Jude knows he isn’t relationship material. The entire population of Mars made it abundantly clear he’s damaged goods, and he agrees. His issues are why he works a remote job flying around the galaxy prospecting for metals, and why he ruthlessly quashes any feelings for Cal, his surveying partner.<br><br>Cal has been looking for an opening to suggest he and Jude could be more than friendly coworkers. When they crash on a tundra planet, the men have a lot of free time, and they put it to good use having sex. It’s fun, but Cal wants Jude as a boyfriend, not a friend with benefits.<br><br>Marooned on a hostile world, with Jude’s demons rearing their heads, Cal’s first task is to keep the two of them alive. His second is to convince Jude that, no matter how much he’s suffered, romance can still be in the cards.

Snowed In: Jude and Cal

Space had its ways of keeping humans from getting complacent. 2


Jude slept very poorly on account of worrying about their upcoming crash landing. By the time they approached the tundra planet, he was ready to get it over with.


“Buckle up,” said Cal, who’d endured a similarly lousy night’s sleep, if the dark spots under his eyes were anything to go by.


Jude looked at his console with its prospecting data. “The silver lining to all of this is, the planet looks promising for metals.”


“You’ll forgive me if I’m more concerned with surviving the descent.”


So was Jude, but he had absolutely no control over that, so he took orbital scans because it beat sitting there doing nothing except hoping to live. The computer noted a good amount of metal in the equatorial regions. Most of the planet was covered in too much ice to get any useful data from orbit, though they’d have plenty of time to scan on foot provided they didn’t burn up in the atmosphere.


Chapter 5