Branded By Kesh (3 page)

A small beep sounded in my ear and the man with silver arms pulled his hand away.

“It should be complete now,” his gravelly voice sounded in my left ear. In the other, I heard that same guttural language he’d been talking in before.

“Can you understand me now, Magnolia?” the man with the markings, who was still holding my hand in his hot one, asked me.

His deep voice shivered through me. Goosebumps popped up along my arms and I almost trembled, the effect of his voice was so strong.

Heat washed across my cheeks as I looked up into his black eyes for a moment before looking away.

“Yes, I can understand you now.”

I wanted to pull my hand from his. I didn’t understand what he was making me feel. I’d never had such a strong reaction to a man before, and it was leaving me feeling confused and vulnerable. I wasn’t accustomed to a man that so strongly affected me. I usually picked my men with a level-headed rationality, looking for personalities that I could get along with, looking for men who understood what sort of relationship I was prepared to have with them.

The men I picked always understood I wouldn’t belong to them. I needed freedom, I needed to be able to come and go in a relationship as I pleased. I needed a man to understand that he might not be the only person sharing my bed and I didn’t think this man with his firm hold on my hand would understand that.

Still, he drew me, and sneaking another glance at his face, I wanted to know what his gorgeous lips would feel like moving against mine. I wanted to know what all the power contained in his big body would feel like moving over mine. I wanted him to consume me and burn me up with his passion.

“Thanks, Devral,” the marked man beside me said before turning towards the door.

“Thank you,” I replied to the cyborg, quickly before I felt a pull from the room and hurried back towards the lift.

“I’m going to show you to the kitchen now.”

I looked up at the man standing in the lift with me.

“That would be good,” I replied as heat spread across my cheeks. Every time I looked into his dark eyes, I thought of sex and what those eyes would look like burning with passion. What he’d feel like moving inside me. It sent heat spreading through me like the flames of a porta fire.

He was standing too close to me, the heat of his big body searing into my skin where our arms brushed each other. His hand was hot in mine, the skin of his palm slightly rough, telling me he did his fair share of work on the ship.

Every time I glanced at him, I found his gaze burning down at me. I felt consumed, his interest right there in his eyes. He wasn’t hiding it at all. He leant towards me, his face close to mine, and I heard him breathe in. A deep rumble of sound came from him.

He pressed against me, forcing me back against the wall of the lift, caging me with his body. I felt trapped. I felt a flutter in my stomach that told me I wasn’t adverse to what he was doing, but his actions shocked me. I looked up into his black eyes.

“You’re crowding me,” I said.

“I know,” he replied, but he didn’t move, he just continued to look down at me. His gaze travelling over my face until the lift stopped and the doors slid open.

He pulled me from the lift and led me down a wide corridor. Much wider than the last corridor, this seemed to be a communal part of the ship. The panelling on the walls was slightly different, the carpet underfoot felt softer. The doors he led me through were wide and opened with a quiet hiss.

The room we entered was a large dining area. Rows of tables and chairs filled most of the room in neat rows. I didn’t see a dirty dish anywhere. The tables had all been wiped clean and the chairs pushed in. On the far wall there were three food synthesisers built into the wall of the ship.

One could purchase new menu chips at retailers on most stations, offering dishes and drinks from a variety of planets. The technology had taken the Universe by storm when it had first come out and spread like a plague across ships and stations, into homes, and even restaurants had them. Their popularity had diminished in the last few years as people came to realise that the foods produced by the synthesisers lacked the complex flavours of fresh food.

My breath caught in my throat at the first sight of the kitchen across its long counter. It spread from one end of the dining room to the other, the long counter dividing the two spaces. It was the most spacious, well-appointed kitchen I’d ever seen. The counters gleamed under the bright overhead lights, the appliances all shone, polished to a high sheen. Two stoves sat side by side, a total of twelve burners and a flat hot plate in the middle. The space was divided in half by a long bench, with storage underneath. On the wall opposite the stoves, there was more counter space with two deep sinks. Small appliances sat on some of the counters. Some of them I could only guess what their function might be.

