Loving Them
Wings of Artemis, Book 5
Rebecca Royce
After Glows Publishing
Loving Them © Copyright 2017 Rebecca Royce
Published by After Glows
PO Box 224 Middleburg, FL 32050 AfterGlowsPublishing.com
Cover by Syneca Featherstone
Formatting by AG Formatting
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Contents
Note from the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Coming Next
About the Author
Note from the Publisher
Dearest Reader,
Thank you so much for picking up Loving Them (Wings of Artemis #5). If you read the Falling For Them anthology, then you met Paloma and the guys in Meeting Them, contained in that anthology and now available as a stand-alone story. I think of it as Wings of Artemis 3.5. But I digress. If you did not pick up the Falling For Them anthology, then you first heard of Paloma in Diana’s story. She is Diana’s absent best friend. Or, depending on where you picked up WOA for the first time, maybe Diana is Paloma’s absent friend.
In any case, you can start with this book if you have not read the others. Like the other stories, Paloma’s has two parts. Her story will conclude in Saving Them (Wings of Artemis #6). Each WOA book has been a two-part story that then drives the overall arc of the series forward. It started with Melissa, then Diana, and now Paloma. Paloma’s story will actually, because of the anthology, be 2.5 parts. Then there will be a new heroine after her. You may have met some of the next heroine’s guys already …
The pesky black hole plays with time in these books, but if you are looking for chronological order, below is as it currently stands. Please note, this is the chronological order, not necessarily the order the books were released. Reclaiming Their Love has been released, but it comes after Loving Them in timing. This is fine for reading them. I promise. Since this is told from different points of view, you will see what is happening with Paloma while Diana is still in a coma coming back through the black hole. You can choose to read Diana’s books together and then start with Paloma, knowing some of what will happen and also not knowing what Paloma was doing during Diana’s story arc. Consider it entirely up to you!
Chronologically (not book release order)
Melissa
Kidnapped By Her Husbands
Rescued by Their Wife
Diana
Crashing Into Destiny
Paloma
Meeting Them (found in the Falling For Them anthology)
Loving Them
Diana
Reclaiming Their Love
Paloma
Saving Them (coming soon)
And more to come….
Book Release Order:
Melissa
Kidnapped By Her Husbands
Rescued By Their Wife
Diana
Crashing Into Destiny
Paloma
Meeting Them
Diana
Reclaiming Their Love
Paloma
Loving Them
Saving Them (coming soon)
Priscilla
“Ship Called Malice” (coming September 2017 in the Married. Wait! What? Anthology)
And more to come …
Much love,
Rebecca Royce
1
What People Are Willing To Do
Whack.
Sister Superior’s switch made contact with my left cheek, again and again. I cried out, trying to shield my face, but it was fruitless. The good Sister had been beating people a long time. She was good at it.
I closed my eyes. This was the tenth time she’d beat me since I’d been dropped off by my parents after humiliating my family by having sex out of wedlock with a boy from Mars Station. This was to be my punishment for the next five years.
But I had to face facts; I was always going to be alone. Even when this was over, I’d have no family. The switch struck again, and this time I wept.
“Paloma,” a voice called me from my dream, which was really a memory, and I opened my eyes to find Clay eyeing me. He wiped tears off my face. By the universe, had I actually been crying? “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
Clay was one my fiancés. He and his three brothers Tommy, Quinn, and Keith had proposed to me the day before. It still didn’t seem real. Clay’s sweet face, with his huge blue eyes and high cheekbones, stared down at me from where he stood over my chair. I guessed I had fallen asleep. I rubbed my eyes to try to clear my head.
We were in the kitchen on Tommy’s shuttle. When I’d conked out, apparently head down on the table, we’d all been going over maps to try to figure out the best way to get from where we were to Mars Station without actually engaging in war with their father Garrison Sandler’s fleet. Fighting might be inevitable, but Tommy wanted to exhaust all other possibilities first. The most important thing was making it to Mars Station. Giving Sandler Cartel a pounding could come later.
Or so Tommy kept saying.
I must have closed my eyes. I didn’t even remember doing so. Where were the others? How much time had passed?
“Sorry.” I sat up, straighter. “Completely rude of me to fall asleep like that.”
Clay knelt down. “I’m not worried about you sleeping. I actually don’t remember the last time you did.” The ship shook, and I gripped the table. We were in an asteroid belt, and gravity played hell on Tommy’s dampeners. Sometimes we shook violently, although they all kept assuring me that we were completely safe.
“We were having a meeting.”
