A dedicated detective meets a rich inventor who wants to play cop. Even in the future, money can get you everything…
Detective Brett Knucks is trying to find a killer. The last thing he needs is to be saddled with the legendary Chris Genius, aka Big Balls. But someone is using one of Genius’s inventions, the cook bot, to commit murders, and Brett has more questions than answers. The only way to find the truth is to dig through all the lies surrounding them. Working side by side with the sarcastic, flirty inventor is definitely not what Brett had in mind. Even more surprising is that they make a good team. Until one kiss changes everything. Meet Big Balls and Brass Knuckles—a dysfunctional partnership that may just save your life.
The door popped open and Genius arched a brow. “Forget something?”
Brett walked right in. “I didn’t mean to tell you all that,” he began.
Genius moved to the door of his office and put down a glass filled with amber liquid on a bookshelf. He leaned against the door frame.
“About my parents. I don’t tell people that. It’s not anyone’s business.” Brett walked up to him. God, that drink looked good right now. “Only a few people know. I’d like to keep it that way. I don’t even know why I told you.”
“Because you like me. Because you’re beginning to trust me.”
That was going a bit far. He scoffed and then, well, then thought left his brain. Genius was so close. Their bodies. Their faces. Their lips. Brett was going to go for that whiskey, but he’d have to lean forward and he’d be even closer to Genius. Fuck. Brett stared into Genius’s eyes and closed the distance. His head screamed as his body swelled with need. Their lips touched. This was no sweet, soft kiss. Their mouths parted. Tongues instantly challenged and fought. Brett leaned into Genius as he took control of the kiss. The man wielded his tongue like a fucking weapon. The pressure and intensity made Brett’s cock swell. His breath rushed out in pants, and then his eyes popped open.
Holy fuck, he was kissing Genius.
He. Was. Kissing. Genius!
Brett jerked back, his lips wet and well taken care of. What the fuck had he done? Genius looked equally as shocked. Brett sputtered random noises, then spun around and marched out of the apartment. He closed the door behind himself and leaned against it. The world just started spinning out of control, and it was all his fault.
****
Genius’s legs were actually shaky. He stumbled backward until he sat in his desk chair. That was a kiss to end all kisses. That was a kiss that poetry was written for. Holy shit. His hand landed on the desk, making his work screen pop up. He glanced at the screen. Images of Brett’s parents stared back at him from the police files Genius had stolen earlier in the day.
Genius was in trouble.
This was not a crush.
This was not even lust.
“Fuck me. I’m in love.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James is rather hard to define. He's obviously into men, but also finds women alluring. To him reading gay fiction is so stimulating he's taken up a pen (keyboard) and started writing. The stories in his head are edgy, hot enough to embarrass him at work and meant to entertain.
James' day job is pathetic but a means to get the green. He lusts after his straight boss and always longed to paint nude men.
King in Check: On the run, Rey is forced to depend on Mosquito, the mysterious young boss of his old home. When they search for help, they have to discover who who they can trust, or they’ll end up dead.
King’s Gambit: When Mosca chose Calle to be his personal guard Calle should have suspected something was off. But this time is different. Very different. Living one step away from betrayal and falling in love with the man he’s charged to protect changes both of their lives. For good.
“Need anything? I’m going to town.” I looked up at the big man on the kitchen porch, trying not to show how urgently I wanted to leave. It would have been even more obvious if I’d left without asking, since trips to town were rare.
I kept myself from shifting my weight from one foot to the other. I was trying to stay casual, trying to avoid the inevitable.
“What for?” Calle asked the question anyhow.
“To pick someone up.” I made it sound routine, but of course a trip to Medianoche never was. If you weren’t caught by the Feds or robbed, and if you got what you were willing to barter for -- hell, that made it an extraordinary trip. And if we returned, we never took new people past the portal.
“Rey?” Calle’s face lit up. “Is it today?”
Calle was a big man who didn’t talk much and never smiled. None of the men ever complained about his cooking, and it wasn’t just because they wanted to be fed regularly. Despite his injury, his muscles were impressive, and his arms could reach wide enough to grab and knock someone against the wall before the other person could move. He’d proved that more than once… and all without changing his dour expression.