Whoever had designed this kitchen had to have been a cook. Only someone with the intimate knowledge of how a kitchen worked would be able to design a space that worked so well. I walked slowly towards the kitchen, my eyes taking it all in. Excitement at the thought of being allowed into such a divine space filled me to almost bursting. What an experience it was going to be to cook in there.

A slight tug on my hand had me glancing back at the marked man.
Kesh
—that was what the silver-eyed man had called him. I looked at him, a question about to fall from my lips until I saw the look on his face.

Determination was what I saw there.

“I’m going to send Penta to help you find your way around the kitchen and to show you where the supplies are. He helped Ceska in the kitchen before she died, but he’s not a cook.”

I nodded my agreement. This Penta would be able to help me work out how many people I was cooking for and when. And hopefully, he’d be able to explain what the ingredients were that I was bound to find.

“Before I go, there’s something I want you to know. I want to prepare you, Magnolia. I don’t want any misunderstandings between us.”

I looked up into his eyes, a little taken aback by his serious words. I nodded unsure what he expected of me.

“I plan to make you mine, little flower. I’ll do whatever’s necessary to make that happen.”

Hours passed where I was busy cooking for the crew of the Fallen Star. Men came to the kitchen in groups looking for a meal, and from the exclamations and nods of approval I received, I gathered they were happy to have a cook working in the kitchen again.

Penta ended up being a small man, only a little taller than me, armed to the teeth, and he was worth his weight in credits. He showed up not long after Kesh left me standing in the dining area completely shocked by his declaration.

Penta and I spent most of the afternoon going through the store cupboard and cold room. It had been some months since their last cook had died, and many things had gone off—vegetables had perished and meat had gone bad. There was another store room in the cargo bay that we didn’t get around to looking in before we had to start preparing the first meal.

By the time we finished cleaning the last pot and put everything away and I’d sorted what I was going to cook for breakfast the next morning, I was exhausted. I made my way on tired feet down to the cargo bay. All I wanted was to find my bed and catch a few hours’ sleep before I had to get up again and start breakfast. Penta had told me it was the one meal that usually saw most of the crew eating together. That included almost sixty men all wanting to be fed at the same time, when I was accustomed to cooking for ten.

The cargo bay doors slid open with a soft hiss and I walked into the darkened area. The cargo had all been stacked neatly to one side of the bay, multitudes of boxes and crates of all sizes with languages I couldn’t understand printed on the sides. Some were made of metal and some were timber. A few looked like they were made of formed plascrete—a manmade substance that set as hard as stone and was used to make all sorts of things from the storage containers I could see to houses.

I was too tired to wonder what was in all of those crates and boxes, too tired to do more than stumble to the area my family had laid out blankets and bedding to find my own. My family had come as a group to eat and my mamma had let me know that she’d made a bed up for me for when I was finished in the kitchen.

My space was at the end of the row, the last bed closest to the doors. That suited me just fine. I could come and go as I needed without disturbing anyone else. I dropped down to the soft blankets and laid my head down on the folded up blanket that would suffice as a pillow. I was too tired even to change my clothes. I was about to close my eyes when a quiet voice said, “You need to be careful of that man, Magnolia.”

I turned to look at the person beside me. Jaxxon had made sure his bedding was next to mine.

“What man?” I asked just as quietly.

“That man who dragged you off by the hand, the one with the markings.”

Oh,
that
man. I already knew I had to be careful of Kesh. He was dangerous to me in more ways than one, but I didn’t like Jaxxon telling me so.

“I don’t understand what you mean.” I shifted around on my blankets so I could see his face.

“He wants you, Magnolia. I could tell by the way he looked at you, by the way he grabbed you, like he had a right to touch you. Nobody has the right to touch you.”

His words left a sour taste in my mouth and had anger forming in the pit of my belly.

