Crux: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 2) Read online

  There weren’t many women on the planet, and Erin would have been something of a commodity to those intruders—maybe even more valuable than the land they were fighting for. Terran settlers would want her for a broodmare, whereas Jekhan men only wanted her because her presence made their weird hybrid hormones happy.

  She blew a raspberry as she hopped into the truck cab. “Gone are the days when men want you just because you’re fun, McGarry.”

  She got the truck started, giggled—perhaps a little maliciously—at the thud sounding from the rolling body hitting the side of the truck bed as she stomped on the accelerator, and then aimed the vehicle toward Headron.

  She lowered the hovering pile of junk just enough for Headron to easily roll the unconscious bodies into the truck bed, and then waited for him to latch the tailgate.

  He climbed in, and knocked back his hood, revealing his grinning face. “No COM signal, unfortunately.”

  All the air escaped from her body.

  He furrowed his brow. “What’s wrong?”

  She couldn’t help her reaction. He was a living, breathing work of art—the perfection of a Michelangelo statue made flesh and blood, only anatomically correct. She’d always thought it was a shame that Greek and Roman sculptors believed large penises were grotesque.

  “How dare you?” she muttered as she got the truck high enough again to hover smoothly.

  “Why do you say that? You always say that when you look at me.”

  “Because you’re gorgeous.”

  “Really?” Incredulity notched his voice up an octave on the second syllable of the word.

  “Ugh. You know you are.”

  “First I’ve heard of it from you.”

  “Like I said, you know you are. I shouldn’t have to tell you. Certainly, enough people already do.”

  “No. Jekhans do not say such things.”

  “Yeah, I keep forgetting you guys don’t overtly flirt.”

  “Teach me how.”

  “Why, so you can know how to even more efficiently turn my brain into sludge? No, but thank you.”

  “You confuse me, Erin.”

  “Good. All of you guys confuse me, so we’re in the same boat.”

  Two of the first Jekhan males Erin had ever seen up close had been her sisters’ lovers Trigrian and Murki. They set a high bar, but Headron hit all the right checkboxes for her. He had the tall, dark, and handsome thing down pat in the Jekhan way. Thanks to the genetic influence of the Tyneali, Jekhans were ruddier than their human counterparts. Redder skin, redder irises, redder hair. Headron had the darkest hair and eyes Erin had seen on a full-blooded Jekhan, and he had one of those panty-melting smiles that somehow managed to be both sweet and ostentatious at the same time.

  Worse, in her opinion, the guy was completely without pretense. Ignoring him would have been so much easier if he’d been a pretentious schmuck. She’d had plenty of practice with those sorts on Earth. They’d always been so easy to kick out of her bed after one-night stands. She wished she had the fortitude to kick Headron out of her bed. Doing so seemed self-defeating. He was so…nice.

  They rode in silence to the barn, and the quiet was fine with Erin. The silence between Headron and her was never uncomfortable because he was absolutely perfect in every way and knew when to shut the fuck up.

  In spite of being unable to send a message ahead via COM, the usual suspects converged on the truck after Erin drove through the open barn doors. She’d barely set the vehicle on the ground when Trigrian and Murki, looking to be half asleep, dragged two of the trespassers out of the truck bed and pushed them into the temporary brig Owen had constructed for exactly that purpose. In six months, they’d apprehended thirty land prospectors—a few particularly brazen ones twice. They’d had to quickly adapt.

  She stretched her arms over her head and whined at her back muscles’ continuing refusal to unknot. Dawn approached. “Someone gonna call the peacekeepers in Little Gitano to have them fetch the idiots?”

  “If they’re there,” Trigrian said. “If we can get the COM back up for more than five minutes, we can call over and see.”

  “I’m not sure it’ll work so well as that when Owen finishes his repairs.”

  “Owen’s doing the best he can,” Murki said. “I’m astounded he was able to get the connection as functional as he did, given the devastated infrastructure. Our system was extraordinarily sophisticated. No other Terran engineer had been able to make sense of the Tyneali algorithms.”

