Terran one suited him just fine.

  “Ah,” Owen said, and a bright light finally beamed from the projector.

  “What movie did you pick?” Trigrian asked. “Do we need to remove Kerry from the room?”

  “Nah, she’ll be all right. She always falls asleep fifteen minutes in, anyway.”

  “Kill the suspense,” Erin said. “What is the film? Tell me it’s not Rocky again.”

  “Hell, no.” At his seat on the middle tier, Owen fluffed the pillows and propped his feet on the row in front of him. He pointed the remote at the display. “Scarface.”

  “Veto,” both female McGarrys said in chorus with Brenna.

  Esteben chuckled. “Apparently, the household developed a system for movie vetting in all the months I was recuperating.”

  “Just plain-old democracy,” Court said.

  “Oh, come on,” Owen said. “It’s a classic.”

  “Classic garbage,” Erin said. “If I wanted to watch a bunch of mean guys getting violent with each other, I’d fly into Buinet and wait for a couple of cops to get shitfaced at the bar.”

  “That’s actually not as much fun as you’d think,” Court muttered.

  “So what do you recommend?” Owen asked.

  “What about Star Wars?” Headron asked. “The ladies talk about it sometimes. I’m curious.”

  “Seriously?” Owen asked.

  “Do it,” Erin said. “First one.”

  “No. I’ll queue up number four.”

  “Four? Why not the first one?” Headron asked.

  “I’ll explain later,” Brenna said. “Some people like to pretend that the first three in the chronology don’t exist.”

  “Are they that poor?”

  Courtney grunted. “The critical reception was split because of the differing tones and supposedly weak scripts in the films made later. You’ll see what we mean.”

  Owen turned the lights way down and started the movie.

  Esteben was trying simultaneously to concentrate on the words scrolling up the screen and to keep Kerry out of the sandwich pile when another body appeared in his periphery.

  Headron had stepped down into the lower tier and knelt beside the table. He bent low over the tray, likely trying to make out which half was safe. In the dark, the mounds were harder to tell apart.

  “The ones nearest your right hand,” Esteben whispered in Jekhani, “have dishe bread.”

  Headron moved his hand to the other side of the tray, hovered it over the pile of sandwiches momentarily, and then darted it back to the dishe side. He took a safe sandwich.

  “Not willing to take the risk?” Esteben whispered.

  Headron moved closer to the bench behind him and put his back to it. He leaned leftward and whispered over Kerry’s head, “I’ve eaten plenty of wheat, but not on such an empty stomach.”

  Esteben yanked his gaze away from Headron’s lips. He’d discovered they were soft and pliant when he’d pressed his cock to them, and he didn’t wish to harbor any new fantasies about other things Headron could do with his mouth.

  Clearing his throat, he looked again at the screen, having already lost track of the plot. “Why would your stomach be empty?”

  “Been too busy to eat.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Baking. I’m a low-class baker, remember? Gotta give people what they want. What do you want?”

  Esteben decided that the best answer was no answer, because what he wanted was for the room to empty out and for Headron to get on his knees again.

  At some point during the engrossing film, Kerry had been whisked off to bed, the sandwiches had disappeared, and the gap between Esteben and Headron had narrowed.

  Likely, the constriction had been a reflexive response to their whispered conversations. Being closer made hearing each other easier. Although the film wasn’t set on Earth and was mostly self-explanatory, Headron still needed small lessons about certain phrases and behaviors. Esteben couldn’t answer every question, but Headron seemed satisfied with the few answers he gave him.

  So many things I could teach you.

  At the end of the film, as most in the room moved into the kitchen for beer and other refreshments, Esteben held back, telling himself he needed a moment to revive the circulation in his legs.

  The truth was that he didn’t want to move until Headron had.

  Headron was watching people file out, his gaze following Erin extra long, but she didn’t look back.

  “Is she icing you out as well?” Esteben asked.

  “Icing out?” Headron mused. “Hmm. Don’t tell me. Courtney has said that before. That means…” Headron closed his eyes and passed a hand over the mess of knotted hair at his nape. “Means purposefully… Damn.” He shook his head and dropped his hands. “Tell me. I’m not certain of the phrasing.”

  “It means to purposefully prevent someone from attempting to get something they need or want. More or less, anyhow.”

  “You must be very well-read in Terran literature.”

  Esteben shrugged. “I don’t catch all of their idioms, but quite a number. What did you do to earn her disregard?”

  “I don’t know. I asked Courtney, and perhaps that was foolish of me. She said the blame was probably on PMS and that Erin hates everyone equally. I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means you shouldn’t repeat that around Erin.”

  “Thank you for the advice.” Headron rose slowly up on his knees, still staring ahead at the muted projector image. “I didn’t realize how late it was. I need to check on my barm.”

