Bond: Stargazer Alien Mail Order Brides (Intergalactic Dating Agency) Read online

  Bond

  Stargazer Alien Mail Order Brides (Book 1)

  Tasha Black

  13th Story Press

  Contents

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  1. Posey

  2. Posey

  3. Posey

  4. Posey

  5. Posey

  6. Posey

  7. Bond

  8. Posey

  9. Posey

  10. Posey

  11. Posey

  12. Posey

  13. Posey

  14. Posey

  15. Bond

  16. Posey

  17. Posey

  18. Posey

  19. Bond

  20. Posey

  21. Bond

  22. Posey

  23. Posey

  24. Posey

  25. Bond

  26. Posey

  27. Posey

  28. Posey

  29. Posey

  30. Posey

  31. Posey

  32. Bond

  33. Posey

  34. Posey

  35. Georgia

  36. Rocky (Sample)

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  Intergalactic Dating Agency

  About the Author

  One Percent Club

  Copyright © 2016 by 13th Story Press All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  13th Story Press PO Box 506 Swarthmore, PA 19081

  [email protected]

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  Packed with steamy shifters, mischievous magic, billionaire superheroes, and plenty of HEAT, the Tasha Black Starter Library is the perfect way to dive into Tasha's unique brand of Romance with Bite!

  Get your FREE books now!

  1

  Posey

  It was happening again.

  But this time it was real, Posey was sure of it.

  She looked down and indeed her nails were done in the perfect French manicure she’d applied just this morning.

  But she couldn’t smell the fresh nail-lacquer over the overwhelming scent of cocoa butter.

  The silent girls backstage had slathered her in it and then rubbed her down until her whole body shone like a star.

  Now she was warm and smooth. Every step she took pleasantly jiggled her nearly naked body.

  She did have on a pair of very tall high heels that were somehow both supportive and stable, in spite of looking like nothing more than spider webs. She wore a thong made of a shimmering soft material she had never seen before.

  Aside from those two items, the only other thing that adorned her was a thick silver chain hung around her neck. It reminded her of the choke chain the neighbors’ Doberman wore, but Posey didn’t care.

  She looked and felt fantastic.

  The room was dimly lit. A sea of men in designer suits stood near the runway Posey traversed.

  It was a strange runway though. It was only about a foot off the ground.

  The men were close enough to touch her if they wanted.

  The thought of it filled Posey with warm desire.

  Each of them was handsome: tall, wide shoulders, narrow hips, defined cheekbones, great hair. God-like.

  Each of them studied her with a detachment that defied logic. After all, Posey had been lovingly bathed, pampered and partially dressed by the crew of girls backstage. She was her very best self right now.

  And even after dragging herself out of bed, blurry-eyed for an 8 AM class across campus, Posey was an 11 on a scale of 1-10.

  The gazes of their bemused eyes were like caresses, stoking her hunger. There was just one man in the room who could fill that void. And he was always the same.

  She had made it only halfway to the crystal chandelier at the center of the room, when she felt his hand on her wrist.

  Wait.

  Somehow, his voice was in her mind, even though he hadn’t opened his mouth.

  Posey turned to him.

  His eyes were a startling blue.

  He gazed at her for a long time, as if he were trying to guess all her passwords or something.

  Then he dropped his eyes to look at the place where his long fingers encircled her wrist.

  Posey looked too.

  His pale fingers accentuated the golden glow of her skin. His hairless knuckles highlighted the blonde down on her arm.

  He flipped her hand over and traced the vein from her inner elbow to her wrist so lightly she almost swooned at the tickly-sweet sensation.

  Good?

  He gazed into her eyes again, asking her without words.

  Posey smiled coquettishly, all pressed lips and dimples, no teeth.

  “Mm hm,” she agreed.

  The gorgeous man turned his attention back to his own hand, and reached up to caress her breast.

  This was the weird part.

  They were in a room full of people.

  Posey had been groped by dumb guys plenty of times. There was nothing sexy about it.

  But something about this excited her beyond words.

  And the way the man touched her was the strangest thing she had ever experienced. He was not lascivious.

  He was… inquisitive. There was an innocence in his touch that took her breath away.

  His index finger stroked the shadow between her bare breasts.

  Posey felt her nipples begin to pout.

  She studied the man’s face to distract herself.

  His handsome features were set in an expression of wonder.

  She gasped when his finger stroked her nipple at last.

  Good?

  He stopped touching her to ask again, concerned.

  “Yes,” she whispered plaintively, wanting him to touch her again, to slide his large hands up and down her body, to snake between her legs and assuage the ache that was pounding so insistently she could barely think.

  Do you want?

  “Yes,” she repeated.

  Not here. I will take you. I choose you.

  The voice in her head was tender and filled with meaning.

