Bianca D'Arc

King of Cups

by

Bianca D’Arc

This book is a
w
ork of fiction.
The
names, characters, places, and
incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been
used fictitiously
and are not to
b
e construed as real. Any
resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or
organizations is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your
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the hard work of this author.

Copyright © 2011
Bianca
D’Arc

Smashwords Edition December
2011

Cover Art by
Valerie
Tibbs

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of
this book may be used or reprodu
ce
d in any manner whatsoever without
written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in critical articles and reviews.

Dedication

This story is a big thank you to my readers,
who have stuck with me through thick and thin. Your support through
the rough times is something I will always treasure. Your
willingness to try new worlds and different genres is a source of
continuing wonder to me. Without you I would never be able to write
what I love, whether it’s in the paranormal sub-genre of romance,
science fiction sub-genre—as this book is—or the fantasy sub-genre.
You’ve let me explore many different aspects of my imagination and
encouraged me to try new things, keeping it fun for me… and I hope
for you as well. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I also want to thank a
couple of special people who’ve helped me with this series in
different ways... Peggy McChesney and fellow author, Lexxie Couper
gave me great advice and support when I needed it. You gals are
truly special. Author buddies Jayne Rylon and Mari Carr have been a
great source of support, inspiration, and most of all laughs when I
really needed to laugh. Super artist, Valerie Tibbs, also did a
dream of a job on the cover for this story and the first in the
series,
King of Swords
. Thanks, friends. I couldn’t have done it without
you.

And as always, I dedicate my work to my best
friend and partner in hijinks, now gone from this world... I miss
you, Mom.

Chapter One

Alexander the Great.

Yeah, right. Alex Hambly was an operative, plain and
simple. Not great. And nobody called him Alexander. Well, nobody
except Della. She didn’t do it often, but she was the only one with
balls enough to even try.

Every once in a while she teased
him about her beloved deck of cards and the King of Clubs. It was
also called the King of Cups in Della’s ancient tarot deck, and she
swore the card represented him. Alex shook his head. He was king of
nothing except maybe the rectangular patch of deck behind the bar
in
The Rabbit Hole
. That was the unlikely moniker of the small tavern on
Madhatter Station
that
was his domain. For now.

He’d moved around a lot in his profession, both as a
special ops soldier and now as a supposedly retired, very special
operative. He’d retired from the service after his time was up but
the Enhancement he’d volunteered for and his own particular set of
skills made him the perfect choice for spy work.

Alex didn’t have family. None that he was close to,
anyway. He liked covert work and he even liked tending bar. It was
a natural fit that he’d taken over the little establishment out on
the galactic rim. The Rim was where the real action was anyway. It
was where he’d spent most of his youth as a grunt, fighting the
jit’suku, a humanoid alien race from a neighboring galaxy bent on
conquest of the Milky Way. His deeds on the Rim as a young grunt
were what brought him to the attention of the special ops community
and what earned him the invitation to volunteer for genetic
Enhancement.

Enhanced soldiers were top secret but they did
exist. Scientists had cooked up a genetic manipulation cocktail
that changed them on a molecular level. Alex was so much more now
than he had been before. He had sharper senses, stronger muscles
and faster reflexes.

He was a so-called
super soldier
, but he
wasn’t, and never would be, king of anything.

That Della though, she would insist on tweaking him
every few days with the nickname only she used for him. She’d sidle
up behind him while he was working at the bar and utter some
request or other in that sexy dark voice of hers, following up by
calling him king in some way. Usually by calling him sire, or my
liege with that little smile she reserved just for him.

It never failed to get a rise out of him. Just like
Della never failed to provoke a rise further down on his anatomy.
The woman was hot. Smoking hot, in fact.

She was also clairvoyant. Markedly so. It was a
trait shared in her family, or so she had explained when her niece
Adele had shown up a few months ago and helped stop a pirate
takeover of the station. Della still looked too young to be Adele’s
auntie, but apparently she had an older sister who’d married young,
so there were only a few years between lovely Della and her niece.
After both women had seen visions of the pirate attack Alex had
learned to respect their premonitions and warnings.

So when Della nearly fell off her chair one night
right before closing time, he sat her down at a quiet booth where
he could keep an eye on her and brought over a steaming cup of
espresso. He knew from prior experience that the caffeine helped
her recover after a strong premonition.

