by Elsa Jade
And maybe having muscle like Cross (whyyyyy had she thought about hotbeds?!?) was extra protection.
The memory of being perp-walked out of her own office, cut out of the success that she’d made possible, erased from the history of her own making, made her bristle. She wasn’t just being contrary now. She’d grasped at the chance to recover some of what she lost over the last seven years: not just her job and work history, but her belief in herself. She wasn’t going to give that up again or let anyone else tell her what she could do with her life.
“I love feelings,” she lied through her very definitely gritted teeth. The throbbing in her jaw was going to need extra massaging tonight. As for throbbing and massaging elsewhere… Yikes, control-alt-delete, hard reboot that right out the door. “When do I start?”
Chapter 2
Wyvryn Cross stood with his fists clenched behind his back, reminding himself that his crew wouldn’t get paid if he strangled his capricious employer. His control had been taking a beating since he’d taken this job. But Evens had promised more than untraceable credits once the Intergalactic Dating Agency reopened in Sunset Falls.
A perfect matchmating algorithm… Was it even possible?
Cross eyed the Earther female, listening with half his attention as Evens expounded upon his project. “—As many ways as there are to find companionship and connection, obviously none of them are perfect or everyone who wants those things would be happy already—” And so on.
Standing at an angle to Tyler Lang, Cross noted the way she stiffened, obviously longing to reject Evens’ hypothesis, just as she’d been about to decline the project entirely. A twitch of curiosity made him sidle a step toward her. Why was she resistant?
More importantly, how could Evens guarantee the critical bondings for what was left of his crew when the architect behind the algorithm would be this closed-worlder who had no inkling of the existence of other sentient life in the universe? At best she might understand what other Earthers wanted and needed in a mate, but how could she save a rogue beast battalion when she had no concept they existed, when even their own people banished them as damaged beyond saving?
Impatience had him shifting his weight. The restlessness was getting worse, not just in him but in the other two members of his crew. But he was their leader; he’d made the decision to hide them from their command, to take this job on a closed world to keep them fed, not just their struggling bodies but their hope.
And hope was a hungry beast.
His gaze sharpened on the new Earther hire. When Evens had said he’d be bringing in an unsuspecting Earther programmer to develop the matchmating algorithm, Cross had imagined some pallid, vague-eyed numbers-cranker with chilled data gel running through their veins.
Instead it was this lanky being. She had the slightly hunched posture and squint common among compu-kind, and her lush backside seemed well-adapted to work from a chair. But her brown hair—the part not bundled under her cap—was threaded with fiery strands, and thousands of speckles of color patterned her dusky face like flying embers burning. And when she’d looked away from Evens to signal her skepticism—accidentally locking eyes with Cross instead—her gaze even shielded behind glass was keen, not distracted, and the same green-gray hue as the night skies above his homeland during the meteor storm season.
With that simmering watchfulness he sensed under her wariness, she was definitely a security risk for Evens’ IDA project.
And that churning, stormy gaze—reminding him of a yearning he could not satisfy—was a threat to his fraying discipline.
While he struggled with his unruly awareness of her, Evens was handing over a data stick of the sort Earthers used in their unsophisticated technology. “Everything you need is right here. With your expertise, I know you’ll have no troubles.”
“I always have questions,” she countered. “Especially if the user input is going to be as ‘out of this world’ as you say.”
Cross glared at Evens. Flaunting closed-world protocols was bad enough; coyly hinting at extraterrestrial existence was just needlessly haphazard.
Not that he and his crew could claim to be guardians of peace and justice—not anymore. And asking questions about out-of-this-world anything was going to get Tyler Lang into worse trouble than Evens was so blithely discounting.
As if perfectly aware of Cross’s seething but silent displeasure, Evens smiled at him. “Cross might be able to answer some of your questions too. He doesn’t think of himself this way, but he’s very sensitive and insightful.”
When Tyler rolled her eyes in another disbelieving glance—this time directly at him—Cross cranked his jaw to one side. “I am not sensitive or insightful,” he told her. He angled the glare to Evens. “And I don’t answer questions. I ask them, but only in regards to important defensive matters.”
“This matchmating algorithm is important. To all of us, I think.” Evens’ crooked smile was sidelong taunt to Cross that he’d taken this job after only a cursory background check via the limited resources he’d had available. At the time, he hadn’t cared what the job was, just that it paid and kept his crew out of sight.
The temptation of a match for his own mating…
Hope wasn’t just hungry; it was ravening.
“When I know what I need, I’ll tell you.” Tyler’s crisp response broke the tension. Or maybe just twisted it in a different direction.
Evens dusted his hands together. “Cross, could you show Tyler up to her room? I have a meeting with the construction foreman. Something-something about how converting an old distillery lacks some vital amenities. But we’ll be ready for our launch party.”
“Launch?” Cross couldn’t believe even his reckless employer would reveal a spaceship to the unsuspecting Earthers of Sunset Falls.
