“Well—”
She snatched him up and took to the air. “I have a better idea. We fly as long, as fast, and as far as we can, and figure out the rest.”
“You know what. I love that idea.” He wrapped his body around hers and held on as they flew into the twilight.
Links
Thank you for reading Only Tonight? Now truly, dive into the world of fallen archangels and those they love. Pick up the next novels in the UnHallowed Series.
Only the Fallen (Book 1)
Only One I Want (Book 2)
Only You (Book 3)
Only One I’ll Have (Book 4)
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Acknowledgments
A heartfelt thank you to my band of merry critique partners.
Cynthia Veldman, your sharp eye for plotting and attention to detail has saved my ass many times.
To my drinking buddy, beta reader, and bestie, Charitee Gerow, what would I do without you? Don't answer that question!
I couldn’t do what I do without all of you! Writing is a solitary endeavor, but it’s not a journey any author takes alone.
Also by Tmonique Stephens
Descendants of Ra series
Entrapped Prequel (coming soon)
Eternity Book 1
Everlasting Book 2
Evermore Book 3
Encore Book 4
Forever Novella Book 4.5
The UnHallowed series
Only the Fallen (Book 1)
Only One I Want (Book 2)
Only You (Book 3)
Only One I’ll Have (Book 4)
Sparks Fly
Gateway to Redemption
Donna R. Mercer
About the Story
Riodan and Piele To-Do List
Get four teenage younglings home to Pyloto.
Convince Captain Zayda Sparks that she was their mate.
Keep Captain Zayda Sparks from ejecting them out of the nearest airlock.
What should have been a simple mission for Riodan and Piele was turning out to be anything but that. Crossing the galaxy with four younglings prone to causing intergalactic incidents turned out to be the hardest job they ever had. Throw in their mate who is not exactly thrilled to find herself mated and their lives have just become infinity more complicated.
Captain Zayda Sparks lived a simple life. Pick up cargo at Point A and deliver cargo to Point B. Don’t get boarded by Free Traders. Pay your bar tab and avoid her matchmaking matra at all other times. Simple.
Until Zayda allowed her greed to overrule her common sense, for what?
For credits. She wasn’t prepared for her ship to be overrun by four teenage females and two hot males. If that wasn’t enough she was being attacked by Tiagerian and Free Traders every time she exited the Intergalactic Superhighway and to top it off she had to wear a dress to the Celestial Ball. A dress. The horror.
Piele and Riodan needed to convince Zayda to give them a chance before the Tiagerians, Free Traders or the younglings ruined their only chance of a lifetime of happiness with their fated mate. Anything can happen when Sparks Fly.
Chapter One
The dim light projected by the lamp illuminated the small area of Bleu Hell, an upscale bar located on the Gateway to Redemption, affectionately referred to as GTR by its citizens. The light from the lamp supplemented the starlight that filtered through the huge glass window separating Bleu Hell from the vacuum of space.
Strong, despite its deceptive thinness, the glass had withstood the test of time. Protecting the countless of citizens who have stood by this window and stared out into the vastness of space contemplating their next step in life. They always came, admiring the view, marking time, as the station rotated around the dead planet of Redemption. Each rotation a standard day. Three hundred days making a standard year. Yet there it was, a constant.
Now the thin glass protected Zayda from the cold, deadly presence of space as she sat in Bleu Hell, surrounded by the clinking of glass as clandestine business deals were conducted.
Bleu Hell was the biggest draw at GTR because of the magnificent view that could be seen from the floor-to-ceiling viewing port that made up a large portion of Bleu Hell. As GTR rotated on its path through the moons that surrounded the dead planet of Redemption, the view changed, highlighting the still beautiful planet and its satellites that the citizens of GTR called home so many kiloyears before. It had been so long since life had existed on the planet of Redemption that only the memories of that existence lived on in the Central Archives with historians being the only ones intrigued by it.
The Gateway to Redemption was the hub of the Redemption galaxy. Nothing in the galaxy of Redemption happened without going through GTR. It was the seat of power of the Grand Matriarch, the heredity ruler of Redemption. If it wasn’t sanctioned by the Grand Matriarch, then it didn’t occur on GTR or in the Redemption galaxy. The ancient truth held, the government always got their cut.
Bleu Hell was at the center of the commerce. Corporate boardrooms may be where the idea originated, but if you wanted to make credit off it then one way or another that occurred in Bleu Hell.
Everyone in business knew that the biggest deals, the credit makers took place in the dimly lit smoke tinged space of Bleu Hell. It was the place where business people and smugglers rubbed shoulders. Under the flashing lights of the dance floor, the loud music hid the not-always-legal deals. Anything and everything could be bought in Bleu Hell.
While unsuspecting citizens stared out at the view provided by the twinkling lights of ships coming and going from GTR, a smuggler just sold something highly illegal to the well-dressed female in the formal tunic. By contrast the shabbily dressed male, just obtain a legal cargo to haul across the galaxy at a substantial profit.
