Prologue
The hallway was dark, lit only by old world lanterns that hung from the low ceiling, casting a golden glow to light her path through their intricate iron design. The worn carpet muted her footsteps and though it was threadbare, it looked like it was from Old Earth and would’ve cost thousands of credits to purchase and install.
The walls were lined in a red, sinful velvet. Eve reached out to touch it, feeling the rasping softness gliding over her sensitive fingertips and she shivered, swallowing the thick lump in her throat.
Her body felt like it was buzzing with nerves, with anticipation, with a gut-churning nausea that she’d felt since the night before thinking about this moment.
The brothel was well-known among the wealthier circle of the Everton colony. And while Eve was by no means as wealthy as some of the women that frequented Madame Allegria’s, she was more than willing to pay the steep price to visit one of the Krave for many reasons.
The most pressing reason, however, was that she wanted her first experience with sex to be…exceptional.
And she knew the Krave were legendary lovers with skills that human men simply couldn’t possess or replicate.
Perhaps it was reckless to come to one of the Krave as a virgin, Eve thought. Perhaps it was foolish to spend close to a thousand credits for the opportunity.
But she’d already paid…and she was already there. She wouldn’t back out now because of fear and uncertainty.
There was only one door at the end of the hallway. It was a dark walnut wood that gleamed with polish, also imported from Old Earth, with gold strips hammered into the surface to create a geometric pattern.
Eve stopped in front of the door, staring at the gold, seeing her distorted reflection in it. Then she stared at the lever. The girl at the entrance had told her to go right in, had told her that he would be waiting for her.
Her heart was pounding so fast in her chest that it was hard to catch her breath. She wiped her palms on the green silk dress she’d chosen to wear, an old style, but timeless.
Eve thought about what she would do if she turned around, right then, and left. If she let her fear win…
She would take a driverless car back to the Garden District, she would enter her quiet townhouse, the one she used to share with her father, and she would sit by the fire that night and feel that bone-crushing feeling of disappointment and loneliness. In the morning, she would do her morning chores, she would dress for her shop job and work the day away, and then she’d go home once night fell over the colony, back to her townhouse to watch the fire.
No.
Eve felt a surge of courage. She wanted to feel connected to something, to someone. Even if it was only for one night and for nine hundred credits.
With one last breath, she straightened her spine.
She reached for the lever.
Then she pushed the door open.
Chapter One
One week earlier…
* * *
It was her birthday.
Eve was 25 that day and though she was by no means old, she felt like it. She feltancient.
On the Everton colony, she was considered a spinster, past her prime and reproductive usefulness. For all of its technological innovations for a space colony, for all of its moral looseness and history of corruption, the Everton colony was backwards when it came to its female residents. If you weren’t married by 20 and producing children by 22, you were a lost cause, an outcast.
Eve had read about the last two hundred years on Old Earth before it had become inhabitable. Women had been strong. Stronger than any time before, especially in her ancestral country of origin.
On Everton, a woman was only as strong as her family’s wealth or her husband’s wealth.
Well, Eve had no family. And she certainly had no husband.
What she did have was the inheritance credits her father had left her. He’d left everything to her, the townhouse in the Garden District of Everton, whatever remained of his shipping vessels, every possession he had collected over the years as a well-traveled merchant trader.
His death still weighed heavily on Eve, four years later. She’d loved him and he’d loved her. They had been thick as thieves, or so the Old Earth saying went.
