Her Consort Read online

  Books by Maren Smith:

  Black Light Series:

  Unbroken (Black Light: Valentine’s Roulette, Book 3)

  Shameless (Black Light: Roulette Redux, Book 7)

  Fearless (Black Light, Book 10)

  Determined (Black Light: Celebrity Roulette, Book 12)

  Masters of the Castle Series:

  Book 1, Holding Hannah

  Book 2, Kaylee’s Keeper

  Book 3, Saving Sara

  Book 4, Sweet Sinclair

  Book 5, Chasing Chelsea

  Book 6, Owning O

  Book 7, Maddy Mine

  Book 8, Seducing Sandy

  Witness Protection Program Box Set

  A Few Other Titles:

  B-Flick

  Build-A-Daddy

  The Great Prank

  Jinxie’s Orchids

  Life After Rachel

  The Locket

  The Mountain Man

  Something Has To Give

  Her Consort

  by

  Maren Smith

  Copyright © 2017 by Maren Smith & Stormy Night Publications

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including, but not

  limited to, photocopying or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, locales, and events are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, and events are purely coincidental.

  Cover Art by Allycat Cover Designs

  Chapter One

  She had found him floating in deep space, with life supports beeping their way down from barely alive to no-longer-compatible-with-life. At the time, he’d been dressed in nothing but his skivvies and a hyper-sleep escape pod. Now, two years later, she had to remind herself that salvaging his pod and waking him up was still the right thing to do, especially when most days all she wanted to do was kill him.

  “It’s a dead ship,” Piper said for the third time. She was no one’s stereotypical redhead; she tried to control her temper.

  “It’s an Ocymit ship,” Kogan corrected, huge hands knuckling into lean hips as he planted himself between her and the docking bay hatch. “You’re not going.”

  The whole of him made a very effective blockade. Standing only two inches over five feet herself, it didn’t take much, but it wasn’t her lack of height that made him so aggravatingly unmovable. He was short too, only a few inches taller than she was. But even had she been six feet tall and a man, she doubted she could have forced him aside. Built like a Neanderthal, Kogan was twice her width and at least twice her weight, and it was all muscle. His six-pack abs had six-packs. She knew, because she’d seen them. All of which meant Piper could shove, push, and punch until the cows came a-shuttlin’ on home, she wasn’t budging him. Not until he decided to move.

  “Get out of my way,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Shoulders rolling, he made himself comfortable. “No.”

  And as so often happened these days whenever they were in the same room together, Piper lost her temper. “This is my job! I salvage dead ships and sweep up the debris that could potentially hurt other ships. It’s what the shipping conglomerates pay me for. Who are you to—” She cut herself off, but too late.

  “Kogan Pulgoy Vovlov,” he announced, already puffing up the way he did anytime she was stupid enough to give him an opening to run down the litany of his titles. “The Third.”

  “For the love of God,” she groaned.

  “Envoy of my home world, pay attention now—” he made an effort to enunciate carefully, ignoring her scowl because she could never pronounce it right, “Hogluopraeswyria. Consort-in-waiting to Her Royal Ambassador, Agi Oof’Thal, currently assigned to Earth.”

  “Rejected consort, you mean,” she sniped, and he deflated. “You weren’t on a flightpath to Earth when I found you. What’s the matter, Kogan? Did you piss her off, too?”

  “No,” he grumbled, frown deepening. “We got along.”

  He sounded disappointed.

  “If that was true, she never would have put your cranky ass on the first flight home to ol’ Hoggy.”

  He scowled. “Don’t call it that.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She wasn’t. “How about you get out of my way and I promise I won’t call it that again?” She was even willing to keep that promise. His home world had a bazillion letters. Given a little time, she was pretty sure she could come up with something every bit as objectionable to him as Hoggy.

  Kogan didn’t move.

  “Look.” Piper heaved a sigh. “There’s nothing over there. I scanned the whole ship, hacked their system, and checked all the monitors. I couldn’t get into trouble if I tried!”

  “That’s a lie. I’ve been with you for two years now.” He folded burly arms across an equally burly chest. “You are very good at getting into trouble.”

  In spite of all her best efforts, her growing aggravation once more poured out as a growl. “I’m not going to find anything over there.”

  “You could find an Ocymit,” he countered.

  She scoffed. As if anyone had seen a living Ocymit since the end of the Plurvian-Delta War. That was forty years ago. She only knew what one looked like because her grandfather had kept pictures. “I promise I’ll run like hell the other way.”

  Kogan scoffed back. “With an attitude like that, he’s probably already printing up auction flyers.”

  “There’s nothing living over there!”

  “You’ll be stripped naked and chained to his bed before you get three feet from the hatch.”

  “At least I’ll have sex!”

  “I’ll barely have time to yell ‘I told you so’ before he launches into hyper-drive and leaves this ancient beast of a vessel far behind. Left with no other option, I’ll be forced to send your parents the annual offspring-to-parent holiday photo of myself beside the Christmas twig, all alone. Again.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t do that!”

  “No, I promised I’d put pants on. There’s a difference.”

