Falcon: Sky Mates (Intergalactic Dating Agency): a Sci-Fi Romance Read online

  Falcon

  Sky Mates (Intergalactic Dating Agency

  Susan Grant

  Contents

  About

  Foreword

  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

  Romancing the Alien

  Also by Susan Grant

  From the Author

  Copyright © 2020 by Susan Grant

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction about fictional people.

  Cover art: Croco Designs

  Other Books set in the Triad Alliance World

  Otherworldly Men Series

  Guardian Alien

  Royally Mated

  Cyborg and the Single Mom

  Borderlands Series

  Warleader

  Hunting the Warlord’s Daughter (2020)

  Raider Born (2021)

  Sky Mates Series

  Hawk

  Falcon

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  About

  I hope you had a blast watching Kelly and Hawk fall in love in Hawk, Book #1 in the Sky Mates series. Things are bound to heat up when Dee learns she’s been matched to Falcon!

  In book #2 of the all-new fated-mates romance by New York Times & USA Today best-selling author Susan Grant, intelligence officer Lieutenant Dee Wilson pushes way out of her envelope with her hot alien-cyborg flight instructor. Can she help it if his expert maneuvers have her seeing stars?

  Dee is afraid of flying. But she’ll do anything for the chance to enter the Sky Mates program and be matched with a loving mate of her own. To overcome her greatest fear, she enlists the help of a big alien warrior with bravery to spare.

  Sky Warrior Falcon is under intense pressure to return to his home planet with a Sky Mate. He can’t believe his luck when the sweet and smart redhead instructor who’s enchanted him since he arrived at Galactic TopGun School turns out to be his match. Except, the only thing she seems passionate about is going out of her way to avoid him. Is she hiding something? When he discovers she’s signed up for flying lessons but fear keeps her grounded, he switches places with her instructor. If she’s serious about going sky high, he’ll make sure it happens with him.

  Determined to see Dee reach new heights, Falcon finds out that when it comes to true love, the sky is definitely not the limit. But will his planet allow their most talented pilot to pair up with a mate who’s firmly grounded?

  For a sweet and steamy, afterburner blasting, galaxy-spanning adventure, join the world of SKY MATES and read FALCON today.!

  (An Intergalactic Dating Agency story.)

  Dear Reader:

  I wrote the SKY MATES Series as a spin-off to stand on its own. The series books can be read in any order, although I recommend you start with HAWK before FALCON. Chronologically the SKY MATES stories take place after HUNTING THE WARLORD’S DAUGHTER. Or you may prefer to read the abbreviated multiseason recap below before jumping in (contains no spoilers).

  Recap

  Previously…

  Long ago, the galaxy was whole. Goddesses lived among the humans and were worshipped as descendants of a mysterious, eons-old race of divine beings.

  Under threat of religious extermination by Drakken warlords, the goddesses were forced to flee. They found refuge on an icy planet, Sakka; formed a new government, the Coalition; and declared war on the Drakken Empire.

  Centuries after the Schism, the two sides still battled to annihilate each other. They called it the Great War.

  Then everything changes when an unlikely world disrupts the galactic balance of power: Earth.

  Peace is won. The Coalition, the Drakken, and Earth unite, and the Triad Alliance is born. With pirates, deserters, terrorists, homesteaders, and the warlord’s loyalists on the loose, the galaxy remains a dangerous place. Old wounds will take time to heal.

  On Earth, the first ever Galactic TopGun school opens for business…

  Other books in the Triad Alliance World:

  The Otherworldly Men Series:

  •Book #1 GUARDIAN ALIEN

  •Book #2 ROYALLY MATED

  •Book #3 CYBORG AND THE SINGLE MOM

  The Borderlands Series:

  •Book #1 WARLEADER

  •Book #2 HUNTING THE WARLORD'S DAUGHTER (2020)

  •Book #3 RAIDER BORN (2021)

  And the spin-off series:

  Sky Mates

  •Book #1 HAWK

  •Book #2 FALCON

  Foreword

  Who else has seen the unclimbed peaks?

  The rainbow's secret?

  The real reason birds sing?

  Because I fly,

  I envy no man on earth.

  — Grover C. Norwood

  Chapter One

  a Sky Mates NOVELLA

  When Lieutenant “Falcon” Faulke traveled across the expanse of the galaxy in hopes of finding his Sky Mate, he never imagined he would meet an irresistible Terran officer on his first night in Texas who would bring him to his proverbial bachelor’s knees.

  He’d come to Earth for one purpose: to be matched with his mate. The most prized warcraft on Sky’s End, their eons-old Dragon-class ships, were too complicated for even experienced, fully bioengineered Solos like him to fly. Dragons needed two pilots, a bonded pair of soulmates, their minds linked, their emotions in synergy. But genetic drift had happened. Sky Mates had become rare at home. Without them, they’d have to ground the incredible Dragons and face the end of their unique and proud culture, and perhaps, eventually, extinction.

