Stowaway (Star Line Express Romance Book 1)

by Alessia Bowman

  And that touching them will have dire consequences—although that part is all based on rumors and on that dramatic vid, The Treachery of Joston Parst, which everyone’s seen so often that it seems like the truth.

  I have already touched this particular Chorynean, so I look down at the hand I grasped her with and, so far anyway, it hasn’t rotted off my wrist, which is what happened to Joston’s best friend, if I recall that scene correctly. Haven’t seen it since last week. It might be his brother. I forget.

  Too bad it didn’t happen to my brother.

  “Fuck you!” she says through the porthole, shouting as though I couldn’t otherwise hear her.

  Even though this rust bucket is something on the order of a billion years old, the cell is equipped with sound enhancement, so that anything said inside will be heard for about 350 meters, and it’s like she’s yelling into my ear.

  I turn around and notice the other stereotypical Chorynean thing about my prisoner: she’s damned good-looking, although not in a Big World way but in the Chorynean way, which way is strange but compelling. Her eyes are just a little too far apart, her cheekbones are slashed across her face, and her lips . . . and her body . . .

  I walk back to the cell.

  “Are you going to tell me your name now?” I say.

  “No!” she says. Her hands are on her hips and she’s doing her Chorynean best to seem powerful and defiant, but, you know, she’s locked up in a cell. How powerful can she be? I hold the winning hand here.

  “Fine, Salana,” I say. “And I was just about to order your rations delivered.”

  I turn around again and start walking down the corridor. Mostly because I don’t want to look at her anymore, because, if I do, I’m afraid that I might unlock the cell and return to my ravage fantasy, making it real. Even though there’s no actual metal ring in the cell to put around her pulsing neck. I can almost sense how that would feel under my hands.

  “Fuck you!” she says yet again, louder still. Good thing there’s no one else in this part of the ship, because it’s not good policy to let your crew mates in on such antics.

  I get farther and farther away from the cell, and it doesn’t feel good. Well, hell, I’ll have rations sent to her anyway, even if I don’t know her name. I’ll put Salana on the register and hope nobody—nobody else—thinks it’s bullshit.

  “Aymee!” says the voice from the cell. “My name’s Aymee, damn you!”

  Yes.

  That’s more like it.

  Chapter 3

  Aymee

  As soon as I say my name, I regret it. There are probably wanted bulletins out by now—it’s been hours and hours since I escaped—and how many stowaways named Aymee could there be on any given day or year or millennium? And from Choryn.

  How many are there? Just me.

  And here I thought I was being so clever by not giving First Officer Ego my entire name, Aymee Desryx, since my last name is a dead giveaway to my criminality. Alleged criminality. Even though I’m totally innocent. In a way.

  My captor, the too bloody handsome First Officer Arca, continues walking away from me. Maybe he didn’t hear me. Maybe I’m going to starve to death. Maybe I won’t mind starving to death. Maybe it’s very pleasant.

  More pleasant than, for example, being beheaded by the Chorynean Guard’s execution squad, who are famous for their perfected methods of prolonging every execution for as long as possible. I heard of a beheading that took over two weeks to complete, while the prisoner was kept alive—and awake.

  Yeah. Starvation is much better.

  I’m thinking these thoughts and unconsciously clutching at my still-attached neck when someone unlocks the door. I wasn’t looking up so I don’t see who it is, but it must be the first officer who imprisoned me.

  Arca! I think with something like happiness as the parts of me that aren’t starving start tingling with expectation and thrill. Probably because I’m so hungry.

  I stand up as the door opens and I have a flash-fantasy that not only will muscular and too-handsome First Officer Arca have a feast for me, but that . . .

  Except it’s not the Terran Big World’s finest specimen who’s opened the door. Instead, it’s a petite female with bright orange hair and a somber expression on her face.

  “Aymee?” she says. “I was told to bring you this.”

  She hands me a tray that has quite a bit of food on it. More than anything that might be termed rations. The tray-bringer looks over her shoulder, then looks back at me.

