Warrior: Eurydice Chronicles

By H J Perry

It was a one-night stand with a gorgeous muscle-bound warrior.

The next morning, the alien turned up as a coworker in my new day job.

He is a fearsome mercenary and in the closet among his crew.

And I'm his dirty secret.

But the fact that I can't keep my eyes off his bulging

muscles

might betray the lust-filled thoughts I have about him.

All. The. Time.

***

Computer geek Edmund Cray has high moral principles: he doesn't sleep around but would love to find a husband. That's on hold while he goes on a pan-galactic mission to fight injustice for the Anti-Slavery Agency. All could change when he meets the crew of Eurydice, including one man who has surely stepped out of Ed's sexiest fantasies.

Jax is a Morib warrior. Men and women look at him through eyes filled with fear, lust, or both. In his life, emotions are a weakness, and whatever you care for can be taken from you. The new tech guy is a distraction, brighter than the sun, hotter than solar flares, and Jax can't get enough of him.

They're on Eurydice to work, the mission is vital, but each man finds it hard to focus with the other around.

Some readers may find the very brief mention of men eating vegetarian food a little disturbing. The pages of requited desire, lust, and sex between two gorgeous men, along with a romantic happy ending should compensate for those crazy words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: H J Perry
• Release date: Oct 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201255985

H J Perry

HJ Perry lives in the English countryside BUT is learning to accept having words translated into American for an international audience.  Having worked in the construction industry for years in real life, her fictional characters also often work in that macho, male-dominated environment. HJP has also been a political activist campaigning around LBGT issues since the 1980s. She enjoys visiting museums, watching films, and live theatre. But most of her spare time she spends reading. You will find lust, sex, desire, and love in her books. They are for an adult audience.

Book preview

Warrior © H J Perry 2016

fresh edits in October 2021

First published by Lovelight Press in 2016

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this story may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embodied within critical reviews and articles.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

The author has asserted his/her rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book.

This book contains sexually explicit content which is suitable only for mature readers.

Warrior is set in the local sector of our Galaxy, and uses American English throughout. The author is British and some British English may also have been slipped in.

The author’s website: HelenJPerry.com

ABOUT

It was a one-night stand with a gorgeous muscle-bound warrior.

The next morning, the alien turned up as a coworker in my new day job.

He is a fearsome mercenary and in the closet among his crew.

And I'm his dirty secret.

But the fact that I can't keep my eyes off his bulging

muscles

might betray the lust-filled thoughts I have about him.

All. The. Time.

COMPUTER GEEK EDMUND Cray has high moral principles: he doesn't sleep around but would love to find a husband. That's on hold while he goes on a pan-galactic mission to fight injustice for the Anti-Slavery Agency. All could change when he meets the crew of Eurydice, including one man who has surely stepped out of Ed's sexiest fantasies.

Jax is a Morib warrior. Men and women look at him through eyes filled with fear, lust, or both. In his life, emotions are a weakness, and whatever you care for can be taken from you. The new tech guy is a distraction, brighter than the sun, hotter than solar flares, and Jax can't get enough of him.

They're on Eurydice to work, the mission is vital, but each man finds it hard to focus with the other around.

Some readers may find the very brief mention of men eating vegetarian food a little disturbing. The pages of requited desire, lust, and sex between two gorgeous men, along with a romantic happy ending should compensate for those crazy words.

Prologue

Four Years Earlier

ED

Ed should have avoided getting shafted by the stranger he invited home.

At nineteen years of age, he’d gotten away with illegal hacking for years by taking precautions. His success and caution allowed him to buy an apartment outright with the profits from his computing enterprises, 

It started out like his lucky night when Luke turned up at his door. A random chance meeting via a dating and hookup app, and this was definitely a hookup rather than a date.

Ed didn’t think of himself as the type of person who did casual sex; it was like a religion he didn’t believe in. But he was a teenager with big needs and no boyfriend, so of course, he dabbled.

With Luke in his bedroom, Ed’s luck was in. 

