Sunastara & the Venusian (Space Cruise Romance #1)

Chapter 1

1

My eyes flew open as the ceiling tilted and the ship dropped out from under me. Only it wasn’t the ship. It was me, rolling out of bed and landing hard on the floor. My head throbbed like a stubbed toe. I frowned down at my half-buttoned blouse, black lace underwear, and the red heel still clinging to my foot. Wincing, and as quietly as possible—even though it was unlikely any overnight guest would have slept through my ass hitting the floor—I peeked up at my bed. Empty , thank the stars .

Where are you? Elanie barked through my viewChip comms.

In my pod, I groaned, turning the volume down on my neural implant. Why? Where are you?

Outside your door. I’ve been knocking for five minutes.

Sitting up, clutching at my head, I commed, Elanie, what in the worlds did I do last night?

I’m going to assume that was rhetorical, my assistant replied flatly. Open the door. Your shuttle to the City of All Knowledge arrives in twenty minutes.

I tried to remember what I’d had to drink last night, and how much of it. But I’d never been good at math. I am not going to the CAK. I’m sick. And I hate Deprogramming and Reprogramming week. It’s the worst.

You are not sick, Sunny. You’re hungover. And you don’t have a choice. D

My door slid open, and Elanie strode in, her long, tanned legs stopping at the foot of my bed. “Stars above, Sunny,” she said, staring down at me like she’d just walked in on a crime scene. “What did you do last night?”

“Did you hack my lock?” I started to pull my blouse closed, then decided who cares . “And I had fun. Loads of it.” This might have been true. I couldn’t remember. The last thing I recalled with any clarity was meeting Co-Captain Isla Jones for drinks at the Blurvan tavern on deck eighteen. There might have been some karaoke later. Possibly a ride around the tavern on a Blurvan’s tail. A sloppy make-out session in a bathroom rang a hazy bell. With whom was anyone’s guess.

Elanie held out her hand, and I took it, letting the perpetually scowling bionic haul me to my feet.

“Why is the ship rocking?” I asked, listing on my way into the bathroom.

“It’s not.” Elanie rolled her eyes while she plucked my other red shoe from the lamp, where it hung by its heel. Where I— or someone else —had apparently flung it last night.

Peeling off my blouse and shimmying out of my underwear, I stumbled into the shower.

I’ve started packing your bag, Elanie commed while I turned the water to near scalding. And set clean clothes on your bed.

Thank you, darling, I replied, holding my hand under the shampoo dispenser and waiting for it to squirt.

Don’t thank me yet. My DQuite the week they have lined up for you.

I perused the itinerary she’d sent me while I rinsed the shampoo and waited for the conditioner squirt. I have to go ziplining? Forgoing my typical three-minute conditioner routine, I rinsed quickly, turned off the water, and stomped out of the shower. “Seriously? Wait, is this a prank? Did you corrupt these files?”

“I’m afraid not.”

I scanned the rest of the itinerary. “Caroling? And an ugly sweater contest? What is wrong with these corporate assholes?”

She shrugged. “It’s not their fault your D&R coincides with Vorp’s Winter Revel. I suppose you’ll have to figure out how to be festive. Do you even have an ugly sweater? Or anything with a cat on it? You know how much Vorpols love cats.”

“No. No to both,” I insisted, ducking under the quikDri. I waited impatiently as a dehydrating film made of microscopic sand guppies dropped from the device. It clung to my head and sucked before peeling itself off with a satisfied sigh. “And I refuse to participate in anything that features the word ‘ugly.’”

“Suit yourself. You have ten minutes.”

As the hospitality specialist aboard the Ignisar —the premier interstellar pleasure cruise in the Juniper-13 star system—I knew my yearly D&R week was unavoidable. But that didn’t mean I had to enjoy it. The coming week at LunaCorp HQ would test my skills for perma-smiling while saying things like: All I’ve ever wanted to do is make other people happy , and I’m so excited to learn from my cohort’s skill sets and experiences .

Puke.

“How entrenched is your precept to do no harm?” I asked Elanie after closing the file.

“For the last time, Sunny, I will not dislocate your shoulder to get you out of this training. No matter how much you beg.”

“Killjoy.”

A bright-red banner flashed: Your shuttle has arrived. Your shuttle has arrived. Make your way to airlock C-14, directly over my central field of vision.

“Your shuttle has arrived,” Elanie repeated unnecessarily.

“Right.” Accepting my fate, I blew a stream of air between my lips, crossed my pod to give Elanie a kiss on her cheek that she promptly wiped away, and then got dressed.

The shuttle pilot, a handsome green-skinned Aquilinian male with impressively broad shoulders, strafed me head to toe with an irritated glare as I ducked through the docking bay fifteen minutes later.

“You must be Sunastara Nex,” he said, a brow sharply arched. “You’re late.”

“My apologies,” I replied, quirking a brow of my own. “But believe me, I’m well worth the wait.”

When he only glowered at my attempt to butter him up, I shrugged. “Can’t win them all, I suppose?—”

“Buckle in,” he snapped. “I’ll need to break some speed records to get us to the CAK on time.”

As the pilot steered the shuttle away fromthe Ignisar , my ship gleamed back at me through the flexGlass. I so rarely saw her from the outside, and despite the debauchery that took place inside her, she truly was a marvel. A kilometer long, encased in white titanium and embellished with diamonds and rubies mined from one of LunaCorp’s mega-asteroids, she was a shimmering queen in the blackness of space. A drag queen, but still.

I’d just pressed my hand against the window separating me from my ship when the pilot accelerated away from her, shoving me back into my seat. Dizzy—and still very hungover—I closed my eyes, searched for reality TV shows on my viewChip, and waited for the shuttle’s velocity to level out.

“Shuttle passengers,” the pilot said, interrupting the episode of Kuiper Worm Chasers I’d been watching. “We’re, uhhh, making our final approach on, uhhh, the City of All Knowledge.”

Why did all pilots sound the same? Did they teach pilot-speak in flight school?

“Please return to your seats, buckle in, and, uhhh, prepare for landing.”

Through the shuttle’s viewport, the CAK—a seventy-kilometer-long wonder of high-tech engineering and obscene credit expenditure—hovered. Towering skyscrapers reached into the blackness of space like the sparkling points of Miss Known Universe’s tiara, while countless orbiting satellites created a twinkling veil cast over the city. The CAK was positioned at the border of the wormhole linking Juniper-13 with the Solar System of New Earth, acting as the port of entry and customs for travel between the two. It was also the home of LunaCorp’s HQ, and one of my least favorite places to visit.

The shuttle landed with a whisper-soft thud that was completely at odds with the gravity tugging on my shoulders. Stepping onto the tarmac, I winced and shielded my eyes against the garish glow of the red and blue Winter Revel lights strewn across the surrounding trees.

Since the accident, holidays were, to put it mildly, challenging. But considering the countless species the Ignisar catered to—all with their own unique customs and celebrations—I’d learned to shoulder through them with a grim determination. I had no choice. A full week at the CAK during a holiday, however, was a different story entirely. A week cut off from the comfortable, numbing routine of my work. A week of mandatory fist-bumping, corporate ego stroking, and enthusiastically feigned interest during team-building bullshit. A week spent being bombarded by holiday music everywhere I went… All I knew for certain was that my mini bar had better be fully stocked.