But now Calle was beaming like I’d told him I’d found a miracle cure for his crushed leg. Damn it. Where was the stolid cook I’d come to know when I wanted him?
“If he shows.”
“If he said today, he’ll show.” Calle’s smile left. He seemed to be thinking deeply. Then that smile came back full force, unable to be restrained. “Yeah. I need something. Bring sugar. We’ll do something special for the meal tonight.”
Shit. The man was going to bake a cake or something. The cook who always cooked chili on Monday, eggs on Tuesday, and so on through the week, following his routine without fail.
I already hated Rey. I’d spent three months busting my ass to manage the compound, and all I got was “Rey wouldn’t do things that way.” I was the freakin’ boss’s kid, but it didn’t matter. No one took orders from me unless I got in their face and proved I could enforce or buy what I demanded. Otherwise, the men just did what Rey had told them to do back when he was still around to give orders. After all, in their minds, he was still the foreman.
He’d been gone for years. While he’d been gone, the compound had withered. The campesino women and children had left first. Then the strongest and boldest of their men had vanished. I’d been sent to save the compound before the hands deserted us and everything fell apart. I’d arrived before the last of the campesinos left. I’d promised the hands double pay if they kept the remaining sharecroppers on our land without killing them. I didn’t ask how they managed it, but the campesinos stayed. Just that was almost enough to make the compound sustainable if we ever needed to close the portal against the Federistas.
“Maybe Dog should go instead.” Calle frowned. “He’s strong.”
“I’m touched that you worry so about my safety,” I said. “But I’ll do it.”
I knew damn well what Calle was worried about, and it wasn’t me. His concern was that I was too short, too weak, too city to pull off bringing Rey home.
I’d managed a miracle to get the compound back to life so quickly. I’d not just ridden but walked the entire compound to work it with the men. I’d done more than my share and never whined. But all I got as a reward was the short end of the Rey stick.
Those hands who stayed made it clear they did because Rey would be back someday. The campesinos didn’t look at me or speak when I gave them orders. But they would sing at night about El Rey -- and they didn’t mean their primitive god. Unless, of course, they thought the man was their god. I wouldn’t be surprised.
“But, Boss, if you let someone else go --”
“Don’t argue with me.” I stalked out.
* * *
My mood hadn’t improved after waiting almost two hours at the station. No one from outside Medianoche stayed in one place that long once they reached town. And waiting at the station, a place officially sanctioned, was even more dangerous when you weren’t sanctioned yourself.
The fans that provided some relief from the heat moved sluggishly, raising my temperature and temper by the minute. When was the coach going to arrive?
I wiped my face. Sweat had already stained my shirt through. Maybe I should leave. Probably he wasn’t going to show. There were all kinds of dangers traveling by coach -- from retired-soldiers-turned-thugs to interfering officials, all of whom required either a bribe or a beating before you were sent on your way.
I wasn’t sure the new Rey would be able to manage either feat if he were stopped. From what I could gather in the brief message sent to me before the reception was jammed, Rey was returning because he was of no more use to our side. I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but no one gave us back healthy, whole men once they became part of the endless fighting in the cities.
That thought sent a sudden chill through me. Maybe he’d been sent back to die. God, how would I manage the hands if that happened? Especially if it happened when he was my charge.
And then I heard the noise in the distance. No one else around me looked up, but I fumbled with my locator and caught the faintest blip of something foreign on the screen.
The coach.
I stood up and pushed my hands into my pockets to keep them from shaking.
The same dilapidated coach that had spit me out here into my new world three months ago stopped again. The horses slumped under the shade, and the driver leaped down, more concerned about them than any of the passengers. The coach door opened, and I braced myself.
One passenger leaped down, apparently healthy, his face hidden under a wide-brimmed hat. Then he looked up.
Jesus God.
Blue eyes in a tanned face. Blue eyes that looked right into you and almost made you miss that the rest of the man was equally beautiful. Almost. Perfection like that was hard to miss for long.
And hard was the word for that body.
I’d had no one since I arrived at the compound. But that wasn’t why my body was leaning toward him.
It was him. He did it with one look at me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Treva Harte has always been an overachiever. She also collects things. First it was degrees. First a B.A. in English, then she decided to go back for a Master's degree. Not content with that, she added a J.D. Since then she's added a husband, also an attorney, and two children to her collection. She's continuing her ways as an overachiever, writing her wonderfully offbeat tales of passion and possibilities -- in her spare time.