Tall and broad, a fit, ripped guy with muscles on top of muscles, Luke reeked of masculinity. A real man, not a teenager. The only way the man could better resemble a character from Ed’s hottest erotic fantasy was if he actually stepped right out from a fantasy. 

Luke fucked as good as he looked, and he looked fucking horny. Ed might not be able to walk anywhere the next day, but he didn’t need to.

Too soon, Ed opened his eyes, wondering how long he’d slept. He reached out and touched the empty space on the bed next to him as if to check the guy wasn’t invisible.

A cold coil of dread started to unwind deep inside. Ed sat up; the uneasy feeling shooed away the feel-good afterglow of sex. 

Luke was probably in the bathroom. Nevertheless, what if he hadn’t found the bathroom, and how long had he been roaming freely in the house?

Shit. Ed had to let the word out. 

He’d left the computers on, everything running, logged in as Hacker21, and then he fell asleep. Usually so circumspect, he’d been careless by his own standards. It only took one slip-up; all he had to do was log out and turn off those damned programs. 

He’d invited a stranger into his home. There were no excuses.

Well fucked, he’d fallen asleep.

No excuses.

Usually so cautious and calculating, Ed didn’t really believe in luck, good or bad, and that night he’d been reckless.

Ed stood up, pulled on his underwear and pants, and buttoned his fly over the flaky snail trails of dried cum across his belly, bits they’d missed in the post-sex wipe up.

The sense of unease grew stronger. 

Ed couldn’t hear the shower. 

Worse, he could hear talking. Voices. Plural. 

How long have I been asleep?

He pulled on a sweater and opened the door to a sight worse than his nightmare of being abandoned on a planet ruled by giant arachnids. Worse because it was real.

Dressed in black from head to toe, helmets with visors down, and holding some scary big batons in their hands, police stood outside his bedroom door. Ed stepped back and raised his hands. 

A man in a suit further along the corridor stepped towards him and pushed between the two police officers. You know why we’re here.

Ed was pretty sure he did.

HE COULDN’T BLAME THE guy who walked into the computer room when trying to find the bathroom. Luke tapped on every interface out of curiosity to see what was running; Ed would’ve done the same, anyone would. 

Naturally, when Luke recognized the computer was running, unhindered, with top-level access to the very department in which he worked, Luke called his colleagues in the PCU, the Planetary Cybercrime Unit.

It was entirely Ed’s fault.

He hadn’t done a background check on his hookup: another oversight.

Criminals were often caught because of minor slip-ups. 

Ed had made some monumental ones.

He’d gotten sloppy.

He’d never thought of himself as a criminal until that point, although if he was one, he was a criminal mastermind. He’d been hacking into computer systems without authorization for four or five years before they finally caught him.

It might have been a honey trap. 

There he was, a horny gay teenager with a browsing history that made it quite clear what he was into when it came to sex. What were the chances of the perfect guy turning up online as a welcome distraction? 

The dude was minutes away from Ed’s home and ready to party. 

Ed faced a dilemma: close down the computers or get showered quickly and change the sheets. The momentary lack of good judgment called thinking with your dick, resulted in his opening the door with still-wet hair and wearing nothing but a towel. As for the sheets, it wasn’t long before they seriously needed changing again. Hell, maybe just throwing away.

No wonder Ed fell asleep.

The few days in police custody followed by his detention in prison went much as Ed would’ve predicted, though fortunately a little swifter. 

The first offer came within a week.

The proposal required Ed to identify the others, the key activist hackers. 

He declined the offer immediately and repeatedly for days after. There was no way he’d hand over names, even if he could. Others shouldn’t pay for his mistake, and, for the most part, he couldn’t identify them anyway; they were all too careful.

The Planetary Cybercrime Unit hung out for him to give up his co-conspirators.

The second offer, not just far more palatable but too good to be true, came a few weeks later. Ed could continue pursuing his passions from a legitimate position, on the inside, working for the government for two years as an alternative to a very long jail sentence. 

The contract Ed signed included a clause about no further illegal hacking, but it didn’t bother Ed too much. Rules are made to be broken, right? 

Hacker21 never intended to bring down the government and steal millions or even steal information and expose scandals. Enough people were doing those things. 