Countless beings called GTR home and countless more traveled there for reasons of their own. Most of the Redemption population stayed in the inner galaxy and vacationed at the planets nearby the Gateway to Redemption, the space station that guarded the wormhole that allowed travel between Redemption Galaxy and the Milky Way Galaxy.
Regardless of their purpose there, GTR was the center of life in the Redemption Galaxy.
Credits brought Zayda Sparks to the Gateway to Redemption. She was greedy for credits. Credits meant independence. She made a good living as an independent freighter captain. Living the life as such, she frequently found herself here, picking up cargo or delivering it all the while avoiding her mating hungry matra. Credits meant not having to give in, to the family pressure of settling down to the boring life of being a mate.
Younglings. Ick. Who needed that kind of torture? Just the thought of little beings with her purple skin and black hair running around the GTR, terrorizing the place as she and her sistahs had was enough to make her give up the idea of sex altogether.
If she had wanted, she could have taken the Tiagerian’s offer, the one who was walking away none-too-happy after her not so polite rejection. Tiagerians were sexy, cat-like beasts. Despite their attractive looks they were known to inflict pain on their bed partners. It had been a while, but she would never be that desperate. The thought itself had her shuddering.
Sex good.
Pain bad.
Or maybe she should hook up with a Gastropian. She heard that they were phenomenal at oral sex if you could get past the slime the snail-like creatures tende
d to secrete.
A good licking might be worth a little sliming. Pearls and Diamonds, she was horny. She needed to find her a tall male with a big cock and ride him into the nearest asteroid and quickly, especially if she was contemplating getting slimed.
Yep, the life of an independent freighter captain wasn’t much, but it was hers. A steady rhythm of making credits. Freedom from her matra. The good life.
Zayda looked around Bleu Hell. The white cube-like tables changing colors as they were inhabited by different beings. Illuminating the bar with subtle colors to influence the patrons into buying more beverages. It just skirted the line of legal like many of the deals that took place in Bleu Hell. She loved this bar. After the message from her matra she had fled to here, a haven. Her matra was experiencing a huge case of denial.
She continued to cling to the hope that the wild youngling that she’d raised would start to use the ladylike manners she’d worked hard to instill in her. Those manners would prevent her from hanging out in any establishment that contributed to the inebriation of the citizens of GTR. She considered Zayda, as the youngest, her last hope. Zayda could have told her she was waiting in vain, but she didn’t completely want to bust her matra’s bubble. Hope was a wonderful thing to have.
Despite those thoughts, she smiled. It wasn’t often that she found a free moment to herself, but when she did she spent it in her spot. Reading her books. Enjoying the view of space. The only thing that rivaled her spot in Bleu Hell was being onboard the bridge of her ship Sparks Fly.
The specially designed XJT spaceship had been her home ever since she saved up enough credits to purchase it. She was proud of her accomplishment. It was something she did without depending on her family like most beings assumed she did. No, Sparks Fly was her baby. Bought and paid for.
Zayda shook the ice cubes in her glass, agitating and mixing her drink at the same time, as she continued to read the pages of her book. It was in the calm moments, sitting in the weird chair that she purchased from the Terran Trader, that she could think. The chair itself had cost her a large amount of rare exotic spices but was well worth the purchase. Her Terran contact called it a Barcalounger. Whatever its name, she called it Heaven. It was her own haven out amongst the stars.
In it, she could lose herself in the books she collected. Reading was fascinating to her. Just reading some of the adventures people participated in, the experiences alone amazed her. Books made with authentic paper were hard to find outside of museums, but her private collection was something that she enjoyed and thanks to the deal she made to transport some highly in demand commodity her books were protected like the crown jewels of the Grand Matriarch. She turned the page. This was a new one, again from a Terran contact.
Terran relationships were weird. She didn’t understand the concept dancing throughout the book. Dating.
What was that all about? It just wasn’t how her people did matings.
Trust in the Purple One. Her parentals always told her. They may exaggerate about other things, but not the wisdom of the Purple One.
Blasphemy.
She knew that one day she would meet her mate when she was much older and through having fun galivanting around the galaxy. He would be someone picked especially for her by the Purple One. She would be in his presence. Get a whiff of his irresistable scent and slowly be consumed by the mating fire. It would burn within her until their mating was consummated. The longer she resisted the mating the more difficult it would be to control her desire for her mate.
That is if the mating stories were to be believed.
It was intense, mating. A bond would form between her and her mate that would allow them to share each other’s feelings. She knew she wasn’t ready for someone to be sharing any of her feelings. But then again if she believed the mating stories time wouldn’t matter. The connection would allow them to learn about each other, quickly. The love between them would start the moment she inhaled his scent. By the Purple One, she hoped he smelled good. She wouldn’t want to be with someone who smelled like the inside of her favorite pair of boots.
