by Marla Monroe
Lost in Space 1
Sharing the Female from Earth
After crashing on an unknown planet on their way to Omega, Della is faced with choosing between Veran, an alien, or Kane, a human stranger, as mates. Or does she? Both men want her, but does Kane only want her because there are so few human women there, and what of Veran, when his planet has no females either?
One man fears he is isn’t strong enough to keep her safe on the strange planet while the other fears he is too stoic and unfamiliar with what a human female needs emotionally to be happy. Can the two of them work together to make Della happy and keep her safe?
Della is willing to try as she develops feelings for the bronzed alien man who saves her life while discovering all the ways Kane makes her happy. When worry creeps in over their ability to share, the two men band together to prove their determination and deep feelings for her.
Genre: Futuristic, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Science Fiction
Length: 40,738 words
SHARING THE FEMALE FROM EARTH
Lost in Space 1
Marla Monroe
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
SHARING THE FEMALE FROM EARTH
Copyright © 2014 by Marla Monroe
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63258-141-9
First E-book Publication: August 2014
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2014 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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DEDICATION
To Dippity Doo and Little Bit,
Because it has been so hard to come to terms with two of my dear muses’ deaths, I’ve waited till now to acknowledge that they are truly gone. They were there with me for over twelve years each and for many years were my only sources of joy and companionship. I miss them each and every day. Their wet tongues and furry paws can never be replaced in my heart. I dedicate this series to you guys because I was lost when you found me, and even our differences didn’t stop the love you gave me each and every day of your painfully short lives.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
About the Author
SHARING THE FEMALE FROM EARTH
Lost in Space 1
MARLA MONROE
Copyright © 2014
Chapter One
So much smoke. Della Ferrell struggled to breathe as she climbed over the debris she could barely see. She pulled the T-shirt she was wearing over her nose and mouth in an attempt to filter the air she sucked into her already smoke-filled lungs. Her head throbbed from where she’d hit it on something when all hell broke loose. What had happened? Why had they crashed?
Three months earlier she’d been living below ground back on Earth in manmade bunkers originally built for the military’s use. She and twenty other women had been chosen, along with forty men, to make the journey to one of the three planets as soon as a ship could be outfitted with needed supplies to sustain them their first year.
When the sun had begun to spew solar flares right and left, disrupting everything electrical on Earth, no one had really thought it would amount to much. It would settle down and everything would return to normal. Only that hadn’t happened and it was eventually revealed that the sun was going to eventually destroy Earth.
General panic had erupted in every country, with whole governments toppled by panicked citizens. The US had fared better, but not by much. They had scrambled to put plans into place to relocate their inhabitants to other planets. Three had already been picked out for further exploration when it was determined they could sustain life during routine space exploration. Then they figured out that the women of Earth were contracting Shear’s disease as a result of the increased radiation from the sun. It left them barren, unable to have children, further endangering the continuation of mankind.
The decision was made to sequester all remaining fertile women and all children under the age of eighteen below ground in the bunkers to shield them from the sun’s devastation. Every female between twelve and fifty were screened for Shear’s disease and tested to see if their eggs were still viable. If they weren’t, they were left above ground to live out the rest of Earth’s days the best they could.
Della stumbled over something and fell, her hands hitting the ground littered with rubble. The stinging told her she’d probably cut them, but with so much smoke, she couldn’t see well enough to tell. The air close to the floor wasn’t nearly as thick with smoke so she began to crawl, heedless of how much it hurt her hands and knees. She had no idea where she was headed, but followed the emergency
strips that pointed the way.
She tried to remember what had happened before she’d been knocked unconscious but all she could remember at present was getting up that morning and going to breakfast in the vessel’s large cafeteria. Everything after that was a blur. The next thing she knew was waking up just outside the door to her room with blood pouring from a gash on the side of her head. Her entire body ached as if she’d been thrown about when they crashed.
So far she hadn’t seen another person and the deafening blare of the alarms kept her from hearing much of anything either. Her one thought was to keep moving in the direction of the emergency arrows lit up along the floor.
As she crawled over chunks of the ceiling and walls, the fear that she was the only one left alive began to build inside her. What would she do? She wasn’t a survivalist. She’d told them that when they’d selected her as a passenger. She didn’t know the first thing about starting from scratch out in the wilds of some unknown planet.
Out of nowhere, someone appeared to her right, making her start, a muffled yelp escaping her covered mouth. The other person moved closer to her, pointing forward but not saying anything. Della wanted to roll her eyes since it was obvious that was the direction she was headed. It became evident that it was a man crawling beside her by his size. He dwarfed her with his broad shoulders and long arms and legs. She couldn’t tell much else about him through the smoke and with all the dirt and blood covering his face and arms.
Before long, they reached an area where eight or ten others were gathered in front of a closed door. Her companion moved forward through the small crowd to help the other two men try and pry the door open. Evidently that was their way out and it wasn’t budging. Her heart sank that they would all die right there because of a stuck door. Hysteria bubbled just beneath the surface, but Della fought it down. She would not freak out. All she had to do was make sure she kept breathing and was ready to go once they got that door open.
They’ll get it open. They have to. I’m not going to escape Earth just to die out here in space or wherever we are.
She wished they could turn off that blaring alarm. When they did get out of there, no one would be able to hear anything for hours. Out of one hundred people who were onboard the ship, she prayed that the few she could see weren’t the only ones who were still alive.
Della wiped at the sweat running down her forehead into her eyes and only managed to smear it with the blood from her hands. On closer inspection, it was obvious she had quite a few cuts and scrapes on both hands. She was afraid to move to look at her knees for fear she’d fall over something. Instead, she tried to ignore the discomfort she felt and concentrate on what the men working on the door were doing. She couldn’t see much through the haze, but she could tell they were moving around up there. It gave her hope.