For all his genius and his business acumen, which resulted in a lucrative sideline, Ed was an idealist. Deeply disturbed by injustices inflicted on those less fortunate than himself, he used his skills to help others.

He had been throwing boulders in the way of slave traffickers, arms dealers, and drug barons. He had worked with those who wanted to protect indigenous species from having their lands stolen from beneath their feet for lucrative mineral mining contracts.

He was a twenty-fourth-century galactic Eco-cyber warrior.

Idealism was written all over Ed’s online activities.

Chapter One

Four Years Later

ED

Leroy looked unusually solemn as he turned over the taupe certificate in his hand. The rear of the card was completely blank. He turned it back and traced his fingers across the embossed Orion script that filled most of the page. Moving down toward the English that held his attention, he paused to read a paragraph in his native language.

Of course, it’s just a certificate. I have the dog tag quite safe. Ed rubbed his skull just above his right ear and passed his left hand over his thigh. The ID was engraved into the bones of galactic travelers.

With this, your qualification to go on a real mission, and your Merit Award in three days, you’ll be snapped up and away soon. Leroy rarely looked so solemn.

I’ll bet I’m still here with you in six months. Same office, same desk job, here on Earth. There wasn’t much call for computer science skills on exciting justice missions; there was some need, but all those posts were taken.

This is the best place for you. You are going to find Mr. Right here and a whole load of Mr. Wrongs and species who want to string you up, kill you and eat you out there. Leroy’s palpable concern couldn’t be more apparent if he’d been on his knees begging Ed not to go. You’ll be out there looking for some fit military warrior type, perhaps the Captain. I know you, Ed. But he’ll disappoint you.

If I go, note the if, it will be for the adventure and to do some good, not to seek out my knight in shining armor. I’m going in with my eye wide open and my reality specs on. Ed took back the certificate and slipped it into his desk drawer.

"You’re more likely to find him here on Earth, and you know it. Well, the romantic settling-down husband type but perhaps not someone to satisfy your warrior fetish. Leroy sat back in the office chair, and his face settled into a grin. Your trouble is you want a bad guy, who’s really a good guy."

Oh, that’s my trouble is it? And what kind of man should I want? The tension lifted as the old friends settled into familiar banter.

I go for any who’s available. That tends to work well. So, seriously, when do you leave?

Seriously? When the right mission comes up, I’m on it. You do understand that I’m not working for this charity organization for the money? He was set up for life from a steady flow of income from lucrative software sidelines.

Yeah, right. Even though you are the highest-paid person working for ASA.

Leroy, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that because you would only know about my pay pack by hacking into the highly confidential finance records, which you are not authorized to do.

And you’ve done it too. And you also don’t have authorization.

Guilty! Ed grinned. You know me. If there’s a way to gatecrash a private database, it’s only right. I ought to go and have a look.

The smile froze and then fell from Ed’s face. They both watched through the glass wall as the man walked the length of the corridor toward Ed’s office. Ed and Leroy were the sole employees in the computer science team based at HQ, and they usually had the whole floor to themselves.

Who’s that dude? Someone you’ve not told me about? Leroy whispered even though the door was shut. It was no wonder Leroy assumed the stranger might be someone Ed had picked up; he knew Ed’s type.

He’s someone I used to know. He’d only met Luke once, just that one time, but he’d never gotten him: the hottest night that sent him to prison wasn’t the sort of thing he’d forget.

Back in your government days?

Something like that.

Leroy left the office after Ed didn’t offer to introduce him to the man who loomed as large as ever in the doorway.

Still broad and tall, his smart clothes didn’t hide the muscular frame of a man who looked like he’d make easy work of carrying Ed up a flight of stairs and throwing him around the bedroom. 

Ed found everything about Luke so attractive.

I wanted to come by in person and say congratulations. Luke held out a hand.

Why exactly? asked Ed, accepting the handshake. 

The award announcement wasn’t public until the day of the presentation, but it might be something Luke already knew about. But after four years, Luke could have been there for any number of reasons. To congratulate him on getting a good job, or ‘going