Wager: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 4)

by H. E. Trent

  “Yeah,” he said quietly, and sat up straighter. “Put me in there, but keep the options open, you know? Doesn’t have to be a woman. Anyone can respond.”

  “If you do that, you’ll get more inquiries from Jekhan men. They’re definitely paying attention to the other listings. Brenna posted one for a farmhand last week, and a man from the desert clan sent a message asking if he had a male already. I know you ignored the other men’s queries.”

  “Maybe I haven’t seen the right one yet.” They hadn’t been domineering enough, and there had to be more Jekhan men out there with personalities more like the Beshnis. “Gotta cast a wide net sometimes to find a few fish.”

  “Perhaps.” Sera sounded skeptical, but she didn’t question him. “Well. We’ll get you set up immediately. Come into the light so I can take you picture for your profile.” She laughed as she walked away.

  He followed.

  “I bet you’ll even have some inquiries as early as tonight from Jekhans.”

  “Maybe so.”

  She fetched her 3D camera from the secondhand desk in the office space and led Luke closer to a window where there was excellent light.

  She had him face the camera, and then captured images of all four sides of him. The camera would stitch the stills together. People with holo-viewers would be able to project a full-sized duplication of him. He’d appear to be standing right in front of them, and they could inspect him up close and personal.

  Looking down at the camera, Sera frowned. “You’re not smiling. You should smile so people think you want to do this.” Her gaze locked onto his face. “Even if you don’t.”

  He let out a breath, smoothed a wrinkle out of his plaid shirt, and forced his lips into something he hoped approximated a smile. It didn’t feel natural, but maybe no one would be able to tell.

  “That’s better,” she whispered, and retook the shots. “Now you’ll need to complete the questionnaire.”

  “All right.” He let the phony smile fall away. He knew he wasn’t fooling anyone. “Maybe I’ll even answer truthfully.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  As you may recall, the first three Jekh Saga stories featured the McGarry siblings. Obviously, we’ll be seeing plenty of them in stories going forward—they’re not leaving the farm anytime soon. I thought of doing three Cipriani romances next, but decided I had a different sort of story in mind for Precious. (Look for some short adventures featuring her and Fastida in the future!)

  Of course, I won’t leave you hanging with Luke. His story, Royal, featuring Alex Hauge and his match from Earth is next. There’s a tiny, subject-to-change sneak peek of that on the next page. Jekh 6 will be Brenna’s story.

  If you’re wondering when the heck Salehi and Eileen will get their act together?

  Soon. Like, after-Brenna-soon.

  FROM ROYAL

  (Subject to change.)

  2039—REGIONAL SHIP DEPOT, CITY OF BUINET, PLANET JEKH

  With nothing to show for it, Luke Cipriani had been awake all night brainstorming ways to back out of what was probably going to be his biggest error in all of his thirty-something years. He’d done seriously rash shit before, but even he could admit he’d gone over and beyond with his newest act of stubborn recklessness. The last time he’d tried to make someone jealous on purpose, he’d been twelve and some kid down the block back in Boston had just gotten himself a brand new bike.

  Luke had one-upped the snot-nosed brat by finding an even better one to steal.

  He obviously hadn’t thought that all the way through, and apparently, he wasn’t doing much better as a grown-assed-man.

  “The fuck am I dong?” he murmured, anxiously leaning against the railing that separated the depot’s seating bank from the passenger flow area. He’d flown his ship in from Little Gitano, arriving the night before, and hadn’t had a good night of sleep since leaving his friends’ farm three days prior. His head was a mess, worrying about the stranger he’d imported to marry and the reason he’d felt he’d had to go to such extents in the first place.

  Drumming his fingertips against the sides of his arms, he watched space travelers disembark from a Category 4 passenger mover. In layman’s terms, it was a space bus, or a cruise ship—not the fastest thing in the heavens, but they could travel the distance between Earth and Jekh in about three weeks without forcing its riders to have to dip into their life savings. It was a damn sight faster than what most of the human people on the planet had traveled in to get there.

