Yours to Uncover: Dirty Sexy Space, #1

By Mel Teshco

He's a hardened criminal … and her biggest ally.

It's the year 2202. Earth is grossly overpopulated and seriously polluted. Rita Songworth has spent half her twenty-two years trying to escape the dying planet. It's taken the last five of those years to realize making it in the hard-ass infantry is her only way out, via space transporter Earth Ship Siren.

But the journey to Unity, the new colony, isn't easy. Rita has to resist an attraction to hard, brutish prisoner, Tristan MacFallan, whose masterful hands create more than the beautiful art he's been assigned to make. His forbidden touch affects her profoundly and he sees things in her no man ever has before. But obeying Zane, her ex-lover and malicious lieutenant, who is appointed to keeping the prisoners under guard, comes at a high price.

Is she willing to sacrifice everything to keep her secret and her lover safe?

The Dirty Sexy Space series:

Your to Uncover

Yours to Command

Yours to Desire

Mine to Hold

Mine to Keep

Mine to Serve

Ours to Embrace

Ours to Share

Ours to Save

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mel Teshco
• Release date: Feb 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386250968

Mel Teshco

Mel Teshco lives in the beautiful country of QLD Australia, where the open spaces of her acreage, fondly called 'the block', gives her room to breathe. When she isn't writing or dreaming of writing, she is often found gazing out the window at the surrounding mountains and thinking how very lucky she is. With one semi-patient husband, three gorgeous girls, two fat horses, one crazy Belgian shepherd and three cats who run the house, writing has (mostly) kept her sane.

Book preview

Chapter One

Rita Songworth stared through the space transporter’s diamond flex window, out into the star spangled heavens of deep space. Already Earth was nothing more than a distant blue dot, barely a blip on the radar.

From this perspective, it seemed almost impossible to believe her home planet was dying, and the human race doing everything just to survive.

Rita pressed a hand between her breasts, as if she could somehow erase all the heartache, all the pain.

Her family was down there somewhere…if they weren’t already dead. If the toxic air didn’t kill them, there was a good chance the lack of food and water would. Not to mention the absence of medical aid, and the hungry mobs, who had turned into raiders and killers.

Her lip curled. The only lucky few left behind were the elite, who lived in air-cleansed towers, taking advantage of their wealth while the rest of mankind suffered. Survival of the fittest was their only concern, not that Rita complained.

If the rumors were true, their wealth was how the government had funded this expedition into space and to Solitaire, a new livable planet, though this was no doubt so the elite were guaranteed a place there, after all the hard work had been done.

Rita being on the ship was what her parents had wanted. A second chance. Hope that their only child would live and maybe even one day fall pregnant, carry a child to full term and continue their genetic line. The window glowed with the cabin’s inner light, reflecting the man sleeping on the bed behind her.

Her belly cramped. Lieutenant Andrew Zane. The man she’d fucked, had been fucking, for a little over two weeks now. It’d taken the lieutenant five days after ES Siren had launched into space from planet Earth, to take her to his bed.

It had taken Rita much less time to uncover his true colors, his penchant for rough and forceful sex. His liking for violence.

Sick fuck.

God, she’d been a fool, blinded by his smooth charm, natural leadership and ease of command. Who’d have guessed that his cherub face, tepid brown eyes and clipped honey-ginger hair hid the makings of a monster?

Now she just had to find a way to leave him without rousing his violent side. She hated how easily she acquiesced to having sex with him. Afterward feeling little better than a whore and wondering why she stayed with him.

She was just grateful the doctor onboard this ship, one of three heading to the new colony, had given her an implant to protect against disease and pregnancy. The same implant had been given to all military women and all the prisoners—male and female. They would keep the implant, even after accommodation had been built and farms were up and running on the new world.

The medics would remove the civilians’ implants and inject the women with hormones to help them fall pregnant, ensuring that the human population was maintained.

If Rita or any of the other military women were suddenly clucky, they could request the same procedure. But it would only be given at the colony director’s authority. He decided which of them were allowed to breed.

Rita blew out a breath. Did the Earth people of old know how lucky they’d been? They’d had a freedom that was unheard of in this day and age. It was bizarre imagining having ten children to different men, but according to the history books, that kind of liberty had been allowed, even financially supported by the government!

Andrew rolled onto his back, his leg bending to reveal his flaccid cock, with its thatch of coarse red hair and squishy-soft ball sack. Rita shook her head at the repulsive display. All too soon his male urges would be upon him and his man bits would look a whole lot harder. And even more repulsive.

His soft snores reverberated through the cabin. She shuddered with distaste, then leaned closer to the diamond-flex panel and peered at her reflection.

Andrew’s teeth marks were clearly visible on her sensitive skin, showing where he’d bitten her just beneath her nipple. Already a mottled bruise had formed, which would undoubtedly mark her skin for many days to come.

It was exactly what he’d have been hoping for. His trademark stamp of ownership.