All of a sudden, a blast of clean air burst over them, dispersing some of the smoke. They’d managed to get the door open. Though it wasn’t cool, it wasn’t filled with smoke either. When the small group of people surged forward, the three men up front stopped them, gesturing that they needed to make sure it was safe to use. She figured that if there was clean air, it meant it was safe, but didn’t try and argue. It wasn’t like they could have heard her over the den anyway.
One of the men disappeared through the opening. After what seemed like hours, he returned and nodded, shouting into the ear of one of the men. He nodded and passed along the information to the next man the same way. Slowly word got around until someone yelled into her ear that there was a ladder that led along the side of the elevator shaft for this type of emergency. They were going to follow it down to the next level until they reached one of the hatches that would allow them to get out.
As she waited her turn to descend the ladder, Della began to go over what she knew in her head to keep her mind off the fact she was going to be climbing down a ladder in the dark to an unknown location. She was desperately afraid of heights as well as enclosed spaces. She’d spent very little time in the cabin she shared with another woman for that very reason. It felt like it was the size of one of her bathrooms back home.
Okay, what do I know?
They must have crashed somewhere that had gravity, since they weren’t all floating around in the air. With the ship all broken up like it was, Della didn’t think it was possible for the systems to be functioning properly. Life support systems might still be up or they had lucked out and found a planet that actually had oxygen they could breathe. So why, if there was a planet with oxygen and gravity this close to Earth, hadn’t they sent them there to begin with? The planet they had been heading for was called Omega One and was supposed to take nearly nine months to reach.
Her turn arrived to start down the ladder. Holding to the edge of the opening, she peered down but couldn’t see much at all. A shaft of light illuminated a section of the interior, showing nothing but metal walls, pipes, and electrical wiring. It looked to be a lot farther to the next level than she would have thought.
The man at the door gestured for her to hurry up as he coughed through what looked like a T-shirt tied around his lower face. Della nodded and forced herself to grab the top rung of the ladder with one hand while stepping to another rung with a shaking foot. Once she had both hands on the top rung, she started moving down, wincing each time she changed rungs with her injured hands or put her full weight on her right knee.
She quickly learned not to stop to rest when the person above her stepped on her fingers or head if she did. The trip down seemed to take much longer than it should have, but when she finally stepped on solid ground and not a metal bar, she breathed a sigh of relief. Hands grabbed her and pulled her out of the way so the next person could step down.
A flashlight appeared somewhere ahead, the beam bouncing off of more bulging metal walls. Then they stepped out into an area where sunlight pierced the gloom from some of the windows looking out at the planet they’d crashed on. The deafening noise suddenly stopped, but with the ringing in her ears, Della still couldn’t hear anything. Everyone smiled slightly at the noise finally going away.
She searched around the people milling about in a daze much like her for her husbands, but didn’t see either of them. Had they made it and were still somewhere on the ship wandering around? She hadn’t really known them very well and they hadn’t sought her out the few months they’d been on board. Still, she wanted them to be okay.
She wandered over to one of the windows where the light streamed in and found herself looking out at towering gray-looking tree trunks. They were in or on the edge of some type of forest or woods. When she attempted to look up, the limited size of the window prevented her from seeing the sky or the tops of the trees. Beneath the tall trunks, what looked like blue carpet covered the grown. It even grew a few inches up the trunks of the trees. No plants or bushes grew as far as she could see.
“Hey! Come back over here so we can go over what happened,” one of the men called out.
Della picked her way around the mess littering the floor and joined the others. As they all settled in a circle of sorts using some of the fallen boxes and debris as places to sit, she counted eleven of them. There were seven women and four men. Surely there were more survivors than just them.
“How is everyone’s hearing doing?” a tall, blond-headed man asked with a forced smile.
The low murmurs indicated that they could hear but still had ringing in their ears. He nodded and rubbed his forehead with his arm.
“I’m Major John Lance. I’m one of the crew on the ship. Though there was a lot of smoke back where we came from, I don’t think there is an actual fire raging out of control. There are automatic fire extinguishers in all areas that are triggered anytime a fire is detected. The initial explosions came from the fuel cells, which also had extinguishers placed for just that type of situation.” He stopped and looked around, seeming to gauge if everyone appeared to accept his explanations. He nodded and continued.
“I wasn’t on the bridg
e when whatever occurred happened, but I was in contact with them. We came up to a black hole before they were able to detect it. It sounded like it just appeared right in front of them. I heard someone shout that all of the computers were going crazy and the next thing I knew I was flying across the hall and hit the wall. I must have blacked out for a few seconds because I woke up to a section of the ceiling on top of me. I was lucky it was just a superficial covering and not something heavier.” He looked around at everyone with a worried expression.
“Where are we?” one of the women asked.
“I don’t know. Right now, we are essentially safe. The planet we’re on seems to have oxygen and gravity similar to Earth’s. That’s a plus,” he said.
“Are we the only survivors?” another woman asked.
It was something Della had been wondering as well. She hadn’t seen anyone else as they had made their way to their present location. Of course, in all of the smoke, they could have been crawling right past bodies and she probably wouldn’t have noticed. That sent a shiver of unease across her shoulders.
“I don’t know. The first thing I wanted to do was find a safer location that was free of smoke. Now that we’ve found this place and it looks fairly stable, the next step is to send out a search party to look for survivors and supplies. Once we have covered the entire ship, we’ll decide what to do next.” John looked around at the small group as if expecting more questions, but everyone remained silent.