  The threat had driven Sky’s End out of isolation to form a partnership with Earth. The venture, his commander Major “Hawk” Hakkim’s idea, had brought Falcon and the rest of the handpicked team of Solos to Webber Space Force Base, where, Goddess willing, they’d find their genetically compatible mates.

  Falcon’s focus was on keeping his flying skills sharp at Galactic TopGun weapons school while awaiting news of his match, and that was all.

  Then he saw Dee Wilson.

  He and the rest of his team of Solos were in O’Malley’s. The welcome reception hosted by the TopGun training squadron, the Crazy Eights, was in full swing. But the moment he laid eyes on Dee standing a few tables away, his world narrowed to only her. The noise, his friends, and the crowd faded away.

  She was a bright spark of happy energy and color, a spray of golden freckles across her nose. Her lips curved into a curlicue on each end as she talked. When she glanced up—glanced at him—he was finished. One look and he melted in her sheer, incandescent cuteness.

  Who was she? Who was this magical sprite?

  Mine. In the center of his soul, he knew it to be true.

  Before he could snap out of his trance, before he could go to her and find out who she was, she’d turned her back to him and walked away.

  Only to roar back into his life the next morning with all the blinding heat of an atmospheric reentry.

  As his academic instructor.

  He watched, stunned speechless, as she stepped to the center of the classroom. Shiny red hair twisted in a bun, blue eyes sparkling, her uniform immaculate, she’d planted her hands on her hips and announced in fluent but Terran-accented Queen’s Tongue, “Welcome. I’m Lieutenant Dee Wilson. Call sign: Rainbow. I’ll be your battle management and weapons systems integration instructor at TopGun School. Get ready to sip from the firehose. Information is going to come at you fast and at full force. It may feel impossible to absorb it all, but work hard and you might.” Her curlicue smile seemed to dare him to try.

  Bah. The subject matter was easy. Having to sit within reach of Dee for hours and not be able to touch her was not. I surrender, Lieutenant Wilson. You win. Take me prisoner…of your love. It was futile to resist her.

  She had no problem resisting him, however. None at all. Weeks into his stay on Earth, he was no closer to turning his fascination with her into mutual fascination than he was that first night in O’Malley’s.

  Did his looks put her off? Sky warriors could be unsettling to some with their genetically engineered silver hair, shimmering skin, and vivid lavender-brown eyes. But using his cybernetic augmented senses to gauge her scent, her skin temperature, her increase in respiration, the way her pupils dilated whenever their gazes locked, he had already determined that the attraction was mutual. Well, physically, anyway.

  Was his attitude the problem? At Webber, she was surrounded by fighter-pilots. She must be used to their cockiness. Yet he did his best to dial down any trace of swagger. In class, he was unfailingly polite, respectful, helpful, humble. A model sky warrior. He sat in the front row so he wouldn’t miss a detail of her instruction. His exam scores, his briefings, his flights were perfect.

  Not that it helped. She still paid him no mind. Yet his interest in her gained strength by the day. Not because she kept rebuffing him, but in spite of it.

  Rainbow girl, why not get to know me better? Maybe she was shy and needed to warm up to him.

  He quickly figured out a way to spend more time in her company: extra instruction. While he was certain she was skeptical about his need for extra help, knowing his perfect test scores, she always stayed after class to assist him and the other weapons undergrads—WUGs. Sometimes, he was lucky to have her all to himself.

  During those moments, he craftily teased out as much information as he could about her. Unfortunately for him, as an intelligence officer she was highly skilled at sharing only “need to know” answers. Orphaned, she’d been raised by her grandparents in a region called Nebraska, and they were now deceased. She’d become their caregiver at an early age, and he sensed she’d been good at it. She was an only child like he was. Also like him, she wasn’t mated—or “married” as the Terrans called it. He’d gained that valuable tidbit from Major “Karma” Goren, one of the instructor pilots. Karma was always willing to reveal vital personal details about his squadron mates once you loosened his tongue with a few alcoholic beverages.

  Dee was single and so was he. He was “cleared in hot,” as the Terran fighter-pilots liked to say. Free to take action. Thank the Goddess. He was hopelessly smitten.

  Such were his thoughts that morning as he sat crammed into his usual seat directly in front of the instructor podium, listening to her as she lectured, hoping this would be the day he’d win her over. He shifted position in his tiny chair, his knees scraping against an equally awkward mission planning table that seemed to comfortably fit other aviators from around the galaxy but not sky warriors. Ah, but the scenery was delightful today.

  Her back was to him, her bottom swaying as she filled one of the whiteboards with scrawled diagrams, mission notes, and briefing points. There were maps on all the walls, and a big, primitive projector in the front of the room. Well, not primitive in the Terrans’ view.

