(A Sci Fi Alien Abduction Romance)

By Celeste Raye

Chapter 1:

Space, lit with light trails from the inhabited planets, sat outside the windows of the spacecraft. Jessica lifted a hand, tucked a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear, and then leaned closer to the glass, her eyes searching the dark for any faint ripple in the space around them.

Talon’s reflection came up in the window, wavering behind hers, and a hard knot settled in her belly. Talon was strong and tall, his wide eyes as silver as a star, and his mouth as ripe and kissable as his shoulders were broad and touchable.

Jessica swallowed hard. Talon was a Revant, one of the last remaining of his race. He was also the one who had rescued her from the ship that the Federation had put her on after she had discovered the secrets that they had not wanted her to know. Secrets she had no business knowing because she was a Capo, and an officer of Law on the planet known as New Earth. Or Old Earth, depending on which part of the galaxy one hailed from.

“That last ship was quite profitable.”

Jessica nodded. “I’d say.”

Talon was not just a space pirate; he was a being on a mission of revenge. The Gorlites were what they were hunting, and with the intention of eradicating them. If they happened to get a few ships that were bound for Federation-affiliated planets and the credits and other things that would be sold for credits that were aboard those ships at the same time, even better.

Talon’s fingers rested on her shoulders. Her clit tingled, and her nipples stiffened. Her muscles went slightly rigid as her breath sucked in.

Talon saw her as nothing but a capable warrior, not a woman, and she knew she would never be able to change that fact.

She was a warrior, and a powerful one. Skills she had learned made her formidable. Her hatred made her unlikely to be defeated.

His warm breath washed over her cheek. “What is it?”

He turned her slightly, and she glanced upward at his face then away very quickly. “I have a bad feeling.”

She did. It was not just related to the fact that she had a massive desire for him that was growing more out of control every day either. Her gut told her that something was wrong and that they should see it.

A frown erupted between Talon’s brows. “Talk to me about that.”

Talon always listened to her. He didn’t dismiss her because she had a woman’s anatomy. He didn’t notice that anatomy, and she sighed and stepped slightly away from him, hoping the distance would help her clear her thoughts and figure out what it was that was eating at her gut and whispering of danger.

“I don’t know what it is. It’s just there.”

Talon’s eyes went past her to the windows. Space and planets lay out there, but all she could focus on was his handsome face. Another shiver of desire ran through her body, and she tamped it down. That sense of foreboding came back.

Talon sighed. “You know what? Maybe it’s this exchange.”

She considered that. Selling off ill-gotten gains was always tricky and dangerous, and it was made more so by the fact that the Federation had a high price tag on pirates’ heads.

She managed to find air and drag it into her lungs. “Perhaps.”

“We’ll skip it. We can head to an outlier instead.”

Relief hit. Her eyes went back to the plenty they had been supposed to land on. Her breath hitched. Desire shook her, but so did foreboding. “If you think that is best.”

“I always trust my gut, and I have to admit that I feel like something is off here too. I can’t say what.”

Talon walked away. Jessica turned from the windows then back, a small frown on her forehead.  Was it just that exchange? There was maybe something wrong there, but what if what she really felt was the clear and present danger that was her attraction to Talon?

That could very well be.

Trusting Talon was stupid. He would do whatever it took to accomplish his end game, even die. He would burn the whole universe to bits if he thought it would get him what he wanted, and getting in the way of that was sure to result in her getting hurt.

Not to mention that at the moment, the ships Talon commanded, and the credits he helped her to acquire, were something she was actually dependent on and that too rankled her. She had been dependent on a system and a man before and look where that had gotten her: on a slaver ship bound for a pleasure planet and with her mind wiped by the Capo.

The ship banked sharply. She heard the whirring and roaring that meant the cloaking device had gone up. Another pang struck. What if she had been wrong? Then they had just lost a perfect opportunity to offload contraband and every minute that passed with that contraband on the ship was another moment that they were in danger. Their papers as a cargo ship would pass inspection, but there was no way that they could explain the contraband, and that would mean having to kill whatever Federation officials boarded them.

Picking a fight with the Federation was stupid. They owned most of the universe. They were a powerful corporation run by the wealthiest planets that had brought smaller planets and systems into line by bringing war to those planets and systems and then taking control when the armies they were up against fell.

A fight with the Federation was just what she wanted though—and Talon was equally willing to fight that Federation. The Federation had destroyed his system and planet. Killed his parents, and had done so all to gain control of a wormhole that the Federation had known would collapse and cause the system to collapse along with it.

Her own reasons were just as bitter. It had not just been that they had sent her off with her mind wiped and to become a slave for a pleasure planet, where she would have died in chains and in a filthy cell, but because the Federation had destroyed all that she had loved.

She had managed to keep her deepest secrets, even in the mind wipe, because Yori had taught her to build memory caches in her brain and hold things within. They were like lockboxes that she could open and close at will, and she had slammed them shut, locked them, and then buried them deep in a hidden chamber of her mind when she had been captured by her fellow Capos after her betrayal was discovered.

Of course, she had betrayed them, her fellow Capo and the Federation.

Under the ground lived far too many humans, all starving and sick, all of them virtual slaves to the credit chips implanted in their arms at birth and whose bills were always so high.

There were some down there who birthed their children outside the Nexus, and so they escaped that fate of being sent above to work while being forced to go underground again after their twelve-hour day to slowly starve to death.

She had not been able to stand it. She had helped more than one person remove their credit chips, and she’d also learned a secret that not even Jeval, one of Talon’s brothers and a being blessed with the gift of being able to slip into people’s minds, could uncover.

The ship hewed hard right. The shudder and thrust of the engines made the floor rumble below her feet. Her eyes scanned the space around the ship yet again.

Nothing.

It was highly possible that she was afraid of the thing growing in her, the desire that made her want to go to Talon’s bedchamber and slip into his bed, and arms.

She did want that.

She craved it.

More than anything else.

More than credits.

More than revenge.

More than knowing what it was that she had hidden with her brain.

She wanted Talon and so badly that her body ached continually with that want and need.

And he did not want her.