Intergalactic Dating Agency ~ Black Hole Brides ~ The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss
Page 1
Table of Contents
Big Sky Alien Mail Order Brides
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
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Intergalactic Dating Agency
Black Hole Brides
The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss
Imprisoned on an abandoned space station orbiting a black hole, Trixie Boudreaux prayed for just one chance to escape…and she failed. When she and the other Black Hole Brides are rescued, she’s left adrift between the coward she was and the new universe ahead of her. If only she had a guide she could trust…
Nor irThorkonos paid good galactic credits for his captain’s commission on the flagship dreadnaught, and how many erstwhile interplanetary pirates have come as far? If he has a secret that the Azthrnos nobles mustn’t discover, well, certainly one skittish Earther girl won’t be the one to find him out.
But when interstellar imprisonment can’t hold an old evil, Trixie and Nor must save not only the worlds of Azthronos but each other.
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Copyright © 2017 by Elsa Jade
Cover by Croco Designs
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as factual. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be scanned, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Chapter 1
In the darkest hour of the alien night, Trixie Boudreaux crept through the Azthronos ducal estate. She counted the turns carefully, not missing a one despite the deep, quiet shadows. She better not miss one; she’d been down these hallways a dozen times since being rescued from the space station. With each step, she reminded herself she wasn’t still orbiting the singularity where Blackworm had imprisoned her and a handful of other Earth women.
The Black Hole Brides.
How she despised that name. It sounded…romantic. Everyone loved brides. And while black holes were scientifically kind of scary, they were nerdy cool, right?
But she wasn’t any of those things, never had been, never would be. Not scary, not nerdy, not cool. Definitely never a bride. She knew what happened to women who let themselves be sucked into those starry-eyed fantasies of white, and lace, and forevermore.
Speaking of stars… She stopped at the beautiful arched doorway that was the closest escape from her bedroom. If she went outside, under those stars, she knew she’d find herself on a beautiful balcony overlooking the estate’s beautiful side courtyard. A beautiful decorative trellis framed the balcony, providing support for a beautiful alien flower. Everything here was beautiful—well, everything except her; she was so totally plain it made no sense that Blackworm had taken her when he had all this—but she was mostly interested in how the trellis reached all the way to the ground three stories below.
Of course, if she had to run, she’d still be stuck on this alien world, but it helped her sleep at night to know her escape route was clear. Counting all the ways she could get away worked better than any bedtime prayer.
The nightmare on Blackworm’s derelict space station was over. Sometimes, though, she still feared she’d look up at the dark sky and, rather than the friendly flicker of starlight, she’d find the baleful eye of the black hole staring back at her. If there were only stars, she’d know she was safe for another night.
Now, just to confirm that the door hadn’t locked her in, and then she could go back to bed.
She pushed the beautiful—of course—carved latch and peeked out to catch a glimpse of the stars.
And saw a full moon instead.
Tight, muscled buttocks revealed by dark pants still in the process of dropping.
With a gasp, she recoiled in shock, yanking the door closed with a bang.
Someone was about to get banged…
She backpedaled hastily down the hallway she’d been so carefully charting. If she missed a turn this time, she probably wouldn’t even notice, what with that strong, pale butt burned into her brain.
She eeped again in alarm when the door slammed open and a large, dark shape strode through.
At least he was fastening his trousers. Otherwise she’d be getting an eyeful…
“Were you spying on me, Earth girl?”
She froze in place, recognizing the voice. Her heart, already racing, zoomed ahead as if rocket-boosted. “N-no.”
A tall, sleek, silver-haired woman glided through the doorway, a narrow bottle dangling from her fingertips. “Thank you, Captain Nor,” she said. “Your explanation was illuminating. When resupply is complete, I will see you back on the Grandiloquence.”
“That you will, Commander Illya,” the captain drawled. “A lot more.”
He smirked as the woman passed him, and though she didn’t smile back, her black eyes gleamed.
Trixie would’ve taken the opportunity to run while they were making googly eyes at each other, but she never turned her back on a threat.
Not because she was brave, but because she was terrified.
Terror must explain the frantic churning of her pulse as she faced Rokal Nor irThorkonos, captain of the dreadnaught flagship of the Azthronos duchy, the Grandiloquence.
She’d already decided that the Thorkons, despite their mostly standard human appearance, were just…too much. And the captain was definitely too too much. He was too tall, his shoulders too broad. Though the corridor was spacious and the doorway to her escape right there, she found she couldn’t catch her breath when she peeked at him. Especially in the black military uniform of the dreadnaught senior officers, he was intimidating. The thick, honey-brown waves of his hair were usually curtailed into a tidy club at his nape, but now it all hung loose, just long enough to brush past those too-broad shoulders. But the casual tousling didn’t soften his edges; if anything, he looked less like a disciplined captain and more like a dissolute bad boy.