  Before she could unravel its mystery, there was a tug at the chain and the collar tightened, cold and hard around her neck.

  2

  Posey

  Posey awoke with a start, her face pressed against the cold glass of the window.

  Outside, the Pennsylvania landscape marched past just as it had before the rhythm of the train had rocked her to sleep.

  Before she dozed off she’d been overlooking the deep moody greens that still reigned down in the bogs outside Philadelphia. Now a cheerful spectrum of reds and yellows adorned the trees. They must be up in the ridges.

  “Good dream?” Georgia asked from the seat across the box, arching a delicate brow.

  Oh, god. Had she been talking in her sleep?

  Rima giggled from behind her dark curls.

  Posey scowled and sat up.

  “How close are we?” she asked, deliberately avoiding the question. No way was she sharing her super sexy recurring dream with her friends. She trusted them with her life, but she so did not want to get laughed at. Especially since there was something special about this dream, something private.

  “Well, let’s see, we were about an hour away before you fell asleep for fifteen minutes, so that would put us at about forty-five minutes,” Georgia teased.

  She’d only been asleep fifteen minutes. Wow.

  Posey’s skin still
tingled from the touch of the curious man in the suit. And a faint whiff of cocoa butter lingered in her nose.

  “Want some chocolate?” Rima offered.

  “Yes,” Posey agreed immediately.

  She shouldn’t, she knew she shouldn’t, but the whole trip was stressing her out.

  Rima smiled and poured a handful of colorful M&Ms into Posey’s outstretched palm.

  Rima’s skin was always perfect and she carried her extra weight in her boobs, not her hips. She complained about being the only Indian woman alive with curly hair, but her raven ringlets were adorable from the moment she rolled out of bed in the morning. And the girl could eat M&Ms all day long without breaking out.

  Posey’s was a more curated beauty, accomplished with facials and trips to the gym to walk carefully on the treadmill. She was a Business major and her plan was to open a spa one day. More likely she’d wind up working at someone else’s spa, if she was being completely honest. But in any case, cultivating beauty in herself and others was her passion.

  As the candy shells melted in her mouth, Posey welcomed the sugar rush of the chocolate.

  “Georgia?” Rima offered, holding out the bag of M&Ms.

  The statuesque redhead shook her silky mane.

  “I don’t know how you guys eat that stuff.”

  “Aren’t you nervous, Georgia?” Posey asked, regretting the slight whine in her voice. If their little group had a leader, it was the fearless Georgia.

  Georgia frowned.

  “No, not really. Why would I be nervous?”

  “We’re donating eggs, our flesh and blood,” Posey said.

  Rima got a strange look on her face and crammed another handful of M&Ms in her mouth.

  Posey had a pang of guilt. However upset she might feel, it had to pale in comparison to what Rima was feeling. Culturally speaking, Posey worried that egg donation might be really frowned on by Rima’s family.

  She reached over and patted her friend on the knee, whereupon Rima choked on her candy and then coughed so hard Posey thought for sure she was going to throw up.

  “Are you okay?” Posey asked.

  “Jesus, Rima,” Georgia barked.

  “I’m fine,” Rima gasped.

  Then she laughed at herself, hard.

  The other two started to giggle too.

  “Seriously, baby, you are not safe in this world. I thought I was worried about you walking,” Georgia teased.

  “When we go in, you have to be really careful,” Posey told her seriously.

  “I didn’t do that on purpose,” Rima said earnestly.

  Posey looked helplessly over at Georgia, who shrugged as if to say, you can’t argue with that logic, and they all started giggling again.

  It had been a long year.

  The three women had grown close in that time, but they started off with only one thing in common.

  They had met almost exactly a year ago today in the waiting room of a small clinic just off the campus of Tarker’s Hollow College.

  The ad in the campus paper that brought them there was straightforward:

  Are you a healthy young woman age 18 to 24?

  Would you like to bring joy to a childless family?

  Consider egg donation.

  *Donors will be compensated $9,500 per cycle.

  Posey had jumped at the chance. Tuition at the small private college was steep and the more she borrowed for living expenses, the longer it would take to pay down her student loans enough to open a business. Posey’s family wasn’t wealthy and she was attending college at Tarker’s Hollow on a combination of grants and loans.

  The morning of her interview and physical she had gotten up early to walk on the treadmill, and then do a complete beauty routine. Couples looking for an egg donor would want to hear that the donor was pretty. She only wished she had lost the stubborn baby fat that still clung to her hips and upper arms. But there was nothing she could do about that.

  Posey had stepped into the waiting room looking and feeling her best. When they handed her a clipboard and gestured for her to sit in one of the blue plastic chairs, she had no way of knowing the two women she sat between would become the most important people in her life.

  Rima had looked up from her own clipboard, eyes sparkling conspiratorially.

