Neal James is a space station navigator whose lover, Dylan Teague, left him for a starmapping mission. But when Dylan radios in a distant signal one night, Neal discovers that he hasn't managed to put the relationship behind him in the two months they've been apart. When he's one of the crew members sent to investigate the signal, he finds that his ex-lover feels the same.<br><br>The source of the signal is a lost colony ship. Only a handful of the original colonists remain, survivors of a deadly disease that killed most of their fellow shipmates twenty years ago. To keep the threat of disease to a minimum, the colony adheres to strict laws, including the prohibition of same-sex relationships.<br><br>When the same fatal virus seems to appear again, Neal and Dylan find themselves in the midst of an irrational panic and hate that threatens to destroy everything the colonists have worked so hard to attain.

Operation Starseed

But he’s pissed, and when he gets like this, he doesn’t feel the


stupid shit he does to himself. Once, back at the station, Dixon


told him he didn’t want his best pilot sleeping on the tech


level—didn’t want him sleeping with me, in all honesty—and


it ticked him off so bad, my hot-headed boy ran his fist through a


glass radar screen on the nav deck and never even realized he was


cut until I saw the blood on his knuckles.


because he just glares at the airlock and mutters, “Fucking


pricks,” and he lets me rub his hand to keep it from fisting again.


He doesn’t bother to kick the wall a second time.


“I know,” I tell him. I do, I know, I


want out of here just as badly as he does, if not moreso, because


when he gets in this Neanderthal mode of his, I think it’s


unbearably cute. It turns me on something fierce to know that I’m


the only one who can calm him down, I’m the only one he listens to,


Chapter 95