Kindle Edition
Amazon
Liquid Silver Publishing
Amazon
Category:
Romance
Publisher: Liquid Silver Publishing
Type: Fiction
Pages: 57
Copyright: April 6, 2015
ISBN-13: 9781622102075
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
Jess Windemere’s father lost her in a game of cards. Sent to a distant planet to be bound to a stranger, she is determined to regain her freedom. When the turn of a card can seal your fate, you better stack the deck!
Jessica Windemere loses her freedom when her father bets her in a poker game. But she isn’t willing to accept her fate without a fight. To have her revenge, she first must survive an unknown world while contracted as some stranger’s wife. She wants nothing more to do with men until a huge, dark god rides into her camp. Can she risk losing her new love on the turn of a card?
Kiernan Randall is on his way home from a trading mission. The group of abandoned women he finds were definitely not expected, especially their feisty red-haired leader. She is contracted to his enemy, but gives herself to him and firmly entwines his heart. Can he trust her enough to let her wager their future together on her skill with cards?
Book 1 of the Gambling on Love Series
Excerpt
The Turn of the Card
Gambling on Love
Vicky Burkholder
Chapter 1
Jess Windemere wrapped the long, heavy scarf around her head and over the lower half of her face, leaving her eyes uncovered. What kind of world is this? Are our intended owners like these mute guides? Owner. The word crammed into her stomach like one of the rocks they were riding over. The collar around her neck designated her as a slave. Her life had never been easy, but at least she’d been free. And she would be free again. Of that, she was certain.
The harsh, gritty wind never seemed to stop. It scoured the stark landscape she and the others in her group traveled through. She suspected if she held still for too long, it would scour her as well. Her mount, an alien mixture of mule and camel that didn’t seem to mind the constant blowing, plodded on, nose to tail with the ones in front and behind them. Hers brushed the side of the steep hill they were descending, scraping her leg against the bare rock. Jess leaned over to rub the sore.
“You! Sit in saddle.” The harsh, guttural voice of the female guard was bad enough, but the short crop she tapped against her leg was more than enough to warn Jess to sit up straighter. Though she knew there was no way for the woman to get to her on the narrow trail, they’d have to stop sooner or later and Jess had seen the woman use the crop on some of the others already. She shot the woman a dirty look under cover of her scarf. No point in antagonizing her more.
Jess studied the raw landscape, not sure what planet she was on. The two suns narrowed it down to a binary system, but that still left a lot of territory to be covered. Something in her fogged brain led her to think it was Tairis. If so, her chances of escaping her captors were even slimmer. Tairis wasn’t known for its large population centers. She grabbed her scarf as an errant burst of wind threatened to take it. Nor was Tairis known for its balmy climate. Is there nothing in this harsh land but wind and grit?
The heavy animals took up the entire width of the narrow canyon trail. Tied together as they were, if one went down, everyone would be in trouble. Jess wondered why their escorts took such measures. Was it to keep the animals together? Or the women?
At night, they wrapped up in the same blankets they rode on, sleeping on the ground, grouped around small fires. Several of the women took their cues from the guards and snuggled together, sharing their warmth. Everyone was miserable, including the animals as they huddled together like their riders.
They plodded along, guarded by six men and one female who kept them moving like they were nothing more than cattle. And in a way, they were. Bought, sold, or traded like an animal, some of them willingly, some, like Jess, not.
Ever since she’d awakened on the freighter ship, she’d studied every opportunity to escape, but there’d been none. She ground her teeth, hiding her rage and frustration behind the scarf. How could her father have done this to her? Yes, times were tough. They were tough for everyone. His gambling and drinking didn’t help, but to bet her on the turn of a card—then lose? How much more humiliating could her life get?
Obviously, a lot more than she thought. Having him come into their rooms and announce the arrangement was bad enough, but she couldn’t even argue. The drink he’d given her had been drugged. She’d slept through the entire trip, as did most of the passengers, but they’d been awake when they boarded.
She hadn’t been.
She hadn’t even had the chance to break free when they’d gotten off the ship. They’d been herded from their sleeper pods through a blank corridor to a windowless room where they’d been instructed by the AI to eat tasteless energy bars, shower, and change into the provided clothing. Then they were herded out to a waiting transport and taken to a barn-like structure where they’d mounted the animals and headed out to who knew where.
Their guards kept them in a mild drugged state, controlled by the collars clamped around their necks. The drugs allowed them to stay upright in the saddles but no more. On the one day Jess had tried to defy them, they’d dialed up her collar with something that knocked her out. She’d awakened to find herself tied over the back of one of the animals like a sack of supplies. She got the message, as did everyone else. Behave like a good little zombie and all would be fine.