“
Thanks.” Della gave him a tired
smile as he put the tiny cup and saucer on the table in front of
her. He kept this special china especially for her use. Not that
he’d admit it aloud. Showing a soft spot for anyone in his line of
work was dangerous. He watched as she lifted the delicate cup and
took a cautious sip of the hot beverage.

“
You okay?”

“
I will be in a minute.” She
drank, closing her eyes as she breathed. Deep, calming
breaths.

“
Want to talk about
it?”

“
Not particularly, but we’re going
to have to.” She sighed, displacing the fringe of her wispy bangs
with the delicate puff of air. He always found the action
endearingly feminine.

“
I don’t know if I like the sound
of that.”

“
And I don’t know what to make of
what I’ve been seeing.” She seemed genuinely frustrated. “It’s
disjointed but it pertains to you. I think maybe you can help sort
it out. If you’re willing, that is.” She looked up at him from
under her lashes and there was no way he could refuse her appeal.
The woman held him in the palm of her hand and she likely knew
it.

“
I’m willing, Del. Let me close up
and we can talk here. No place safer on the station.”

She nodded. He knew she was well aware of the
special safety precautions built into the fabric of the bar itself.
This tavern had been designed as a secure place where information
could be passed from operative to handler and vice versa. Alex had
stepped in as the proprietor when the last man retired—this time
for real—and had inherited a number of operatives that he now ran
as their handler.

Alex had retired from the more active parts of the
game, going from field agent to field handler. He liked the job. It
allowed him to stay in one place for a longer period of time. Put
down roots. Make friends.

Della was one of those, yet she was also part of the
game. During the last crisis, she’d told him—and him alone—out of
the group of spec ops soldiers they’d been stranded with, that she
was a secret agent. She’d done it subtly. She’d given him a name
and a code. He recognized both and knew that her clearance was
above even his. She was probably working for his boss’s boss.

What she was really doing here, dealing cards in his
bar, he still didn’t know. He wasn’t authorized that high and he
knew better than to ask.

He closed up shop quickly. The bar had been mostly
empty anyway. He didn’t bother with the mundane chores. Anything
the bots didn’t handle he could do tomorrow before he reopened for
first shift lunch break.

Della was his priority now. Della and her mysterious
visions of the future.

Alex poured himself a Pearson’s Star Ale and brought
a cup of regular coffee over for Della. She still looked a little
pale.

“
How are you feeling?” he asked as
he placed the larger cup and saucer in front of her, pushing the
empty espresso service to the edge of the table where the server
bot would pick it up on its next round.

“
Better.” She pushed her hair back
from her face with a pale, trembling hand.

“
Drink the coffee. It’ll help.” He
took the seat opposite her in the cozy booth. “So what is it? What
did you see?”

Alex was one of the few people who knew the very
real power of Della’s gift. She played at telling fortunes in the
bar every once in a while but most of the patrons figured she was
just scheming for entertainment or coin. Then again, her
predictions of the future had an uncanny way of coming true.

He’d seen her in action more than a few times and
knew her foresight was the real deal. It was him she turned to when
the particularly powerful visions took her by storm. She had to sit
down for a minute to regroup when that happened, as she’d done just
now.

Her color was looking better as she sipped at the
coffee. He was pleased to see Della’s pretty face vibrant with life
once again, though her brows drew together in an expression of
dismay.

“
It’s hard to explain.”

“
Try.” The deliberately sultry
tone of his voice startled her gaze up to his. He sent her a smile
and immediately the frown lines eased just a bit.

“
All right. Here goes.” She took a
deep breath before continuing. “Remember when the pirate jit’suku
ship tried to take the station? There were a few jits who stayed on
board their ship during the action. A young man, an older fellow
and a couple of soldiers. They were released without charges
because they hadn’t actually taken part in the siege itself. When
the rest of the crew boarded the station and tried to take it by
force, that small group stayed on board their ship for whatever
reason, and didn’t engage in any combat.”

“
I remember.” Between the small
group of retirees in the bar with Alex and one of his friends
stealing the pirate ship, they’d managed to reverse their fortunes
in a hurry. It had been fun to be engaged in field action once
more.

“
Tomorrow, that young jit man and
his…entourage, for lack of a better word, will be back on the
station, despite my niece’s admonitions to him to stay out of human
space. The fool.” She made a face. “I see him. Sometime after first
shift lunch break. On the departure concourse.” Her eyes squinted
as if she tried to look at something that wasn’t quite
there.

“
Is this something you know from
your contacts or something you
know
?” Alex thought he recognized
the signs, but wanted to be sure.