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Ice Red by Jael Wye


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Polaris Rising


Jessie Mihalik - 2019
    As the fifth of six children, Ada von Hasenberg has no authority; her only value to her High House is as a pawn in a political marriage. When her father arranges for her to wed a noble from House Rockhurst, a man she neither wants nor loves, Ada seizes control of her own destiny. The spirited princess flees before the betrothal ceremony and disappears among the stars.Ada eluded her father’s forces for two years, but now her luck has run out. To ensure she cannot escape again, the fiery princess is thrown into a prison cell with Marcus Loch. Known as the Devil of Fornax Zero, Loch is rumored to have killed his entire chain of command during the Fornax Rebellion, and the Consortium wants his head.When the ship returning them to Earth is attacked by a battle cruiser from rival House Rockhurst, Ada realizes that if her jilted fiancé captures her, she’ll become a political prisoner and a liability to her House. Her only hope is to strike a deal with the dangerous fugitive: a fortune if he helps her escape.But when you make a deal with an irresistibly attractive Devil, you may lose more than you bargained for . . .

Toxic Desire


Robin Lovett - 2018
    She should want to kill him. But everything on Fyrian is an aphrodisiac. So she just wants to have him. Now.Revenge. That’s all commander Oten has wanted against humans for more than a century, ever since they tried to destroy his kind. He never thought he’d end up in bed with one. But the desire the sex planet stokes for this human female is eating him alive. Keeping his hands, his mouth, and his vampiric fangs to himself proves impossible—especially when she’s begging him to touch her.Nemona has no idea what endless sex with a Ssedez will do to her. But Oten knows all too well. They need to get off this planet. Before their coupling stirs an alien mating bond that neither of their hearts can withstand.

Nightchaser


Amanda Bouchet - 2019
    Pursued by a vicious military general who wants them dead or alive, Tess has to decide if she can trust Shade Ganavan, a tall, dark and arrogant stranger with ambiguous motivations. Shade Ganavan had oodles of arrogance, oodles of charm, and oodles of something that made me want to kick him in the nuts. What Tess and Shade don't know about each other might get them killed... unless they can set aside their differences and learn to trust each other - while ignoring their off-the-charts chemistry. Shade swallowed the bad taste in his mouth. Two hundred million. He could buy back his birthright and live like a king forever on that. Captain T. Bailey. Beautiful. Ballsy. And Brave. A wanted criminal. Indecision clawed at his chest. He knew where she was. The easiest nab and grab of his life was waiting for him. He could land two hundred million in his account. Double that if she still had the goods.

Gabriel's Ghost


Linnea Sinclair - 2002
    . . . After a decade of piloting interstellar patrol ships, former captain Chasidah Bergren, onetime pride of the Sixth Fleet, finds herself court-martialed for a crime she didn' t commit-and shipped off to a remote prison planet from which no one ever escapes. But when she kills a brutal guard in an act of self-defense, someone even more dangerous emerges from the shadows.Gabriel Sullivan--alpha mercenary, smuggler, and rogue--is supposed to be dead. Yet now this seductive ghost from Chaz's past is offering her a ticket to freedom--for a price. Someone in the Empire is secretly breeding jukors: vicious and uncontrollable killing machines that have long been outlawed. Gabriel needs Chaz to help him stop the practice before it decimates Imperial space. The mission means putting their lives on the line--but the tensions that heat up between them may be the riskiest part of all.

