Rebuilding his life and rediscovering love...

At first, Dr. Sacha Dalton is simply curious about the prisoner of war admitted to her med-lab...until she sees who it is. For Commander Kai Yang—the commander of the battleship Valiant Knox—has long been thought dead. Killed in action. But after almost a year and half, he's returned home. Returned to her.

Kai is recovering from his ordeal and under the watchful care of Sacha, his childhood friend and the widow of his best friend. Only now, their friendship has grown and deepened into something far deeper, and far more complicated. Yet as Kai's body recovers, his psyche remains broken. How could he ever be the man he was, and the man Sacha deserves? But an intergalactic war has a way of forcing a man to be the hero he was always meant to be...

"I really enjoyed this tale of love, loss and coping with trauma all set on a military base somewhere off in distant space." Book Gannet Reviews

"I seem to have read quite a few sci-fi romances recently, but I have to admit I really really liked this one... Highly recommended!" Just Talking Books

"A forbidden woman and a wounded man...in space...and set to the backdrop of an intergalactic war! Escape Velocity reads as if Star Wars or Star Trek were written with a romance focus, and I was totally hooked!" Heroes and Heartbreakers.com

"The characters are strong, compelling and capture the heart as they draw the reader in to this steady to fast paced and smooth flowing romance full of suspense, excitement and romance." Eva Millien via Goodreads

Chapter One

May, 2436
Ilari, Brannon System

The precise scratches on the wall across from him tapered off into a dim blur toward the far corner of the cell where the light didn’t quite reach. There were far more marks than Kai wanted to count. Time had distorted into an immeasurable haze ever since the heavy, steel-reinforced door had clanged shut and locked behind him. Having a record of how long he’d been in here made his skin crawl, but damned Amos had carefully scored a new mark every time the sun came up and sent a teasing shaft of golden light through the paneless barred slit of a window.
Kai shivered under his ragged coat and breathed in the hint of fresh coldness over the revolting dank and rotting dungeon-esque smells. The brief slant of sunlight made an appearance and he lifted his head to look over at Amos, huddled on his side against the opposite wall. Any second now, his friend would sit up and drag himself over to add another score to the tally.
Muffled banging echoed from outside the cell. Slop time, right when the sun came up, just like every other goddamn morning he’d awakened here.
“Amos, get your lazy ass up. No sleeping in on my time, Sergeant.”
The door to their cell made a series of clicking noises and then swung outward, but Amos didn’t move.
Two black-robed figures appeared in the doorway. One stood back while the other walked in and dropped two bowls of gray swill in the middle of the rough concrete floor.
“Enjoy your breakfast, Commander.” The one in the doorway sneered. “And don’t forget to pray before you start. The Lord God is watching.”
Kai clenched his jaw over the words “screw you and your psychotic religion” but that’d only get him another beat-down, just like it had the other twenty or so times he’d lost his temper and opened his mouth.
The two men left and slammed the door behind them. He let his head fall back against the cold cement wall and fortified his mental defenses to endure another meal of goo that tasted like manure. Eating the stuff had become a lottery for the damned. Some days it made them so sick they’d barely get it down before it came back up again. Sometimes the slop was drugged and it’d knock them out cold for a few hours. Mostly it just tasted bad and left him feeling queasy. But refusing to eat it was not an option, not if he wanted to survive.
With a determined exhale, he sat forward and braced for the pain of moving his damaged leg. A couple of a-holes had broken it early on in his confinement, and without any type of medical attention, the bones hadn’t healed right. He could still get around on it, but if any of the Christ’s Sunday Soldier jerks wanted to torture him, all they needed to do was get him to walk laps of his cell. The ache would be all right for a while, but eventually he’d start sweating and getting light-headed from the pain. Of course, being half-starved and dehydrated didn’t help any.
With a sideways dragging kind of movement, he shuffled over to the two bowls, which also put him in poking range of Amos. Lazy sonuvabitch. He’d missed the whole three minutes worth of sun they got to see every day.
“Come on, grub’s up. It’s a four-star serving of crud. With any luck it won’t be poisoned today.”
Amos still didn’t respond and with a muttered curse at having to move farther, Kai lugged himself over to his sergeant and grabbed the man’s shoulder.
“Wake up.” He shook him, gentle at first, and then harder when the guy didn’t rouse. A spike of gut-clenching apprehension took hold deep within him as he rolled Amos over.
The sergeant’s lips were blue, his skin waxy and gray.
No.
He slapped a trembling hand to Amos’s neck, searching for a pulse, for a sign of breathing, any little spark of hope. But he felt nothing except the rubbery post-rigor-mortis flesh of a dead man.
“No!” The hoarse yell ripped deep from within his chest as he pounded a fist down on the sergeant’s shoulder. The impact jarred his hand as he struck bone. He focused on the pain, drawing in short ragged breaths as his lungs seized.
Since the religious zealots had grabbed him and Amos, each day had been a living hell. But the two of them had strengthened each other, had made a pact to survive and get home. Except Amos was dead, and inside, Kai could feel himself crumbling.