  “I know how to do my damn job,” she sniped. “I’ve been doing it long before I found you!”

  “Yes.” He inflated again. “But only half as well.”

  Now it was Piper’s turn to deflate. So… that was what this was about. “Hey, Kogan,” she said without enthusiasm. “Wanna help me scavenge the Ocymit ship?”

  Kogan brightened. “How kind of you to offer. I would love to.” He stepped out of her way, grandly gesturing for her to lead on. “Women and children first, I believe your saying goes.”

  “Only if the ship’s about to explode.” She took the lead anyway. “Asshat.”

  “You humans and your colloquialisms. There are too many to keep track.” He fell into step, following her through the narrow corridor that led to the docking hatch. Here Piper had her pick of the dozen or so silver-gray pressure suits that lined the walls. Kogan only fit into one and so it took extra time while he combed over every inch of it in search of the tiniest oxygen-escaping perforation. She helped him. When she finally decided to kill him, she was determined to do it with her own two hands. Not through carelessness or oxygen deprivation.

  They helped each other with the lightweight O2/CO2 conversion tanks, each no bigger than a deck of cards, which plugged into their forearm controllers and which guaranteed at least six hours of breathability so long as they didn’t tear their suits. Which was always a possibility on a salvage run, she wasn’t saying otherwise. But regardless of what Kogan thought, Piper wasn’t reckless or careless with her safety, and she was good at
her job.

  And because she was, before she turned her attention to opening each of the two ships’ hatchways, she entered her passcode into the security panel just outside this nook of a room and passed out firearms. She preferred the short-range plasma gun, with the long barrel that reduced the kick of each shot and the contoured grip that fit the palm of her hand. He always took the disruptor rifle, because it was so big. Between the dual cartridge and the scope, it was bulky too, and it packed almost two hundred rounds. Not one of which he’d yet had the opportunity to fire. They were salvagers, not pirates. Still, hope burned eternal.

  “I’ll go first,” he said, as she opened up their side of the hatch and began the tricky process of hacking into the Ocymit’s system through their exterior access lock.

  “A person could leap to his death from the top of your ego,” she muttered, snipping two wires in half. “I’m captain of this vessel. At best, you’re a passenger; at worst, you’re the ship’s very hairy mascot. You’re only coming because I allow it. I’ll go first.”

  His censuring frown crackled over the speaker in her helmet when he said, “I am not hairy.”

  “Please. I could wear your chest for a sweater.” A spark leapt when she struck the ends against one another, but lights all around the door also flickered on, then off again, and she heard the click of the lock releasing. The door opened easily after that.

  “Captains go down with the ship,” Kogan said, snagging the back of her suit and yanking her behind him. Ignoring her squawk of protest, he took the lead.

  “That’s only if we sink, you idiot!”

  “Colloquialism.”

  “Asshat!” But there wasn’t much she could do. She might be the captain and the only remaining member of what had at best only ever been considered a skeleton crew, but that still didn’t mean she could give him orders. She couldn’t physically knock him out of the way either. Especially not when, like now, he seemed determined to take charge. “I’m supposed to give the orders and you’re supposed to take them, damn it.”

  “Hush.” Shoving her behind him and using the threshold for cover, he hunkered in the doorway, rifle at the ready as he peered down the long, dark Ocymit corridor beyond.

  Nothing moved, although as they slowly ventured inside, at first it was hard to tell. The corridor was full of junk—bits of wall and periodic ceiling panels, broken furniture, empty supply storage containers, and garbage mounded knee-deep in places—but none of it looked alive. The lights kept flickering, creating a strobe-like effect that cast eerie garbage shadows on the walls and ceiling. Emergency lights weren’t supposed to blink like this. Either they had been tampered with or they had become damaged over time. Judging by the layer of dust she wiped off the cover of the light near her foot, the ship could have been drifting on dwindling batteries for a very long time. And yet, she couldn’t help thinking there seemed a symmetry to how the garbage in this corridor was thrown about. The longer she looked at it, the less the mounds struck her as random and the more it took on the deliberate appearance of an obstacle course, with the dark ‘dust’ smudges on the wall beside her taking on the ominous hues of old disruptor fire.

  “Stay close,” Kogan told her, but Piper was already leaning in to get a closer look at the nearest smudge. She wiped her finger through it, feeling tiny blisters of cooked wall through her gloved suit, telling her brain something her eyes only belatedly confirmed.

  “Wait,” she said, but too late. Only a handful of steps in, Kogan found the first booby trap. She heard the click when he stepped down. Fortunately for them both, he heard it too.

  He froze.

  She swore. “Don’t move.”

  “If you don’t know how to disarm panel mines, I’ll be moving at least twenty feet at very high velocity in every direction.”

  Grumbling under her breath, Piper headed back to her ship.

  “Where are you—”

  “I need light,” she snapped. From salvage mission to cluster-fuck before they got out of the hatchway. That had to be some kind of record, even for them.