Their guards spoke among themselves, but not in any language Jess understood. If they needed to talk to the women, the single female guard did so, though as little as possible. And calling her a female was a stretch, as she looked more like a brick wall than a person, and had a personality to match.
A couple nights into the trip, one of the younger men had made a pass at one of the “looser” women, a buxom black-haired woman who had been leading him on. The female guard had attacked the boy, beating him into a whimpering mass and sending him off to tend the animals. Jess hadn’t seen the boy again. Technically speaking, it hadn’t been his fault as the woman had flirted with him, still…they all understood. No touching. No flirting. The women belonged to whoever owned their papers; no one else could touch.
Jess raised her head, facing into the relentless gale. She would bide her time, waiting until conditions were more favorable. After all, she didn’t have a death wish. But once they got to where they were going, she would find a way to get the collar off, and they’d find her not so easy to intimidate. There was no way in the universe she was going to be owned by a man. Nobody would ever own her. Nobody.
* * * *
Jess watched as her new friend, Cam, sank onto the hard chair in the hostel they’d stopped at. The young woman had come on the trip of her own free will. How bad did your life have to be to accept something like this?
They’d met on the ship after they’d awakened and had taken to one another. Cam was everything Jess wasn’t—tiny, blonde, pert, and an unfailing optimist. Nothing, not even the mind-muddling drugs, could curb her enthusiasm. Unfortunately, her ebullience had dried up with the unending miles of dust and wind. None of the women were full of energy, but Cam’s drawn features and sunken eyes worried Jess. They’d been on the trail for ten days, the weather growing worse daily.
On their eleventh day, the guards had kept watching the skies more than usual, their voices and gestures showing their discontent. Jess could tell they argued by the dark expressions on their faces. Of them all, only the woman seemed to want to continue on. And she held sway over all the rest. Jess watched the sky as well, but hadn’t seen anything different. Scudding grey clouds raced in front of the ever-present wind. The few peeks of sunshine did nothing to dispel the cold that bit through their clothes—just like every other day they’d been on the trail. The two low, rough buildings they stopped at, the first they’d seen since the spaceport, had been a welcome relief to the unending wind that had grown colder as they rode. Their guards opened the smaller of the two buildings for the women, then went to the other with their animals.
“Sleep here,” the female guard barked out.
Tired, but elated to be somewhere other than the middle of the wastelands, Jess and the other women had dismounted and gone into the building. Even if all they had was a hard floor, it was a chance to sleep on something other than rocks and sand and to escape the wind and grit. And get off the odorous animals. To their surprise, they found a communal living area, a kitchen, bunk rooms with real beds and even showers.
While the other women squealed over the beds and showers, Jess searched the sparse kitchen until she found a clean mug and poured Cam some water. At least it appeared clean.
“Here. Drink this. You need water.”
Cam barely acknowledged her, but she did sip some of the lukewarm liquid. While she did, Jess checked out the building. The central area consisted of a kitchen and common area with one long table that could seat twenty on the long benches and a half-dozen smaller ones scattered around, as well as several random chairs. A single door on either side led to two large sleeping areas. Three-tiered bunks lined two walls of the large rooms. One for men and one for women? Two other doors led to bathing areas and toilets. Jess unwound Cam’s scarf from her head and helped her out of her cloak. Jess shook out the garments, coughing as the dust billowed up, and led Cam to one of the beds. “Here, lie down for a little. Are you all right?”
“Tired, ’sall.” Cam rolled over, pulled the blanket to her chin and was soon snoring. Several of the women joined Cam in the bunks, but Jess didn’t want to sleep. Not yet. The lure of a shower and the chance to wash the grit out of her hair proved too tempting. She pulled a thin towel and bottle of wash from her bag and headed for the bathing room. Her father had been so kind as to pack her bag with two changes of clothes—old things that even a beggar wouldn’t take—a thin towel, toiletries, her PADD, and a deck of cards. Knowing him, he’d probably pawned or sold the rest of her stuff. A check had shown that he’d emptied all her accounts. Her own father had traded her off and left her with nothing.
“Worthless piece of…” She shook her head, done with him and his schemes. She would have left him years ago, but for the promise she’d made to her mother. A promise well paid. She headed for the bathing room.
Jess wasn’t happy about having to use a communal shower, but after the past week on the trail, she’d lost all sense of embarrassment. A few of the other women joined her there. They didn’t talk, but all uttered the same sigh of relief as they enjoyed being clean for the first time since they’d left the station.
Calling the weak stream of tepid water a shower would be a stretch, but nothing had ever felt so good to Jess. She soaped her body and short hair, scrubbing hard to loosen the caked-in dirt. Jess compared her lean slenderness to the other women. They were sturdy and well-rounded. Her father had always derided her for her lack of female curves. What man would ever want me? Then she amended that thought. There was no man she’d ever want. Ever. They were all scum.
