Kiss and Tell
Scions of Sin: Book Two
Taylor Holloway
Contents
Also by Taylor Holloway
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Prologue
Going Where No Man Has Gone Before
1. Nathan
2. Zoey
3. Nathan
4. Zoey
A Palace Fit for a Princess
5. Nathan
6. Zoey
7. Nathan
8. Zoey
Durant Astronautics Launches Successful, Unmanned Rocket, Suffers Simultaneous Data Breach
9. Nathan
10. Zoey
11. Nathan
12. Zoey
Angelica Hunt Returns to Angelic Blonde
13. Nathan
14. Zoey
15. Nathan
16. Zoey
17. Nathan
Durant Astronautics Continues Data Breach Investigation Amid Countdown to Manned Test
18. Zoey
19. Nathan
20. Zoey
21. Nathan
Amid Cyber Attack Fallout, Durant Astronautics Confirms Manned Test To Proceed on Schedule
22. Zoey
23. Nathan
24. Zoey
25. Nathan
26. Zoey
Angelica Hunt Reveals Her Least Favorite Thing About Her High-Profile Life
27. Nathan
28. Zoey
29. Nathan
30. Zoey
31. Nathan
Russian Spy Found Dead in Affluent Philadelphia Suburb
32. Zoey
33. Nathan
34. Zoey
35. Nathan
A Day in the Glamorous Life of America’s Princess
36. Zoey
37. Nathan
38. Zoey
39. Nathan
40. Zoey
41. Nathan
Socialite Angelica Hunt Arrested
42. Zoey
43. Nathan
44. Zoey
45. Nathan
Angelica Hunt Reveals Her Secret Horror
46. Zoey
47. Nathan
48. Zoey
49. Nathan
50. Zoey
How One Journalist Almost Solved the Murder of the Century
51. Nathan
52. Zoey
53. Nathan
54. Zoey
Epilogue
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Also by Taylor Holloway
Bleeding Heart
1
2
3
Also by Taylor Holloway
Scions of Sin
Bleeding Heart - Alexander
Kiss and Tell - Nathan
Down and Dirty - Nicholas - COMING SOON
Thanks for downloading ‘Kiss and Tell’
I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it! I specialize in creating rich, fascinating escapes, where the heroes and heroines bring out the very best and worst in each other, and where the endings are always satisfying. HEA all the way.
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Prologue
Nathan
Space defies explanation. I can try to describe what I felt, but it will never measure up. My inadequate descriptions frustrate me, even now. Looking down at the Earth from the International Space Station (hell, being in space at all) was a feeling that has no analogue.
Have you ever tried to explain what it’s like to be in love? It’s like that. Imagine putting your soul into a blender and then pouring the homogenized concoction back into a mold of you. The pieces fit back together, but you’re never the same you afterward.
Your senses get all screwed up in space. Your eyes, used to the atmospheric pressure of earth, don’t know how to deal with sudden lack of weight. The focal length deforms slightly, becoming flatter. It’s a subtle effect at first, but the longer you spend outside of Earth’s influence, the more you notice it. Over time, it will actually destroy your eyes. Even worse, a lack of gravity causes fluid to accumulate in the sinuses. In addition to the inevitable headache, the increase in intracranial pressure squishes the eyeballs and puts pressure on the optic nerve. After a few days, your eyes start playing tricks on you.
Your nose and tongue don’t work well in space, either. Nobody knows why, but the hypothesis is the artificial atmosphere and changes to your inner ear and brain send things entirely out of whack. Things you enjoy on earth taste revoltingly bland, while other foods and smells you’d normally revile become unbelievably attractive. The effect is confusing and nauseating. You don’t want to eat the shit they packed for you, but you know you have to (I ate the shrimp cocktail for twenty-three meals straight, because it was the one thing that had any taste).
Then there are a whole host of psychological and psychosomatic effects. Like the fact that the toilets are the stuff of nightmares. The fact that you have no privacy and have to sleep next to a fan or your carbon dioxide bubble will suffocate you, both of which lead to insomnia. You’re under more stress than you’ve ever felt in your life, and even with the absolute knowledge that you could die instantly if one out of a million uncontrollable things occur, you still get distracted by the assholes up there with you. Right outside your window is the deadly void of space, but Tim keeps whistling and you’re considering air-locking him right out into it.
