Desire in His Blood (Brides of the Kylorr #1)

Chapter 1

Gemma

B lue salt twinkled in the light of the floating, golden, glowing orbs. The salt clusters cast kaleidoscope-like refractions against the cave walls, and I stared, thinking it looked like a rippling sea. Beautiful and endless.

Mr. Cross didn’t see the way my fingers pinched at the thick material of my pants. He didn’t hear my palpable swallow over his clipped voice, a voice that made my stomach knot with sickening nerves. He couldn’t sense the drip of sweat that rolled down my spine, sliding into the little divot at the base.

“Mr. Cross,” I said, swiftly taking advantage of the brief lapse of silence over the Halo Com. “Would you like to see what I’m looking at right now?”

His thunderous glare pinned me in place, but my voice came out unwavering.

My superpower, I thought. Inside, I was shriveling up, crumbling in on myself like balled-up parchment.

Yet he didn’t need to know that. I’d known men like him all my life, men that frequented my father’s office, a revolving door of demons more unforgiving than the last. They preyed on weakness, reveled in desperation, and rejoiced in despair.

His impatience traveled through the Halo orb, the miniature image of him flickering briefly when I reached out to spin the small, hovering metal ball.

“The miners found it this morning,” I informed him. And since he couldn’t see me, I let my shoulders sag for a brief moment. It felt like a steel band was tightening and tightening around my forehead, but I breathed through the pain. “A whole cavern of blue salt.”

My relief and excitement over the morning’s discovery had been short-lived. I’d calculated out the yield within an hour and the amount we could export could cover one of Father’s debts in full or a very small portion of all of them. That didn’t take into consideration the wages for the miners or Fran’s wages.

Or the bill that had just been delivered from an off-world seamstress for Mira’s newest dress. Or the ridiculously expensive plate set from a Dumerian potter that Piper had insisted she needed because Lord and Lady Rossi were visiting soon. A purchase—I’d later found out—Father had encouraged.

That tight band around my forehead spread. I narrowly suppressed my hiss as my temples began to throb.

Breathe, I reminded myself. One thing at a time. One step forward.

Then came the bitter thought, One step forward, only to take so many backward.

Mr. Cross was shrewd and his eyes were keen. “It is not enough.”

The nausea was rising in my throat. I spun the Halo orb back around so I could meet those dark eyes.

“It’s not enough ,” came that familiar clipped voice. He jabbed a tiny finger at me, his image flickering with the sudden movement. “Do you take me for a fool? You think I don’t know about the other lenders? The 200,000 credits your father owes to them? The 45,861 credits he owes to me ?”

His graying mustache was quaking with his fury, and even over the Halo orb, as outdated as it was, I could see his cheeks getting redder and redder.

“You need twenty caverns full of blue salt to pay back your family’s debts. But you already know that, don’t you?”

I just need more time, came the quiet thought. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing those soft, cliché, pleading words. Not from me.

“There are endless mountains in the Collis,” I told him instead, keeping my voice firm. My spine straightened. “There will be twenty caverns full. And more. Much more.”

“If your miners don’t pack up and leave once they realize the great House Hara has no credits to pay them with.”

My family’s name was a taunting twist on his lips. A quick, pleased grin followed when he caught my flinch.

A burst of frustration and pride made me snap, “Then I’ll mine them myself! But you will have your credits by the end of the year. As agreed.”

“And the interest,” he added.

By then the interest would be as much as the original loan. And Mr. Cross knew it.

“And your interest,” I said back, my careful mask falling back into place after my brief outburst. “Of course. How could I forget?”

“I have something else to discuss with you,” he cut in before I ended the connection, his voice momentarily and uncharacteristically hurried.

There was a long, pointed pause through the Halo. Though I couldn’t see it, I saw Mr. Cross shuffle something across his office desk. The sound of metal tinkered through the connection. My stomach soured further because I knew what was coming next.

“Remember what we spoke about last time. Have you reconsidered?”

A jagged edge of my nail caught on the worn material of my pants, fraying the threads.

“Despite what you think, Mr. Cross, my sisters are not for sale ,” I told him, my tone curt. I had the strongest urge to claw at his miniature, holographic image, if only to make those ugly words and the slimy knowing in his eyes go away.

“And what about you , Gemma?”

Stunned, I could only whisper, “ What? ”

Mr. Cross leaned back in his chair. In addition to loaning credits to people he clearly shouldn’t loan money to, the human businessman was known for something else entirely throughout the Quadrants, something I thought far more dangerous.

He called it a matchmaking service. But underneath its “Lonely Beings Looking for Love” marketing bullshit, I knew what it really was.

It was human males looking for exotic alien mistresses who could do things their human wives couldn’t. It was brutish, cold, lizard-faced Jetutians wanting a female that they could use whenever they wanted. It was wealthy Gwytri heirs that needed to marry to access their inheritance—and once they did, they shipped their new wives off to the nearest colony without a second thought.

Hell, I’d even heard that Mr. Cross coordinated monthly orgy parties with females from his little black book. Desperate females who needed credits fast.

Desperate just like me.

“How much is your pride worth, I wonder?” he asked, picking at the ends of his thick gray mustache. “How far would you go to save your home? Your family’s good name?”

“If my father knew that you were speaking to me like this, he’d have your head,” I said, my tone cold.

A bark of laughter rose from Mr. Cross. “Come now, Gemma. You’re past your prime. It is preserving your sisters’ virtues that your father is more concerned with now.”

The truth of his words stung. They stung more deeply than I thought they should.

Past my prime?

I was thirty.

Yet…most human women were married by twenty-five—especially those that lived under the Earth Council’s rule. On the planet of New Everton, in the Collis, I was considered withered . Like rotting fruit on a vine.

“Good thing for you that I have an interested suitor,” Mr. Cross continued. “One that was very interested in the renowned beauty of the Hara daughters.”

His mockery was plain to hear. Everyone knew that my sisters were the beauties of the family. They were spitting images of Mother—though Piper had taken father’s dark hair, like me—whereas I had only taken small pieces of her. And they were both of marrying age with Mira being twenty-three and Piper twenty.

“What suitor?” I asked before I could stop myself, keeping very still.

Mr. Cross’s eyes narrowed on me. His expression was watchful. Alert.

The back of my neck prickled.

“A Kylorr.”

The blood drained from my face. Sucking in a quick breath, I stumbled back, as if I could escape the impact of that admission, even though it had come from a tiny floating Halo orb.

“I didn’t meet the suitor in person,” Mr. Cross went on to explain, his tone nonchalant. “I met his ambassador. He gave me the impression that no price would deter his lord from making the match. The Kylorr in question is apparently very wealthy. One of the heirs to the Kaalium.”

I barely heard his words over the rushing in my ears.

“The m-match,” I repeated dumbly, my superpower momentarily leaving me when my voice came out strangled and weak. “You cannot possibly mean—”

“Marriage. I mean marriage , Gemma,” Mr. Cross said slowly, that grin crawling over his features. “I’m helping you, can’t you see that? I can make all your problems go away in the blink of an eye. All your debts”—he snapped his fingers, the sharp sound jarring—“ gone .”

I shivered, the cavern walls beginning to sway.

“The Kylorr will pay whatever you like. But he is determined to marry a daughter of House Hara. Oh, and Gemma?”

“What?” I whispered.

Mr. Cross grinned.

“The Kylorr specified his preference is the eldest daughter. He wants you .”