by H. E. Trent
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE JEKH SAGA
Erstwhile
Crux
Salvo
Wager
Royal
SUMMARY
Luke Cipriani refuses to be pushed back into the closet, so when sparks fly between him and the secretive Alex Hauge, he’s quick to throw ice water on their fling. Luke decides next that the best way to get the royal-blooded hired gun out of his system is to find someone else to marry…and fast.
Enter Autumn Ray. Luke thinks the mysterious businesswoman relocated to faraway Jekh from Earth solely for their match, but the calculating princess of real estate has other plans. Jekh is rebuilding fast and is overdue for a population boom, and Autumn wants to be the government’s go-to lady for new developments.
The engagement was a way for her to get her foot in the door, and Alex isn’t about to let some scheming fraud from Earth come between him and Luke. He’ll do whatever’s necessary to break the newlyweds up.
When Luke discovers, though, that there’s more to his wife than meets the eye, he’s suddenly got his work cut out for him. While Alex is willing to go to incredible lengths to be with Luke, Luke doesn’t believe he should have to choose one lover over the other. On Jekh, there’s no such thing as “third wheel,” but if Alex and Autumn can’t ease their friction, someone will be the odd one out…and it won’t be Luke.
CHAPTER ONE
2039—REGIONAL SHIP DEPOT, CITY OF BUINET, PLANET JEKH
Luke Cipriani had stayed awake all night, brainstorming ways to back out of what was probably going to be the biggest error in all of his thirty-four years. He’d done seriously rash shit before, but even he had to admit that he’d gone above and beyond with his latest act of stubborn recklessness. The last time he’d tried to make someone jealous on purpose, he’d been twelve. A jerk kid who lived down the block from his parents’ house back in Boston had just gotten himself a brand new bike. The kid had shown that hundred-dollar ten-speed off as though the wheel spokes were made of solid gold and like there were diamond flecks mixed into the paint. He never could stand people who to rubbed their good fortune in his face, so of course, he’d had to find a way to one-up the kid. Took him a few days, but he’d found an even better bike…and he’d stolen it.
That baby was a top-shelf, high-end sort of bike like the ones the prep school kids in the suburbs had. After all, that’s where he’d found the thing. In Luke’s opinion, the dumbass owner shouldn’t have left the thing leaning against a mailbox the way he had, and he deserved to be taught a lesson. Obviously, the bike hadn’t meant much to him, so why shouldn’t Luke have helped himself?
Thanks to hindsight, Luke could admit he hadn’t thought that caper all the way through. The bike had a GPS tracking chip, and Luke had done his first official stint in juvie for stealing it.
He’d grown out of his thieving compulsions, but apparently, he wasn’t doing much better at the whole say-no-to-revenge thing as a grown-ass-man.
“The hell am I doing?” he murmured, anxiously leaning against the railing that separated the depot’s rows of public seating from the passenger flow area. He’d visited the depot more times than he could count since arriving in Jekh back in ’37, but in all those times, he’d just been passing through—fueling up his little ship between one leg of a mission and the next. As a government contractor, his job was to find out what was fucked up on Jekh and help the fledgling government search out fixers. He was starting to wonder if he was the one who needed a fixer. In trying to fix his life, he’d added a whole new layer of chaos.
Hanging his head, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and contemplated stretching out on the hard as hell bench for the shortest of power naps. Back on Earth, he’d learned to sleep standing when he was in the FBI, but horizontal rest was more energizing. At the rate he was going, though, he could probably fall asleep while walking.
He’d arrived in Buinet after three days of solo travel from the remote northern village of Little Gitano. He hadn’t had a good night of sleep since departing the farm that his friends owned and that he’d been living on for more than a year.
Most folks on the Beshni farm slept in actual houses, but Luke, along with a couple of unattached ex-servicemen, spent most nights in a parked cargo ship called The Tin Can. The damned ship was practically a lawn ornament, or maybe an oversized paperweight. It could probably still get into orbit—assuming there was enough of the right kind of fuel to be found for the old Category 18 space ship—but there was enough wrong with the conveyance that Luke didn’t trust traveling much farther than to the general store and back. And for a man who’d stolen an experimental space ship from the FBI and launched it into space with no training or even an instruction manual, that was saying something.
Blowing out a long, ragged exhalation, Luke rubbed his eyes and gave his head a clearing shake. His brain was a mess on even the best of days, but the combination of sleep deprivation, non-stop anxiety 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 intensified his muddled thoughts.
He hated feeling so strung-out—hated feeling like he wasn’t in control. He craved order on his own terms.