But somehow, you’re able to subsume that fear and existential dread along with all the other petty torments. The inconvenience and the sleeplessness fade. Because when you look out the window, you see home. And it's miraculous. An enormous, blue and green swirling pearl in a vast, lifeless black sea. Suddenly everything about the misery and pain is worth it, just for that.
You want the discomfort. It reminds you that you’re alive. As long as you feel it, you get to keep experiencing that miracle.
It’s just like love.
Going Where No Man Has Gone Before
Local Scion of Durant Industries Called Before Congressional Committee After Allegations of Prohibited Sexual Activity with Russian Cosmonaut While Onboard the ISS
By Zoey Atkinson, The Philadelphia Monitor
Astronaut Nathan Breyer, grandson of Durant Industries founder Alexander Durant, was called before the Congressional Committee on Science, Space, and Technology to address allegations and video evidence of a sexual relationship with Russian Cosmonaut Ysenia Antonova while onboard the International Space Station. It is unclear how the video footage leaked. However, some intelligence analysts suspect it was a Russian state-sponsored attempt at embarrassing the United States.
Up until this incident, NASA has always maintained that U.S. astronauts have never engaged in sexual activity while in space. Many tabloid and pornographic websites are hosting the explicit footage. On gossip website ‘JuicyNews’ one viewer commented, “This depraved behavior on the part of our own astronauts just proves America is headed down the drain!” Another commenter had a different take, “This dude truly is one of our nation’s finest. I’d ride his rocket into deep space any day.”
Major Breyer was formally stripped of his rank by the Committee and given a dishonorable discharge by the United States Air Force in earli
er private hearings. While there is realistically no law or military code under which Breyer could be formally charged and punished, NASA maintains that astronauts are to maintain the highest moral standards while on duty. At no point did Breyer contest his discharge or deny the allegations against him.
The other individual in the footage, Ysenia Antonova, has not been seen or heard from publicly since her return to Moscow, prompting additional rumors that she was acting on government orders. Russian sources speaking on the condition of anonymity suggested that her disappearance may have an entirely different cause: Military punishments in Russia are reportedly harsh and swift.
Today’s meeting of the Committee was more concerned with delivering formal reprimands than fact-finding or investigation, although Committee members repeatedly requested additional information from Breyer on his thought process and his consideration of consequences prior to engaging in sexual activity with a potential foreign agent. Breyer, through his counsel, declined to answer additional questions about the incident after the first four hours of questioning. The televised hearing lasted a total of six hours.
Breyer released a brief, written statement to the press after the hearing: “I regret any embarrassment that my sexual relationship with Ysenia Antonova aboard the ISS has caused or may cause the United States Government. While I do not believe that sexual activity generally ought to be subject to public scrutiny, I acknowledge that I had no expectation of privacy on a mission and that my sexual activity was unsanctioned by NASA. I may have been the first, but I sincerely hope that I will not be the last man to ever have sexual intercourse in space. At some point our culture will need to move beyond our prurient obsession and outdated attitudes about sex if we really hope to reach the stars.”
1
Nathan
At the time, I thought it was the worst day of my life. I saw my career at NASA imploding into nothing. I had graduated Cum Laude at MIT, become a Major in the Air Force, got recruited into the astronaut program, been chosen to pilot an actual mission, and made it all the way to the ISS; then one zero-g fuck with a hot Russian scientist obliterates my career and turns me an international disgrace.
I went back home to our family estate with my tail between my legs. A grand, resort-like compound situated amidst the gentle rolling hills of the Pennsylvania countryside was the perfect place to lick my wounds. I clipped the article written about me out of our local paper. I must have read it and re-read it a thousand times, wondering how I managed to completely screw up my life. After forty-eight hours of drowning myself in whiskey and feeling like a massive fuck up, I was abruptly overcome with a sensation I hadn’t felt since graduating college: the sweet taste of freedom. On that day a decade ago, I gave my uncle a friendly middle finger when he asked me when I would be starting at Durant Industries, our massive seventy-two billion dollar ‘family business’.
I may have avoided becoming a cog in Durant Industries, but I’d inadvertently become a cog in the massive machine that is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration instead. Cogs don’t set the agenda or make meaningful choices. I was just following a script written for me by my ‘betters’.
When I was a kid I dreamt of setting foot on Mars, exploring the moons of Jupiter, and helping push humanity deeper into the cosmos. America hasn’t even set foot on the moon in almost fifty years.
Fifty. Fucking. Years. How utterly pathetic.
