Angel in the Badlands: space opera sci fi romance (Sons of Amber Book 1) (2 page)

“I know already, children. Be at ease.” A new, more mature female voice floated through the chamber to him, coming closer. With it came a fragrance of flowers and earth, and a beautiful, slightly older woman stepped into his line of view. “Your arrival was foreseen. Be welcome, Son of Amber. Can you tell us your name?”

He didn’t know why, but he wanted to tell this lovely older woman whatever she wanted to know. He would reveal all his secret plans, if she just asked, but she only wanted his name. That he could give her before his strength failed.

“Ezekiel.”

“Be welcome, Ezekiel.” She placed her hand on his forehead and he felt a peace he’d never experienced before wash over his senses. “Rest now and recover.”

That was all he knew until he woke a full day later.

When he woke again the angel was gone but her cute little friend was at his side, watching him with wide, almost frightened eyes. He tried to sit up, but found himself in too much pain to move very far.

“Oh please, do not move, brother,” the small woman said in a worried tone.

“What’s wrong with me?” Zeke felt like shit. Even worse than he had the first time he’d woken up.

“It is the aftereffects of the herb we gave you to deaden the pain. Your head will clear in a few moments, but you must lie still. It will take much longer to be free of the herb’s effects if you do not.” She moved back as he settled himself back on the bed. A moment later, she got up and went to the doorway, calling for someone before returning to his side. “Sister Angela will come shortly. She’ll want to see how you’re feeling.”

“Who’s Sister Angela?” he asked, though even as he spoke the words, he remembered the name being spoken before.

The young girl giggled. “I’m sorry. The other woman who was here when you last woke. That’s Sister Angela. She’s one of our most talented healers. It was Sister Angela who set your leg.”

“My leg?” He tried to rise again but sat back abruptly as the room began to spin.

“Your leg was fractured.” A new voice sounded from the doorway. Zeke elevated his gaze to see the angel who had tended him before, standing in the doorway. She moved softly into the room, her strides brisk but feminine in a way that caused his gaze to linger. “But it is knit well now. After the painkiller wears off, you should be ready to sit up for a bit.”

“You’re Angela?” he asked, just to be sure he hadn’t mixed up his thoughts about her being an angel with her actual name. Hell of a coincidence, but then, Wildcards like him often tapped into the vein of synchronicity running through the universe.

She nodded, and he liked the expression on her pretty face as she moved closer. She didn’t speak, merely bent near to inspect his leg. He watched her every move.

“Thanks for patching me up,” he said, trying to get her to look at his face, rather than just his injuries.

“You’re welcome,” she replied softly, finally meeting his gaze. “But I had help.” Her gaze drifted to the smaller nun standing a few feet away.

Zeke shifted his gaze to the girl. “Thanks to you too.” He sent a small smile toward her. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“I’m Agatha.” The younger girl blushed, clearly shy. She was charming, but she didn’t have half the impact of Angela. For some reason, Zeke felt drawn to the angel as he had never felt drawn to a woman before.

“Thanks, Agatha,” he said, trying to carry on his conversation, even as his mind spun. “You’ve both been angels of mercy in my hour of need,” he said, only half joking. He had no doubt that they’d saved his sorry hide.

Angela moved closer. “It’s part of our calling.”

For a dreadful moment the pit of his stomach fell, as if he were in free fall. “Are you part of a religious community? Are you nuns?”

Both girls chuckled and it somehow reassured him. “We’re part of a fellowship, but it’s not religious in nature. Our ancestors banded together because of their shared abilities. They left the homeworld as a group.”

“Then you haven’t taken vows or anything?” His heart nearly stopped, waiting to hear their answer. Why it should matter so much was something he wasn’t prepared to analyze.

“As healers-in-training, we are bound only by the ancient Oath of Hippocrates,” Angela told him.

Relief zinging through him at her answer, Zeke waited a moment more, then tentatively tried for a sitting position. Surprise filled him when his head remained clear this time.

