April Andrews is back! She's sharing a little bit of her upcoming release (Feb 15th!) with us today. Crossing the Line is the first title in her new Alpha One series.
In
the year 2152 the last of humanity lives on a series of generational
spaceships. Twice a year, on the ship known as Alpha One, five scouts are chosen to head out into deep space and
find places where Alpha One can
re-stock its supplies.
Tobias
Hark, newly qualified pilot, is one of those scouts but Tobias isn’t being sent
on his mission alone. He has been paired with his commanding officer, Javier De
Santos. Javier also happens to be the one man that Tobias has been crushing on
ever since he joined the pilot unit. But there are rules on Alpha One and those rules mean that
Tobias can never let his superior officer know how he feels.
Javier
has been following those rules too, despite the fact that he has lusted after
Tobias from the day they met. But when their ship lands on a strange planet,
and they have to make some drastic decisions in order to survive, Javier soon
realizes that if there is ever a time to break those rules it is now. Because
protecting Tobias has just become his priority and the only way that Javier can
do that is by crossing the line.
Excerpt
If Javier DeSantos heard the word
‘sir’ come out of Tobias Hark’s mouth just one more time he swore it would be
his undoing. It wasn’t even the word itself, though that was bad enough. It was
the way the young pilot said the damn thing. The way his green eyes seemed to
widen. The way his lips parted softly as he spoke. And the way his skin
flushed...that soft fucking skin of his...
It was constantly flushed around
Javier, and Javier knew why, of course he did, it was fucking obvious. The
young pilot had a crush on him. He’d had that crush since his very first day of
pilot training.
Javier could remember well the
moment he had picked up on it. It had been midday and after the usual briefings
that all new pilots were given, Javier had decided to launch them straight into
a virtual reality scenario. He often did things like that, springing scenarios
and tests on his recruits, it gave him an idea of who was confident, who would
need a bit more attention and so on.
The VR was for a planetary
landing. Javier had been strapping the pilots into their test modules. Tobias
had been the last on his list of new recruits. Javier had eleven in all.
Slightly less than the other officers but unlike the other officers Javier
didn’t just train new recruits, he was still on active pilot duty himself.
He’d moved across the room to
Tobias’ module. The young man was already trying to strap himself in. He was
eager. That thought made Javier sigh inwardly. He’d read over Tobias’ record
when Tobias had been assigned to him. The young man had only just turned
twenty-five—the age of entry to the pilot unit—and he’d come all the way from
module zero one, the module at the very front of the ship, one that Javier
hadn’t visited in years. The people there tended to end up in the engineering
or medical units. Tobias was the first of them to apply for the pilot unit in
more than a decade.
And of course, Javier had noticed
the other man during their briefing, realized how good looking he was, but he
certainly wasn’t the only attractive male to enter the unit, and Javier had
thought no more of it.
“Let me show you how to do that
properly, Tobias,” Javier had said as he approached Tobias’ module.
The younger man had smiled at
those words, looked up, and that was
when it happened. That was when Tobias’ crush started...and when Javier’s
raging lust did too. In those first few moments together, as Javier looked down
at Tobias, as Tobias looked up at him, something clicked between them.
It was just a moment, just a
heartbeat, but it happened.
And then Tobias’ skin had flushed
a deep, deep pink, his green eyes had widened, and he’d whispered just two
words, “Yes, sir.”
Yes, sir....
Those two words had featured in
pretty much every wet dream that Javier had experienced since. And there had
been plenty of those dreams because try as he might, Javier couldn’t help the
fact that Tobias’ crush was not unrequited.
Javier felt it too, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t stop himself
from wanting Tobias.
Badly.
And what the hell was that going
to mean for the mission ahead?
“Sir, I’m confused...” Tobias
began.
Javier sucked in a deep breath.
It was the voice he decided then. The voice did not help matters at all. It was
too soft, too easy to imagine it in his ears as he slid his body over the other
man’s...
“There’s no need for confusion,
pilot, it’s quite simple,” Javier said quickly. “I will be flying the primary
scout ship and you will be my co-pilot.”
“You’re coming on the mission
too, sir?” Tobias asked and his voice, that damn voice, was filled with
confusion.
Javier turned to him and shot him
a look. Tobias did not return it. He simply flushed and lowered his gaze. It
took quite a bit of Javier’s willpower to stop his body from reacting to the
sight of that in the way that it wanted to. “Do you have a problem with me
coming on the mission?” he asked.
“No,” Tobias said quickly. “Of
course not, I...just...”
“You just what?” Javier demanded.
“I thought scouts went out alone,
sir,” Tobias said.
And he was right about that, of
course he was, because apart from being the most attractive male that Javier had
ever met, Tobias was also the only pilot in over twenty years who had scored
one hundred percent on every single exam that he had ever taken. The test
flights, the written exams, the oral exams, he never put a foot wrong. That was the reason he had been chosen
for this mission, the most important mission of this entire scouting campaign.
And that was the reason that Javier could not pick someone else, someone who
did not make his body clench with desire, someone who did not make him wake up
in the middle of the night with an erection that just wouldn’t quit, someone
who didn’t make Javier feel like he might explode every time they were close to
one another...
Tobias was the best person for
this job.
Whether Javier liked it or not.