“Launch?” Tyler said in the same incredulous tone. “But we don’t even have a viable database yet. I haven’t quite decided on an object-oriented model or a relational model or a hybrid for the management system. And then we’ll need a designer for the user interface, then arrange for beta testing and stress testing. Then we can schedule a soft release before we—”
But Evens was already whisking around the counter, cutting between them as he headed for the door. “Fire ready aim!”
The jangling metal instrument above the door was a mocking reply.
For a pulsing moment of disbelief, there was only silence in Evens’ Odds & Ends Shop.
Then Tyler let out a harsh breath. “I don’t know how you security guards think, but in my database development world that’s really terrible advice.”
“Likely to get someone killed in my world,” he replied.
And then winced as he realized he was evoking different worlds to someone who thought she was alone in the universe. Of course she heard it in a different way than he did, but if he was going to save his crew’s honor—and their lives—he couldn’t make any mistakes ever again.
He should start here, by ending the threat that Tyler Lang unwittingly presented to herself, to him and his crew, to Evens’ project, to the innocence of her world. All he had to do was make sure she walked back out that door under that annoying bell. “Your feelings about the absurdity of this assignment were correct,” he announced decisively. “You should leave and find some other project better suited to your understanding and temperament.”
Instead of looking grateful for the validation of her initial impulses, she scowled, her dark brows pulling low into line with the plain black frame of her corrective eyewear. “Considering you’ve known me for, like, a minute, you don’t know anything about my understanding and temperament.”
In truth, it had been several minutes already, and it seemed longer. “Oh, I just have this feeling.”
“Feelings don’t have anything to do with my work, and I’m guessing not yours either. Maybe a dating app wasn’t my first choice for a new project but—”
“Matchmating,” he said.
Her scowl deepened. “Whatev
er you want to call it. Evens promised me a lead developer title on this, and if it’s half as groundbreaking as he keeps promising, it’ll let me write my own ticket for what comes next.”
“If by groundbreaking, you mean Earth-shattering…” But she could never learn the truth of her role in reopening the Intergalactic Dating Agency, not without subjecting her to the potentially damaging mind wipe that was protocol for any unauthorized closed-worlders. Exposure could even endanger her world’s protected status. Either Evens was simply lying to her about crediting her or he had something more nefarious in mind than he’d revealed to his luckless protection crew.
Cross held back a growl. The beast battalions of Xymir thrived on their legendary reputation of excellence and unswerving commitment to protecting their intergalactic clients from a vast, dangerous universe. But after the banishment of his crew, he’d pledged himself to their survival first and foremost. That vow left scant room for shielding this oblivious Earther female if she was determined to get herself in trouble.
And as his crew would be too loyal to ever point out, his penchant for trouble gave him no high ground in this matter anyway.
Taking a stiff step back, he gestured her toward the door where Events had departed. “If you won’t change your mind, then come this way.”
She angled past him, leaving more room than was necessary. But her suspicion made his fingers tighten into a fist again, remembering how he’d grabbed her before she fell.
When he’d walked up behind her, he’d only meant to interrupt before Evens revealed something classified. Her startled stumble at his voice had been the physical version of what happened inside him when he caught her scent—an unexpected shock that rattled him almost off his feet. He’d honed his senses the same way he’d trained his body, the same way a battalion kept all their tools in top condition, but the tease of her body heat called to something deeper within him.
Something dangerous.
He’d held her a moment too long. Despite her angular frame, her flesh had been yielding in a way he suspected her spirit was not. And he of all beings knew better than to confuse matters of the flesh with yearnings of the spirit.
To his consternation as he watched her walk away from him, talons bit into the calluses of his palm even though he always made sure to keep his nails blunted. When it came to threat levels, he’d planned to focus his attention on preventing surprises from Evens and keeping secrets from Tyler; he hadn’t anticipated that the real menace would be so close, so soon.
Wrestling with the instinctive urge to grab her again, he waited until she cleared several steps ahead of him before following. But when she opened the door to step out to the street, a gust of wind carried her scent again, straight into his brain. He’d familiarized himself with the mineral tang of rock and water around Sunset Falls that kept the area shielded from current Earther technologies. Now, spiked with the natural perfume of Tyler’s skin, the wild fragrance threatened to pierce his control deeper than a wvyryn’s claws went through flesh.
If she saw through him…
It took far too much of his control to hold himself in place, and when she turned to look back at him, he froze, certain she would scream, sure his beast was in his eyes.
Instead, she frowned at the door. “You’re not going to lock up? Is it that safe in Sunset Falls?”
“When I’m here.” Now she would hear the beast in his growl.
This time, she frowned at him. “Well, I guess you do have all the answers, don’t you?” She flounced toward the street. “Let me just grab a few things from my car.”
He let her get a little farther away this time, to settle himself before following her. But when he reached out to take her bags, she ducked away.
“It’s fine,” she snapped. “I got this.”
Since he also did not like strangers touching his gear, he got out of the way. He politely ignored her huffing behind him as they climbed the steep, narrow stairs along the outside of the building to the second floor where he unlocked the door, pushed it open, and held out the key.
