Hannah's Stolen Men [The Men of Space Station One #10] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)
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The Men of Space Station One #10
Hannah’s Stolen Men
When Hannah Engels takes the place of Porter Jones and Edward Stafford’s intended wife, she expects a little resentment at first, but for how long? Can the men eventually forgive her and give their family a chance on the new planet of Alpha, or will her deceit ruin their chance at love?
Porter is willing to give the lady a chance, but Edward’s past might get in the way of things. The three of them circle each other warily while trying to adjust to the new planet they have traveled to with all of its hidden dangers.
They are all shocked to learn that the planet seems to be altering their cells, making their children become more than human. When Hannah immediately ends up pregnant, Edward is suspicious, hurting Hannah with his accusation. It’s up to Porter to mend their broken fences and Hannah to give her stolen men another chance.
Genre: Futuristic, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Science Fiction
Length: 52,522 words
HANNAH’S STOLEN MEN
The Men of Space Station One #10
Marla Monroe
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
HANNAH’S STOLEN MEN
Copyright © 2014 by Marla Monroe
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62741-403-6
First E-book Publication: February 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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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
About the Author
HANNAH’S STOLEN MEN
The Men of Space Station One #10
MARLA MONROE
Copyright © 2014
Chapter One
Hannah peered up at the two men staring down at her. She wasn’t sure what they were going to do now that they knew they’d been tricked. Fear tightened her throat to the point that she could barely draw a breath in, much less let it out. Her lungs burned with the effort.
“What the hell do you mean she sent you instead?” the one named Edward asked in a deceptively quiet voice.
“S–she changed her m–mind about going. She m–made me come in her place. She sent this for you.” Hannah pulled the envelope from her pack. Edward snatched it from her hand.
She looked up at the other man standing in front of her. His handsome features remained unchanged as if he hadn’t just been told that the woman he’d married had skipped out on him. His stoic silence scared her even more than Edward’s obvious anger.
“Why?” he finally asked, when Edward turned and stalked off a few feet to read the letter.
“She had a boyfriend and didn’t want to leave him. He wasn’t eligible because he had a record.” Hannah looked down at her tightly clasped hands, trying to make them relax to no avail.
“No. Why did you come instead? Why didn’t you just say no?” he asked.
She knew his name was Porter. He was large like a porterhouse steak, but without the fat. He had broad shoulders and a chest as big as a mountain. His weather chiseled face looked as if it had been carved from stone. If it wasn’t for his amazing green eyes and all that thick wavy brown hair, she’d have thought he was statue come to life. The hair and piercing eyes gave him just a breath of humanity though, giving her hope that he wouldn’t strangle her for her part in the mess.
“When they started rounding up all the women who didn’t have Shear’s Disease to go underground, my younger sister tested positive for the disease even though she was only twelve. They were taking me, but they wouldn’t take her even though it would have left her all alone. Our parents had died a month before in a fire from the first wave of riots. We had no family close by. I couldn’t leave her by herself,” she said, praying he would understand.
“What does that have to do with why you’re here?” he asked.
“I paid Gladys’s brother to forge her health papers, so I could take her with me. It took them a few days to get to us after we had our physicals. Her brother hacked into the computer and changed the test result to read negative and gave us copies.”
“And Gladys threatened to have your sister retested by telling them what you’d done if you didn’t take her place,” Porter finished for her.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. It was all so fast. All I got to do was pack the one bag and say good-bye to my sister.” Tears spilled from Hannah’s eyes despite her resolve not to cry. Men hated tears
.
“How old is your sister now? Hell, for that matter, how old are you?” Edward demanded.
“I–I’m twenty-five. Cathy is sixteen now. I had another sister who would have been nineteen, but she was killed in the fire, too.” Hannah didn’t know why she’d added that last part. Maybe because she felt like Jeni should matter, too, despite being gone.
“What is going to happen to your sister with you gone?” Porter asked, walking back toward them as he shoved the folded envelope into his pocket.
She swallowed. “We made friends with a few other women there who will watch out for her with me gone. I–I was hoping she might get chosen to come here one day, but if they test her again before they marry her to someone, well, she wouldn’t get to go and they might kick her out of the bunkers. I guess I’ll never know what happened to her now.”
“Hell, Porter. It’s getting late. We need to grab our things and go. They warned us not to travel at night.” Edward picked up her bag along with one of his and strode in the direction of the transport that had been assigned to them.
Porter grabbed one of the large cases in their pile and followed the other man. Hannah didn’t know what to do, so she picked up one of the heavy cases and struggled to carry it to where they were loading the vehicle. Porter looked up and saw her walking in their direction with the case in her arms and cursed before nearly running to meet her.
“Don’t pick anything else up. You’ll hurt yourself. We’ll handle the loading and unloading. You just wait till we finish and we’ll get you strapped in.” He carried the case she’d nearly broken her back hauling as if it were a feather and not a ton of bricks.
Where they going to let her stay with them? Did they really have much of a choice? She was all they had. She couldn’t stop the icy cold finger of fear from digging through her gut at the thought of living with them. She knew nothing about them or what to expect of life with them.
Oh, she knew about the planet, they’d been well schooled on how to survive on Alpha, from planting and harvesting a garden to the dangers that surrounded them there. She even knew a little about what to expect their sex life to be like, but she didn’t know anything about the men themselves. Were they normally kind men or were they grumpy? Did they enjoy talking or would they expect her to stay quiet?
Ever since the sun had begun to die, sending larger and larger amounts of radiation toward Earth, people had been trying to figure out what to do. They’d already started traveling to other places to set up colonies as part of space exploration, but now that their sun was in the act of slowly imploding, they had to speed up the process and find galaxies with their own healthier sun to explore. Three planets had finally been located that were considered habitable to humans. She had ended up on a craft destined for planet Alpha.
