Stowaway (Star Line Express Romance Book 1)

by Alessia Bowman

  “Aymee,” he says, and I love it when he says my name.

  I reach up and run my free hand, the hand that’s not pinned underneath me, through his damp, thick blond hair. I lean up to kiss him, my mouth ready to feel his again and again.

  Then he ruins everything.

  “Do all Choryneans lie all the time? Or is it just you?”

  Niklas

  No one, I’m sure, has ever looked more beautiful, more sensual, more satisfied. Although I notice that she’s still having occasional aftershocks.

  Her wide gray-green eyes are hypnotizing me, I think. I can’t stand to look away from them.

  A momentary flash of Minda crosses my mind’s vision and I wonder how I ever thought she was someone I wanted to love, much less someone I did love. Or someone I was furious with after she and Rej latched on to each other. How did I care about her at all?

  Damn you, First Officer Niklas Arca. You’re getting pulled in yet again. The only difference is that this time you know better. This time you know the female you’re so attracted to is a liar, a schemer, a wanted criminal, and, worse still, the saboteur of your part-owned Centreale, making Minda and her coconspirator, Rej, seem like petty thieves at worst and careless fools at best.

  Yet, even knowing all this, knowing it, you couldn’t stop yourself. You can’t stop yourself. Don’t want to stop yourself. And never even considered stopping yourself.

  And, damn your Big World ego, if you had it to do all over again—and assuming the equatorial stabilization system doesn’t fail completely in the immediate future, I might just do it all over again—but if I could go back and do it all over again, I would. I’d do it a hundred thousand million times over again.

  With this alluring, unnerving, scheming, lying saboteur. Who I cannot get enough of. Who I cannot stop wanting.

  “Well?” I say. “Do they? Are they all liars?”

  She squirms to get away from me.

  “Look around, Aymee Desryx. There’s nowhere to go. Might as well stay here.” I pull her closer to me. I’m still inside her, although the mood is changing rapidly. I stroke her hip. Its rise and shape are made for my touch.

  “Still trying to find the slot?” she says, her mouth twisted in bitter anger. Although, she is Chorynean, and I know so little about them other than what I learned from Joston Parst, so perhaps that expression means What a great liar I am. Deal with it.

  “Why?” I say. “Are you hiding that and lying about that like you’re lying about everything else?”

  She squirms upward, trying to disengage herself from me, and since my length and girth have both finally subsided, she succeeds.

  My cock, lying limp yet still swollen, has lost some of its charm. Although the scheming saboteur has lost none of her attractive qualities. Not one.

  “I seem to have a tendency to fall for liars,” I say, even though I was just thinking it and hadn’t planned on saying anything. Even if it’s the truth. But I don’t have to let her know about it, do I?

  “I have a tendency to fall for idiots,” she says, which makes me laugh. I’m a lot of things but I’m not an idiot. Idiotic sometimes, but never an idiot.

  “Because what other Big World idiot would sabotage his own ship so thoroughly that his own life would be in jeopardy?”

  “You tell me, master engineer. You’re the one on the suicide mission.”

  Revelation hits me square in the face. Of course she’s on a suicide mission. She’s going to have to face the notoriously brutal, torturous Chorynean Guard execution squad if she ends up back on Choryn.

  So when idiot me took her back to the scene of her treachery, she fixed it so the Centreale would never be able to make it back to Choryn—or back to anywhere.

  All this because while I was off-duty I had the bad sense to wander around the corridors near the hot box. Because I had the worse sense to find the Chorynean stowaway and the even worse sense to go after her.

  Followed by a bout of sheer idiocy where I removed her from this very cell and took her back to my quarters.

  I’d have to say that the only thing I’ve done right all day is end my seventeen-month-and-three-day-long sex drought. And I did that magnificently, if I may congratulate myself for having done one thing right today. If nothing else.

  “I have to get up,” she says, and I hold out my topside arm, showing her there’s nothing holding her back.