Mercenary Instinct


Ruby Lionsdrake - 2014
    But Ankari Markovich needs a few archaeological samples for her latest business venture, a venture that might prove lucrative enough to move her family off the impoverished planet where she grew up. Unfortunately, she has no sooner collected her samples than she’s captured by a band of brawny mercenaries. The captain might be handsome, but he’s intent on turning her over to some finance lord who has, for reasons unknown, put a bounty on her head, a ridiculously large one at that. If she can’t figure out a way to escape before she’s delivered to the lord’s home world, she could be forced into a life of indentured servitude—or worse.Captain Viktor Mandrake doesn’t usually take on piddling bounty hunting gigs, but when his intelligence officer informs him of a criminal on a nearby planet, he decides it wouldn’t hurt to take a shuttle down to collect the woman. But Ankari Markovich is trouble from the start, nearly eluding his elite forces, then fighting and tricking his people left and right. He finds himself admiring her spirit, but according to her warrant, she’s a criminal. The safest thing is to keep her in the brig and ignore her until she can be handed off to the man who wants her.But the situation grows more complicated when other bounty hunters show up, wanting to claim Ankari for themselves. Thanks to this woman, Viktor’s ship is in danger, his crew members are going missing, and he’s fighting enemies he never asked for in a jungle in the middle of a hurricane. He’s either going to strangle Ankari… or fall in love. Either scenario could get him killed.Mercenary Instinct is a full-length, stand-alone novel of 90,000 words. It is part of the “Mandrake Company” series of science fiction romance stories and is recommended for readers who enjoy space-based adventure (such as Firefly) and steamy love stories (in the style of Linnea Sinclair).

Shades of Treason


Sandy Williams - 2015
    She’s pledged her life to protect the Coalition, an alliance of thirteen planetary systems, but when a top secret operation turns bloody, she’s charged with treason and the brutal executions of her teammates.The Coalition needs the information Ash’s team stole on their last mission, so they send in Commander Rhys “Rest in Peace” Rykus to get it. He’s the man who’s responsible for turning Ash into an elite soldier… and he’s a man who isn’t, never was, and never will be in love with the woman he trained. Or so he tells himself.Ash wants nothing more than to clear her name and be the woman her former instructor wants her to be, but the enemy who killed her teammates did more than frame her for treason and murder: they telepathically silenced her mind, preventing her from saying anything that might point to the truth about what happened.Now Ash is trapped and set to be executed, the truth dying with her. Unless she can prove her innocence. But taking that path could destroy the Coalition she’s sworn to preserve and protect…

A Conspiracy of Whispers


Ada Harper - 2018
    When her handler sends her into the Quillian Empire, her mission is complicated by stumbling upon a kidnapping in progress.Liv is drawn deep into political upheaval when her hostage is revealed to be the infamous Red Wolf, Galen De Corvus, brother of the Quillian Empress. Worse yet, he is an altus, more sensitive than most to the pheromones of caricae. If he realizes what she is, he could expose her secret to either government and doom her to a life as breeding stock.Quillian nobleman turned operative Galen never planned to involve himself with a citizen of the cold, cruel Syn, but Olivia entices him more than she should. As they work together to protect his royal sister from a violent coup, the passionate bond between them proves to be more than mere biology. And Liv must decide if that bond is worth dropping her guard for both an enemy and an altus.This book is approximately 122,000 wordsOne-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise : all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

