Book picks similar to
The Key by Pauline Baird Jones


science-fiction
sci-fi
romance
sci-fi-romance

Cassandra's Challenge


M.K. Eidem - 2013
    It's hard not to at 6’1” and 165 pounds with jet black hair and sapphire blue eyes. And if that wasn’t enough she is also brilliant, graduating from Harvard at fifteen, teaching at MIT at nineteen and up for the prestigious Magellan Award at twenty five. But she’s never really fit in. Not with her peers, not with her contemporaries, only with her family. But everything changes when the Earth is attacked and Cassandra and her niece Victoria are the only survivors. Suddenly the smartest woman on the planet has to relearn everything. Everything she’s believed to be true is challenged and she has to learn to survive, not only for herself but for Victoria, because someone wants them dead.Admiral William Zafar is the youngest Admiral ever in the Coalition fleet, the hero of the Battle of Fayal. At 7’1” he’s 325 pounds of Carinian male in his prime who is feared and respected throughout the fleet. He is a royal from the House of Protection, carrying its birthmark and considers its King one of his oldest friends.But when the Regulians destroy a previously unknown planet leaving only two survivors he finds he's willing to risk it all to protect the woman he loves from the Regulians and the Carinian traitor that wants her dead.

Prime Obsession


Monette Michaels - 2009
    Calls from ships in distress are not all that uncommon in the outermost spirals of the Milky Way. Calls from the warlike Prime were. Now that they were allies, Mel figures she’d better get used to working in conjunction with the chauvinistic race. She never expected to be attracted to one of them.The Prime, one of the oldest species in the galaxy, were known for going their own way. But with problems on Cejuru Prime and increasing attacks by the Antareans, the Prime joined the Alliance to lend their expertise in battling the warlike reptilian species--and ultimately, to survive as a race.Captain Wulf Caradoc, the eldest son and heir apparent of the Prime leader, looked forward to the trip to the Alliance ambassadorial planet. His mission is ostensibly to deliver the diplomatic team to the new Prime embassy. His real mission is to meet his fated mate, his gemate, one of the Lost Ones. Wulf hadn’t anticipated the diplomatic mission being attacked by pirates--and he especially hadn’t anticipated his gemate, Melina Dmitros, being the one sent to rescue his ship.Two strong people pulled together by biology and fate. Their union will be forged in a crucible of survival, treachery and duty.

Enemy Within


Marcella Burnard - 2010
     After a stint in an alien prison, Captain Ari Rose wonders why she even bothered to survive. Stripped of her command and banished to her father's scientific expedition to finish a Ph.D. she doesn't want, Ari never planned to languish quietly behind a desk. She wasn't built for it, either. But when pirates commandeer her father's ship, Ari once again becomes a prisoner. As far as pirate leader Cullin is concerned, Ari's past imprisonment puts her dead center in Cullin's sights. If she hasn't been brainwashed and returned as a spy, then he's convinced she must be part of a traitorous alliance endangering billions of lives. Cullin can't afford the desire she fires within him and he'll stop at nothing, including destroying her, to uncover the truth.

Grimspace


Ann Aguirre - 2008
    Then a crash landing kills everyone on board, leaving Jax in a jail cell with no memory of the crash. But her fun's not over. A group of rogue fighters frees her...for a price: her help in overthrowing the established order.

Betrayal


Pippa DaCosta - 2015
    Rated: R. Restricted. Contains space battles, killer AI, intergalactic ass-kicking. Read at own risk.She is programmed to kill.He’ll do anything to survive. Ex-con Captain Caleb Shepperd believes being good is overrated. All he wants is to smuggle illegal cargo through the nine systems and live a prosperous (likely short) life on the wrong side of the law.But there's a problem with that plan. The priceless synthetic stowaway on his ship is a distraction he doesn't need.Torn between selling her and tossing her out the airlock, Shepperd fails to realize the synth is a killer, and he's the one locked in her sights.In a world where only one thousand synthetics were built, synthetic number One Thousand and One should not exist. She is no ordinary synth. Memories locked inside her code could bring Shepperd—and the entire nine systems—to its knees.Captain Shepperd and the oppressive corporations are about to learn that you can't hide from the sins of your past, especially when that past has orders to kill.WARNING: 18+ only. Contains adult content, including sex, drug use, violence, and swearing.Older cover editions of this ASIN can be found here & here.

Star Nomad


Lindsay Buroker - 2016
    It should be a time for celebration, but not for fighter pilot Captain Alisa Marchenko. After barely surviving a crash in the final battle for freedom, she's stranded on a dustball of a planet, billions of miles from her young daughter. She has no money or resources, and there are no transports heading to Perun, her former home and the last imperial stronghold.But she has a plan.Steal a dilapidated and malfunctioning freighter from a junkyard full of lawless savages. Slightly suicidal, but she believes she can do it. Her plan, however, does not account for the elite cyborg soldier squatting in the freighter, intending to use it for his own purposes. As an imperial soldier, he has no love for Alliance pilots. In fact, he's quite fond of killing them.Alisa has more problems than she can count, but she can't let cyborgs, savages, or ancient malfunctioning ships stand in her way. If she does, she’ll never see her daughter again.

