by H. E. Trent
Sera put her hand over her mouth to suppress her own squeak of laughter. “We might even end up with more women than men on the planet if we do that.”
“Then let’s do it.” Ara got that glint in her eyes that warned of imminent action. “Immediately.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Okay, you two are killing me.” Jasper scraped off the rind of the experimental new cheese the Beshni neighbors had sent them away with and gave the Merridon sisters a pleading stare. “Have mercy. You’ve gotta tell me what the giggling is about.”
The first visit had taken longer than anyone had anticipated, apparently. Sera must have thought she could hand over her little gift at the doormat and run, but had been pulled inside along with Elken and Ara for at least half an hour. Jasper had lost track of the time. He and Marco had waited in the truck until the ladies emerged, smiling, and with arms full of dairy goodies. They’d done the same at the next farm, and that had been at least forty-five minutes. From there, Elken had gotten cake. A lot of cake, judging by the way she was bouncing around like a little sprite and singing to herself.
Ara and Sera also delivered lunches for the five of them, and they’d set down the hover-truck halfway between that farm and the third to eat them.
Their backs were against the side of a short, squat mountain a few meters from a quiet stream. Sera and Ara were sitting what was probably a respectable distance away from the men, which was a shame, and probably a good thing at the same time. Every time Sera launched one of her shy laughs, his nuts tightened. It made no damn sense how with something as little as a press of her hand against her collar, his dick was ready to make a proper salute. His body was apparently parsing some sign language that his eyes weren’t.
“The giggling?” Ara cleared her throat and examined the wedge of cheese sandwich she was holding. “Nothing interesting,” she said.
“I can’t believe that. Ladies usually only giggle like that when the laughter is at a gentleman’s expense.”
“Where do you see a gentleman?” Marco muttered. He was reclined against the rock with his eyes closed, arms folded over his chest, and legs crossed at the ankles. There was also a teasing smile on his lips.
Jasper was really starting to like that dude. “Touché,” Jasper said. He glanced at his COM’s screen to check the time. They were doing okay, but if the pattern held up and their next hosts wanted a lengthy chat, he’d be cutting it close for getting to work on time. The outing was worth the tardiness, though. He wouldn’t have had the opportunity to spend the time with Sera otherwise. Even chaperoned, it was better than nothing. As far as he knew, no other suitor from the wager pool had anything close to a similar advantage.
“We…laugh more now,” Sera said. Her gaze was on Elken, who was crouched next to the stream and poking at bubbles with a short stick.
“You mean in general?”
“Mmmhmm, nothing to laugh at when we were prisoners, and drawing attention to one’s self was often unwise. We weren’t allowed to congregate.”
Jasper grimaced and took a bite of the salty cheese. “I guess you and your sisters are playing catch-up now from all the years you couldn’t converse openly.”
“Yes. It is good that we do not all share a room. We’d probably never sleep.”
“Luke and I shared a room growing up,” Marco grumbled.
Sera leaned forward to see him past Jasper’s body. “How was that?”
“Miserable. By the time he turned fifteen, he had a never-ending queue of chicks climbing in the bedroom windows. Usually the other way around, you know? In the movies and television shows, the horny teenaged boy visits the girl in the dark of night looking for an awkward tryst.”
“He did that with you in the room?” Sera asked in a pitch that indicated she was either impressed or appalled.
Jasper, troll that he was, grunted appreciatively. Luke was a seriously bold motherfucker, and he had to give the guy props.
“Yep,” Marco said. “I learned to tune them out. I’d put in my earplugs and roll over to face the wall. Luke was good. My parents never heard a thing. I will say that all that practice ignoring him made living with a couple of my dorm-mates in college somewhat more tolerable. They had a revolving door of women coming in and out, too. I think there was a two year period where I never had a locked door at night.”
“Damn. I can’t say I ever had that problem,” Jasper said. “I moved out of my abuela’s house straight to the goddamned barracks. No hanky-panky going on there, I assure you. We were in the middle of nowhere, and there were so few women in our company that the chances of a hookup were basically zero.”
“Your women serve in the military?” Sera asked.
A question for him. He would count that as a small victory.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding, and thinking ahead to what he could say that would both keep the conversation flowing and also give her some insight into him. He didn’t want her to think of him as some kind of mystery. “The ones who want to, anyway. In the United States, service isn’t mandatory, but the military was pretty much the only career I could go into where I’d get decent pay and training for something other than working an assembly line job or in the fields or anything like that.”
“You did not expect fighting?”
“Hell, no. I’m sure some guys go into the service looking for some action, but I wasn’t one of them. Yeah, I was prepared for fighting. I’m a munitions expert, after all, and I’m damned good at my job. But it’s one thing to be trained in a defense capacity for something that might happen, and another thing entirely to get shipped across the galaxy to nip a problem in the bud that ain’t even a problem.”
Sera furrowed her brow and handed another sandwich quarter to Ara. “You…left?”
“Yeah. Tried to, anyway. We’d been here for a year, maybe, plowing our way into cities and shutting off the people in charge.” He scoffed at the notion, remembering the surprise and the abject horror on the faces of the Jekhans when the troops had stormed in.