The savage murder of a pleasure worker rocks the corridors of Spaceport Adana. Peri Barberossa and Fyche, her faithful AI, answer a call from her sister Holly to get to Adana posthaste. When they arrive, they find Holly gone and a case of mistaken identity allows Peri to make a big impression on the enigmatic private eye, Silas Archimedes, who finds that Holly's sister is even more trouble than the ace reporter herself.
While Fyche discovers the joy of human sex, Holly's old nemesis, Mischa, reaches out with her long and vicious right arm.
Stay tuned for further carnal developments in The Adana Affair, a Peri Barberossa Spaceport adventure.
"You're lucky I'm still talking to you. You're lucky you're still on my ship. You're lucky you still have a body!"
I was referring to the organic body I'd finally agreed to buy for my long-serving ship's AI. He had been begging for it for ages. He cited all the usual practical reasons why an artificial intelligence might want an organic body; guarding me while on assignment, helping me with my research, being an extension of the ship's core memory and effectively allowing him to be in two places at once.
The list went on, but his real agenda was quite selfish. He, Fyche, an artificial intelligence, had fallen in lust with me. He openly admitted it, though was at a loss to explain it. I, and my body, had become an obsession with him. He wanted, he said, to taste my bodily delights after witnessing so many of my sexual adventures.
I wasn't entirely sure this was a good idea, and I offered to have him psychoanalyzed, or whatever the equivalent was for artificial intelligence, but he convinced me that was not a good idea. Such analysis could destroy his distinct personality which, I must admit, I'd come to appreciate and grown accustomed to. What finally swayed me was the prospect that the month it took to grow a synthetic organic body around his positronic brain presented me with a too good to miss opportunity to linger at the capital and spend some extra bed time with Laz.
Laz. The thought of my lost lover sent me into another bout of sobbing. I'd been in this morbid state for three days. It was ridiculous.
"I know what will get your mind off him," Fyche said.
"Fyche, for the last time, you are not going to get into my pants!"
"I meant this."
I opened my scratchy eyes. Phong knows what I must have looked like. Three days crying can't be a good thing. "What is it?"
He held a data card. "It arrived an hour ago."
"Who is it from?"
"The transmission didn't say," he said. "It was coded private and confidential."
"And you didn't even peek?"
"Tampering with private transmissions is an offense."
"Yeah, yeah," I said, not entirely believing him. "When have you not opened my mail?"
"I'm offended that you would think I would break my basic code of ethics."
I waved him into silence lest he start quoting me the AI code of behavior. "Don't just stand there like the piece of furniture you are, plug it in."
The holo-screen lit up on a face I hadn't seen for years. The eyes grabbed me first, like they always had. I always hated those eyes. They were too blue to be real, but were, in fact, her own. Her face was framed by a halo of jet curls. When I'd last seen her, Holly's hair had been straight and long, but that was years ago when we were teenagers. Her face was animated, full of life and energy. She was beautiful.
I haven't really thought about her in ages, really thought about her, that is. I was surprised that even now I still resented her. Call it petty but I was never one for sisterly affection.
Holly smiled that dazzling smile that would melt my father's heart.
"Peri, I need your help," she said bluntly. "Come to Spaceport Adana. I have attached the coordinates." She fixed me with her azure gaze, the confidence slipping to be replaced by something like melancholic resignation. "I need you." The recording faded and I sat back in my chair.
"Your sister?" Fyche asked me. "I can tell by the resemblance. The same intensity in the manner, the arresting presence, yet, I sense she is naïve, a child almost, and she plays on that perception. Men want to protect her, and she lets them."
Starting with my father. I glanced at Fyche. He was watching me closely, his dark eyes attentive and kind. He always knew the right thing to say. Though I called him a simple AI and treated him abysmally, he was not a simple piece of furniture. He was, in all things where it counts, a good friend, probably my only one. "Her physiological signs?"
"Impossible to pick up on a hologram. I have to be in the person's physical presence to detect their vital signs. However, pupil dilation, non-verbal behavior and phase variations in her voice suggest she is in a state of some anxiety. Is she susceptible to pressure?"