“You don’t own me, Jaxxon. I explained to you what kind of relationship I wanted right back at the beginning. I told you I wanted the freedom to be with whom I chose and that might mean you’d have to share. You were fine with that. If I remember rightly, you readily agreed to what I wanted.”

“We’ve been together for a long time, Magnolia. Are you going to throw all that away just because some stranger comes along who seems more interesting?” he asked, anger clear in his voice and on his face.

It wasn’t about how interesting Kesh was. It was about what he made me feel. It was about the way he looked at me, but I wasn’t going to tell Jaxxon any of that or try and explain to him how Kesh was different to any man I’d ever met before. He was making his position abundantly clear with his words.

“I haven’t thrown anything away. It’s you who is making a fuss because you can’t handle something that I thought was a fundamental part of our relationship, and all because of something you thought you saw. There might be nothing there.”

I wasn’t going to tell him what Kesh had said. He was already wound up enough about what was happening—that would only make it worse.

“I know what I saw. That man wants you, and he seemed like the kind of man who doesn’t let anything stand in his way, even a relationship that has a prior claim over you.”

This conversation was going nowhere, I was tired and now grumpy. I’d put off thinking about what Kesh had said, and how it had made me feel while I’d been busy in the kitchen. Now his words were at the forefront of my mind, as were thoughts and doubts about the kind of relationship I’d always believed I wanted.

Jaxxon had been a part of my life for three years. We’d had our ups and downs, but until now there had been no other men to lay claim to my attentions. This was the first time our relationship had been put to the test, and it looked like it wasn’t going to survive the first hurdle.

“I need to sleep, Jaxxon. I have to be up in a few hours to cook the morning meal for the ship.”

“I get it, Magnolia. Your new man and his crew are more important than your family.”

Chapter Four

Jaxxon’s words burned in my brain all night. Anger sent me stomping my way back to the kitchen the next morning. It was good I didn’t come across anyone on the way because I didn’t think I could be civil. I banged pots and pans as I started breakfast, the noise echoing around the empty kitchen and dining room.

I had a lot to think about. My conversation the night before with Jaxxon had left a sour taste in my mouth. I thought I was doing the right thing by offering to cook for the people that had saved us, but what if I’d abandoned my family when they needed me? And what about Kesh? Was I doing what Jaxxon said and chasing after something new and interesting when I had a relationship that was suffering because of something I’d always thought I wanted?

My parents had an open relationship all my life. I’d watched them make it work. They loved each other and allowed each other the freedom to have other partners when someone came along who they found fascinating. My sister and I were both from relationships my mother had with other men, and my papa had raised us as his own kids. He’d never treated us as anything less than his children.

I’d even heard my parents talking to each other in hushed but excited voices at night about new persons who had grabbed their interest and the other partner had been supportive and encouraging. They hadn’t been jealous, or angry, or hurt, but just listened and offered advice. Some of those people had even joined our crew for short periods of time, and they’d made it work.

Jaxxon was putting constraints on me, and I was baulking at being confined. What I felt when I was near Kesh was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. The heat he caused to flash through my body, the desire that pooled low in me whenever I caught his gaze on me, told me that I wanted to explore things with him, to see where a relationship with him would lead. However, would he be like Jaxxon and baulk at the kind of relationship I wanted—the kind of relationship I needed?

I wanted that freedom. It wasn’t just some silly whim or a case of my finding something better. I wanted the freedom to have more than one partner. I needed to be able to express myself any way I felt necessary, and that included having open relationships. If he couldn’t understand that, then a relationship with him wouldn’t work any more than the one I had with Jaxxon was working.

But I couldn’t just set aside what he made me feel and ignore it. I couldn’t tell him to leave me alone. I couldn’t walk away and not explore what could possibly be the most significant relationship of my life. Maybe he was the other half of my soul, like my parents were two halves of a whole. Maybe he was the man who could complete me.