  “I brought you extra,” she says.

  “But you don’t even know me,” I say.

  “I have a Chorynean friend,” she says. “I trust her and I don’t care what anyone says about you. It’s not true. It’s been a long time since we left port. You must be unbearably hungry.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Chlo,” she says, giving me her hand.

  “Aymee,” I say unnecessarily, since she already knows who I am. I wonder how long I have to wait before I can start eating. What the etiquette is here on this beaten-down cargo transport.

  Chlo must sense both my hunger and my hesitation, because she points to the food and says, “Go ahead. Mind if I keep you company for a while? I don’t feel like going back just yet.”

  “Stay,” I say as I pick up the bowl and start slurping. Delicious. Fantastic. Ambrosia. Well, really, maybe it’s not delicious or fantastic and it’s hardly ambrosia, but it’s food—just what I need.

  After a few bites and Chlo not saying anything, between chews and swallows I remember what she said—I don’t care what anyone says about you. There’s only one anyone on this ship who knows squat about me: Arca.

  “What did he say?” I say. The last thing I picked up was so terrifically sweet that I wish Chlo had brought a hundred of these things with her instead of just two.

  “Who?” Chlo says. She’s leaning against the doorframe and occasionally glancing over her shoulder into the hallway.

  “Him,” I say. “The first officer.”

  “Oh, you mean Niklas,” Chlo says.

  “First Officer Arca,” I say, and spend some quality time with the second sweet foodstuff that I’m savoring for every moment I can get out of it.

  “Niklas,” Chlo says. Then she sort of scrinches up her face, as though I’ve just mentioned the Majnian Menace or something equally sickening and deplorable.

  “That’s the only first officer on this ship I know,” I say. “Other than you, he’s the only other being on this ship I know. Not that I know either of you.”

  I’d better shut up now and see if I can find out something, if indeed finding out anything will help me, a prisoner on the Centreale, a wanted criminal on Choryn, and a scrambling-for-solutions thinker in my own head.

  “He didn’t really say anything,” Chlo says. “Just to bring you your rations. And that you were a stowaway.”

  “And that I was from Choryn, I guess,” I say when Chlo looks like she wants to say something else even though she says nothing else.

  “Did he?” I have to prod. It’s my way. My training. Not that prodding has ever gotten me anywhere that’s any good.

  “Yeah, I guess he said that too,” she says. “I’ll see if I can get you into the proper lockup.”

  “Proper lockup?”

  “There’s a much nicer cell block on the starboard side,” she says. “This is just the temporary holding facility.”

  “For stowaways,” I say.

  “I’ve never heard of a stowaway on this ship, so I don’t know.”

  “Tell me about First Officer Arca,” I say, never knowing when to stop saying things.

  “Niklas? He’s harmless,” she says, “for a Big World Terran, anyway.”

  “I knew it,” I say. “He has Big World practically seared onto his chest.”

  “They don’t know how to hide it,” Chlo says. “Comes with the territory.”

  She goes silent while I finish my food. I think she must have to
take the leavings back with her, which is why she’s waiting here.

  When I’m finished, I put the last of the bowls back on the tray and sigh in gratitude.

  “Aymee,” Chlo says. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot,” I say, then wince. She could be one of those literal-minded types, the kind of social misfit who’d for sure be working on a fucked cargo transport. Maybe she’s going to take out a weapon now and shoot me right here.

  Well, at least I had a last meal. And the sweets were damned good.

  “Why did you stow away on the Centreale?”

  I look away. I don’t know this Chlo and I don’t want to tell her—or anyone—why I’m stowed away here. Well, currently imprisoned here. I’ve graduated from merely stowed away.

  “It’s because of a bad love affair, isn’t it?” Chlo says, her bright green eyes lit up with excitement. She puts her hand on her chest and sighs. “I hear love is just wonderful.”

  I’ve heard that too, although I’ve never experienced it. But since it is sort of because of something kind of a little small bit like that that I’m here, I decide to agree.