They didn’t understand why they were there. They didn’t understand what they’d done wrong, and Jasper had thought their objections were scripted and disingenuous at first. They had to know that the Terrans had arrived to stop them from attacking.
But then, they didn’t activate their militaries. They didn’t send out their men with guns to try to suppress the alien forces.
Jekh didn’t have very many men with guns. They’d been a quiet race that no one in that part of space ever bothered except the Tyneali.
The troops from Earth had been set up. Pawns of corporations rather than governments.
They were there on Jekh because some assholes got dollar signs in their eyes and forgot that life was more important than profit.
Jasper flicked a pebble into the stream and tried to shake the self-blame from his head. He’d been following orders, but he’d stopped following those orders when they didn’t make sense. But it was too late by then.
“At first I went AWOL briefly along with Salehi,” he murmured, digging into the sandy soil for another pebble. “But we got diverted. Seriously. We were trying to get the hell out of Dodge, but didn’t get so far before Lil Devin caught up to us. Man, she scared the hell out of us. We didn’t know what she wanted. Thought she was gonna turn us in to our unit commander or something, but nah. She had other ideas.”
“Where is Dodge?” Sera asked.
“Oh. That’s right. I fall into those Earth habits and forget that not everyone here understands the references. Dodge City is a Kansas town you hear about all the time in old movies and TV shows. When someone says they need to get out of Dodge, they’re saying they need to go before trouble finds them.”
“Ah.” She turned her attention back to Ara, basically putting her back to them.
Jasper grimaced at her casual, but abrupt dismissal and fidgeted the patch on his pant knee. For the life of him, he couldn’t keep her in a conversation for more than a few minutes. Perhaps he didn’t
know enough about her to even have a conversation.
Hmm.
While he racked his brain for safe topics, Marco grumbled about the nonstop chirping of his wrist COM.
“What is wrong with your COM?” Sera asked him.
“That’s the swan song of a dying battery,” he said. “I would have replaced it already but the size isn’t manufactured anymore. Usually by the time the batteries die, folks are ready to replace their COMs.”
“How long have you had that one?” Jasper asked him. “I’m not up to date on the newest ones from Earth.” He held up his wrist. “Still got my military-issue TRE-1B.”
“Jesus.”
“Yep.” Jasper shrugged. It still worked. He didn’t see the point of replacing it.
The band on Marco’s was ragged and looked old, but that didn’t mean anything. Some people were just hard on their tech. Given Marco’s intergalactic superhero antics, he likely would have been one of the many whose technology was more or less throwaway.
“Five years,” Marco said.
“Not quite an antique, man.”
“I know, but they don’t make these anymore, and I don’t like the new ones. They’re too buggy.”
“You don’t like the Jekhan ones?” Sera asked.
“Ours are based on Jekhan designs. They were reverse engineered from the technology we stole from you.”
“Oh. No Jekhans have been able to develop any new technology recently.” She slowly pushed herself to standing and picked across the pebble-strewn ground toward Elken.
“Exactly.”
“Perhaps you and Owen could try.”
“That’s on our list.”
“Truly?” She forced her eyebrows up at him and widened her eyes. When her eyes went so open and round, the purplish hue of them was so much more prominent.
Jasper leaned back onto his elbows and let his head fall to the side, watching her.
When he was a kid, he’d made up comic book characters that looked like her—with hair, eye, and skin colors that didn’t exist on people in real life, but there she was. Real. There they all were, the Jekhans. They didn’t need bustiers, larger-than-life weapons, thigh-high boots, and spandex to be unusual. They already were.
Smiling, he nudged a few pebbles into a pile and pondered what Sera would look like in one of those fantastical getups. The cinched waist. The full bosom. The perfectly sculpted ankles and calves.
As if his dick needed the stimulus.
He scoffed.
“No crabs in there,” she said, peering into the stream.
“Remember Captain?” Ara asked. “Had fish and crabs.”
“Who’s he?” Jasper asked.
“A man from Buinet,” Sera said. “He used to harvest the Terran fish and crabs the Tyneali seeded in the rivers here. The crabs were very rich.”
“Get fat in River Buinet,” Ara said, chuckling. “They like the mud.”
“We used to get pretty good seafood in Boston,” Marco said. “Precious could probably pack a cooler with some dry ice and get some onto the ship if you want her to try to bring some back. I’m not sure what kind of permits she’d need for that, though. They’re weird about meat and seafood.”
“Can she bring them back living?” Sera queried, eyes wide again.
“Why?”
“Well, we could dam part of the stream on the farm, and—”
“Ah, I get you,” Jasper said, straightening up. “You could breed them yourselves and have your own supply.”
She nodded jerkily and scooped Elken up into her good arm, cringing a bit as she worked the opposite shoulder downward.
He stood, too. “I don’t see why you couldn’t. Bringing in a new food source is a fabulous idea. Could probably make a little money if you trade them in town.”
“No, that’d be too much trouble. I don’t know what I was thinking. More work for Trigrian to do and he already has too much.” She took off toward the truck without looking back, and Jasper couldn’t help but to feel like he’d been dismissed again.