Luckily, in her book, she was way too young to find her mate. Most Redemptites or the Xirin didn’t mate until well over a hundred years and she was just a little over fifty. She still had plenty of time to enjoy life before settling down, despite her obsessed matra campaign to see her mated. With four sistahs over one hundred and fifty years all unmated, her matra was convinced that she had to get Zayda mated young or she would never be a grandmatra.
Though she was not a hardcore disciple like the Princ-ples, she believed in the wisdom of the Purple One when it came to mating. She knew that one day the Purple One would put her mate in her path. That was why she resisted her matra’s mating efforts. She wanted a true mating as her parentals had.
Besides, if the Purple One wanted her to mate any of the males that her matra threw at her then she would feel an uncontrollable passion for them, not just a mild lust. She wouldn’t waste her time on something long-term with someone who wasn’t meant to be hers like the poor terrans did.
Terrans spent time with each other prior to mating to see if they were compatible, then they mated and if that didn’t work out they split up.
Strange.
The wisdom of the Purple One originated a long time ago on that little blue planet that the Terrans called Earth. How terrans could produce someone so wise yet not follow his teachings amazed her. When trade started between the inhabitants of the Milky Way and Redemption galaxy the early traders were fascinated by the treatises of the Purple One. They brought them back to the Redemption galaxy where they studied them. Many of the early traders started living their lives by the wisdom found in the treatise. They found inner peace. Solutions to many of the problems that plagued the galaxy at that time. It was a time of glorious enlightenment as the teaching spread across Redemption. A new era emerged. The Princ-ples, followers of the teaching of the Purple One, spread out across the galaxy sharing the wisdom of the Purple One with everyone. Some planets embraced the teaching while others did not. Some beings like Zayda, followed the teaching of the Purple One because that is how she was raised.
Zayda was a Xirin-Redemptite mix. Her matra was Redemptite and her patra was Xirin. She got the best of two great worlds. She gained her beautiful purple skin and her height from her Xirin patra along with her glowing purple eyes. Her sistahs, with their plain brown orbs, were jealous of her gorgeous eyes. Her long black hair and rebellious nature were from her matra.
Since she reached the age of accession, Zayda traveled on one ship or another until she was able to purchase her own. That suited her just fine, explore the world, learn new things, and earn credits.
Sparks Fly took her many places in the galaxy.
It gave her freedom.
She loved being in space with no worries other than making her next cargo run. Free from being responsible for anyone. There was nobody, but herself. Unlike others, she did not surround herself with a massive crew, or a boisterous team.
Instead, she enjoyed the companionship of her friend, Maud, an X-MONT III sentience computer being. She felt proud of what she achieved.
But her dream was coming to an end.
Her matra had sent an official message, with the stamp of the Grand Matriarch. She had received a royal decree. Matras with political pull should be outlawed.
She was to present herself at the Celestial Ball in two Redemption Standard Week to meet prospects to become her mate. The Celestial Ball was supposed to be the event to celebrate the Grand Matriarch’s day of birthing, but over the centuries it has turned into an event for single males and females to meet and form a mating bond.
That was totally unfair. Despite not having felt the mating urge. Despite her wishes to experience a true mating like her parentals, she was going to be forced into an arranged mating. Probably some dang political match that would benefit her matra.
She had several older sistahs. Why wasn’t her matra picking on them? No, sh
e had to be a buzz kill. Curtailing her freedom of being an independent freighter captain. Zoya Sparks, her matra, should understand her love of being in space. She captained her own ship before settling on GTR with Lytko Sparks.
Yes, GTR was a space station in space, but she didn’t have the same sense of freedom there that she did out in the big black. The huge space station was too confining. She loved to travel amongst the stars. Exploring different worlds. Interacting with different life forms.
Hmm, she wondered if she perhaps heard about the space race that she won, over in the fourth quadrant?
Nah. That couldn’t be it. She flew under an assumed name, ever careful. Sparks Fly had a high-tech illusion system that changed it from the XJT to a rusty old SpaceBeetle.
Maybe it was the fight after the race that her matra heard about? It wasn’t her fault that the loser was a whiny baby. She had won fair and square. She had a better illusion system and ship then he had.
Zayda loved being a space captain. Racing through space at top speed. Dodging asteroids and pitting her wits against the Free Traders and coming out victorious. Having to depend on her quick reflexes and own ingenuity to succeed in areas that others have failed. to deliver her cargo in record time. It earned her big bonuses. Then there was the thrill of beating males who thought they were better captains then her just because they had dangling parts was just icing on the cake.
Whatever the reason, she was ordered to present herself at the Celestial Ball appropriately attired or risk going to prison for disobeying a royal decree.
Moonlight Mist: A Limited Edition Collection of Fantasy & Paranormal) Page 34