“So there are men in this settlement?” he asked, curious. He’d never met another human male who wasn’t one of his genetically engineered brothers. A few still existed, here and there throughout the galaxy, but he’d never crossed paths with any.

“Yes, of course,” Agatha replied.

“Amazing.” Zeke knew he’d have to get word back to Command about these people. To his knowledge there were no other uninfected colonies of any size anywhere in the galaxy. Ease of travel between star systems meant the alien bug had spread far and wide across human-occupied space.

Angela took a seat beside him, her curvy butt resting near his hip as she faced him. He thought he saw admiration in her eyes as she looked at his bare chest a moment before she shuttered her gaze. She was a nice contradiction of competence and modesty.

“How do you feel now?” Her voice was low as she busied herself with the items on the tray she had brought with her.

“Better, thank you.” He wished she would look at him, but he had to get his mind off her and onto business. There was a reason he had crash-landed on this rock, and it had to come first. “Did any of your people have a chance to look at my ship?”

That got her gaze back to his. “Ship?”

“I suppose that answers my question.” He pulled the covers down, ignoring the fact that he was naked, and examined his leg. It looked sound enough, but standing would be the real test. He shifted himself to the side of the bed and stood.

Angela held her breath, a little shocked at his behavior. A look from her sent Agatha scrambling from the room to get help.

“I said you could sit up, not get up.” She tried to sound stern as she got a good look at him, naked as the day he was born, testing the support of his newly healed leg. He didn’t seem the least disconcerted that he was nude. Then again, with a body like his, he certainly had nothing to be ashamed of.

She moved around the bed to stand in front of him should he falter on his newly-healed leg—at least, that’s what she told herself she was doing. She didn’t really want a better look at the marvelous male flesh revealed so enticingly before her. Did she?

Angela had seen naked men more than a few times in her role as a healer, but the men of the colony didn’t look like this. No, this male was totally out of her experience. Ruggedly handsome and muscled in a way that made her mouth water, this male was like those in storycubes. He was magnificent, male perfection made flesh.

“It feels good as new.” He put his weight on the leg that had been broken, then looked up and smiled at her. There was a twinkle in his eye she had never seen before in any male’s gaze. It appealed to her on some basic level. He moved closer to her, his voice lowering to more intimate tones. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

He leaned in, impossibly closer, until his warm lips settled over hers. Her heart leapt in alarm as his hands went to her shoulders and pulled her toward him until her open palms rested against his warm, naked chest.

He was kissing her like she had never been kissed before. It felt like he put his soul into it, his tongue seeking entrance to her mouth and slipping in as she gasped. He drew back, his gaze seeking hers.

“Little Angel, can you feel what you do to me?” He nibbled his way down her jaw, lingering at her ear and biting down on the lobe just enough to make her squeak. Then he buried his mouth in her neck, his tongue licking her skin as if she were a sweet treat.

Chapter Two

“Are all the Sons of Amber as frisky as you, Ezekiel?”

Another woman’s commanding voice came from the doorway, breaking through the sensual spell that had come over him the moment he’d touched Angela. Zeke pulled back but found he couldn’t let go of the petite bundle in his arms. She felt too good there. Like she belonged.

He merely looked toward the door. It appeared the so-called
Mother
of this little enclave had arrived. Thankfully, she had an indulgent and slightly amused expression on her lovely features.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered her question, giving her a wink and a grin. “Especially when in such lovely company.”

His angel blushed. He felt so drawn to this one lovely little woman, it amazed him. Never before had he felt such an immediate and compelling attraction for a particular female. This was definitely a new experience for him.

Zeke hadn’t been raised to find just one special woman. No. For a Son of Amber—one of the few men who had been genetically designed to repopulate the human worlds—one woman would never be enough. Hell, it would never be
allowed
.

When he and his brothers had reached puberty, they’d been clinically taught how to pleasure a woman by the female doctors and scientists in Dr. Amber’s facility. His performance had been graded, his semen collected and tested repeatedly for viability. He’d had no real youth after the testosterone had started flowing through his body.