Dark Planet Warriors: The Complete Serial


Anna Carven - 2016
    Kordolians, by the looks of things. What the hell do they want with this floating rust bucket? What are they even doing here? In the grand scheme of things, Earth is a total backwater, and the Solar System is the galactic equivalent of Hicksville. That's why aliens rarely bother to come to this corner of the universe. And Kordolians are usually too busy conquering the important parts of the nine galaxies to bother with us. But it looks as if their battle cruiser is broken. Probably shot up in a firefight. They're going to use every means necessary to fix it, even if it means putting Fortuna Tau on lockdown. I just hope they don't decide to enslave us and ship us off to some remote alien planet. Come to think of it, I've never seen a Kordolian up close before. They're huge, with strange silver skin and pointed ears. They have freaky nano-armor. And they're packing a serious arsenal. Our human technology has no chance against their weapons. When I encounter their General, I find him insufferable. Arrogant. Domineering. He won't tell me anything. I guess that's what happens when your race is kicking ass across the nine galaxies. You get pigheaded. So why do I keep running into him? Why is he looking at me funny? And what's with this weird feeling I get when he's around? I really hope these guys fix their ship and go away soon, because I get the feeling they could be major trouble. Tarak Sucked into a wormhole during a fierce skirmish with an enemy ship. Spat out near a human mining station in a remote corner of the nine galaxies. Stuck with weak humans who operate with inferior metals and technology. This mission couldn't get any worse. We need to fix our craft before the wormhole collapses. We need to hunt the cursed Xargek monsters that have infiltrated this human rust-bucket. And these infernal headaches of mine are getting worse. I don't really care about these humans. Their existence makes no sense to me. All I care about is killing Xargek and getting back to my home planet, Kythia. This situation is tiresome. The light of the star humans call the Sun burns my eyes. I crave Kythia's darkness. So why has this crazy human female captured my attention? She's messy, awkward and she babbles nonsense half the time. These humans are crazy. I don't understand them at all. Especially this female. Why do I keep coming back to her? I need to leave this place before I go insane Warning: This book contains swearing, violence and steamy sex scenes. It's recommended for readers aged 18 and over.

Dark Horse


Michelle Diener - 2015
    Sazo's an artificial intelligence. He's saved her from captivity and torture, but he's also put her in the middle of a conflict, leaving Rose with her loyalties divided.Captain Dav Jallan doesn't know why he and his crew have stumbled across an almost legendary Class 5 battleship, but he's not going to complain. The only problem is, all its crew are dead, all except for one strange, new alien being.She calls herself Rose. She seems small and harmless, but less and less about her story is adding up, and Dav has a bad feeling his crew, and maybe even the four planets, are in jeopardy. The Class 5's owners, the Tecran, look set to start a war to get it back and Dav suspects Rose isn't the only alien being who survived what happened on the Class 5. And whatever else is out there is playing its own games.In this race for the truth, he's going to have to go against his leaders and trust the dark horse.Winner of a SFR Galaxy Award 2016 and the Prism Award 2016 for Best Futuristic.

A Long, Long Sleep


Anna Sheehan - 2011
    Locked away in slumber, the 16-year-old Rose slept straight through dark times that killed millions and utterly changed the world. Hailed upon her awakening as the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire, she is thrust alone into a dangerous future.

Overload Flux


Carol Van Natta - 2014
    Debilitated by their influence when faced with violence, the brilliant forensic investigator now only takes assignments involving theft. But when he has to hunt down a hijacked vaccine for a galaxy-wide pandemic, the tragic first clue is his best friend’s brutal murder.Nightshift guard Mairwen Morganthur knows she must keep a low profile. The product of illegal genetic alteration, she’s a lethal weapon with no social graces. But when she’s tasked to protect a detective with frightening intuition, she finds herself falling for him even though he could expose her.Racing to recover the cure for a galaxy-wide pandemic, Luka is surprised by his developing feelings for the capable-but-mysterious guard. And Mairwen may have to risk everything by revealing her identity, with deadly mercenaries hot on their tail.Can the unlikely pair survive an interplanetary conspiracy long enough to save lives and find love?Overload Flux is the first novel in the sweeping Central Galactic Concordance space opera series. If you like haunted characters, compelling mysteries, and interstellar romance, then you’ll enjoy Carol Van Natta’s epic tale.

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.

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.

Wanted and Wired


Vivien Jackson - 2017
    But technology has made him the man he is today. Now he heads a crew of uniquely skilled outsiders who fight to salvage what's left of humanity: art, artifacts, books, ideas-sometimes even people. People like Mari Vallejo.Gun for hire • Texan rebel • always hits her markMari has been lusting after her mysterious handler for months. But when a by-the-book hit goes horribly sideways, she and Heron land on the universal most wanted list. Someone set them up. Desperate and on the run, they must trust each other to survive, while hiding devastating secrets. As their explosive chemistry heats up, it's the perfect storm...