  “Barm? What is that?” Esteben caught a loose end of Headron’s dark hair and twirled it around his fingers. The other man went very still, and Esteben understood too late that asking permission to touch was an expected thing for their kind. His body was in autopilot, though. He needed to touch—to spark reaction.

  To watch.

  If Headron didn’t resist, he’d be tacitly conceding that he’d allow Esteben to assume a role as leading male. Esteben wasn’t sure yet that he wanted to take it. He only knew that he liked that the baker’s hair felt like the finest silk around his fingers. He loved the rich and rare blackness of the strands. Hints of the darkest red glinted when the light hit just right.

  The rawness of Headron’s features charged some dark motive in him. Not jealousy for
a change, though, but something else. Ownership or possessiveness. Thanks to Shaid’s perfidy, jealousy was something Esteben understood far too well, in spite of his Jekhan nature. He was an aberration that way. He wanted what he wanted.

  “Why did you wait so long?” Esteben asked.

  Headron visibly swallowed and then dragged his tongue across his lips. “To tell you about the barm? I—”

  “No. Why did you not live with someone? Some male. Anyone else would have.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. Before I was committed to the institution. Or rather, before he committed me.”

  Headron’s cringe was quick, but not invisible. Esteben saw. Expected it, really.

  “Where is he?” Headron asked.

  Esteben shrugged and freed Headron’s hair from his grip. “Shaid? I don’t know.”

  “Do you care? I don’t hear wistfulness or regret in your voice. Are you capable of such soft things, or are you not a sentimental type?”

  “Of course I’m capable. I simply don’t know where Shaid went, and I’m not entirely sure I care anymore. I did at first.”

  “What made you stop?”

  “When I realized he’d abandoned me at the first sign of trouble.”

  “You mean, after the Terrans came?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Esteben pulled in some air and closed his eyes, raking his fingers through his short hair. Contrary to what Headron might have thought, he did miss having long, dense hair to fret over and fondle. His hair was meant for his lovers’ pleasure, and he felt at times as though he’d lost a limb.

  Headron turned toward him, resting the side of his head against the bench behind them. “Tell me the story.”

  “I’m sure it’s like any other. They’re all the same, aren’t they? We learn how cowardly and shameful we all are under stress. So much like the Tyneali at all the wrong times.”

  “I don’t believe you’re a coward.”

  Esteben shrugged. “Perhaps not. Perhaps I’m too much in the other direction.”

  “Like Murki?”

  Esteben smiled. “Family trait.”

  “Tell me the story.”

  Esteben didn’t want to tell the story. Every time he thought he’d gotten over the betrayal, the old burns flared up, and only half his anger was directed at Shaid. Esteben was just as angry with himself for being susceptible for the man’s cons. Shaid was everything a man like Esteben was supposed to look for in a mate—everything Esteben had told Murki to seek. In the end, Shaid had been nothing more than a user.

  “I will hold your words in confidence,” Headron said.

  “Yes, of course you will, because that is my luck, is it not?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Esteben shook his head and opened his eyes.

  Headron was watching him intently. His dark eyes were so warm and beckoning, a stark contrast to Erin’s cooler stare.

  The coolness suited her, though, or perhaps suited Esteben in a different way. Her stare, when she actually deigned to fix it on him, was a dare. Headron’s was a query.

  “I’ll tell you,” Esteben said quietly. “Perhaps I’ll allow myself one more episode of anger over the situation, and that will be enough for me to finally be done with it.”

  Headron nodded. “Go on.”

  Esteben reclaimed that swath of dark hair from Headron’s shoulder. He tucked the strands over the other man’s ear and coiled them around the knot of hair at his nape.

  There. Perfect again.

  “Shaid was a son of a governor from a small city on the Jtan continent.”

  “That small place? That was obliterated during the invasion, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, sometime after he left me. Perhaps he was there during the bombings. I no longer wish to speculate. He’d been my lover for three years. Not exclusively, but close enough.”

  “Why not exclusively?”

  “I don’t believe you are so naive, Headron.”

  “I’m not. I simply don’t understand how a lover of three years wouldn’t be your exclusive partner.”

  “Are you that strict a monogamist?”

  “Yes.”

  Headron answered so quickly and with such indignation in his tone that Esteben knew better than to cross-examine him. Very few of the young men in Esteben’s circle had been monogamists. He’d started to doubt that such a practice existed, and for the longest time, he’d thought Murki would stray from Trigrian soon enough, too. He never did.

  “I don’t understand you people of the lecht class,” Headron said. “How you could be so wealthy, but—”

  “Morally bankrupt?” Esteben suggested.