  “Consider all possible counter measures to deny, defeat, degrade, or avoid the enemy.” Dee rose up on her toes, reaching overhead to draw a diagram. The hem of her uniform blouse, a style worn outside of her waistband, lifted, exposing a creamy sliver of skin. Faint golden freckles dusted her back. The discovery intrigued him. She must have them everywhere. He’d love to fact check that notion. It was his goal to eventually taste them all, every freckle, no matter how long it took—days, weeks, years even, all her graceful angles and curves his to explore at his leisure.

  Heat pooled in his groin with the thought of her spread out beneath him in bed, her back arching, his name a sigh on her lips as he kissed all her most sensitive places.

  He swallowed a groan, drawing his boots closer to the chair legs, and quickly called on his bio-engineering to help divert blood flow from his aching cock to body parts more appropriate for a classroom setting.

  To his brain, for instance. He was in class, after all. And Dee did have many other attributes besides the body he’d longed to taste and touch. Like her sharp mind and a love of teaching, her happy, endearingly earnest personality, and that quiet little snort she made sometimes when she laughed too hard.

  His mouth looped into a grin. Goddess, that soft snort. It was adorable. Then there was her scent. He could no more pretend it didn’t exist than he could stop his heart from beating. He didn’t drink alcohol, it was thought to interfere with a sky warrior’s neural implants, but he doubted its effects could have dizzied him more than the scent of Dee’s skin did. He let out a sigh.

  “Lieutenant Faulke. In a wartime scenario how would authority be delegated down to the weapons system operator?”

  He jerked his head up. Dee’s gaze was on him, her coppery brows raised. She wasn’t smiling exactly, but her expression broadcast that she thought she’d caught him daydreaming.

  He could hear Ellfen’s muffled snicker from a few seats away, where she sat with the other Solos, Rowan, Rigel, and Narekk.

  Falcon sat up straighter, moving aside his Terran issued tablet computer and folding his hands on the table. “Well, Lieutenant Wilson, it depends.”

  Dee paced in front of him, tapping a pointer against her open palm. “Why does it depend?”

  “If they are exercising centralized control, then the sector operations center would determine a target and assign the appropriate weapons system at the group level.” He waved a hand in a circular motion. “And then on down to the individual squads. If it is decentralized control, as is normal in wartime, then the individual sector commanders would have the authority to engage to protect their respective area of coverage.”

  “Nice work, Lieutenant,” she said and turned away, shutting off the projector. Her warm expression told him his response had pleased her. Victory! He’d finally won her favor.

  His mind was the way to her heart.

  As the students filed out of the classroom, Dee stacked the day’s teaching materials on one of the mission planning tables, organizing the charts and publications before storing them in the vault. A flight of jets roared over the base so loud it rattled her car keys sitting next to her purse.

  It pulled her mind back to the orientation flight she’d scheduled for that afternoon, part of the flight school she’d signed up for at a civilian airstrip. She wasn’t a fighter-pilot like most of her friends at TopGun, but she loved her job as an intelligence officer and instructor. Her goals for today were simple: just get in the air and not throw up, thus proving she was capable of learning to fly.

  Then she could enter her DNA in the Project Sky Mates study.

  Being a Sky Mate sounded like a dream. She was deeply involved in the project. She notified the matches of their selections, facilitated their first meetings, safeguarding the anonymous identity codes until it was time to share them. She was the dependable conduit that the program’s co-liaisons trusted. Despite her thoroughness, some on Earth and in the Triad remained uneasy with the idea of genetically bonded mates.

  Dee had no such reservations. Deep down, she’d always known she was meant to be part of something larger, destined to find her other half and be a team. Matched, mated, and synced, she and her sky warrior would go off to live on an exotic, faraway world together.

  Granted, it was a stretch for a nerdy data wonk like her. She’d spent her life in offices, in classrooms, behind computers. She could practically hear her late grandparents waving her off the idea of interstellar exploits: “It can only come to no good, Deandra. Stay home. Be safe.”

  Like Mom and Dad didn’t do.

  Her parents were true adventurers. In the photos from their world travels, they looked as exhilarated about their surroundings as they must have been in love with each other. There were even some with Dee as an infant in their arms. She’d visited three continents before she was eighteen months old. Then one day they didn’t return from one of their trips. Adventure became a touchy subject after that.

  But she dreamed of it anyway—and meeting him: the love of her life. She knew he was out there, her other half, she could feel it, the empty spot inside her only he could fill. Her partner in crime for all the adventures she wanted to experience. A man with bravery to spare.

  She’d dated now and again, had a few boyfriends along the way, but none reached the high bar she’d set. She’d even submitted an application to the Intergalactic Dating Agency last year, thinking a man from the stars would be The One, but a few stilted video dates had left her disappointed.