The realization that Earth was dying had seen most humans revert to a dog-eat-dog mentality. Love and affection were almost forgotten emotions.

But although Rita had been attracted to the lieutenant at first, the decision to sleep with him had been mostly about protection. It had seemed like a smart idea—his high-ranking position was one to be coveted. She’d never expected that he’d be the one she’d need protection from—the very man who was her lover and supposed guardian.

She swallowed, but the bad taste in her mouth remained. Even without the overpriced red wine Andrew insisted they drink whenever she came to his cabin, she’d be left with that same horrid sensation on her palate.

She gathered up her clothes, carefully strapping on her bra before stepping into her briefs and standard army regulation uniform of sandy-colored pants and shirt. She pulled on her socks and lightweight boots, gathered her hair into a rough topknot, jammed her cap on her head, then headed out of Andrew’s cabin and down the stairwell to the lower prison deck.

She needed a long run. She needed to get away from the lieutenant. She needed a new plan for surviving the trip and life on Solitaire.

She pushed open the door into long corridors that were especially creepy at night. The lights were kept dim to preserve energy and to keep everyone’s circadian rhythms as close to Earth’s cycle as possible. But Rita found a strange kind of peace here in the shadows, where she didn’t need to pretend to be anyone other than herself.

It was why she avoided the treadmills in the crowded and well-lit gym.

Down on the prison deck, the ship’s alloy flooring wasn’t rubber-matted. It reverberated underfoot, but she was light and had adapted her running style to keep the noise to a minimum. No sense in waking anyone up, especially when every run this past week had seen her take a long detour.

The sudden dryness in her mouth and lightness in her chest had little to do with exercise and everything to do with anticipation. The anticipation of seeing Tristan MacFallan, prisoner 1588.

A man who called to her soul in every way.

Between the three Earth ships heading to Solitaire, there were thousands of prisoners onboard, most of them sentenced for the theft of water and food, the basics of survival. These prisoners would be forced to do hard, manual labor. Many of them wouldn’t survive the term of their sentence.

There were also a few ‘whites’ on board, prisoners who wore a full white uniform to distinguish them from the common prisoner yellows. The whites were guilty of terrible crimes. They were murderers or insane…or both and were carefully hand-picked because of their talents and skills that would be utilized on the new world.

From the very first time she’d seen Tristan board the ship in his prison whites, she’d known he was different. She’d recognized him as the emergent artist the critics had raved about, at least until the Earth had gone to shit and he’d mysteriously disappeared.

But despite his uniform and the standard magna-cuffs securing his wrists, he was neither a killer nor crazy. God only knew those people were a dime a dozen on her dying Earth.

No, she’d detected nothing but brilliance behind his watchful stare, although something told her he’d gone way beyond world-weary. He’d lived it tough. More so even than most onboard the ship, whose lives had been shattered by the catastrophic events on Earth.

She only wished she’d been able to read his file, but it’d been labeled high security and even she didn’t have the authority or clearance to peruse the details.

A guard doing his rounds saluted as she jogged toward him. She nodded back, mentally counting the minutes before he’d return. With only a skeleton crew on night shift, she should have a full twenty minutes before the soldier completed his rotation.

As she neared Tristan’s cell, she slowed. Though the master switch meant all lights were out, his cell had its own powered light illuminating a corner of the room. The rest of the all whites prisoners—any of the prisoners, for that matter—held no such privileges, but 1588 was given special rights and freedoms.

He was unique. A gifted artist in a world that had almost forgotten the joy of beauty.

Rita slowed, then stopped at his cell and stared through the flex window.

The shaggy brown-blond hair that drifted to his shoulders was in stark contrast to the male soldiers on the ship, with their closely cropped hair. But Tristan’s mane, shining beneath the overhead light, did little to soften the hard angles and planes of his face.

Not that it mattered. His toughness didn’t detract from his magnificence. It just enhanced his maleness, his magnetism.

Tristan’s brushstrokes abruptly stilled. He turned, his deep emerald eyes locking with hers. Something flashed in his gaze. Awareness. Caution. Restraint.

Rita had no doubt he accepted her presence as routine now. She only wished she could see something more…welcoming in his face.

Anger swelled even as all her common sense deflated. She wasn’t some lowly whore beneath his worth! She was Chief Warrant Officer, commissioned officer in the US army and officer in charge of work placement for the prisoners.

She was a rung below her lover, who commanded the prison guards, and she was sick and tired of the men in her life treating her as something less.

She turned her wrist to the cell’s identifier so that it read her implanted chip and allowed her access.

As an officer, she wasn’t exactly restricted from going into Tristan’s cell, but it was foolhardy to do so alone.

The door unlocked and she pressed it open then stepped into his cell. Her heart hammered and the lower regions of her belly tightened. She paused for a moment to regain some semblance of composure.

Not for the first time, she wondered if he appreciated the fact that no other prisoners shared his space. In comparison to the three standard bunk beds bolted to the walls in each of the other cells, his living area was expansive.

She cleared her throat. "I see they’ve taken