In the years leading up to the initial colonization, they found out that a large majority of the woman on Earth were now sterile due to Shear’s Disease, which occurred in women between the ages of eight and forty-five. They had discovered that the increasing flares and explosions from the sun as it slowly winked out of existence was directly linked to the female’s inability to become pregnant. There was no way to avoid it other than to hide the women below ground in specially made bunkers designed to withstand the constantly increasing radiation and magnetic fields produced by the sun.
The two men loaded the last of the trunks and cases then turned to where she still stood waiting, having been afraid to move from the spot Porter had left her. They shook their heads and exchanged glances. Porter walked over and took her elbow in his massive hand.
“Let’s get you settled. We’ve got to stop by the storehouse to get some perishables. Everything else has already been set up for us. We just have to show up,” he said as he picked her up so that she could climb into the buggy. “Remember never to climb in or out of one of these things if the engine is on. It’s dangerous.”
“I know. They instructed us while we were on the trip here. I just spent six months on that thing just like you and they crammed a lifetime of lessons into such a short amount of time,” she said.
“I hope you were a good student,” Edward grumbled. “This isn’t going to be a bed of roses. There aren’t many luxuries here, and you can’t pop into town to shop whenever you want to.”
“Edward,” Porter said in a warning tone.
The other man didn’t say anything else, but by the set of his jaw, he wanted to. Hannah wondered what she’d landed in this time. After Gladys found out they were in the same area of the bunker, she’d used the knowledge she had about her sister to get anything she wanted from Hannah. She’d more than paid for what she’d done to keep her sister near her. Now it looked like she was in for even more karma.
“What’s your name?” Porter asked her as he strapped himself in next to her.
“Hannah Engels.”
“Well, Hannah. I’m Porter Jones and that is Edward Stafford. This didn’t turn out like we planned, but we’ll get through it. Just do what we tell you to until we get things unloaded tonight and we’ll have a long talk about the situation later. Okay?”
Hannah nodded her head. “Okay. I’ll stay out of your way.”
Edward grunted again then started the transport and pulled away from the loading dock. It occurred to her that they were officially married to Gladys who was back on Earth and she was going to be living with them without being married at all. Considering this wasn’t Earth and there wasn’t really anything she could do about it, Hannah supposed it was the least of her problems.
The fact that she had two men to please was something for her to worry about. Why did they have to decide on two men? She knew the reasoning behind it, but it didn’t help settle her nerves about it. They’d looked at the conditions on the new planets and likened them to when settlers had first arrived in America. The conditions were harsh and the land dangerous. They’d decided that considering there were so few women who could bear children, it was only logical to pair them up with two men. That way they had more men on the planet settling it and working the land without the fights that often broke out over the lack of available women.
On the other hand, the women had two men to take care of her so that if one was away working, the other could be close by to keep her safe. That had been a problem with the original settlers of the West on Earth. When the men had gone to tend to the cattle or take them to market, the women were left vulnerable to attack. With two men, one should always be nearby to defend her. She couldn’t help but wonder how that was working for the settlers who’d been on Alpha for a while now. She’d heard there were children now.
She’d been on board with a female doctor who’d come to be with her husbands, one of which was Space Station One’s only doctor and the other his nurse. Megan had told her all sorts of things about how since the first settlers had arrived more than twelve children had been born and all were healthy. The settlement itself was nearly six years old now. The first year and a half there had only been the men working to build the town and initial homes. They’d started a ranch and several farms that produced their major grains, hay, and corn. Once they had everything ready, the first women had been sent to choose their husbands.
Hannah nearly laughed out loud at Megan’s rendition of how that had gone over. It was decided after that to pair the families up before the trip over and cut down on the time it took to court and win their wife. Plus, they’d taken to using computer programs to match the two men with a compatible female. Where did that leave her and the men?
“What is that?” Edward’s voice cut into her thoughts and she looked where he was pointing off in the general direction they were traveling.
“Fuck! I think it’s one of those mantis things. They’re supposed to be extremely dangerous and aggressive,” Porter warned.
“What the hell do we do? Wait for it to go away or just keep heading toward it and hope it moves?”
“It’s going to be dark soon. I don’t want to still be sitting here
when it happens. Veer to the right of it as much as possible with these trees, and let’s see what it does,” Porter suggested.
Hannah gripped the straps of the harness holding her in the seat in a death grip as Edward started aiming for the wooded area on the right. They all kept their eyes on the oddly shaped creature that seemed to be watching them as it remained seated where it was. The closer they got, the more detail she could make out about its shape. It resembled a cross between a praying mantis and some sort of big cat. It actually had some fur and paws. It didn’t look to be more than about four feet, but she’d read they could stand on two legs which would make it much taller.
“That is one ugly son of a bitch,” Edward said. “It has to weigh nearly three hundred pounds. Look at the size of it!”
“Keep us out of the trees, man, and I’ll let you know if it heads this direction.”
“Well, give me some warning because they can move fast, according to the literature,” Edward told him.
“So far it’s just watching us. We’re going to be even with it in a few more minutes. Hold steady.” Porter didn’t take his eyes off of the animal.
Hannah was afraid to watch the tree line since Edward was skimming by them pretty darn close. The mantis seemed the lesser of the two evils at that point. It wasn’t nearly taking their doors off—yet.
“It’s turned its body toward us, Edward, but it isn’t moving. I think there’s something behind it. Maybe it’s guarding its food or something.” Porter had one hand on the dash trying to see around Edward’s profile now that they were about even with it.