She pushed the thought away and dried off. It didn’t matter if a man wanted her. She was done. If she had an itch to be scratched, a one-night stand with an escort would be fine. Love? Hah. What had that ever done for anyone? Her mother, Lynn, had loved Jess’s father, even as the man dragged them from port to port, game to game. Lynn had died on some dirty gambling ship when Jess was eight years old and her father hadn’t even left his game to take care of the body, just paid a steward to handle it. Love. Stupid sentiment.
She pushed those thoughts away, too, and dried off. Dressed in clean trousers and a loose top, Jess returned to the kitchen and pulled out a meal packet she found in one of the storage cabinets. She popped the tab and waited for it to heat. There were no windows in the building, but she heard the wind blowing even harder outside. Maybe a storm building? She’d almost welcome one.
Anything as long as she didn’t have to get back on the lumpy animal she’d been riding for the past week. Thinking about her circumstances and everything that had happened in the last two weeks, she ate her dinner, settled onto the bunk above Cam’s and sank into a dreamless sleep.
* * * *
The next morning, Jess woke to the sound of dishes rattling and someone singing. The rich alto was full of longing and wonder. Jess had never heard such a beautiful sound not generated by a set of earbuds. She opened her eyes to find Cam gone. Jess rose and spied Cam through the open door, setting the long table in the center of the common room, singing as she laid out meal packs.
Though she still looked worn, the smile on her face lightened Jess’s mood. It looked like she’d bathed, too, as the blonde braid down her back was still damp. Jess joined Cam at the table.
“You sound better. Look better too.” For the first time since she’d left the ship, Jess’s head felt clear, as if washed clean like she was.
“I am. I’m sorry about collapsing. I guess I just wasn’t made for camule riding.” She rubbed her backside and Jess laughed. She pulled out her PADD to check messages. But there was no connection. That surprised her. She’d never been any place that didn’t have a connect.
“Don’t bother,” Cam said. “Nobody’s got a connection.”
“Seriously? I’ve never heard of that.”
Cam chuckled. “Guess you’ve never been on the back side of nowhere. Or a controlled planet. Where I grew up, you could plug in at the council building but only to approved sites and all mail was scanned by the elders.”
Jess had heard of places like that, but had never experienced one. “Wow. What did you do for entertainment?”
“We played games. Supervised.” Cam's eyes lit with mischief. “Or at least, some of them were.”
“Have the guards been in yet?” Jess asked.
“No. But they should be soon. I mean, the sun’s been up a while. I’m thinking we need to be on the road pretty soon.”
“Yeah.” Unless this is where we’re meeting our “mates.” The guards had never given them any indication of how long their trip was going to be. Maybe they’d reached the end? Jess glanced around. All but two of the women were up. “Any of you see the guards this morning?”
Choruses of no’s and shaking heads answered her. “Guess one of us should go check.”
The others refused to meet her gaze or muttered, but Jess got the message. Though the thought of facing them didn’t appeal to her either, she grabbed her scarf and heavy shirt and headed to the door. “I’ll be back in a sec. Best you all get to eating. I’m sure we’ll be leaving soon.” She went out and stopped in surprise.
The overnight gale had died to a brisk wind that smelled of moisture. Ice rimmed the doors and ground where the sunlight had yet to reach. Her breath puffed out white and the cold bit through her thin clothes. She gripped the heavy overshirt close to her neck, but even that couldn’t keep her from shivering. Traveling with her father on the gambling circuits, she’d rarely been anywhere where the temperature required heavy clothing. Space stations and planet casinos were all temperature regulated. She played with puffing out her breath, smiling when it clouded white in different shapes.
Both suns were well up, but the long shadows made her think it was still early in the morning. At least, she thought it was morning. Having lived most of her life on space stations, her knowledge of planetary timing was limited.
Jess strode across the stony yard to the other building. Not wanting to walk in on the men, she knocked at the door. It swung open, the squeak from the hinges deafening in the quiet and showering dust down on her.
She froze in the doorway, her hand still raised in shock. The place was empty. Completely empty. No men lounging in the bunks, no animals snoozing in the stalls. She crept into the building, stopping about halfway in. It didn’t look as if they’d even stopped there.
“Hello?” Her voice echoed in the cavernous space. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
Nothing. It didn’t even look like the guards had entered the place. They’d probably dumped the women and left, with Jess and the others none the wiser. She and the other women were alone…in an unknown land, with no way back, and no idea who would be coming for them, or when. Or even if. And, with no connectivity to the ‘Net, no way to find out.
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