  She goes to the corner and uses the toilet while I stare at her. Not because I have any interest in her toilet habits, but because I can’t take my eyes off her. It’s like she’s mesmerized me. Well, she has mesmerized me. I’ve never met a Chorynean before, though. Maybe they’re all like this.

  Maybe they all give you that heart-stopping look that makes you want to take them in your arms and make love to them for endless days and night, coming up only for air or a drop of water.

  The look that makes you instantly forget your past loves and your past hurts and your very past itself and catapults you into their irresistible trap of delicious Chorynean passion.

  That makes you want to give up everything and run off with them. To anywhere. Maybe even to Choryn. Or to the uninviting, black-as-death Gadnon. Because if she’s going there, you are too.

  The Chorynean Guard execution squad probably employs someone just like Aymee Desryx to get its victims to willingly submit to them.

  If the Centreale weren’t about to disintegrate and if I weren’t locked up here, accused of sabotaging my own ship, I’d be hiring her on to work with Draybirge. Because no one would be able to resist her.

  Let’s go put you in prison for life, she’d say to the wrongdoer of the day, and the wrongdoer would say, Let me run there as fast as I can. Thank you for locking me up. I would do anything you say, Aymee Desryx. Without question.

  Maybe I am an idiot. Maybe Aymee Desryx is actually right about that. Who else would be stupid enough to introduce Minda to their worthless brother?

  Who else would be having blistering hot sex with the ship’s saboteur? And thinking of doing it with the ship’s saboteur again?

  And who else would be falling in love with the ship’s saboteur?

  With a sneaky, lying, treacherous villain who’s wanted for high crimes on Choryn?

  With someone who wouldn’t recognize the truth if it were that or die?

  With someone who in the past few hours has created more trouble for you and actual doom for your shipmates without so much as a moment of remorse?

  Only the idiot first officer of the Centreale.

  Chapter 15

  Aymee

  I look around. There’s not much to look at since the cell is tiny, but I’m trying to avoid looking at my accuser even though he’s taking up more than his share of space here with his tall, sturdy body. With his golden-eyed look and his perfectly sculpted chest and his blond hair, now splayed out on the pillow under his head.

  With his pleasure-destroying statements.

  This jail cell is better than the hot box, I remind myself. I can stand up and lie down here. I can walk around here. And, more than that, this place has a toilet.

  And, yeah, unlike the hot box, the jail cell contains First Officer Niklas Arca, who just gave me the most exhilarating, scintillating, thrilling, satisfying experience of my life. Who made me feel, if just for a moment . . . for more than a few moments, actually . . . that I could fall in love with someone. Well, with him, if I’m going to be honest with myself.

  But I’m a lying Chorynean, aren’t I? I don’t tell the truth. Per the very liar I’m locked away here with.

  “Lie down,” Niklas says. Is he trying to lure me back for another round of sex? Not that I’d mind. Not that I don’t want it myself. And I certainly want that more than I want to be blamed and accused again. For things I never did.

  I sit on the edge of the cot that he’s sprawled out on, the full glory of his naked body uncovered and almost taunting me with the sheer sensuality of its presence.

  What the hell? I ha
te this Big World Terran. Yet just being next to his body sends me into fits of desire. And if only he weren’t saying such cruel things to me, I’d love hearing his voice, which is rich and deep and almost soothing.

  “You’re nothing at all like Lasson,” I say.

  “More lies,” says First Officer Arca.

  “I’m not lying!” I say. “You are nothing like Lasson.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” he says. “I meant that you said you’d never done this before, even though it seems quite obvious that you’ve done this numerous times.”

  “What?”

  “Just stop lying. I can’t stand it. Lasson must be one of your lovers.”

  I sigh in frustration. Then I laugh, because what the Centreale’s first officer just said is absurd.

  “I’ll have to make a note of this for the future,” he says. “Assuming there is a future. That liars laugh the more they lie.”