With her hands full, she just gave him a look before scooting past him into the room, unable to avoid bumping him with her assortment of bags on the tight landing.
And he was unable to avoid reveling in the passing warmth of her body as she edged around him.
He bit his tongue. Desperation flooded him like the taste of blood, more tang than all the hidden mineral deposits around Sunset Falls. No, his beast must not rouse again, not when his crew was so close to evading their doom.
The thump of Tyler’s bags on the floor jolted him out of his turmoil. She turned and held out her hand. “You don’t lock downstairs but you do up here?”
He released the key into her extended palm. “Security is one thing. Privacy is another. You are an employee of Mr. Evens, and I’m contracted to keep his concerns both secure and private.”
“But you left his shop wide open.”
Cross half closed his eyes. “He is…contrary. He believes the shop must reflect the local standards of trust and honesty.”
Tyler put her hands on her hips. “And you don’t believe in trust and honesty?”
He hadn’t said that, had he? Not that she was wrong. “If you want to give me back your key…” He held out his hand again.
She slipped it into the small front pocket of her jeans. She had to straighten and suck in a short breath to clear enough space for her hand in her pants, and the posture thrust out her breasts, subtly straining the small buttons down the front of her dark blue sweater. He forced himself to look away while she turned again to recon the room.
His crew had been desperate when he accepted the job with Evens, but he’d still done the best he could with clearance checks on the man and the planet where his crew would be staying. He’d made sure they were comparable enough—mostly—with a local species to pass unremarked. He’d found Earthers and Xymirans were not just comparable but compatible along several intersecting measurements. In general, Earthers were noted to be less perceptive than other sentient races, partly due to their unrefined sensory organs but also because of their historical overconfidence as the dominating species on their planet. That lack of awareness was supposed to make his job easier, but so far in Sunset Falls he’d learned that friendliness, nosiness, and the apparently very competitive hunt for vintage glassware in the shop below were almost as problematic as ET conspiracy theories when it came to disguising the presence of aliens in a thrift shop.
Evens had dismissed all concerns. “I’ve been here a long time,” he’d said. “And no one’s noticed yet.”
Under other circumstances, Cross would’ve pressed the shopkeeper/aspiring IDA franchise manager on his personal background. Hiding on a closed world was prohibited. But it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered except saving his crew before their beasts took them.
So he would watch over this unknowing Earther female with her rather surprising array of technology and her wild scent, making sure nothing interrupted her work until he could collect on Evens’ promise of taming his beast once and for all.
Chapter 3
When she’d finished looking around the place and turned back to dismiss the security guard, he was already gone.
He was so quiet. Obviously she’d spent way too much time around the blowhards in Silicon Valley; she’d gotten used to men who couldn’t stop talking about themselves and how they were going to disrupt the world.
She’d never seen the inherent value in disruption. What was the point of changing something only to make it worse?
But now that she’d had a minute to think about it, maybe dating apps—fine, matchmating, whatever—could use some improvement. She hadn’t done much professional evaluation of such algos, but she’d tried a couple for personal reasons, and… Yeah, okay, sometimes burning something down and starting over was the only way.
After all, it was what she’d just done to her life.
Time to disrupt for the good
.
After tossing her suitcase in the small, tidy bedroom (furnished with what seemed like the nicer items from downstairs and overlooking the alley behind the row of shops) and unrolling her toiletry kit in the even smaller bathroom (inexplicably finished with an owl theme) she returned to the main living room/kitchen/dining room. The breeze through the open windows was getting chilly, so she wrestled the heavy panes back into place. By the time she was done, she was hot enough to want to open them again.
Should’ve asked the big guy to do it before he left. Speaking of hot…
Uh-uh, no. Not tiptoeing down that fantastical path. Disrupting her very logical decision to swear off men forever was not on her agenda. She had plenty of top-rated tech in her suitcase to take care of anything she needed in the bedroom.
And she had the rest of her tech to keep her busy out here. Time to get to work.
Luckily, there were a variety of smaller, lighter tables she could rearrange to make a viable work station. Since she’d started in a basement, hunched over a collection of stolen milk crates, this wasn’t bad at all. Not quite as nice as the corner suite she’d eventually commandeered overlooking the bay…
But that view of the future was gone. Her view now was this sleepy commercial side street of the smallest town she’d ever stayed in for more than a convenience store pit stop. The colors were tinting sepia with the late-afternoon sunlight, like she was living in one of ye-olde-tymes hand-colored photographs from downstairs. Probably there were people who actually loved that sort of thing, and now her task was to find a way to match them up with other people who inexplicably wanted a lifetime commitment to owl prints, owl liquid soap dispensers, and owl towels.
Or maybe just boink owls? Ugh, what was Evens’ deal with matchmaking versus matchmating? And how was she supposed to parse the differences within a database giving such nebulous guidance?
As always, the only way to start was with the numbers.
She grabbed another bottle of Sunset Springs water from the fridge (someone had kindly placed a six-pack there), slid the thumb drive Evens had given her into her laptop, and got to work.