Drumming his fingertips against the sides of his arms, he watched space travelers disembark from a Category 4 passenger mover. In terms of functionality, the vessel was a space bus or a cruise ship. The Tin Can wasn’t the fastest thing in the heavens, but it could travel the distance between Earth and Jekh in about three weeks without requiring passengers to dip into their life savings to pay for the trip. Cat-4s were a hell of a lot faster than what most of the human people on the planet had traveled in to get there. The trip had taken some of his friends six months.
Progress.
Now that the Jekhans had reclaimed control of all their technology after booting the Terrans off the planet, they were starting to get back into space. Earth had been trying to establish its colony on Jekh for about twenty years, and during that time, all of the tech went into disrepair. Engineers from Earth couldn’t wrap their minds around the alien technology. Most was unsalvageable, but the government’s technology office was up and running again and they were pretty good at prioritizing what needed to be put back into service first.
In spite of Jekh’s contentious relationship with Earth, Jekhans weren’t quite ready to close the door on migrants. They 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. The biolo
gical dysfunction was caused by a genetic quirk of their alien halves. A species called the Tyneali had seeded the Jekhans on the faraway planet a thousand years ago as an experiment. The half-human race looked very much like their cousins from Earth, redder coloring aside, but their hormonal divergences made their birth rate dangerously unstable.
Luke was a plain-old Italian guy from Boston. His hormones were just fine, and he certainly wasn’t adding anything important to the gene pool. He’d simply chosen to make Jekh his home, for better or for worse.
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.
Alex.
Prick bastard.
Scoffing and dragging a callused hand down his unshaven chin, Luke scanned the faces emerging from the Cat-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 your list,” but he was a petty motherfucker and forced himself to go through with the farce. Members of the Cipriani family had a genetic tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as the old saying went. They were the kind of idiots who’d start forest fires to warm themselves up when putting a little space heater in the corner of their room would have done the job just fine.
They did hasty things like signing up for matchmaker services, to distract them from pining over the people they needed to get the hell over.
And Luke needed to get the hell over Alex.
He got a sinking feeling he never would, just before a low, cultured voice behind him intoned, “Ais told me you’d be here.”
Luke’s entire body seized with panic.
No fucking way. No. Way.
He knew that voice wasn’t a coincidence. He’d already decided that the universe was out to get him. Of all damned places he could be on the enormous planet, Alex was in Buinet.
Luke squeezed his eyes closed tight, pounded his thighs with his fists, and mouthed, “Shit.”
He hung his head again and pried one hand off of the railing to rub the bridge of his nose. “What do you want, Duke?”
The other man didn’t immediately answer.
Luke could feel him looming at his right. The gazes of nearby strangers bore into the both of them. Duke cut a dashing figure and people on Jekh knew who he was.
Alexander Hauge, whom Luke called “Duke” because Duke hated that shit, was a known mercenary, notorious philanderer, and third-eldest grandson to the king of Norway.
And the bastard was a pain in Luke’s ass, and, unfortunately, his heart. The planet was filled with bisexual men, and yet Luke had to go senseless over that one.
“I was just in the area,” Duke said.
“Sure you were.”
“Ah.” 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 your plans, which only made me all the more suspicious.”
“That’s my girl,” Luke murmured. Blood may have been thicker than water, but Ais wouldn’t throw Luke under the bus. She was his best friend Owen’s wife and Luke loved her as much as he could love any woman who wasn’t his, which made his infatuation with Duke all the more disturbing.
Soap opera shit.
Luke laughed dryly and shook his head.
That was exactly what it was. The worst outer space soap opera ever and Luke couldn’t even be the leading man when competing against a handsome devil like Duke.
“Oh, fuck me,” he muttered to himself.
“What did you say?” Duke lifted one of his pristinely arched dark eyebrows.
His entire face was pristine, and every time Luke made the mistake of looking at him, he stared for longer than was good for him.
Symmetrical. Elegant. Perfect skin. Exquisitely molded lips with just the right amount of fullness.
Duke was a walking, talking mannequin who had a pretty cock and fun accessories like guns and a wicked-fast ship.
He was not at all Luke’s type.
“What’d you say?” Duke repeated, his sensuous lips curving up at one corner.
Luke managed to tear his eyes away at the same time the nearby speaker chimed, demanding his attention.
The depot, normally abuzz with activity, quieted. In a smooth baritone voice, the announcer stated in Jekhani, German, and then English that the next section of passengers was preparing to disembark.
