Tolstoy Read online

  Tolstoy

  Stargazer Alien Barbarian Brides #1

  Tasha Black

  13th Story Press

  Copyright © 2019 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]

  Contents

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  About Tolstoy

  Tolstoy

  1. Anna

  2. Leo

  3. Anna

  4. Leo

  5. Anna

  6. Leo

  7. Anna

  8. Leo

  9. Anna

  10. Leo

  11. Anna

  12. Leo

  13. Anna

  14. Leo

  15. Anna

  16. Anna

  17. Anna

  18. Leo

  19. Anna

  20. Leo

  21. Anna

  22. Leo

  23. Anna

  24. Anna

  25. Leo

  26. Anna

  Tesla (Sample)

  1. Raina

  2. Nick

  3. Raina

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  About the Author

  One Percent Club

  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 at tashablack.com!

  About Tolstoy

  Just one glance and this lonely alien shifter instantly craves Anna for his mate. Too bad the beautiful treasure-hunter seems blind to what’s truly valuable…

  When space-pirate-in-training Anna Nilsson embarks on her first solo mission to plunder an abandoned luxury cruiser, she assumes she’ll be all alone aboard the big, empty ship. She’s hunting for treasure - the last thing she expects to find is a sinfully sexy alien who eyes her with a hunger that speaks of centuries of longing.

  Leo’s ancient race has suffered greatly at the hands of the strangers who invaded their planet centuries ago, leaving the barbarians without a home world. When he awakes from stasis to the scent of a blood mate, he is stunned to discover the delectable creature is human. Being close to her sets his senses on fire, but he knows the attraction can only end in misery. What human could ever love a shape-shifting barbarian?

  When a third occupant of the not-so-abandoned cruiser shows itself, the two realize they must work together if they want to get out alive.

  Then they uncover a baby who just might be the priceless clone of a famous cultural icon, and things really start to get interesting…

  Tolstoy

  1

  Anna

  In a forgotten corner of the galaxy, far from the established trade routes, and even farther from where it was supposed to be, floated a long-forgotten ship, one among many.

  And at the center of that abandoned ship grew a forest.

  Anna Nilsson froze in place, wishing she had someone to share the unusual sight with her. But she was alone, in more ways than she cared to think about at the moment.

  She stepped closer, mesmerized, the only sound the steady hiss of her spacesuit’s air pump.

  After the endless burnished aluminum of the Stargazer, the lush greenery before her almost hurt to look at.

  Anna stood at the heart of a derelict luxury star cruiser the size of a shopping mall. She’d already made her way through winding corridors of threadbare rugs and corroded, flickering chandeliers, using her tagger to mark items of interest along the way. The passageways circled rings of rooms that extended along the sides of the ship as far as she could see. She almost felt as if she were in a Scooby Doo episode, or visiting the sunken Titanic, until she opened the latest door.

  Maybe it was the lack of sleep since she’d found out she would be running her first salvage mission completely solo, or maybe the oxygen mix in her suit was a little high, but Anna couldn’t shake the feeling she’d stepped into a dream. She blinked to clear her head, but nothing changed.

  She paused before a huge wall of glass, or something like glass, anyway. Beyond the wall, trees - real, honest to goodness trees - stretched upward, their lumpy branches bristling with bright green leaves. They had to be hundreds of years old.

  As a child, Anna had visited the indoor rain forest exhibit at the Baltimore Aquarium on Earth. Clutching her big brother’s hand, she’d dashed up the wooden platforms, trying to catch a glimpse of the sloth or the toucan. The trees there had been spread out, the bustling city always looming just outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, a reminder that the attempted wilderness was not so wild after all.

  What stood before her now was not an engineered approximation. It was a real forest, branches growing thick enough to almost completely block out the light source above. The surreal scene was made complete by a pair of ancient looking lamp posts glowing faintly at the edge of the tree line, their light barely penetrating a few steps into the wooded area.

  The ship was as good as dead, but the forest was very much alive. Tendrils of ivy burst through the crevices between the corroded metal panels that held the glass in place, refusing to bend to the will of the man-made structure.

  Hot tears sprung to her eyes and Anna had to lean over and rest her hands on her knees to steady herself against a wave of sudden emotion.

  She hadn’t seen a tree in six months.

  Well, technically it had been far, far longer. But she tried not to think about that part.

  Light from above filtered down into the woods, dappling the soil and stones beneath the trees.