He kissed my cheek. “A totally boring one. Tommy needs to face facts. We’re going to engage. I’m more concerned with the fact that you were crying. Are you okay?”
“Memory in the middle of a dream. A rather brutal beating I took at the Sisterhood. Don’t worry about it.”
Anger crossed his eyes before Clay pushed it away. He was the gentlest of the four brothers. I was never sure if that was because he was naturally slower to get mad or if he simply hid it better. I supposed if the universe granted us a lot of time together, I would eventually learn.
I rubbed my cheek. “I took a switch to the face. If not for the med machine, I’d have a brutal scar.” The scars of those days were no longer visible, at least not on the outside.
“Where?” He touched me where I’d rubbed. “There?”
I nodded, and he leaned over until he could kiss me there, over and over. I closed m
y eyes. This was heaven. This was what I’d thought I’d never have. Warmth infused my body like someone had turned on a heater, and I moaned against him. Clay caught his breath before he resumed his gentle caresses of my cheeks.
We hadn’t had sex yet. I hadn’t been with any of them, technically, yet. We’d had a lot of finger play. I’d certainly discovered the joys of orgasming, but given that I had once told them I wanted to wait until I was married to have sex again, actual consummation of the act hadn’t happened.
I opened my lids and wrapped my arms around Clay’s neck. “Thank you for waking me. It’s a terrible memory.”
I drew him down to me until he straddled my lap on the chair. His breathing was hard, and the bulge in his pants told me all I needed to know about how turned on he was. “Paloma…”
“Hey.” Quinn came around the corner calling out to us. “How can you two be getting it on with the ship shaking like we’re inside a popcorn maker?”
I didn’t really follow him. “What’s a popcorn maker?”
He shook his head. “So many things I’ve got to teach you. This is epic stuff, P.”
“Presumably popcorn is something you eat?”
Various parts of space did have regional food. I hadn’t eaten everything in the universe. Quinn grinned at me, but Clay groaned. “Move on, Quinn.”
“This is a public space. If you want to make out with her in private, go to your room or hers.”
Quinn was being obstinate. It told me a lot—like he’d probably not slept much the night before. Clay pressed his forehead to mine. “More. Later. Love you.”
He hopped off my lap and then adjusted his pants. “Why is the shuttle shaking so much?”
Quinn shrugged. “See? That’s what I’m saying.”
I rose from my chair. I should have been embarrassed being caught in such an intimate moment with Clay. Only, I wasn’t. This was how it was going to be. When we were married, we would all be together, all of the time. They didn’t seem to mind it, and as long as they weren’t going to get jealous of each other, I supposed our marriage would work.
One woman, many men in marriage had been going on a long time. My sister, Amber, had been happily married to three men for years. But the McQueens were a special group—their real last name was Sandler—and they were in a huge fight against their father. They lived under a tremendous amount of stress.
I didn’t want to be another problem they had to solve.
“Let’s go ask Tommy why it’s shaking. Seems like a pretty good place to start.”
Quinn grinned. “Look at her being all logical instead of standing around complaining about the shaking.”
I rolled my eyes and walked toward the comm room. Tommy and Keith huddled together over the control units. A sense of dread filled me. Was the shuttle broken? I couldn’t think of a fate worse than our floating around in a broken shuttle on the edge of where the Sandler Cartel had lined up to attack Mars Station.
We’d be slaughtered.
“How bad?” I asked, and as Quinn came up behind me, he wrapped me up against him like I was a puzzle piece made to fit. He smelled like the soap from the shower. I breathed him in.
Tommy lifted his gaze and smiled at me. “What?”
“How bad is our situation?” I didn’t want them to sugarcoat things for me. If things were bad, they needed to say so.
Clay scooted around us and sat down in the communications chair. “The shuttle is shaking like it’s heard some music and wants to dance. What’s going on?”
The McQueens were full of similes. Popcorn—which I assumed was food—and dancing in relation to the shuttle. They were being downright poetic in their speeches.
“Keith is updating the ship. He’s going to make us less visible.”
I cleared my throat. “How are you doing that, Keith?”
He lifted his gaze. “Do you really want an explanation of the science?”
Keith was a theoretical physicist. “If you think I can understand it.”
“I’m moving us out of phase a little bit. I’m messing with the way our ship refracts light. We’re going to look blurry. It’s why we’re shaking.” He smiled. “I built something last night, and it seems to be working.”
Quinn sighed and dramatically sunk into his chair. “If only Dad had known that you would have been so much more useful to him than me. You could now be the crazy one.”