And the very top tab of his trousers was still open…
The captain had been present for the rescue at Blackworm Station, but from the first moment she’d seen him, she suspected he was just a different sort of villain. Catching him loitering with the Grandiloquence’s chief engineering officer only reinforced her suspicions.
“Lit
tle lost Earther.” His drawl and his smirk were the exact same as he’d given the commander. “What are you doing wandering the halls this time of night?”
“Nothing wrong.” She glowered at him. “Unlike you.”
“Wrong?” He chuckled. “Oh, you mean getting caught with my pants down?” He ambled toward her, somehow making the smooth, loose-jointed walk a thing of menace. Sexy menace, maybe, but she wasn’t fooled. “Trust me, little Earther, what you’ll find behind the seal of my fatigues is not nefarious, but—dare I say?—grandiose, just like my ship.”
She tucked her chin. “Seriously?”
His beautiful, thin lips—really, was there nothing on Azthronos that wasn’t beautiful?—curved in a seductive smile. “Want to try me?”
She managed not to snort, but it was a close thing. “Like everyone else has?”
Some fleeting shadow she couldn’t quite decipher flashed through his pale eyes—okay, that stare was one thing that wasn’t beautiful. Too eerie, the pale blue narrowly ringed with a darker hue. “Not everyone,” he said curtly. “Thanks to your interruption. But there’s enough to go around.”
“Riiiiight. Well, I was just taking a stroll before bed.” She sidled sideways, making sure not to turn her back. “I’ll be going now.”
“By yourself?” Whatever deeper emotion had flickered in him submerged again when he arched one eyebrow rakishly.
“By myself.” This time she couldn’t hold back the sarcastic reply. “Unlike some aliens.”
He flicked one finger dismissively. “Commander Illya is vrykoly,” he said. “The vrykoly are masters of intellectual pursuits, but they tend to have difficulties in matters of interpersonal relations between colleagues. Since she is gunning for a captaincy of her own, she asked me for…private instruction.”
This time she just had to snort, and loud. “Because she wanted to be…illuminated. What, do you have a penlight in your pants?”
A short bark of laughter jolted from him. “Ho, the mishkeet shows her little teeth.”
She tucked her back against the wall, giving him plenty of room to go around. If he would just go. But curiosity got the better of her and she found herself asking, “What’s a mishkeet?”
He peered at her, his pale blue eyes narrowing. “Haven’t you had a universal translator implanted? I thought you and the other Earther girl decided not to get the memory wipes.”
Although the estate was always beautifully temperature controlled, she shivered. As if she’d willingly let anyone into her brain when that was her only sure refuge. “Lishelle and I decided not to have our memories altered to go back to Earth, and she got the translator. I…like my head with no extra holes. Besides, even with the technology, not every word translates, you know.”
He grunted. “Every world has mishkeets.” His eyes narrowed ever further, a look she recognized from watching Lishelle try to force the translator into coughing up difficult concepts. “Cat-rat,” he muttered, a slight frown making him seem momentarily more…human. “Do you have cat-rats?”
She wrinkled her nose, offended. “Those are two different things. Cats and rats. Yes, we have them, and no, I am not that.”
He flicked that rude finger again, a gesture she wanted to break off at the third joint, before reaching into his pants… Oh wait, he was just rummaging around in his pocket. “Never heard of cats or rats, but you are a mishkeet.” He removed a small wrapped package—not a condom, she hoped! “Glittery little eyes always watching, sneaking around in the dark—”
“I have normal hazel eyes,” she said defensively, realizing she was watching him much too closely. “And I wasn’t sneaking. Rayna’s duke said we can go anywhere we want in the estate and its grounds.”
“Ah, yes, the beloved new Duke of Azthronos, who commands the fleet and me with it.” Nor stared past her as his fingers deftly undid the little package, his eyes unfocused again, but in a different way than accessing his universal translator. “So generous to you closed-worlders, choosing a Black Hole Bride for his own.”
Something about his acid tone—not to mention that stupid name—made her bristle. “I am not just one of Blackworm’s victims.” She opened her mouth to keep venting…and then realized it didn’t matter. She’d been plenty of people’s victim, and if she was something more than that, no one cared. She slid her spine along the wall, uncomfortably aware of the silky nightgown under the heavy Thorkon robe. “Never mind. I have to go.”
“Just like a mishkeet,” he said with an aggrieved sigh, tossing back his honey-brown hair with a shake of his head. “Bite and run.” He popped the little object he’d unwrapped into his mouth and strode toward her, seemingly oblivious to how she cringed away. “I’ll escort you to your room.”