  It took ten minutes for her to rig enough lights to see by, then she had to clean the garbage from around him. Working slowly, in constant search of more booby traps, she shifted enough trash to cut through the floor panel directly behind him. Crawling head and shoulders into the hole, she aimed her wrist-light at the nest of wires (and, oddly, at least a greenhouse or two worth of dead ivy-looking vines) surrounding the explosive beneath Kogan’s foot. It was armed and blinking.

  “Maybe it’s a dud,” Kogan said optimistically.

  Crawling back out from under the subflooring, Piper said, “Don’t move,” and headed back into her ship for the toolbox she’d accidentally half-buried under a mound of shifted garbage. Finding her wire cutters, she once more got down on her belly and leaned head-first into the hole. There wasn’t a lot of space in the subflooring to maneuver around, only a foot or so, at best. She twisted upside down, using her legs for balance as she angled and reached.

  “Look for the black wire,” Kogan said helpfully.

  “They’re all black wires,” she muttered, using the nose of the cutters to nudge her way through the nest and get a better look at the components underneath. When it came to explosives, Ocymit or Terran, it didn’t seem to matter. They were all built pretty much the same way, with the same identifiable parts. She had to do a physical trace of the wires before she felt comfortable making a decision on which to cut.

  “Take your time,” Kogan said. “I’m just admiring the view.”

  A prickle of irritation climbed her spine, dashing up out of the shadows of the subflooring to center in the flesh of her ass. Piper came up out of the hole so fast, she whacked her helmet on the lip of a floor panel. Glaring at him through the lighted faceplate, she rubbed the back of her skull through her suit. “Asshat.”

  His smile was wolfish. “You’ll notice I waited until after you disarmed the mine before I said anything.”

  “See if I disarm the next one,” she vowed, shoving to her feet and storming past him. Her angry stomp off was destroyed three steps later when she crossed from his floor panel to the next and heard that ominous click. She froze, then closed her eyes. “Oh, for the love of—”

  “Ocymits are dangerous, trap-setting, money-grubbing bastards,” Kogan reminded her.

  “Nobody’s seen one since the war,” she stubbornly insisted.

  “One doesn’t have to see one to lose the fight,” he just as stubbornly replied. “One only has to explode.” He held out his hand.

  Piper handed him the wire cutters. “It’s the black wire,” she wryly said as he pried up the floor panel behind her.

  “It’s all monochromatic to me,” he told her cheerfully, dropping to one knee. “I’m color blind. Don’t move.”

  This wasn’t the first booby trap she’d seen him disarm and, unless she smothered him in his sleep, it probably wouldn’t be the last. But as she stood there, basking in both the bright lights shining through the hatch behind her and the humiliation of being clumsy enough to set off their second trap in under twenty minutes, she couldn’t help but admit the view was pretty nice. The silver suits they wore were neither slimming nor form-fitting, but when he lowered himself to his belly to wedge his head and broad shoulders one burly arm at a time under her section of booby-trapped floor, with his legs spread wide for counterbalance, that suit became molded to his ass in a way she’d never seen before.

  His was a fine ass, too. Coupled with lean hips and thick thighs, the high round curves of it looked damn near… what was the word? Molest-able. Clearly, she’d been in deep space too long, but his was the kind of ass that made a girl want to dig her nails in. And bite. Maybe even give a little smack or two, just to see if it had a bounce to it.

  Kogan wiggled his way back out of the hole. “You want to do what to my what now?”

  “I said you’ve been down there forever. What’s the holdup?” Her face burned, sending ribbons of slow warm
th twisting through her abdomen to tangle in places that never should have burned for anyone as irritating as Kogan. “Why?” Piper cleared her throat. “What did you think I said?”

  Grunting, he started to thread his head and shoulders back under the floor. “That you want to wear my genitals on your…” His legs suddenly lashed and she heard it when the back of his head whacked the underside of the booby-trapped panel. Kogan all but flung himself back up onto his knees, knocking his head again on the lip before he withdrew enough to stab her with an accusing finger. “Asshat!” he cried with such unexpected discovery that she almost took her foot off the explosive’s switch. “All this time I thought that nothing but another colorful human curse word. You want to wear my genitals on your face!”

  Her face didn’t burn now, it scalded. “That is not what that means!”

  “I was paraphrasing. I personally see no erotic appeal in the literal translation. Unless—” Cocking his head, he cautiously asked, “You actually do want me to rub them atop your head? Again, no erotic appeal in that, per se, although since they would already be in the general vicinity, if you’re interested, there is a move I could show you…”

  “What? No!” If her body grew any hotter, she was going to spontaneously combust and yet, horror upon horror, her gaping mouth refused to form another single coherent rejection for what he was suggesting. Worse, her brain was running with it, summoning up a whole kindling pyre of images—him and her, hip to head, with the masculine musk of him filling up her senses while she opened to take that first long-denied taste upon her tongue—images fit to haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. The twists in her gut became strangling knots, but not before the warming tug of them ignited a slow, thumping pulse between her thighs. “That’s not what that… what I…” God, she couldn’t breathe right. Her heart was too high up in her chest. She couldn’t do this whole conversation. She pointed to the floor. “Disarm the damn mine!”

  “I disarmed it the first time,” Kogan soothed. “I was going back for the cutters I dropped.”