10. Zeerah

Oh, boy.

"What?" I choke at his answer. "Did you not hear anything? You can't fight them. Are you insane?"

Falkion looks, in this moment, both beautiful and terrifying. He's like the Arrisans I grew up watching, the ones who wrecked our planet so casually as they took it over.

Then he lifts his chin and centers his silver eyes on me. "I fight so you may survive."

And the image fractures, becoming more complex.

I take in a deep breath and let it out. Only a shift ago, I was in those arms, enclosed and safe. I'm supposed to overrule him. I don't think anyone overrules this man. But I'm also not afraid of him anymore. I think.

Noemi looks between us, intrigued. "That's so funny. I was going to say, ‘Pray.'"

"Well, you have to do something," I say.

"Hmm. I guess the answer isn't as obvious as I thought."

Falkion's eyes go fuzzy while accepting a communication, and he touches his ear. Someone's contacted him directly. His implant communicates with the local equipment and bounces back to the dreadnought.

While he's distracted, Noemi turns away from him and murmurs to me privately. "Ukuri heard back from the scientists studying the spray. They've made a cure."

My belly squeezes. "Oh? Have they?"

"We've sent for it."

"Um, but, uh, what if we don't want to administer it right away?"

She tilts her head. "There's no point in prolonging the suffering, is there?"

Her question stabs me.

She's right.

She's right, and yet…

What happens when Falkion is cured? A shift ago, nothing. I'd pack my bag and leave. Now? In the very unlikely event that the H-aliens return—or in the much more likely event that we have yet another false alarm—he's the only one standing between me and the entire dreadnought, maybe the entire Arrisan empire.

It's better to sever our connection now. Right now. Because then I'll know how to go forward. If he hates me, I'll tell Allie that it's not going to work, and I'll beg her for a ship and fly away.

If he doesn't hate me…

Mm. That possible future is blurry. I can't see my way.

In the meantime, I finish asking questions about the H-alien ship, and Falkion leaves with me. Back on his dreadnought, we fly through the familiar grav tubes. I allow him to guide me back toward the bridge, but the shift has changed. He leads me to the officer's hallway. It's fully patched, no longer pitted and blackened. The walls are smoothed over, gray.

Falkion leads me to his quarters. I pause outside.

He opens the door and stands inside. "It's your resting shift, Zeerah."

"I know."

He waits, and I shift my weight. I've never entered his room before. Somehow, I think if I do, I can't go back. Everything will change, and as bad as it might be for me, I'm afraid it's going to be much worse for Falkion. My presence in his life materially damages him. Kollok and High Commander Drin are only the beginning.

If I follow him inside, if I choose to be with him, I'm going to bring his career, his dreams, his whole world crashing down.

Falkion takes my hand and draws me into his room. The door seals behind me. Now we're inside.

The captain's room is high-ceilinged, gray, and empty. A large sleeping pod rests in one corner. Benches line the walls. Directly across from the door stands a waist-high metal platform with a design carved into it.

There's nowhere to hide. My heart beats out of my chest. He looks at me, silent, a predator waiting to see which way I'll run. Because I always run.

Don't I?

I'm definitely not going to have sex with him. In fact, to prevent us from ever having sex, I've got this foolproof plan. "Take off your suit."

He strips, and the skinsuit flutters into a gray pile at his ankles. Within moments, his proud member rises to point at me. "Why?"

"I'm going to cure you."

He wraps his hand around his dick. "You'll guide me?"

"More than that." I step forward and curve my hand around his fingers. His dick radiates heat. The girth stretches my grip.

His knuckles are rough beneath my palm. Hard and bony. My elbow brushes his chiseled torso, and his jaw, which I always fantasize about nibbling, brushes my cheek. And he smells like musk, silver command, pure electricity. My pussy throbs, and I squeeze, tightening my grip and therefore his.

He sucks in an unsteady breath. "Zeerah?"

Arousal pulses through me. I bite my lip and focus on him. "Concentrate on your release."

She tells me to concentrate on my release, but that's impossible when she's fully filling up my mind.

Her skilled hands wrap around mine, but after a few strokes, she slips off and cups my hard jack all by herself.

A new sensation of pleasure shoots into my root.

She pulls my taut skin in an eager and unsteady rhythm. More sensations ripple outward from her contact. Pressure and gentle friction, poignant and sweet.

Her lips part. The lush pink interior calls, damp and inviting.

She captivates me.

I cover her mouth.

She moans.

An invisible cord connects my jack to her sensual response. My jack pulses in her palms. I trace her small, flat teeth with my tongue.