  “He’s a technology savant, I guess,” Erin said. “Most of the teenaged boys I knew growing up would lock their bedroom doors because they were watching porn. Owen locked his because he owned illegal tech.” She stooped and gave the mixed-breed terrier Court had hauled all the way from Earth a scratch between the ears. “Hey, puppy.”

  Apparently satisfied that he’d gotten his sniffs and licks in, Jerry scampered toward Headron. Headron always had bits of food in his pockets.

  “Are you going to bother questioning them?” he asked his hosts.

  Murki grunted and pulled the curtain in front of the cell. Though folks in the barn may have been able to hear the perpetrators whining and pleading to get out, they wouldn’t have to look at them. Murki got angry when he had to look at them, and Court preferred that he keep his Tyneali bloodlust tamped down so he didn’t scare the chickens. They always stopped laying eggs after Murki bellowed.

  “No,” Murki said. “We’ve gotten to the point where we prefer to leave the interrogating for the volunteer peacekeepers. We never learn any new or useful information. I personally don’t care about their motives anymore. All that matters is that they came, and that’s offense enough. I’m becoming exceedingly intolerant of the disruptions.”

  The razor-sharp edge of his deep voice lent credibility to his claim.

  Erin rubbed down the hairs on the back of her neck that had stood on end. “Glad we’re on the same team, Murk,” she said in an undertone.

  “He’s not so frightening,” Trigrian said on a laugh.

  “That would be incorrect. If Al Capone had a smile like a toothpaste model and a fondness for swearing in six languages, he would have been Murki Beshni.”

  “Who?” Trigrian asked, then shook his head and put up his hands. “Never mind. I’ll look up the name.”

  “Yeah. The database’ll probably explain better than I could, anyway. Murki’s a frightening motherfucker, but you’re just used to him.” Murk had all the innate practicality of his race with little of its submissiveness. He was a perfect adjunct to the McGarry clan. That was a good thing, in Erin’s opinion, because Court had his baby.

  “After more than twenty years of acquaintance, I would hope so.”

  “That’s cute. Acquaintance. You act like he’s just some guy you see at the gym every now and then and not someone you share everything under the sun with, including my sister.”

  “‘Frightening Motherfucker’ has a certain quality,” Murk said flatly, rubbing one of his heavy-lidded eyes. “I suppose I could take on one more name.”

  “You already have five, Murk,” Trigrian said. “I’d appreciate not having to memorize one more.”

  “Anything for you, my love.”

  Erin leaned against the truck’s tailgate and watched Trigrian drag the third man off the bed.

  Trigrian’s long hair was half-pinned, and he was usually so impeccable about keeping his hair up around people who weren’t his lovers. He’d obviously been in a hurry. Erin had never seen that much of his ass-length, dark auburn hair down before. She wondered, briefly, if she should avert her eyes. Gazing upon a Jekhan man’s unpinned hair was something of a taboo if the man belonged to someone else.

  She closed her eyes and sighed.

  “I think I’m starting to understand why Court’s always wistfully musing about playing in your hair, Trigrian. It’s so shiny and silken. Not to sound like a shampoo commercial or anything. I mean, your hair is nice, too, Murki, but try as I might not to star
e at you guys, I see yours all the time.”

  “The novelty has worn off, has it?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” she muttered.

  Murk kept his reddish blond hair shorter than Trigrian’s—about shoulder-blade-length—and rarely bothered pinning his per Jekhan custom. He looked like the model Fabio might have, if Fabio had been two meters tall with eyes the color of burgundy jewels.

  “Trigrian, what is that?”

  Erin opened her eyes in time to see Murk take Trigrian by the chin and tip his head backward. He appeared to be examining the bloody new scratch along the jaw that Trigrian must have gotten while carrying the last trespasser into the poky. “That mewling son of a bitch. I ought to pull his balls out through his throat for harming you.”

  “I’m fine, Murk.”

  “You let me decide that.”

  Erin chuckled low. “I thought you were supposed to be working on cleaning up your language for your daughter, Murk.”