  “Yes. Love is terrible,” I say. It is.

  “That’s so romantic,” Chlo says in direct contradiction of my statement.

  She takes the tray out of my hands, smiles, and leaves the cell. And, yeah, locks the door after she’s gone.

  Niklas

  Once every few months I get an itch to contact my brother. I haven’t had that itch for a while so it takes me by surprise that I’m having it right now.

  Anything to distract me from the thoughts—and sensations—I’m having about that all-too-desirable stowaway I found in the hot box, a place for the storage of temperature-sensitive materials, not for the storage of Chorynean runaways with shiny black hair and a body straight out of a sex-starved teenager’s catalog of self-indulgence.

  Runaway? Criminal, most likely. Might as well admit it.

  I haven’t looked at the bulletins yet, but for sure she’s wanted for at least one or two serious crimes back on her hellish world. No one would risk this kind of thing—stowing away, on a cargo transport, too—just to leave home. You’d have to be running away from something. Something serious.

  Is that why I’m thinking about my brother? Because he ought to be running away from something? From me? Yet it’s the other way around—I’m getting farther and farther away from him. Good riddance, bro. You fucking bastard.

  I hope you’re enjoying your life on the Big World, reaping the benefits of everything you stole from me seventeen months and three days ago.

  The need to call him subsides. I just want someone to take my anger out on and he’s the most likely candidate. The most deserving candidate.

  Although today I have no particular reason to be angry, or any angrier than usual. Not that I can pinpoint anyway.

  I’ve been roaming the corridors for an hour now. I like the corridors. They have no personality or interest and, as a bonus, they have no demands. It’s soothing. And I desperately need some soothing, because my semidormant sexual urges have all sprung forth and are driving me wild with fantasies.

  Like how I’d like to unlock the cell where I’ve got Aymee holed up, close the door behind me, strip off all my clothing, and let her see what a real Big World Terran looks like. Then, because this is the way fantasies go, find out what a real Chorynean looks like. Naked.

  I try out a few different versions here. In the first one, she’s already naked when I open the cell door. That’s pretty satisfying but not as exciting as it might be.

  In the next version, I order her to strip and, after a playful tussle where we get to accidentally touch each other in increasingly more intimate locations, she obeys my order.

  But the fantasy I like the best and the one I stick with is the one where I barge into her cell, slam the door shut behind me, and then she says, “Niklas, I’ve been waiting for you.” So I rip off her clothes and have at her immediately while she moans in exquisite pleasure.

  Supposedly there’s a slot by the left hip of every Chorynean female—or maybe it’s the right hip. And I’ve heard that this is where they keep their hidden weapons.

  Damn it! I never looked for any hidden weapons. I am falling down on the job here.

  Well, I was officially off-duty. So I wasn’t falling down on anything.

  Found a stowaway. Good work, Niklas!

  Almost lost her. Be careful, First Officer Arca.

  Got her into the cell and locked her up tight. Be very careful, First Officer Arca.

  And got her fed, assuming Chlo did as I told her. She can be a bit distracted at times.

  Like I am right now.

  Since I’ve wandered the corridors for so long that now I’m right back in front of the door to the cell where the most itch-causing female in the Seven Galaxies currently resides.

  Chapter 4

  Aymee

  I must have fallen asleep. Maybe it was the big meal. Maybe it was the exhaustion of an overlong day, one that started out with me stowing away on the Centreale, hiding in the hot-as-blazes storage locker, needing a bathroom, and practically starving to death, then proceeded on to me not just hot but having the hots for the most annoyingly self-adoring Big World Terran who ever existed, and went on to my having a good meal with a pause in there for being incarcerated.

  At least I’m not on Choryn. At least the Chorynean Guard isn’t making the first of their not-lethal-enough cuts into my neck.

  At least I’m far away from Lasson. My intended. Well, maybe technically, he’s my husband. Although I think maybe he isn’t. To me, he isn’t. To everyone else on Choryn? Not sure. Doesn’t the union have to take place for the contract to be, uh, consummated?