Claimed


Evangeline Anderson - 2011
    Problem is, she isn’t being forced into the Army, she’s been chosen as a Kindred bride. The Kindred are huge alien warriors—a race of genetic traders whose population is ninety-five percent male. After saving Earth from the threat of invasion they demand a reward—the right to find brides among the population. The chances of being chosen are about the same as those of winning the lottery—guess it’s just Liv’s lucky day. Baird is a Beast Kindred who recently escaped imprisonment and torture at the hands of the malevolent Scourge. Through the torment and pain only one thing kept him sane—the thought of finding and claiming his bride—Olivia. His need to possess her is a burning intensity that threatens to consume them both.Angry at having her future and her family taken away from her, Liv vows to fight back the only way she can—by resisting. She has one month on the Kindred Mothership with Baird—their claiming period. If she can keep from having bonding sex with him during that time, she can go home and get on with her life on Earth. But Baird isn’t going to make it easy for her. Every week he is allowed to touch Liv more and more intimately and according to the contract she signed, she has to let him. She’s determined to resist him but his touch sets her on fire. And just as she thinks she knows what she wants, a twist of fate and an attack by the faceless Scourge AllFather changes everything…

The Savage King


Michelle M. Pillow - 2005
    When his father unexpectedly dies, it’s his destiny to take the throne and all of the responsibility that entails. What he hadn’t prepared for is the troublesome prisoner that’s now his to deal with. Undercover Agent Ulyssa is no man’s captive. Trapped in a primitive forest awaiting pickup, she’s going to make the best out of a bad situation…which doesn’t include falling for the seductions of a king.

Jane's Warlord


Angela Knight - 2004
    The next target of a time traveling killer, crime reporter Jane Colby finds herself in the hands of a warlord from the future sent to protect her--and in his hands is just where she wants to be.

Seeing Red


Patty Jansen - 2013
     Young diplomat Cory Wilson narrowly escapes death in the assassination of President Sirkonen. No one claims responsibility but there is no doubt that the attack is extraterrestrial. Cory was meant to start work as a representative to Gamra, the alien organisation that governs the FTL transport network, but now his new job may well be scrapped in anger. Worse, as Earth uses military force to stop any extraterrestrials coming or leaving, as 200,000 extraterrestrial humans are trapped on Earth, as the largest army in the galaxy prepares to free them by force, only Cory has the experience, language skills and contacts to solve the crime. But he's broke, out of a job and a long way from Earth.

The Challenge


Susan Kearney - 2004
    Kahn offers her proof she can't refute: Tessa has been brought forward through time to save Earth by winning an intergalactic challenge. Kahn only has a few weeks to train Tessa to use the psi-abilities he insists she has. He is confident in the success of a time-honored method that uses sexual frustration to bring out her powers, but Tessa is dubious. She's a martial arts expert and can fight her way through anything, but she's never had much luck with emotions.Luckily for Earth, Kahn can be very convincing...

Song of Scarabaeus


Sara Creasy - 2010
    When renegade mercenaries kidnap Edie, she's not entirely sure it's a bad thing . . . until they leash her to a bodyguard, Finn—a former freedom fighter-turned-slave, beaten down but never broken. If Edie strays from Finn's side, he dies. If she doesn't cooperate, the pirates will kill them both.But Edie's abilities far surpass anything her enemies imagine. And now, with Finn as her only ally as the merciless Crib closes in, she'll have to prove it or die on the site of her only failure . . . a world called Scarabaeus.Cover art by Christian McGrath.

Collision Course


Zoe Archer - 2011
    Blackmailed into helping Commander Kell Frayne infiltrate a treacherous corner of the galaxy, Mara learns that her biggest danger is from her sexy, by-the-book partner. She's a loner with more than a few battle scars on her heart, but something about Commander Frayne stirs up her long-buried need for an intimate connection.An ace pilot for the elite Black Wraith Squadron, Kell's mission is to rescue a lost pilot and ship. Unable to deny his attraction to the beautiful, rebellious Mara, he decides bedding her would cool his ardor. But one taste is not nearly enough, and he finds himself sharing more of his real self with her than he has with anyone.With deadly criminals on their heels and an increasingly dangerous assignment to complete, he's starting to wonder...if they survived, could he let her go? And will Mara want to stay?46,390 words

Releasing Rage


Cynthia Sax - 2015
    Half Machine. All Hers. Rage, the Humanoid Alliance’s most primitive cyborg, has two goals — kill all of the humans on his battle station and escape to the Homeland. The warrior has seen the darkness in others and in himself. He believes that’s all he’s been programmed to experience. Until he meets Joan. Joan, the battle station’s first female engineer, has one goal — survive long enough to help the big sexy cyborg plotting to kill her. Rage might not trust her but he wants her. She sees the passion in his eyes, the caring in his battle-worn hands, the gruff emotion in his voice. When Joan survives the unthinkable, Rage’s priorities are tested. Is there enough room in this cyborg’s heart for both love and revenge?

Pirate Nemesis


Carysa Locke - 2016
    All roads lead her to the one place she can’t return: home.

Killers. Thieves. Pirates. Family. Mercy has spent her life evading the Pirate Queen who attempted to murder her as a child. Now, living as a smuggler with the outlawed Talent of telepathy, she keeps her head down, takes jobs that keep her moving, and searches for answers about her mother’s disappearance fifteen years ago. But living outside the law has consequences. 
Tricked and captured, Mercy must choose between two rival factions: the terrorists who will do anything to exploit her gifts for themselves, and the pirates she’s been eluding since childhood. 

Her only ally is the most dangerous killer of them all, and trusting him may be her final mistake.
Star Wars meets Firefly in this space fantasy series readers compare to Ilona Andrews and Nalini Singh.