  He growled and unhanded Trigrian’s chin. “Given the circumstances, I’d say the words coming out of my mouth are admirably tame.”

  “Uh-huh. Tame wouldn’t have been the adjective I’d have picked first, but I suppose it’ll do in a pinch.”

  “I find him highly amusing,” Headron said. “I can never guess what he’ll say next. He’s a rare breed amongst our kind.”

  “Not that rare.” Erin said the words so quietly, she was pretty sure no one had heard.

  She could think of one more person with a similar inability to temper his speech. He happened to be Murk’s closest living relative…and the only Jekhan Erin had ever wanted to punch in the face.

  Most Jekhans had timid constitutions because they’d been bred by the Tyneali to behave that way, but Murk—and apparently others in his paternal line—were aberrations. Court, being the foul-mouthed wretch that she was, couldn’t really complain. The two did try to tone down the language for their daughter, though. Kerry wasn’t even a year old yet, but she was starting to mimic sounds and babble. They wanted her first clear word to be “Daddy,” not “Damn.”

  “Do you recognize any of those men in the cell from your trips to town?” Headron asked Erin.

  She clucked her tongue and shook her head. “No. Not even the slightest bit. I found this, though.” She patted her pockets in search of the sign one of the men had been trying to post and followed her brothers-in-law toward the cell.

  After they’d tossed Perpetrator Number Three inside and closed the door, she handed the paper to Trigrian. “Maybe that name belongs to one of those guys, and maybe the name is someone else’s who couldn’t be bothered to do his theft in person.”

  “The latter has usually been the case,” Trigrian said, yawning.

  Murki gripped his shoulder and gave it a tender squeeze. “To bed with you. You’ve been awake for two days fretting over the dishe crop. Sleep, for a change. I’ll monitor those three until the peacekeepers get here in the morning.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Must I compel you?” Murki asked in that warning tone that always made Erin’s eyebrows shoot up and her grin go wide.

  She had a pretty good idea of what kind of bedroom trouble they preferred. They weren’t exactly shy about their attraction to each other, and they weren’t as good at coding their innuendo-tinged language as they must have thought. That was how she knew Murki was super-Dommy, Trigrian was apparently submissive to him, and Court somehow fit nicely into that sandwich. Erin didn’t want to think too hard about how.

  Trigrian padded off to bed, the sound of his bare feet slapping the ground the only noise in the outbuilding, so of course, Erin, Headron, and Murki all started talking at once.

  “Owen needs to get those perimeter sensors functioning at nighttime so we can stop doing these patrols,” Erin said.

  “Have you considered those offers from the displaced Jekhans from Buinet who’d live on the farm in exchange for security work?” Headron asked Murki.

  “Go to bed, both of you,” Murki said.

  They stared at each other a while, probably trying to untangle all the words they’d scrambled together.

  When Murki narrowed his eyes at Erin, she harrumphed, turned on her heel, and then walked toward the door. “I’m going, but only because I was going to go anyway. This chick’s tired.”

  “As you should be,” Murki called after her. “You really don’t need to get up every time you hear Kerry cry. She has two doting fathers and a mother who would angrily insist that she be allowed to lift a finger.”

  “Waking is a reflex. I can’t help it.” She paused in the doorway and leaned against the frame, looking at him. “Back when I was a kid, we McGarrys seemed to always have someone’s baby in our house. My mom used to do emergency babysitting for ladies who had to go to work at odd hours. I guess after being around so much of that, some girls start developing a certain instinct to figure out what’s wrong when they hear a baby cry. Court and I used to take turns sleeping with earplugs in.”

  “Perhaps you should acquire some from the meet-shop the next time you go to town.”

  “Nah. One day, Kerry will sleep through the night every night, and we’ll all miss how little she was way back when. Don’t take my memories away from me.”

  “I never pegged you as being sentimental,” Headron said as he passed her in the doorway.

  She followed him toward the main house. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, bub.”

  “So tell me things.”