  Although I’m not an expert at Chorynean law. Or any law.

  My expertise is in hypercalculation. Unaided hypercalculation. It’s more of a talent than an expertise, although I do have to practice some. And I am damned good at it. Better than anyone on Choryn. Made getting my engineering qualifications a snap.

  The hard cot in this crappy cell on this falling-apart yet grandly named Centreale has given me the best sleep I’ve had in weeks. In years, really. Since I found out about my future with Lasson. I much prefer this future. The one where Lasson is millions of light-years away and I’m locked up and fed sweet treats and left alone.

  Except . . . I’m not alone. Because someone is opening the cell door.

  I sit up. Maybe Chlo has come back with another meal. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. Could be hours. Could be a day. I feel very awake, so maybe it’s tomorrow, or however they tell time on this intergalactic cargo ship.

  But as the door opens I see not the petite, orange-headed Chlo but the large, broad-shouldered, muscular, damn him, First Officer Niklas Arca. All six and a half feet and a mile of muscle of him. They grow them big on the Big World.

  I stand up. Not that this will bring me into direct eye contact with my captor, but it’s better than sitting down, where he’ll loom over me like he’s a god and I’m a mere criminal, at his mercy. Which I am not. Also, he’s no god. Even if he does have the body of a . . .

  “Comfortable?” he says with that sly grin on his face. I feel like slapping it off and lift my hand, then remember that in some ways I am at his mercy. I put my hand behind my head and nod.

  “Very,” I say.

  “Did Chlo bring your rations?”

  “Yes,” I say, not mentioning how she brought more than she had to. Don’t want to get my only friend on this giant, plummeting-through-space rickety cargo ship in trouble. If she is my friend. And like I’m not already in enough trouble.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Several minutes of unbearable silence go on here. Maybe it’s only several seconds, but it feels like eons. I have nothing to say to First Officer Arca and he has nothing to say to me. We just stand there, looking at each other.

  Good thing he can’t see how hard my heart’s pounding,
assuming the pulse in my neck isn’t too visible. I try holding my breath every few seconds.

  More time passes. An eternity.

  I look away first. I was never good at the stare-down game. And I hate the way he’s staring at me—like I’m about to be his lunch. Or dinner. Or breakfast. I don’t know what time or what day it is.

  He looks at his hand, the very hand he grabbed my arm with.

  “I haven’t gotten the rash yet,” he says as he turns his hand over and flips it back again while he seems to scrutinize it.

  I take a step forward. And then I do slap his face, because I’m so tired of those awful stories about what happens to Big World Terrans when they touch a Chorynean that I can’t stand it.

  “Fuck you!” I say. “Of course your hand doesn’t have the rash. There is no rash.”

  “Really?” he says, calm and cool like he gets slapped every afternoon or evening or morning and it was nothing at all. He’s still staring at his hand and never reacted to my slap.

  So I slap him again—or start to.

  This time, though, he does react. He takes my wrist in his big paw and pulls me toward him.

  “Don’t. Ever. Do. That. Again,” he says, snarling, his golden eyes on fire.

  This is the point where he should shove me back away from him, but instead he tightens his grip on my wrist, pulls me closer, stares down at me, and says, “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

  Then he drops my hand and backs away.

  For a second there I thought he was going to kiss me or something. Disgusting. Even though I almost—almost—wanted him to.

  “First Officer Niklas Arca—isn’t that who I’m dealing with?” I say, trying to regain some composure.

  “I don’t know what—” he starts to say when the ship lurches to the side, throwing us both up against the cell’s back wall.

  His large, powerful body is pinning my not as large and less powerful—although still pretty powerful, for me, anyway—body to the wall.

  If it weren’t for the unexpected and scary lurch, the fact that I’m a stowaway and now a prisoner, the additional fact that I’m a wanted criminal on Choryn, and the extra fact that I absolutely despise this Big World Terran, I’d be enjoying this contact. Almost.