  For a moment Anna was back at the cafe in Tarker’s Hollow, gazing out the window at the park as her mother scolded her to bus the lunch tables. She could smell the almond croissants baking, hear the mindless chatter of the patrons as they discussed whatever it was people with real lives discussed. It had been her entire existence, and now it was just… gone.

  A light breeze sent a shiver of motion through the leaves in front of her. It must have been manufactured weather, still operating on reserve energy. The movement highlighted what she hadn’t noticed before.

  The plant life had run riot, but there were no birds, no squirrels, not even insects on the forest floor. Besides Anna, the forest was the only living thing on the ship.

  She stepped closer, placing her gloved hand against the nearest pane in solidarity, and holstering her salvage tagger.

  She gazed up into the tremendous sycamore that towered over her head just inside the glass.

  The light seemed to be brightening above.

  No. That wasn’t right.

  The tree was brightening.

  Before her eyes, the green leaves faded then burst into flaming orange.

  All around the sycamore, the other trees erupted into a symphony of yellow, peach, pink and scarlet.

  Anna was watching summer turn to fall, as if someone had pressed a button on the remote that controlled the speed of the world.

  A tone sounded in her helmet.

  She looked down at her wrist, where her origami drone unfolded from its dock and then refolded itself into something resembling a bird before fluttering up to her.

  “Environmental scan complete,” BFF19 sang out in a reassuring, feminine voice. “The onboard air is breathable.”

  Anna disengaged her helmet and pulled it off.

  2

  Leo

  Leo watched from the shadows, his pulse racing.

  The whole ship had been sleeping.
<
br />   He had awoken hours ago, alone, with no memory of what happened.

  Now the ship was waking too.

  And he knew why.

  They had a guest.

  He crept closer, sticking to the shadows so as to avoid its notice, and watched as the strange creature placed an appendage against the glass wall of the forest.

  It was covered from head to toe in suit and helmet, but it was bipedal and it moved in much the same manner as the former residents of the ship.

  Something detached itself from the visitor’s wrist, folded itself into a bird-like shape and hovered near its head.

  A moment later, the creature unlatched its helmet and lifted it off.

  It was female.

  She shook out a curtain of flame colored hair, brighter than the blush of the changing trees in the forest between them.

  He had just enough time to take in her expression, tender, wondrous, maybe just a little lonely.

  Then something stirred in Leo’s chest and hot lust washed over him. His skin prickled, ready to change for her, to join her.

  It seemed impossible. But he knew it to his bones.

  This was the call of his blood mate.

  Stronger than the strongest will, more ancient than the stars, the grip of his blood mate held him in her thrall. He gasped for breath, his eyes trained on the hall that separated them, searching for the fastest way to get to her.

  Before he could decide, another zap of awareness electrified him.

  Darkness pulled at him this time, incinerating him from within with pulsing red anger. He struggled against it, but the world went scarlet behind his eyes and the Other took over.

  3

  Anna

  Anna soaked in the view of the trees - they seemed even more real now that her helmet was off.

  “Incredible,” she whispered.

  Double glass doors a few feet away led into the woods, she moved toward them almost without thinking.

  “There is nothing of value in there,” BFF19 chirped. “Nothing to tag.”

  Maybe there was nothing of value to the little drone, but Anna had never seen anything so arresting.

  “How do we know if we don’t go in?” she asked.

  “There’s never anything salvageable in a biodome,” BFF19 said.

  “But—” Anna began.

  “And it may not be safe. The climate program appears to be glitching,” BFF19 added. “Your mission is to tag salvageable materials.”

  Anna nodded, conceding defeat.

  She looked around at the rest of the ship. It was dizzyingly huge. She had no idea how she was supposed to find everything of value in this hulking thing in one lifetime.

  “Start with your blueprint,” BFF19 suggested.

  Shoot.

  Anna slid her pack around and pulled her glass palette from its protective case. She pressed her thumb to the glass and it lit up in response.

  “Blueprint,” she said, lifting it in front of her eyes.

  The palette let off a musical sigh in response.

  Anna spun in slow circles, taking in the floor then slowly scanning upward until she reached the ceiling.

  She lowered the palette and waited.

  After a moment a hologram sprung up, a near perfect rendition of the ship, though two of the floors were echoed off-center.

  She reached into the image and tugged them out, spun it around slowly, making small adjustments until it was just right.

  She tapped the door where they had entered on the hologram and a winking star appeared there. This would be the roadmap that would help her keep track of where she had been.

  She slipped the palette into her pocket and took in the space with her own eyes.

