Page 1 of Her Consort
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.”