  “No no no,” I say. “I’m laughing because Lasson could not be further from being my lover if he tried. He’s my match.”

  Niklas sits up now and leans back against the cell wall. I do the same. But I keep my distance, as little as that distance is. And we aren’t looking at each other.

  “What the blasted hell is a match?” he says.

  The ship lurches harder than it’s lurched so far and now we look at each other.

  “Did you have to set the Centreale on a self-destruct course?”

  “Niklas,” I say. “I haven’t touched anything on this ship—”

  “I can testify that that’s a complete lie,” he says as he puts his hand on his cock.

  “I mean . . . I don’t mean . . . I mean the EQSS. I only looked at it.”

  “For all I know, Choryneans can just look at things and fuck them up.”

  “For all I know, you rigged it so that the moment anyone got near the array, the doom mechanism would engage.”

  “Doom mechanism?”

  “I made that up.”

  “Right.”

  “A match is your life mate,” I say.

  “So this Lasson fellow is your life mate. Nice. I’m sure he’ll be quite, uh, angry to hear what you’ve been doing with me.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t care at all,” I say. “I didn’t say he was my life mate. I said that one’s match is your life mate.”

  “And you said that Lasson is your match. So he’s your life mate. Seems simple enough to me.”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, he’s my match, but . . .”

  “But?”

  “But I refused to mate with him.”

  “Because you have too many other lovers?”

  “Because I don’t love him!” I say.

  Niklas gets up and pulls his pants on, to my great disappointment. Hiding a body like that inside clothing is a terrible mistake. He should be on permanent display in a gallery or something.

  “Yet you chose him as your match. Typical,” Niklas says as he puts his shirt back on, the tattered one, which looks more tattered than it already did.

  Then he does something so sexy it’s all I can do not to rip off his ripped shirt. He pulls back his clutch of thick blond hair and ties something around it with such skill, it’s obvious he’s done this thousands of times. My breath shortens.

  But instead of ripping off his clothes, I put mine back on. Well, the shirt is his, but now it’s mine. Sort of.

  “I didn’t choose him,” I say. “He was chosen for me. All matches are.”

  Niklas

  “What a stupid system,” I say. “Trust the scheming Choryneans to come up with something that inane.”

  “It’s not stupid,” she says, defending the very system she seems to have violated. “It’s just the way things are on Choryn. It usually works out. It always works out.”

  “Does it, now? Then how do you explain your refusal?”

  “He has a beautiful house,” she says. Her eyes get all faraway-like, and I can tell she’s remembering this beautiful house. Unlike my nonexistent house. Unlike my now-inaccessible-to-me quarters.

  “I’m sure he’ll be pleased as all hell to see you when you return,” I say. “Maybe you can visit his house one last time before the execution squad comes for you.”

  “We’re never making it to Choryn,” she says. “Not with the EQSS the way it is. We’re not making it anywhere.” The scheming sexpot looks happy while she’s saying this.

  “You’ve done your job, Aymee the expert saboteur. I just can’t figure out why you wanted to do this and why you roped me into it.”

  “I haven’t roped you into anything,” she says.

  I wish she hadn’t put her clothes back on. Although I can see the outlines of her fine form through my borrowed shirt. My cock is starting to forget that it just had sex.

  “Lasson Birtak,” I say, remembering what we were talking about before I was overcome by lust.

  “How do you know his name?” She’s looking at me like I know the whereabouts of the Destroyer of the Universe, the great mythological figure of the last millennial cycle.

  “Aymee Desryx,” I say. “I don’t forget anything. Even if it’s said in the heat of sexual excitement. Not all that long ago you were telling me you hated him.”

  “I hate you,” she says.

  “Well, the feeling is mutual,” I say, thinking how much alike love and hate are. In this case, they may be more than merely alike. They may be synonymous.

  “I’m going to try to explain this to your dense Big World mind and then I’m going to give up. Okay?” Aymee says.