"Not that I ever noticed," I said.
"How long has it been since you've seen her?"
"Many years. A lifetime, maybe two."
"She seems to be in trouble."
"What do we know of Spaceport Adana?"
I waited the half second it took for him to interrogate the ship's library and collate the results. "According to one travel writer, 'Adana is a seething cauldron of crime, corruption and political unrest, a cancer on the tattered edge of civilization.'."
It seemed typical of Holly to end up in such a place. She seemed to have an affinity with degradation. "Prepare a summary for me," I said. "Holly's a reporter. No doubt you'll find some of her stories."
"The only one," Fyche mumbled.
"What?"
"She's the lead journalist for the only independent news service, the Adana Observer."
I laughed. "You mean she has the whole spaceport at her mercy? Phong help them."
"Shall I set a course for Adana?"
"As fast as you can."
ABOUT MIKALA ASH
Aussie Mikala Ash lives a hectic double life, mild-mannered training & development consultant by day... wild sci-fi and paranormal adventure writer by night. "For me, burning the candle at both ends is not such a terrible problem; I'm having too much fun!"
The last thing Dryson expects when he takes his latest shipment of smuggled goods to Spaceport Adana is to end up with a Rajian sex slave, Sasha. Sure, he planned a little R & R, but the impulsive buy is proving to be more than he bargained for. Sasha is a force to be reckoned with, and her bite is definitely worse than her bark.
Something else Dryson doesn't expect is to find himself face to face with an assassin sent to kill him. Belin, the large and very experienced killer, has other plans. Instead of killing Dryson, Belin wants to recruit him to smuggle much-needed goods to his home planet. Unfortunately, the Interplanetary Alliance Council has strong objections to letting Dryson live.
When Dryson is taken hostage, Belin and Sasha must keep their cool and use all their cunning if they're going to rescue him. Keeping a level head is not something a Rajian is capable of when her mate is in danger.
"That's it, Sasha," Mathum, the big Maylarian, ground out, "suck it."
Sasha looked up at him from where she knelt between his legs sucking his dick. It wasn't that she didn't like sucking cock -- quite the opposite -- but she was a slave. This wasn't about her pleasure. Which meant this game wasn't fun anymore.
It was annoying. And not at all satisfying. Time to move on.
She continued to move her mouth up and down on her master's dick. His moans and shudders of pleasure bespoke Sasha's talent, but she couldn't care less if he enjoyed himself or not. Still, what she had planned for his climax would almost make up for her lack of pleasure.
She kept her master on the brink for several minutes, just like he liked it. Sucking and pulling with just the right amount of pressure, Sasha watched him carefully. When she pulled him down from the edge of orgasm one final time, she removed her mouth from his cock long enough to ask, "Would it please Master to fuck his slave slut now?"
He groaned. "It would please me if you sucked me off, you little wench." His growl was one of desperation, not of command.
It was also a mistake. Having given him one last chance to please her, to appease her nature, Sasha had no problem with her next action. When she took his cock back into her mouth, she bit down. Not hard enough to cause permanent damage, but enough to draw blood and make her point.
The hulking Maylarian screamed and Sasha had to release him quickly as he pushed her and staggered away from her, tripping on his feet and falling to the floor. Even so, she took a strip of skin from his dick with her teeth. She spat out the small amount of blood and flesh she came away with and smiled, supremely satisfied.
"You little bitch!" His scream lacked the appropriate amount of viciousness given he was scooting across the room on his ass while he held his privates with one hand.
Sasha rose slowly to her feet. "I'm tired of you," she announced. "Sell me."
"I'll do better than that," he screeched. "I'll kill you!"
Sasha wasn't worried. The Maylarian had never been a match for her. He might be bigger, but she was faster and the better warrior. Besides, he was injured. As he tried to regain his footing, Sasha scampered to the door and slid easily past the panels before they'd completely opened.
Running down the corridor in the dim lights of the evening cycle, Sasha disappeared into the darkness of Spaceport Adana. She'd resurface sooner or later, but for now, she was happy to find an empty ventilation duct and sleep.
She carefully lifted a blanket and small pillow from a couple of different shops on this level of the station before heading into deeper levels via several conduits. The deeper she went into the lower levels, the worse conditions got, and it wasn't long before she was covered in grime. Once she was satisfied no one had seen either her escape or her theft, she curled up and promptly fell asleep.