But what’s the use of owning a quarter of the largest privately held company in the United States if you can’t make the shit you want to happen, actually happen? I sat down with my family and we worked something out. Durant Astronautics was formed with the stated goal of commercializing space travel, but I want to do more than fly billionaires around Earth’s orbit. I wanted to propel humanity to the next stage of civilization.
I wanted everyone to have the chance to practice the Kama Sutra in space.
I ended up framing the newspaper clipping and hanging it in my home office right next to my desk. Within a few short years I was the CEO of the largest and most important spaceflight company in the world. We were weeks away from sending the first private, manned, ship into space, completing the initial step in the process of constructing the first privately owned space station. After that— a Durant Astronautics colony on the moon. A Durant Astronautics colony on Mars. A Durant Astronautics colony on Europa.
Banging that hot Russian scientist in zero-g was the best bad decision I’ve ever made.
Now, I was the one calling the shots.
“Ok, run us through the data again,” I said to the computer, and it obediently spit back the data overlaid over the video from the previous test launch.
It looked good. I could see the two engineers in my office, Drs. Matthews and Gonçalves, fidgeting in their seats. This was at least the fiftieth time we’d gone over this data. My reputation notwithstanding, I’m actually not impulsive when it comes to my work. Impulsivity gets astronauts killed. Good astronauts (good pilots in general), are thorough and methodical.
“What do you think about the modifications to the telemetry prior to stage two of reentry?” I asked Matthews, wondering if we were making a mistake by not going for a more traditional approach.
“All the data says it’s solid as-is,” Dr. Matthews replied blandly, peering at me owlishly through her super-thick glasses. At her side, Dr. Gonçalves nodded in agreement and stroked his long, grey beard thoughtfully. Not that he would know. He was in charge of the module’s structural integrity, not the physics of reentry.
Then again, maybe after the fortieth time I’d asked this question, he’d memorized the answer. We’d been through the models so many times we’d all dream about them for weeks. I needed to stop torturing the two of them. They were at the top of their respective fields, stolen mercilessly from NASA by the promise of money and autonomy. I trusted them implicitly; it was just hard to greenlight a mission like this.
“Ok,” I said, “I’m satisfied. We’ll find out if we’re right tomorrow.”
The tension in the room decreased significantly. The two middle-aged scientists exchanged a delighted smile with one another, and then looked away, vaguely embarrassed. They were totally into each other but were too awkward and shy to admit it. I considered telling them to get a room but didn’t need the EEOC complaint.
“You two should go get a drink to celebrate,” I suggested instead, “even if the module bursts into flames, we’ve already done more together in two years than NASA has accomplished in the last decade. Go celebrate. Seriously. Expense it back to me.”
The excited pair of scientists departed a moment later, looking as stoked to buy some drinks on me as they were about the launch tomorrow. Hopefully I didn’t live to regret that decision. It would be unfortunate to lose either of them to a bad breakup.
“Incoming call from David Breyer,” the computer told me in the sexy Russian-accented voice I’d programmed it with as a bit of self-deprecating joke. I’d turned the stupid thing on voice-mode during the meeting with Gonçalves and Matthew, and now it thought it needed to announce everything to me.
“Hello David,” I answered warily, “what can I do for you?”
My fraternal twin David and I may not look alike, but we were too similar in temperament to get along. The both of us were overly competitive, extraordinarily stubborn, extremely ambitious, and unapologetically arrogant. We had very different interests (he’s a chef, of all things), but approached our problems and one another with an identical mixture of bullheadedness and snarkiness. Our poor mother was a saint.
“Hey Starboy,” he replied, referring to me with his nickname of the day (a marginal improvement over ‘Spaceoddity’ or its predecessor ‘Rocketdick’), “I’m just calling to remind you that everyone’s meeting tonight at the Hunt house for the board meeting. It’s the Senator’s turn to host. Don’t be late.”
I had completely forgotten about the board meeting.
“I didn’t forget about the board meeting,” I s
napped at him, “but I don’t see why I need to attend in person.”
“Yeah about that,” David said, and I could now hear what sounded like cows in the background, “I’m out of town, so you actually need to be there for the in-person quorum.”
“Where are you?” I asked him, wondering if it was even worth the effort. David had a habit of wandering off the beaten path in search of ingredients. One time he spent a month in Spain looking for the right saffron.
“Out on the range,” was his cryptic reply. Yeah, those were definitely cows I heard in the background.
“Texas?” I guessed. Texas has cows, right?
“Farther south,” David replied.
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