  Headron rolled his eyes. “No. Perhaps I’m too soft, but I worry about wounding people’s emotions with my actions and words. I worry that right now, Erin is angry with me, and the fact I don’t know why makes me sick to my stomach. Having upset her in some way makes me feel nauseated. The idea of intentionally insulting her…”

  “That arrangement I had with Shaid was mutual.”

  Headron opened his mouth but closed it before any words could come out.

  “Go on,” Esteben said. “Speak your mind.”

  Headron gave his head a slight shake. “I just… Could you not give each other what you wanted?”

  “No.”

  “So why were you together?”

  “Because we were suitable. Let us leave it at that.”

  Headron shook his head harder. “I don’t want to. I want to understand, because you perplex me.”

  “You take umbrage to my indiscretions with a man I haven’t seen since I was twenty or twenty-one?”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “But you do. You’re testing me, speculating on how I might treat Erin.”

  “I do worry about that. She’s not a Jekhan woman. She won’t be so permissive about you jumping from one bed to the next. To a Terran woman, that behavior would be an insult.”

  “It’d be an insult to most Jekhan men, as well.”

  Headron nodded.

  Something to agree on, then.

  Esteben rubbed the scar over his lip contemplatively. “The truth is, Shaid slept around because he was a whore and got a thrill out of being paid to spread his ass open for anyone rich enough or well-connected enough. And me? I strayed because I suppose he never really felt like my mate. I was half happy when he left me—when he ran at the first sign of trouble and promised he’d be back with help.”

  “You were too sick to care by then.”

  “Yes. From my compounded mental disorders and from immune deficiencies. My stability slipped far sooner than most men’s would have. I was twenty when it started. Declining before twenty-five is almost unheard of.”

  “Yes. You were on Marscadrel so soon?”

  “Very high doses when the drug was still easily available in Buinet, and then it was gone. I should have had a woman at twenty if only to modulate my hormones, but I’d put off looking, even for a temporary one. I was too busy trying to secure my place in society. I was too busy trying to be a respectable merchant, and I suppose in away, I simply wasn’t ready for a mate. Not like Murki was.”

  “Do you really like Erin?” Headron asked in slow, sharply enunciated Jekhani. He needn’t have switched back from English. There was no one else in the room, and the raucous laughter emanating from the kitchen hinted that no one in there was paying them any attention. “Do you like her, or is she just...convenient?”

  Perhaps Esteben had taken too long to shape the truth in his mind, because Headron scoffed and pushed himself to standing.

  “I see,” he spat.

  Esteben tugged him back down and pulled him close so he could whisper into his ear in that same crude Jekhani, “No, you don’t.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  “Are you worried I’ll take her from you, still?”

  “Yes.”

  “So honest, aren’t you?”

  “What good would lying do?”

  “I wil
l not take her from you as long as you don’t try to alienate her any further against me.”

  Headron was still and stiff in Esteben’s grip, and his breathing went slow and uneven.

  Smelling the scent of arousal on women was always so much easier, especially with Terran women and their bright, fertile odors, but being close enough, Esteben could tell the same with a man. He could smell it in their sweat.

  Esteben would have bet his best tunic that Headron would have accepted a proposition then and there, and if Esteben’s hormones had been slightly less balanced, he would have fucked him and not cared who could have walked in.

  But if he were going to move forward with the sort of relationship he wasn’t certain he really wanted, he needed to exercise some restraint. All good traders knew to never obliterate their options.

  Headron wasn’t Shaid. He couldn’t be further from Shaid, in fact. Unlike Shaid, Headron’s breeding was unremarkable. Headron worked, not networked.

  Maybe that was a good thing.

  Esteben swallowed and unhanded him, but Headron didn’t move away. Headron kept looking at him in that anticipatory way like he wanted Esteben to do something.

  Anything.

  Fine.

  “You were going to tell me about barm,” Esteben said.

  Headron dragged his tongue across his lips and finally looked away. “It’s…just a way of starting bread. I’ve been reading some of the cookbooks Mrs. Cartwright transmitted to Courtney in the last data packet. I thought perhaps Courtney and Erin would like something new. I’m experimenting with sourdough as well.”

  “You enjoy pleasing people, don’t you?”

  “I do, but more than that, I like knowing they’re taken care of.”

  Food for thought from the baker.

  Esteben gave him a slight push away. Headron’s warm breath against his face heated hidden parts of him—parts that he’d expose for pleasuring if Headron didn’t go.

  “Good luck with your barm.”

  “I will be done with chores in a quarter of an hour,” Headron said. “Then perhaps, I’ll finish my bath. I never got to finish. Did you?”

  Esteben didn’t answer, but it didn’t matter, because Headron had already left the room. He wasn’t quite sure if the subtle man was propositioning him, but he was becoming increasingly surer that he wanted him to be.