I rubbed Quinn’s arm. “You’re not crazy.”
“I am. But you love me, so you don’t notice as much as you should.”
Maybe it was just a question of someone’s, or in my case, many someones’ crazies matching my own. I didn’t know why we worked as well as we did.
Keith pointed at the screen. “See? That shadow? Every ship in the nearby vicinity is now looking to determine what that shadow is. But there’s nothing there. While they are looking—we move.”
On cue, Tommy hit the button and the ship jolted forward before he spoke. “The shaking is the light not hitting us appropriately. We can’t keep it up forever. Eventually, we’ll be seen. But hopefully by then, we’ll be at Mars Station.”
I stared at them while they explained. The science was over my head. Maybe it wouldn’t have been if I lived in a fairer world where I could have had more schooling. My missing friend Diana was a genius. She’d probably understand all of this just fine. But then again, she’d been pushed through a black hole and was who knew where at this moment. I sighed. I hoped she was okay.
The four brothers with me—my fiancés—were the smartest men I’d ever known. They were also gorgeous. Thomas, call me Tommy, was the oldest. Blond, blue-eyed, and strong, he’d been born and raised to be the perfect general to lead his father’s fleet in gaining control of the universe. He’d given it all up to save his brother Quinn from the pain their father had inflicted on him. Tommy kept us all safe. He could be rough, particularly verbally, and he always spoke his truth whether I liked it or not. He’d been the most resistant to having me around. Now, however, he made me feel like I was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.
Long ago, before I had been sent away and his world altered beyond recognition when he’d to save his brothers from his father’s abuse, we’d been scheduled to meet and marry. It turned out to be a small universe after all. Who would have thought we’d wind up together?
Clay, the second oldest, was a lawyer. His hair was slightly browner than his brother’s but blond at the tips. His eyes were the same Sandler blue. He was an attorney who helped those who needed him. His clients didn’t know his identity since he had to stay hidden. I loved his big heart, his romanticism. I was alive because he’d come back to the Sisterhood to see if I was okay after the Sisters beat me in front of him. He was incredibly smart.
Keith and Quinn were twins. They looked an incredible amount alike, but they weren’t identical. I’d never mix them up. They had platinum blond hair and the same Sandler blue eyes as their brothers. Keith’s face was slightly longer and Quinn had a small birthmark next to his right eye. Quinn had to win—pathologically—and that need had meant that when his father created a “game” for him to win when he was young, a game that involved conquering the known universe, Quinn had done as he was asked. It had been many years before he’d realized it hadn’t been a game at all.
Keith was equally as smart, but his brain turned toward physics. He missed teaching and theorizing. These days both men, when they weren’t hiding on a shuttle trying to get to Mars Station, gambled to help support Tommy’s shuttle building empire. Keith only did it because he needed to be there for Quinn. The twin thing.
I loved all of them.
“What’s that look on your face, Paloma?” Tommy didn’t look at me when he spoke. I wondered how he was seeing the look on my face until I saw myself reflected in a monitor across the room.
“What look?” I stood. I wasn’t going to be useful here. Later, at Mars Station I would. I could open doors previously closed to them. I could make the wo
rld see they weren’t their father’s sons. Or at least that wasn’t all they were.
In the meantime, my years as a Mars Station debutante followed by unwilling initiate of the Sisterhood meant I could cook, clean, garden, sew, and do all other manner of things that weren’t useful on this ship.
“Just out of curiosity”—I turned to look at the others—“it wouldn’t make sense to travel the other way, right? Avoid this battalion altogether and come to Mars Station from Earth or another direction?”
Tommy shook his head. “Normally? Yes, that would make sense. You’re right. But Ari says the station is under attack. They need us to get there fast.”
He was right. “Just checking.”
“Love you,” Tommy threw out to me before he turned back to his control panel.
I loved him, too. His mind had already moved back to the ship. He wouldn’t even hear me if I replied. I’d have to make sure to tell him later.
Cooking didn’t seem like such a great idea with the ship rocking, so I made my way back to my room. I hated being useless. I hadn’t realized how much I detested the feeling until right that second, but I really, truly did.
I slumped down on the bed. Maybe I would read and try to stay out of the way.
A knock sounded, and Quinn poked his head in. “Want to help me?”
“Yes.” The word was out of my mouth before I even knew what I was agreeing to. “What are we doing?”
He came over to the bed and sat down next to me. We adjusted until I was pressed against him with his tablet in front of both of us.
“Okay, my father is off book, so to speak. He’s following the plan I made for him and also not following it.”