  Now that the Jekhans had reclaimed control of all their technology after booting the formerly conquering Terrans off the planet, they were starting to get back into space. For about twenty years when Earth had been trying to establish its colony on Jekh, all of the tech went into disrepair. Engineers from Earth could rarely wrap their minds around the alien technology. Most was unsalvageable, but the government’s technology office was up and running again and they were generally pretty good at prioritizing what needed to be put back into service first.

  In spite of Jekh’s contentious relationship with Earth, Jekhans still needed the Terran boost to their sagging gene pool. There weren’t enough women on the planet—Jekhan or otherwise—and Jekhan men needed female partners to stabilize their hormones. It was due to their alien halves. An alien species called the Tyneali had seeded the Jekhans on the faraway planet as an experiment. The half-human race looked very much like their cousins from Earth—redder coloring aside—but had certain hormonal divergences that made their birthrate unstable.

  Luke was a plain-old human guy from Boston. His hormones were just fine. He wasn’t importing a chick because he was on the brink of death, but because that was the only way he could move on from…him.

  Scoffing and dragging a calloused hand down his unshaven chin, he scanned the faces emerging from the C-4, a disconcerting blend of ambivalence and stark fear shuddering through him.

  He should have backed out. He should have told his matchmaker Brenna, “Know what, babe? Never mind. Take me off the list,” but he was a petty motherfucker and didn’t.

  It wasn’t completely his fault. The Ciprianis had a genetic tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as the old saying went. They started forest fires to warm themselves up when campfires would have done just fine.

  They signed up for matchmaker services, preferring the obligation of caring for a stranger to pining over the people they needed to get the hell over.

  “Ais told me you’d be here,” came a low, cultured voice behind Luke.

  Not just any cultured voice, but one with a Norwegian accent.

  Luke squeezed his eyes closed tight and mouthed, “Shit.”

  He’d always thought his life would make a perfect sitcom because the improbable just kept happening to him. The person he needed to get the hell over was apparently in Buinet.

  Of all damned places.

  “God.” Luke hung his head and pried one hand off of the railing to rub the bridge of his nose. “What do you want, Duke?”

  Luke could feel the other man’s proximity looming at his right, and the gazes of nearby strangers boring into the both of them. Duke cut a dashing figure and people on Jekh tended to know who he was.

  Alexander Hauge, whom Luke called “Duke” because Duke hated that shit, was grandson to the king of Norway.

  And the closeted bastard was a pain in Luke’s ass and heart.

  “I was just in the area.” Duke bumped Luke’s right elbow with his left and leaned in to whisper, “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have to resort to such measures.”

  “And what measures would you be referring to? I’m pretty sure Ais wouldn’t tell you that much of my business.”

  “You’re right. She didn’t. My little sister was quite coy about it, which only made me all the more suspicious.”

  Blood may have been thicker than water, but Ais wouldn’t throw Luke under the bus. She was his best friend’s wife and he loved her as much as he could love any woman who wasn’t his, wh
ich made his infatuation with Duke all the more disturbing.

  At the speaker bleat of the announcer, stating first in Jekhani, then German, then English, that the next section of passengers was disembarking, Luke pushed himself upright and scanned the walkway.

  He didn’t know if he’d recognize the lady, though had to hope that he would. The FBI had trained him well in face recognition, but the investigations he been tasked to do back on Earth weren’t personal. Pulling the equivalent of a mail-order bride off a spaceship most definitely was. He knew she had dark hair, and that it may either straight or curly. It’d been both ways in the images in her packet. Her eyes were either brown or that shade of gray that may as well have been black. She was from New York and liked “adventure,” her profile had said. She was pretty in a catalogue model kind of way.

  A couple of years ago, a lady like that could have gotten his dick hard on sight because he hadn’t been especially picky, but he just didn’t have the mojo anymore. Ais had ruined him.

  And then Duke.

  Fucking asshole.

  Look for Royal in September 2017.

  Subscribe to my newsletter to receive notifications about new Jekh Saga releases.