What the hell did I say wrong this time?
He waited for Ara to tuck the remnants of the meal into her satchel and for Marco to gather up the trash, and then he followed a few paces behind them.
Sera hadn’t warmed up so much as just not looked like she wanted to set fire to his face. He was going to have to ponder new strategies, or perhaps do what the others hadn’t done and seek guidance from someone with experience in wooing Jekhan women.
He climbed into the passenger’s seat of the truck and pulled the door shut. “Damn,” he muttered to Marco, glancing into the back to ensure the ladies had found their seats.
“What?” Marco got the truck into the air.
“No enthusiasm whatsoever, you know? It’s like, I’ve got snot on my face. I am a complete turnoff and no one wants to tell me.”
“What are ya talking about?”
He crooked his thumb discreetly toward the back of the truck. “Trying to make something happen, you know?”
Marco furrowed his brow and nudged the truck up to maximum cruising speed. “You’re serious about that?”
“Why? You think now I shouldn’t try?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that…a lot of guys have tried. No one’s gotten anywhere with her. I’m surprised that you’d sign up for a dose of the Merridon ice.”
“You’ve seen lots of guys try?”
“Yeah.” Marco glanced Jasper’s way wearing a cringe shaped by pity or some other pathetic thing. “They’re not exactly subtle, you know? I guess they really can’t be. No one around here is shy about wanting to hook up with someone. Folks are too practical.”
“So, what do they do? Come straight out and say, ‘Hey, how about me and you?’ Because I don’t think that’s gonna fly.”
“Pretty much, from what I’ve seen.”
“Okay, then I won’t fall back on that as Plan B.”
“I wish I could give you some advice, but I’ve got nothin’. I’ve never been good at getting women’s attention. If you need advice, talk to Luke.”
“Hey. Maybe I will.”
Asking Luke for some good ideas wasn’t the worst plan. In fact, he’d even be willing to listen to bad ideas, too, if only for comparison. The dating situation on Jekh was nothing like the one on Earth. Jasper hadn’t felt so out of sorts since he was fifteen, and even at fifteen, he could get a girl to kiss him with only a minimum of wheedling.
He really didn’t think he’d laid enough groundwork to get Sera to kiss him. At this point, she would sooner bite him than kiss him, and not the kind of bite he liked, either.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Luke checked the time on his COM, rolled his eyes, and gave the side of Hauge’s ship a bang with his fist. Standing with one foot on the precariously narrow landing platform and the other on one of Hauge’s spindly landing struts, Luke was kind of in a precarious spot. If he lost his balance, he’d fall ten feet down to the jungle floor to bust his ass and any number of other things. The platform looked like an oversized bird perch, and Luke had climbed up the dew-slicked ladder, swearing all the while because Hauge hadn’t responded to their ship-to-ship communications.
Luke banged again and shouted, “All right, you’re here, but this isn’t what we meant, asshole. We meant here and ready, and not making me climb up here to root you out. This isn’t Earth, and I’m not one of your countrymen. Your royal status doesn’t mean jack shit to me, so open the fuckin’ door so we can get this over with.”
The lock clicked, and the door let out a long hiss before slowly cranking up.
Luke jumped back onto the stem of the platform and, folding his arms over his chest, waited for the door to completely rise. “You said you wanted to see—”
What the…
The sight of bare feet that weren’t Hauge’s brought Luke up short. At least, he didn’t think those were Hauge’s feet in the gap, unless Hauge was a kinky motherfucker who liked sparkly gold polish and who ha
d tiny little lady feet.
And hairless calves.
And shapely thighs.
The door cranked up another few inches.
There went neatly trimmed pubes around an exposed pussy.
Tiny waist.
Massive tits.
Big blue eyes and tousled blond hair.
Luke cocked a brow and let his gaze scan her body in the downward direction now that he could take the human woman in all at once. “Well, well, well, you’re not Hauge.”
“No, silly,” she said with a playful flick of her hand. “I’m Beth.”
“Uh-huh.” Beth had a mermaid tattoo on her ankle. The mermaid’s tits were out, too.
He tugged his gaze back upward. Cute belly ring. That might have even been a real diamond dangling from the hoop. He flicked at the jewel and watched light dance over her belly. “Huh.”
“So…” She tucked her thumb between her teeth and blinked coquettishly at him. “Who are you?”
“Not important.” Also not important: the barbell in her left nipple. Pretty, the way the metal stem made her nipple protrude for a pinch or a suck, but definitely not important.
Jesus.
He dragged his hand down his face and closed his eyes. “Is Hauge in here?”
“Oh, I think knowing who you are is very important, handsome. What’s your hurry, anyway?”
“Beth?” came Hauge’s impatient bellow from within.
“Sounds like the man of the hour is at home, then.” Luke tried to look past her, but there was nothing to see except the unmanned piloting console. Hauge must have been in the back.
She turned toward the voice. “Yes, honey?”
“Who’s there?”
“Well, I don’t know. He won’t tell me his name.”
“So, he is here, then,” Luke said. He leaned forward carefully, grabbed the edges of the door, and leaped over the gap and into the ship.