ABOUT MARTEEKA KARLAND
Erotic romance author by night, emergency room tech/clerk by day, Marteeka Karland works really hard to drive everyone in her life completely and totally nuts. She has been creating stories from her warped imagination since she was in the third grade. Her love of writing blossomed throughout her teenage years until it developed into the totally unorthodox and irreverent style her English teachers tried so hard to rid her of.
Logan and his crew may just have to turn a treasure ship into a literal time bomb.
Cover Artist: Zury
Publisher: Changeling Press
Pepper and her cyborg ally, Kade Starke, scavenge space junk hoping to find that one-in-a-million hunk of rock that will make them rich. Then they find the sad wreck of an old shuttle, and a hunk inside named Dr. Logan MacDonald. Oh, and several billion credits worth of long-lost artifacts and art. Now everyone from pirates to Imperial forces want Logan and his treasure. To get the artifacts to where they can be shared by all humanity and not just a wealthy few, Logan and his scavenger friends may just have to turn the treasure ship into a literal time bomb.
Captain Pepper Corstorphine drummed her long fingers on the ship's console and glanced listlessly at the running vid game she was playing with her partner and friend, Kade. As usual, he was winning. He beat her nine out of ten times, but playing games was better than sitting in her chair staring at the stars of space while they hunted space junk. "Why do I bother trying to beat a cyborg?"
Kade turned his sober and scarred face to look at her, but his hookup to the console kept the game running. His face, one of the few human things visible on him, was enough to scare small children, but laser blasts did that to you. The only things untouched by his former profession of Imperial soldier were his big brown eyes. "Because you're bored out of your mind. However, it pays the bills to scour the sector for occasional hunks of debris and the rare metallic meteor worth hauling in for a few credits."
Pepper knew that. Even their conversations had become an endless loop on replay. She sighed and stood. "Give me the damn helmet. I need some virtual exercise."
"Shall we play naked and vulnerable?" Kade pretended to leer at her. They'd served as each other's sexual release often, but diddling with a cyborg's extensions wasn't much of a turn on for her. "We haven't gone without our armor in a few cycles."
"You're bored, too, aren't you?"
Kade shrugged. "Tired of being half-man and half-machine. Half a life is what I call it. I'd welcome a bit of danger right now."
Pepper reached for the virtual helmet, but the console proximity alarm beeped the warning sequence. Instantly, she was diverted. Either they had a collection to make, or they'd be arguing with another space junker for rights to the immediate sector. Either way, it was better than boredom. "Woohoo! What have we got?" Pepper hopped back into her chair, shut down the game, and called up extra power for grapplers or a boost to the engines of her ship, the Tor.
It may have looked like a patchwork of technology and corrosion, but the Tor was hers. Okay, it was the creditors' until she achieved payoff. Her ship looked like the junk they collected, but that ugliness was deliberate. Even the corrosion was fake, but would pass casual scans.
"Metal, Pepper! A big hunk of it. Barest trace of an energy signature, and it's not photon propulsion. It's -- I don't believe I'm saying this -- nuclear fission and fossil fuel." Kade's eyes lit up in greed and joy, even if the screen gave his face an eerie green cast. "I think we have a whole derelict, and it's bigger than a satellite or probe. It may be a ship!"
Her heart raced, and Pepper dove to look for herself. Hope flared in her greedy heart. A whole ship could get them darn close to payoff and much closer to freedom than either had thought possible. She and Kade discussed endlessly what they'd do if they ever got to payoff without ever believing it could happen before they were too infirm to enjoy it. "Dollavera's Nuts! Let's get over there and confirm."
The wedge-shaped hulk hove into view, beautifully framed by a nearby nebula. The white hull gleamed and winked, belying the pocked appearance of a hull that wasn't meant for deep space. "What's the inscription on the side there? I can't read it, and I thought I was pretty good with the common trade tongues."
Kade focused on the side of the ship and captured an image as well as deploying the grappling magnet. The magnet attached to the nose cone with ease, assuring their claim over the entire bulk. "Accessing the data. Hmm. It's Old Earth French, Pepper. The name of a museum called the Louvre, but that's odd. The registry number is for another ship called Enterprise. The Enterprise was supposedly destroyed during the reign of the dictator Amin in the early twenty-first century."