  There was something… off.

  She felt as if she were being watched.

  Suddenly the gaping center of the ship felt like the wrong place to be. Like a gladiator in the ring, she was on display for anything that might be watching from the endless floors above.

  “We should find a safe place to camp,” she murmured.

  “The most efficient thing to do is sleep wherever our work ends each cycle,” BFF19 pointed out.

  “I’d feel better if we had a safe place,” Anna said, her skin crawling with the sensation of being watched.

  “Don’t be silly,” BFF19 chirped.

  Something wrapped itself around Anna’s ankles and jerked.

  She fell backwards immediately, landing hard on her bottom, barely managing not to hit her head.

  Something black and smoky rose in front of her, rippling and writhing in a way that made it look as if it were underwater.

  Anna struggled, but her feet were bound tightly in its grip.

  The rising column of inky smoke before her pulsated in response to her struggles, though she couldn’t tell whether it was excited or infuriated.

  “Call for help,” Anna moaned.

  “My comms are down,” BFF19 said.

  The little drone folded herself into an arrow-like shape and dove at the shadowy thing, letting out a high-pitched squeal as she reached it.

  The shadow repelled the drone effortlessly and it flew backward, smacking into one of the ship’s columns and falling to the ground.

  Anna stretched to reach her companion, just managing to hook her index finger over its wing. She dragged it back and clicked it into her wristband, hoping it would reboot or whatever origami drones were supposed to do when they had been damaged.

  The black thing above her roiled and swelled, almost as big as a tree now.

  Anna tried to remember her training, but nothing was coming. She had no weapons, and she had never seen anything like this before.

  It bent slowly in the middle, leaning in closer to her, carrying with it a strange, almost metallic scent.

  In desperation, Anna pulled her tagger out of its holster. There was an electronic hum as it geared up.

  She aimed at the place where its chest would be if it were a person, then closed her eyes and pulled.

  A many-voiced scream like fingernails on a chalkboard filled her head.

  The coils around her legs loosened and she dragged herself into the shadowy hall on her hands and knees.

  When she reached a column, she used it to pull herself up to her feet. Panting, she ran as fast as her numb legs would take her.

  Each footstep echoed loudly in the empty space.

  4

  Leo

  Leo blinked into wakefulness.

  His body throbbed. Bursts of color interrupted his vision.

  But it was his mind that suffered.

  He had forgotten his teachings. He had shifted out of passion instead of mindfulness and the Other had taken him.

  Leo stood, rubbing his aching limbs.

  The woman’s footsteps still echoed through the empty hull. She was terrified.

  His heart constricted as the reality of what he had done consumed him. She was his blood mate.

  The depth of the unexpected emotion threatened to carry him out of himself again. Leo hadn’t allowed rage to shift him since he was a nestling.

  Control yourself, his teacher’s calm voice said in his head.

  Leo had always struggled for control. He had never fallen docilely into mindfulness like his brothers. Even now, there was no grace to Leo’s gift, but he did have hard-earned deliberation on his side, or he would never have been assigned to guard this ship.

  At least, he assumed he had been assigned to guard this ship.

  He looked around with fresh eyes.

  What actually happened here?

  When he’d first awoken to find himself alone he’d been fairly sure the ship had been attacked by pirates, or that the occupants had fallen to a disease. His unique physiology made him naturally disease-resistant, and a barbarian like Leo would be of little use to a pirate. They dealt in ransoms and pleasure ship indentures.

  But why couldn’t he remember?

  And how had so much time passed?

  There
was no dust in the carpets - there were no humans present to create dust. But the aluminum struts holding the bio-dome showed signs of corrosion.

  An army of engineers had spent a lifetime polishing and painting every inch of this ship. This could never have happened on their watch.

  His eyes caught on something, an imperfection in the velvet wallpaper of the hallway.

  He moved closer, his blood turning to ice as he saw what it was.

  The marks of enormous claws obscured the pattern in the paper.

  Did I make those marks?

  He closed his eyes trying to remember.

  Something very bad had happened to the people on this ship.

  Had something killed them all?

  What if it was him?

  Was that even possible?

  No memory greeted him. His mind was a blank page.

  The sound of the woman dragging a sobbing breath into her lungs reached him from somewhere deep in the ship.

  Her thrall drew him down the hallway before he could think.

  He grabbed a tablecloth from a buffet on his way to her. Her kind was squeamish about nudity.

  He would go to her, just to be sure she was okay.

  What if you kill her?