  “Why? So you can tell me I’m weird and needy, and two weeks later you’ll get bored with me and be ready to be entertained by some other chick?”

  “Terran males are a strange lot indeed, if that’s how you’ve been conditioned. I don’t think you’re…weird, whatever context you meant that in. And certainly not needy. Not as needy as I am.”

  Erin shrugged and risked a glance at the lady’s cottage as they passed on the path. Its occupant had asked not to be disturbed time and time again. Erin had needed four months to give up on who she considered to be her first Jekhan “patient.” The trained paramedic part of her, and the reluctant savior part of her, too, hated the idea of people suffering, but she’d finally had to force herself to leave that man to his own devices.

  The cottage had been built apart from the main house to be used by the family matriarch. Jekhan women tended to become repulsed by their men over time—a biological quirk mistakenly bred into them. They lived on-site, but separate from the main house. Their men generally oversaw the majority of childrearing duties as a team.

  Court, being human, didn’t want to live that way. She was a firm fixture in the main house.

  The occupant of the lady’s cottage was the supreme ultimate Jekhan asshole who Murki couldn’t even hold a candle to—his brother Esteben.

  “You gave up on him,” Headron said chidingly. “I see you looking. Stop tormenting yourself.” He put a hand to the small of Erin’s back and kept her moving.

  “I hate giving up on anyone,” she said. “I feel guilty about quitting. I guess I’m too Catholic for my own good.”

  “I’m not familiar with your Catholicism, but I know Jekhan males.”

  “Yeah? And what’s your opinion of that one? You’ve never spoken of him.”

  Headron paused with his hand on the door of the main house and ground his teeth for a few beats.

  That was rarely a good sign. Headron always had a kind comment about everyone, or at least a sufficiently neutral one.

  “Headron?”

  Finally, he shook his head and opened the door, whispering, “My uncle taught me well to hold my tongue. Allow me to continue to do so, please.”

  She wanted to press, but the brush of his gentle fingers across her parted lips silenced her query.

  “Please.”

  “Okay.” He needn’t have begged. Denying such a lovely man small things was always so hard because she had to refuse him the big ones.

  Besides, she was tired. Dawn wa
s close, and a good night’s sleep was one of the most expensive currencies a person could get on Jekh, given the continuing chaos in the city of Buinet and beyond.

  Especially since people with the last name “McGarry” had sparked some of the chaos.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Go back to sleep,” Headron whispered. “There’s no need for you to wake.”

  “Headron,” Erin murmured sleepily against his chest as he pulled her closer toward him.

  She smelled so vital and feminine—the perfect hormonal perfume. She had everything he required to keep his mind sane and his body performing at its peak, but he couldn’t look at and touch Erin McGarry and want her solely for medicine. Perhaps his will was soft, but he didn’t think anyone else would be able to resist her sensual allure, either.

  “Hard not to be awake with you poking me like that,” she muttered.

  “As you might say, it’s just biology.”

  “So you’d wake up with a hard-on for any woman in your bed?”

  “No.”

  He could feel her rolling her eyes against his naked chest.

  Obviously, she didn’t believe him. She was entitled to her distrust. He might have been untrusting had the tables been turned.

  Jekhan women were scarce, and had been even before the first Terran soldiers arrived almost twenty years prior. They’d been born at a ratio of about one female to every two males, just as the Tyneali had evolved. The ratio didn’t work well for the hybrid race. It limited options, and the human parts of Jekhan brains still liked having options. So many of their women had likely been plucked off the planet, likely sold in to sex slavery by Terran profiteers, though no one could confirm for sure. There were too many other pressing issues on Jekh to deal with before the people set their attention on problems elsewhere.

  Trigrian and Murki had gotten lucky, however. Courtney, having arrived in his home city of Buinet with a ship full of recruited police officers from Earth, had been his first compelling option for a lover in years, but Headron hadn’t been persistent enough. Jekhan men—Beshnis notwithstanding—weren’t overt with their interest of potential lovers. They tended to bide their time and wait for an appropriate means of making a connection.