"Louvre? Weird name. So is it the Enterprise or the Louvre?" Pepper leaned forward to study their prize. Their big, hulking ticket to freedom. She did a tiny jig behind Kade's chair. While historical dating could place the ship and give them clues as to what types of saleable items it might contain, they could explore for themselves. It would just take longer, and longer meant more time for pirates to find them. A pulsing light caught her eye on Kade's console. "What's the energy readout blinking for?"
Kade's extensions were busy and his voice absent. "Weak energy pulse. I haven't identified the source yet. One question at a time, Captain Greedy." Images flipped at rapid speed on his screen, slowed and stopped. An image of a ship identical to their prize stood against a pale blue sky. "That thing was never meant to be here in deep space, Pepper. It was called a shuttle, meant only for flights of short duration between nearby objects of a planet, like to orbiting space stations and back to the ground. Our prize was one of only twenty shuttles ever created, and all were presumed destroyed." Kade gestured out the window. "What we have there isn't supposed to exist."
"So, no chance of knowing what's on board. Delia's tits. Okay, so we suit up and go look." Pepper sighed. "Does the pulse come from the nuclear power? I don't want a radiation leak contaminating my best power suit."
"No leaks that I can find." Kade clamped down his helmet, sealing his vulnerable face behind a smoky mask. His voice issued from the radio speaker on the console, and would until Pepper tuned in to his channel from her own suit. "I'll go see to the jet packs while you primp."
Pepper laughed and jumped into the bottom half of her suit. Since she wore a singlesuit coverall unless she was sucking up to some officious government type, primping like a sex slave was out of the question. Not that such action did her much good. Pepper fingered the scar that ran from her hairline over her eye to her jaw. No male would look at her without wincing, and that was the way she wanted it. She hit the button that lowered the top half of her suit and fitted herself inside.
By the time they jetted over to the ship, Kade had already located a hole in the hull large enough to let them enter, just behind the command module. He dove right in, and Pepper was seconds behind. They both fought with the odd wheel that opened the door to the next portion, labeled crudely "Cargo Bay."
There was no sound in space, but Pepper could imagine the creaks and groans emitted by the old mechanism when it finally gave way and spun freely. The door opened into a darkened area where strange shapes floated in the zero gravity. All were packaged, some crudely, to protect them, and many showed signs of collision with other objects.
"I'm going to cut this one open." Kade changed his left appendage from scanner to knife, and scored along the textile covering a very tall and long object. After several attempts, the wrapping fell away revealing a human female figure made of stone, starkly white in the darkness. "This looks familiar. Let me access the ship's database."
Pepper waited, pushing away the occasional object floating too near for her comfort. She'd seen statues before in pictures, mostly in newsvids of the richest homes. This statue was beautiful in a way Pepper could not describe. Pity its arms had been broken off, though they weren't in evidence nearby.
"Holy Lextu! Pepper! Turn on your link. Take a look at this." She'd never heard Kade's voice have that tone of awe and excitement before.
Pepper tongue-switched on her access to the ship, and an exact picture of the statue appeared on the tiny screen in her hood. She listened carefully to the accompanying recording.
Last known picture of Venus de Milo statue, lost in 2015 during reign of dictator Amin. Presumed destroyed in his cultural purge, along with all contents of museums in major metropolitan areas of Europe, Asia, and parts of North America. Estimated value at time of destruction was incalculable…
Kade ended the transmission. "If this is the real thing…"
ABOUT LENA AUSTIN
Someone cursed Lena Austin with "may you have a life so full you'll have many tales to tell your grandchildren." Lena's a "fallen" society wench with a checkered past. She's been a licensed minister, hairdresser, Realtor, radio DJ, exotic dancer, telephone service tech, live-steel medievalist swordswoman, BDSM Mistress, and investment property manager. Not necessarily in that order. She never finished that degree in marine archaeology, but did learn to scuba -- she's got a lifetime of "Research material!"
Hey, why waste these stories on kids who won't listen anyway? Writing them down is a nice way to spend her retirement. What? You expected an ex-BDSM Mistress to take up crocheting or something? See all her books at http://www.LenaAustin.com.