We don't do this, as Arrisans. The mouth is for eating and, once upon a time, biting our mates.

In the arena five years ago, there was no lingering touch, no enmeshing of skin and mouths, no imprinting of another heartbeat on mine.

I am not releasing with Zeerah so much as I am shaping myself into her hollows, fitting our partial forms into the mold of a complete being.

She pulls her mouth free, breathes heavily, eyes closed. "Are you close?"

"To what?"

Her lashes flutter, meteor-dark brown eyes focusing on me. "Your release."

"I don't know."

She frowns. "You aren't feeling it?"

"When you make the sound, I feel something."

"What sound?"

I nibble her lips, teasing and tangling with her tongue.

She emits another sensual moan.

"There," I murmur against her trembling lips. "That sound."

"Mm?"

It sends a vibration from my chest down my spine, and my jack swells. Everything feels sharper, more present. I bring the sound from her again and again, and once more, I feel close to my release.

"You're reacting to me?" She drops my jack and steps back. "Oh, no."

I hold my ground even though the urge to chase her is almost intolerable. "What?"

"I was afraid of that." She clenches the collar of her skinsuit and glances at the door as she takes another step back. "We're too interconnected."

"Good." I point my chin at her body. "You understand your own sexual response."

"What? You think I should get myself off and see if my, um, release triggers yours?" Her fingers tighten around her collar. "Right here? Like this?"

I shrug. We have all the time in the universe. Clegs until her resting shift ends, and longer until my next shift begins.

She swallows. Her eyes dart again to my door. Just when I'm sure I've made a mistake staying where I am and I should have crossed the distance and forced her to me, she lets out a huge sigh and draws one finger down the front of her suit. The halves part. She shrugs out of the sleeves, and the skinsuit falls to her ankles.

She stands before me, partially naked.

A triangle of brown fabric covers her socket, and a small harness of black fabric armors her breasts. I have seen her like this before, during our capture when she was stripped of her skinsuit and sprayed by the Vanadisans. Then, it meant nothing.

Now, she is everything.

Her limbs are long, but a perfect ratio to her slender body. Subtle variations of brown darken her knobby knees and elbows, then lighten to tan along her flat belly and as it curves over her soft breast, disappearing under the chest harness.

Arrisans find humans to be difficult to tell apart because they have so much variety in their coloration.

She is as beautiful to me as the surface of an unfamiliar moon, and I devote myself to memorizing every fraction of her.

But I do have a question. A skinsuit offers perfect protection. I can't divine the purpose behind the fabric layer. "Why?"

She covers the triangles inadequately. "I can't run around naked, can I?"

"You can."

"No, I mean." She waves a hand and laughs nervously. "I can't just run around naked. Your skinsuit feels weird, and these are sensitive areas."

"They are?"

"Yes. Of course, almost anywhere can be sensitive when you're with a…" Her gaze unfocuses.

"A what?"

She swallows. "A lover."

The word isn't Arrisan Standard. It's something else. A Humana word for a concept we don't have. My implant translates it with only the slightest lag.

I turn the word over in my mind, double-checking that I have the correct meaning.

She slips her hand under the hem of the fabric and cups her socket.

Her shaky inhale mirrors mine.

And then I don't think of anything else.

There is no logical or physical explanation for why the mysterious hints of shadow and light of her hand, touching herself, should grip me with such ferocity. No way to explain the hitches in her unsteady breath, the way she closes her eyes and licks her dark lips with her pink tongue that hardens my jack to bursting. The soft sounds in her throat pluck strings in my chest, and matching ligaments in my jack clench, making it bob like a hypnotized beast.

Before, I could have kissed her until the end of time.

Now, an urgency overtakes me. A need to unify, to bury myself in her, to cage her so she's contained in every direction and can never escape me again.

She pants and opens her eyes. "Falkion. Come here."

I cross the distance in an instant and scoop her into my arms. She's vibrant and hot, writhing against me. My lips steal her gasp, and I smother myself with her skin.

Her bare belly seals to mine. Her back curves. Her buttocks swell, round and full, beneath the damp fabric. I squeeze her pillowy flesh beneath my hungry fingers.

She pulls back. "Wait, let me…" Her fingers pluck at the harness.

Using my finger as a protective guide, I slide my blade along the fabric edge, separating the midline strap, and it springs free. The same movement along the leg of her other fabric, and it falls, baring her to me.

She clasps her hands on my jaw and kisses me back with ferocity that rakes the fire in my chest even hotter. Her scent is wild, hurtling like an asteroid, and I catch her in my orbit, draw her deeper into my gravity well.