  “Of course, my Chorynean cultural affairs representative, part-time saboteur, and full-time liar. Go right ahead.” I turn around so that I’m facing her side. She’s still leaning against the cell wall the cot’s next to.

  This female Chorynean has a stunning profile. I stop myself from staring too hard.

  “Everyone on Choryn has a match. It’s the law.”

  “Well, that shouldn’t’ve stopped you, the female who’s wanted for—how many crimes is it?”

  “Choryn’s laws are very, uh. Let me see. Strict.”

  “No wonder you don’t want to go back.”

  “Do you want me to explain this to you or do you want to just keep telling me what a liar and a criminal I am?”

  “Perhaps a bit of both,” I say.

  For some weird reason, the image of my brother, Rej, jumps into my head and, along with it, the image of my socking him in the jaw, which is far less than he deserves. And far more than what I did when I had the chance.

  “Choryn has a very rigid legal system,” she says. “The laws have for the most part been in place since the First Chorynean Legislature convened, and that was over three millennia ago.”

  “Good thing nothing’s changed since then,” I say with my best sarcastic intonations.

  “Well, in some ways, nothing’s changed,” she says. “Choryneans are still Choryneans and problems are still problems. On Choryn, we like to avoid and avert problems.”

  “All except for you,” I say. “You like to create them.”

  “Shut up!” she says just as the ship jerks with a violence that’s more intense than the last several lurches. Aymee is thrown toward me, and I can’t say I’m unhappy to have her luscious body up against mine.

  I go to embrace her, then remember that now added to her crimes is the crime of betraying her lover, one Lasson Birtak, the Chorynean with the beautiful house. I restrain myself.

  “I give us another two hours, tops,” she says.

  “That long?” I say.

  “At most,” she says.

  “Better finish your story, then,” I say. “Time’s running out.”

  “This is how it was explained to me—how it’s explained to everyone—when we’re children,” she says. “That it’s inevitable that everyone will want to mate with someone else. And that it’s also inevitable that, left to one’s own choices and impulses, they’ll pick the wrong one to mate with.”

  �
��It’s as though the Choryneans have read my mind,” I say. “I’d love Rej and Minda to hear about this stuff.”

  “Who are Rej and Minda?” she says, and the ship starts feeling like it’s plummeting, even though there’s nowhere to plummet to. We’re not in anyone’s gravitational field.

  “It’s because of the EQSS,” she says. “When it’s fucked up, it can create these sensations.”

  “Finish your story,” I say.

  “They—the Chorynean authorities—they decided that no one should be in the position to choose their own mate. It would almost certainly be a disaster. So, since that first legislature, they choose your mate for you. Your match.”

  “And how do they match you up?” I say, picturing a set of data a thousand meters high.

  “By lottery,” she says.

  Chapter 16

  Aymee

  “All right, Aymee Desryx,” First Officer Arca says.

  I congratulate myself for having stopped thinking of him as Niklas, as the universe’s most enticing lover, or as someone I could ever care about. He’s just First Officer Arca.

  “Well, it isn’t all right,” I say. “Although it does work out for a lot of couples. Even a lot of very unlikely couples.”

  “You’ve really lied to me enough,” he says. “That this millennial-old system would be a lottery is just ridiculous.”

  “I agree,” I say. “But it’s the way it is. Although it is somewhat rigged.”

  “Of course it’s rigged!” he says with a triumphant grin on his face, making him even more handsome and appealing than he already was. Blood starts racing through my torso and swirling around my pelvis.

  “It’s Choryn!” he says. “Isn’t everything rigged there? Choryn, the most corrupt spot in the Seven Galaxies?”

  “It’s not the most corrupt spot,” I say, defending my home world, even though I would normally be on the other side of this argument.

  “You should just finish your story,” he says. “I’m beginning to think that liars tell the best stories. Must be part of the whole liar’s package. And as long as we’re all going to be dead pretty soon, we might as well finish off our stint here in existence with a roaring-good tale made up by an expert Chorynean liar.”