  OTHER JEKH SAGA STORIES

  ERSTWHILE

  As an adamant opponent of Terran settlement on the planet Jekh, Owen McGarry made his family name synonymous with “traitor” on Earth. Lobbyists standing to profit from off-world colonization hinted that the Jekhans were preparing to declare war. Nearly twenty years after Owen’s supposed death, his granddaughter Courtney wants to learn the truth—even if she has to travel to the far-flung colony to do it.

  Court soon learns that not only was her grandfather right about the Jekhans, but that conditions on their world are far more hostile than she feared. Terran forces decimated the population of the resident human-alien hybrids, and the people who remain seem to be all out of fight. That is, except for the pair of men Court finds hiding in her basement.

  Fugitives Murki and Trigrian see a future in Court. On a planet where so few women remain, she has the potential to be the mate the lovers need. And more, she could become the advocate for their people that her grandfather didn’t get the chance to be.

  When the corrupt local government seeks to punish Court’s friends and family for her actions, she has no choice but to make a stand. If it takes a riot to make the people on Earth see that they were misled about Jekh, she’s more than willing to start one. After all, her reputation couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  ___

  CRUX

  Erin McGarry fears she’s becoming the very thing she hates. She traveled to the planet Jekh to get her big sister, Courtney, out of a jam, and now Erin has become a colonist, too. In spite of the planet’s unstable political environment and ongoing rioting by the native Jekhans, Erin fears that retreating to Earth would mean she’d never see Courtney again.

  To complicate her ordeal further, as one of very few women on a planet of desperate men, people expect Erin to pick a lover—or two—and settle down. With the Jekhan race having nearly been obliterated by Terran colonists, Erin refuses to help further dilute their culture. But at least two men think Erin’s objections don’t hold water.

  They may have been enemies at first sight, but Esteben Beshni and Headron Jiro intimately bond over a common goal: making Erin their mate. Just when they think they’ve made headway with convincing her, the men’s efforts are choked by the reemergence of Erin’s long-missing grandfather and by unsettling revelations about the abductors who created the Jekhan hybrid race. If they can’t convince Erin that a mixed-culture ménage is the intergalactic ticket to happiness, they may miss their chance to have children.

  How can they help rebuild Jekh if the one woman who wants them both is too idealistic to commit?

  ___

  SALVO

  Owen McGarry’s plan to isolate himself on planet Jekh in hopes of escaping survivor’s guilt about his identical twin’s death drastically backfires when the newest inhabitant of his sister’s farm proves she can’t be trusted with independence.

  Raised in an alien lab and designed to be a “better” Jekhan hybrid, lonely Ais is actually nearly blind and can barely communicate. While her hostesses bend over backward to make Ais feel welcome, their brother Owen treats her like a petulant child who lacks common sense. After enduring a quarter century of experimentation on a cold Tyneali space station, Ais wants to feel useful and wanted, but Owen thinks what she needs is to be locked away for her own good.

  Lust and affection bloom in close quarters when gutsy Ais shows she’s more than a problem for Owen to solve. His gruffness doesn’t deter her. She soothes his wounded spirit and can actually put a smile on his face, but love on Jekh is never simple. Ais is being hunted by three entities with competing agendas, and they won’t stop until they have her.

  Owen didn’t move to Jekh to play hero, but if he doesn’t want to see true love slip away, he’ll have to quickly learn to be one.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  H.E. Trent is the science fiction romance pen name of USA Today bestselling and award-winning author Holley Trent. She’s the author of dozens of sexy, snarky romances set on Earth and beyond.

  Connect with her online:

  Website: www.holleytrent.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/writerholleytrent

  Twitter: www.twitter.com/holleytrent

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2017 by H.E. Trent

  This book is published by Holley Trent

  www.holleytrent.com

  holley@holleytrent.com

  All rights reserved. No parts of this work may be reproduced without prior consent of the author except for short quotes used for purpose of review.

  Wager is a work of fiction. Names, locations, and events are either created by the author or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people or locations is coincidental.

  Cover art design by Clarissa Yeo/Yocla Designs

  Copyedited by Tasha Harrison

  Proofread by Cassie Hess-Dean