  “This is so unreal,” she whispered.

  Posey felt immediately at home with her.

  “Are we the only ones here?” Posey whispered back.

  “I’ve been here half an hour, and we’re it so far,” Rima nodded, her curls bouncing.

  “Pity,” the other girl said.

  Posey and Rima had turned to the tall redhead.

  Posey thought this particular girl looked too rich for egg donation. Designer jeans, long straight preppy hair - perfect for ponytails and field hockey. Her teeth even had that post-braces perfection. What was she doing here?

  “There are a lot of couples who can’t have children without the help of a donor. More young women should be generous with their eggs. We may be in the position of the recipients one day,” the girl said in a smug way.

  Oh. It was political for her.

  Well, Posey only wished she could afford the luxury of altruistic motivations. Her own motivation was a semester of tuition.

  “Mm,” Rima nodded noncommittally.

  “Well, for me it’s about the money,” Posey admitted. “I don’t want to graduate drowning in debt. If I can help someone in the process I don’t mind. Though it is a little weird.”

  “Me too,” Rima said. “I never really thought about how I’m going to pay off my loans until this year. The room and board is insane.”

  “I wish I could get an apartment. I wouldn’t mind cooking and walking to campus,” Posey said.

  “I’ve thought the same. I even started looking, but you have to have roommates, and no one else I know wants to live off-campus,” Rima said. “Hey, you know there’s a place above the drugstore in town? It’d work with a roommate. Even better with two, if you know anyone?”

  Posey got excited immediately. She’d known Rima all of two minutes but somehow it felt right.

  “Oh my gosh, I’d love to. I don’t know anyone though. I guess we could post it on MagsList and see if we find anyone that way,” Posey said.

  The redhead snorted behind her clipboard.

  “Sure, that’ll work. If you want to get raped and murdered.”

  Posey rolled her eyes. Drama queen, much?

  “Unfortunately, she’s got a point,” Rima said. “You never know who you’ll get on MagsList - that’s why I haven’t posted yet myself.”

  “It sucks, the whole system is against us,” Posey said, stopping just short of waving her fist in the air.

  Redhead put down her clipboard.

  “Is the system against you? Your parents don’t have enough money to pay for college, but you want to go, so the government gives you grants and loans and the college gives you grants and loans and then you get to go. And if you’re smart about it, you’ll find a job that allows you to pay it back quickly.”

  She leaned back and picked up her clipboard, but not in time to miss Posey rolling her eyes again.

  “You know what else sucks?” the redhead asked.

  “No,” Posey replied. “But I’m sure you’re going to tell us.”

  Undeterred, the girl continued.

  “It also sucks when you know what you want to do with your life, when you graduate at the top of your high school class and you’re accepted to the police academy, then your dad says no daughter of mine is going to become a cop. So he sends you to a four-year private college instead, but then he gets downsized from his corporate job during the stock market crash before you can graduate.

  “And then guess what? They base financial aid on your parents’ tax returns from the year before, which was a damned good year, but that money’s spent already on last year’s tuition. So you get a job working nights as a security guard while carrying a full course load, an
d you try to finish school with no grants and no loans, because if you stop paying tuition mid-year your credit will be shot and the police academy won’t accept you again.”

  With that, the redhead looked down at her clipboard, scowled and resumed writing.

  “Jeez,” Rima breathed.

  “You want to be a cop?” Posey asked incredulously.

  “Yes, and I’m going to be a great one,” the girl replied immediately. “If I can finish college, that is.”

  Posey realized suddenly that what the girl said was true. Redhead might be a tad judgmental, but she had the bearing of a leader, and the determination not to lose sight of her goal.

  “Do you want to rent an apartment with us?” Rima asked.

  “Do you care that I work nights?” the girl asked.

  Rima looked to Posey, who shook her head.

  “No,” Rima said.

  “Georgia,” the redhead said by way of introduction.

  “I’m Rima,” Rima smiled.

  “Posey,” Posey said.

  “Posey Quinn,” a nurse called in a bored voice.

  Quickly, Posey jotted her number on the corner of Rima’s paper, then waved a quick good-bye and headed down the hall with the nurse.

  They’d taken so many vials of her blood for various tests, that she’d gotten light-headed and the nurse had to give her orange juice.

  Ultimately though, she had not been selected as an egg donor that day, none of them had.

  But they did get that apartment over the drug store. And together, the three of them were able to struggle through another semester.

  And then came the letters a year later, inviting them each to rural Pennsylvania.

  After doubling up on summer classes to arrange for some time off in the fall, all three of them were about to become egg donors after all.

  3

  Posey

  Posey and her friends arrived in Stargazer, Pennsylvania at just after dark, but still in time to grab dinner after checking into the hotel.