Pleasure Dome-L.F. Hampton

Pleasure Dome
L.F. Hampton
ImaJinn, Mar 2009, $14.00
ISBN: 9781933417455

At thirty-eight years of age, Warship Captain Soledad Scott of the Icarus faces mandatory retirement. She travels to the Straits at the end of known space to visit the Pleasure Dome. Soledad is a maternity client who will be teamed up with a sex toy male with the DNA she wants for the sire who will make her pregnant. Due to worm-hole dyslexia, she misreads room 660 as 990; the hunk waiting in the wrong room is expecting a sterile female sex toy.

Sol acts as if half-breed Chakkra empath Commander Gabriel Merriweather is her sex toy and he acquiesces enjoying the role change. However, in the morning she learns of her mistake and sneaks out of his room. Most species believes that Chakkra are violent barbaric mercenaries who prefer to fight to the death than negotiate. The empath cannot forget Sol, but fears she will reject him because of the reputation for violence his Chakkra heritage has in spite of the irony that he works in the Diplomatic Corps. He uses his empath skills tring to find Sol but they fail him because his target is a tranq; a person with the ability to mute the emotions that empaths like Gabeare bombarded with. Still he is coming for the woman who ran away with his sperm and his heart.

This is a sizzling, energizing science fiction romance that takes place far into the future vividly described by L.F. Hampton to the point that readers will believe they are at the Pleasure Dome. The heroine is a brave combat veteran who displays vulnerability once she embarks on her first post-retirement deployment. Gabe is her wonderful counterpart showing the same leadership caring qualities along with a liability (in his mind) of being half-breed Chakkra. Together they bring to readers a pleasurable romantic outer space thriller.

Harriet Klausner