Accelerated growth in the incubators meant the Sons had come to consciousness as half-grown children. Subliminal teaching aides had taught them languages and mathematics while still in their gestation tanks. Special therapists worked with them after decanting, teaching them how to form words and develop other physical skills. A rigorous schedule of physical therapy, followed eventually by a hard-core physical fitness regime honed them all to the peak of their various genetic designs.

Dr. Amber had overseen their progress, along with her team of doctors and specialists. They were all female and each of them had taught the Sons different things. Dr. Amber was the mother figure. For all of her scientific genius, she had a heart—and a soft spot for the boys she had designed. For it was her work on each and every one of the viable embryos that made her Sons who they were. She picked the traits each would carry. She combined the DNA, and she watched over her babies as they incubated. Hers was also the first face each of them saw when they were decanted from the incubators.

She also distributed motherly hugs when the boys needed them. Encouraged them and gave them treats when they accomplished something important. Punished them when did something wrong. And she named them all. They could’ve been given experimental numbers, but Dr. Amber had balked at that suggestion. No, she had insisted on finding individual names that had been carried by one of their DNA donors for two main reasons.

First, she wanted each boy to have an individual identity as much as possible. She wanted them to know they were human, not merely lab-designed experiments. Grounding them with a name one of their forefathers had carried was a good start, she thought, and Zeke had to admit, it had worked with him.

He’d been curious to learn about the dead man named Ezekiel who had donated more than seventy percent of his DNA to Zeke’s existence. Knowing that his main progenitor had been a scholar and adventurer had helped Zeke understand his own leanings in those directions.

The second main reason to give them names and not numbers was that Dr. Amber wanted those men who had fallen in the war to be remembered. The Sons may have been designed by Dr. Amber, but the raw material to make them had come from real men who had lived real lives, worthy of remembrance.

Dr. Amber may have seemed tough at times, but Zeke knew she had a strong, soft heart. She was also a woman of honor, who wanted to honor the fallen and their contribution to the continuance of the human race.

And the best way to start rebuilding was by helping all those women left on all those worlds, have babies. It was part of every Son’s duty to bed willing females, as well as to produce sperm deposits at regular intervals so females from many different human planets and colonies could have access to it. Any female who wished it, could use Zeke’s, or any of his brothers’ sperm whenever they wished to produce the next generation. He didn’t know exactly how many children he had fathered so far, but Dr. Amber and her scientists kept meticulous track. He knew there were probably hundreds, if not thousands, of little boys running around the various human worlds with his DNA by now, and the thought gave him solace.

Something of him would live on to help humanity survive, if he never made it off this rock. All those little boys meant his life up to this point had had some meaning. Still, sometimes in the dark of night, something about his life bothered him, leaving him feeling unfulfilled.

He had come to realize that something vital was missing, but he wasn’t exactly sure what it was. The old storycubes he’d seen from beforetimes showed a much different existence than the one he was living now. He especially liked the stories where one man and one woman would live their lives together in partnership and love.

He had never really felt love for any of his bed partners, and it was something he wanted to experience at least once before his Wildcard nature led to one risk too many. He looked down at the gentle creature still held tightly in his embrace and realized that if he actually could experience love, he would want to try it with someone exactly like this little angel. Perhaps he could make her love him, though he hadn’t a clue how to go about it.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” his angel whispered, her pretty eyes staring up at him.

“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever beheld.”

Her expression softened and her cheeks flushed with a hint of luscious pink. He would have claimed yet another kiss from her at that moment, but Mother Rachel cleared her throat rather pointedly, reminding them both of her presence. How could he have forgotten she was there?

Zeke turned to face the woman in the doorway, keeping Angela in his arms. He shifted so she stood slightly in front of him, both of them facing Mother Rachel. He was naked and let Angela’s robes shield him for the sake of the other woman’s modesty.