“This might be it.” 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 facial 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 was most definitely personal.
He knew the lady had dark hair but didn’t know if it was straight or curly. She’d worn it both ways in the images in her profile packet, and he hadn’t been able to tell which was her natural state. Her eyes were either brown or that shade of gray that may as well have been black. He couldn’t tell. She was always squinting a bit.
Her build was slim, but not skinny. She took care of herself, the best he could tell. That was good. He definitely didn’t want to get involved with someone less active than him. In fact, she’d be in for a rude awakening if she thought there was anything leisurely about life on Jekh. She was from New York and liked “adventure,” her profile had said, though, Luke would soon see if that was the truth.
Overall, he remembered that she was unassumingly pretty in a catalog model kind of way. Not a bad thing, necessarily. A couple of years ago, a lady like her could have gotten his dick hard on sight because he hadn’t been especially picky, but he didn’t have that hot-blooded mojo anymore.
Sweet Ais had ruined him with her gentleness.
And then Duke had come along to kick Luke in the feels while he was down.
Fucking asshole.
“I hope you didn’t come all the way to Buinet just to stalk me,” Luke told Duke with a snarl. “Go do what you need to do and leave me alone.”
Unbothered, Duke flicked a speck of lint off the placket of his flight suit. “I came to Buinet to pick up Herris and take him back to the farm, but I volunteered for the errand because Ais said you were here.”
“And you felt an unquenchable yen to be all up in my business.”
“There’s nothing wrong with curiosity,” Duke said blithely. Luke wanted to pluck Duke’s cheeks until that tight, well-rehearsed smile fell off his face. He always suspected Duke was mocking him when he smiled like that.
“Curiosity gets people in trouble sometimes,” Luke said.
Curiosity was how men ended up with their fingers around other men’s dicks. Masochism was what made them go back for seconds—especially in Duke’s case. Duke didn’t do men. He just wanted to be done by Luke.
Again, Luke scoffed.
Not gonna happen.
Before he’d left Earth, Luke had sworn off being in relationships with men who weren’t out. He hadn’t left Earth because of his secretive ex, though. He’d left because Owen was on Jekh. The guy had been in a bit of a sticky legal and political situation, and that had made Luke’s heart hurt. He didn’t like his friend getting in trouble without him.
If he were capable of keeping score, Luke would probably determine that he loved Owen even more than he loved Ais. They’d been friends since they were toddlers. Just friends. Over the years, however, hormones had surged and rewired Luke’s brain in the way puberty tended to do, and Luke developed a soft spot for his friend.
And Owen was hot—make-a-guy-come-without-touching-him hot—but Luke didn’t go there…for the most part. Owen was straight as an arrow, however, he
was tolerant of Luke’s occasional urge to sneak a touch. Luke had done his groping under the guise of “just in the neighborhood” whenever the two friends had shared a lover. Owen would snort and give him a warning smile, and that’d be all.
They’d never be more than that. Owen had a wife and a little boy, so Luke had figured he needed to start trying to put his own family unit together.
He’d settled in advance, telling himself he’d probably never find anyone who turned him on as much as Owen did, and certainly not as much as Owen and Ais did when they were together, Jesus Christ, but then there was Duke.
Shiny, rich bastard.
Duke nudged his elbow again, and Luke cut him a sideways glare.
Mistake.
He was almost too pretty to look at: an archetype of male perfection. Bright blue-green eyes. Black hair combed back. He always looked like he’d just had a fresh cut. High cheekbones. Strong jaw. That wide mouth with lips that Luke knew, unfortunately, were soft and yielding.
And his body…
Jesus.
Duke was tall and broad-shouldered and his ass didn’t allow for even a centimeter of slack in the seat of his pants. Luke had already spent too many nights thinking of that ass with his hand in his pants and hoped to eradicate the image of it from his brain as soon as was reasonably possible.
The mail-order wife was supposed to help with that.
A Jekhan man wearing an official Buinet Transit Authority uniform approached the railing carrying a tablet computer. He tapped a voice amplifier clipped to his collar and announced, first in Jekhani, then in German, then in English, “If anyone here is waiting for passengers from the Childickia, there’ll be a short delay in disembarkation. Our immigrations computer is being rebooted and we’ve had to send remaining passengers back to their cabins to wait. We apologize for any disruption.”
A chorus of groans erupted from the waiting area.
Before he could walk out of earshot, Luke, impatient, called after him, “How long? Can you guess how long? I haven’t slept, you know what I mean? Rushed all the way here from Buinet. Low on fuel, so it took me three days of flying.”