“Not afraid I’ll bite more?” She clamped her own teeth on her tongue, unable to believe she’d asked that. Was she trying to bite him—er, bait him?
He gave her a toothy smile. “Not afraid at all. Since you don’t have a translator, you might not know that the closest thing to vrykoly in your language is vampire.”
Jaw slackening, Trixie stared at him. The engineering officer was a vampire? Had Commander Illya bitten his… Her gaze flittered down to that open tab on his pants.
Since she was distracted, she forgot to flinch away when he clamped a hand above her elbow and peeled her away from the wall. “Let’s go.”
Without the support at her back, she stiffened. “I know the way.” She’d memorized every turn and straightaway to safety, ticking them off like a rosary in her brain. “I don’t need you.”
“I’m sure you don’t.” He marched her forward, his long fingers a ruthless manacle around her bicep. “But you left me with no better way to spend my time tonight than to play the good Azthronos gentleman.”
She hissed out a disbelieving breath. “You are no gentleman.”
He cut a sidelong glance at her, blue eyes half lidded. At this close range, the paler striations in his irises glittered like icicles. “You wound me with those teeth, mishkeet.”
“Liar,” she snapped back, trying to yank her elbow from his grip. And trying to yank back a little spurt of attraction too. He really was beautiful… “You aren’t hurt any more than you’re a gentleman.”
“Half then,” he amended flippantly. “As I’m half Thorkon.”
Again, there was a diffidence in his tone that made her hesitate. “What’s the other half? Bad boy gigolo?”
“Gigolo,” he repeated slowly. “Ah. I like the sound of that. No, your word is pirate.”
She sniffed. “Now that I believe.”
He laughed. “Is that the first time you have agreed with me?”
It probably was, and it didn’t seem like something he should be so pleased about. She stopped at a doorway. “This is my room.”
After what seemed like a heartbeat too long, he released her elbow. “I’ll see you inside to make sure you are inside, not creeping around anymore tonight. Unlock it.”
As reluctant as she was to let him anywhere nearer her private refuge, she pressed her thumb to the identilock, and the door chimed softly. “Okay? You can go now.”
“In you go,” he prodded.
With a scowl, she slipped through the half-open portal. “You can’t come in.”
He braced one hand at the top of the doorway and canted his body forward, staring down at her. “I didn’t ask.”
In the black ship’s fatigues, he was like a shadow in her doorway. But with his arm stretched overhead, hiking up the coat, and the top tab of his pants still undone, a tiny sliver of tawny skin showed in between.
Did aliens have bellybuttons?
He was close enough—and she was close enough to her retreat to comfortably focus on specifics—that the light from her room filtering through the doorway picked out a faint scar near his left eye. The silvery mark of raised skin curved from his temple and over the sculpted cliff of his cheekbone. She knew firsthand how high-tech and skilled the medics on the Grandiloquence were;
so why did he still have a scar that could’ve been healed away with a few rounds of dermal regeneration?
She realized she was leaning forward too and caught herself back with a snap.
He exhaled, not quite a laugh, and the whiff of a caramel-like sweetness underlined the sharp tang of ethanol. Consumption of alcohol, apparently like cats and rats, was ubiquitous to the universe. Her pulse skittered nervously. “You’ve been drinking,” she accused.
When he inclined his head, the luxurious waves of his hair fell across his cheek. “The very grateful commander brought along a bottle of ghost-mead to thank me for explaining the, ah, ins and outs of reciprocal social skills.”
Drinking, as if sleeping with a fellow officer wasn’t bad enough. God, he was everything that had ever made her life miserable. “You better not be drunk driving the duke’s dreadnaught,” she warned.
“Are you going to tattle on me, mishkeet?”
Through clenched teeth, she said, “Stop calling me that.”
“Shall I call you cat-rat instead?”
“My name,” she said tartly, “is Trixie.”
Chapter 2
Why was he toying with her?
Nor muscled far enough into the doorway to trigger the safety feature and prevent it from closing on him, despite her best effort. He wasn’t trying to intimidate her—much—but he wanted to know why she piqued his interest. He’d come a long way on instinct and impulse, and he wasn’t going to ignore them now.
She was a bland little thing, with sandy blond hair and mud-puddle eyes. In her soft, cushy estate slippers, she didn’t even reach his chin. While he’d encountered more than his fair share of lovely, lethal females in all sizes and colors, she was not one of them. And yet she’d sidetracked him from the inquisitive, willing, and striking vrykoly with nothing more than a startled gasp and a pointy little nosey nose poked into his evening.
He peered past her. “Where’s the other Earther girl?” That one had the lethal loveliness that usually attracted him.