She hitches a leg around my waist whimpering, "Please."

This is how female Arrisans climb a male.

I hold her thigh, a wonder of supple flesh, to my body. She uses my support to hook her other leg around my waist. I catch and hold her steady. Her soft breasts brush my chest, the nipples dark and pert, tracing new symbols on my damp gray torso.

I want to taste them.

Can I do that?

Is it allowed?

I want to take all of her into my mouth, into my body, into my soul.

She grinds against me. Her wet socket touches my jack. She moans. My jack pulses in answer.

"Are you going to…?"

I lower her slowly.

Her socket sucks me in, enveloping my tip.

She shudders.

I seat her deeper, sinking her onto me completely.

The sensation is totally different from the arena.

She's hot and wet and gripping me tight. A mind-bending embrace of heat and light.

Her mouth opens, breath coming in short gasps. "So much…"

The sound of her voice, rough with need, erupts into my veins like little firecrackers. I center her on me until our pubic bones nest.

This is where I was meant to be.

She says in an almost normal tone, "Oh, there it is."

And then she tilts her head back and groans hard. Her socket clamps me, rhythmic, with her release.

Fizz bubbles up behind my eyes. The room goes white.

There's only her and me in the entire universe.

I pump my essence into her while she shatters apart, remade by me as I've been remade by her.

My orgasm goes on and on, peaking with each involuntary micro-thrust of Falkion's release, filling me up like an ocean of gold bubbles and tossing me through the sunset onto the soft, gentle shore.

And then I gasp back to life and slump against his shoulder.

He holds me to him, his iron arms tireless, but his legs, very slightly, trembling.

Oh.

This is exactly what I was not going to do. But at this moment, I can't feel regret. I can't feel much of anything beyond relief, satisfaction, and a sleepy affection.

The universe is at peace. I am one person in it, next to another person who shares my body, and we exist, safe, in each other's arms.

I don't feel this way often, so I'm just going to enjoy it.

He shifts his weight, and I suck in a deep breath, forcing myself to rise and face the consequences. "If you're tired, you can let me down."

"I'm not."

"You're shaking."

"Not tired."

His voice is gruff and adorable and reassuringly normal. I wasn't sure what would happen, if he would go cold and throw me aside, flash his blades, or shout.

His short black hair is soft, almost rabbit-fur-like, beneath my fingers. I stroke the shape of his head to his ears, tease the long spires on the tops, the four pointed black spikes.

He shudders. "Zeerah."

"You are tired."

"No."

The silence is somehow too precious. If I stay here much longer, I won't be able to stay casual. Words bubble up out of my mouth as I try to regain myself. "You can let me down. Seriously. If this didn't cure you, there's no point in—"

"More."

"Huh?"

His gruff voice has a rasp, an edge. And his eyes are fierce, fiery like before. "You've awakened something within me."

My mouth goes dry. "I have?"

He withdraws his dick, gliding almost to my outer edge, holding me on the brink, and then plunges deep.

It's like the ocean drawing away with the tide and then surging back in, dragging all the helpless sea life with it. His massive member stretches my silken walls, pours fierceness into the pool of my womb, and pulses against a new, undiscovered pleasure spot. My body contracts like a reflex. Another orgasm shoots through me, tingling pleasure all the way out to my fingertips and toes.

I catch my breath. "Oh, I—"

He roars and thrusts again.

I feel dragged backward by my hair, primal and shaking, into the liquid ocean of exquisite delight. Heat radiates from my clit and my G-spot, two waves that crash into each other and only grow stronger. I can't breathe. I can't think.

He drops me on my back onto the metal platform, drags my hips to the edge and growls. "Need you…"

"W-wait…"

He plunges his tongue into my mouth. His taste is brutal fire, searing and unpredictable.

I've done this to him, somehow. I've broken him.

He pulls back. "Everywhere…"

"Falkion—"

He grips my hips, thrusts.

Sweetness seeps outward from my contracting womb. It captures my mouth and coats my veins, shimmery and golden. I arch against the platform, pleasure clenching my fingers on the unforgiving metal. My squeak is lost in his furious roar.

He takes me, storming me over and over, and then we slide bonelessly from the platform onto the floor. I try to crawl away, and he flips me over, holding me to his chest. "Need to fill you up to overflowing so that when I scent you, all I smell is me." He bites my earlobe, cups my heavy breast, thrusts up into my dripping liquid center.

And I shatter.

Over and over, gorgeous and unstoppable every time, until my oh-so-logical reasons for running away are mush, and there's only me and him, convulsing on the floor of his warship, so deeply entangled that even the gods couldn't sort us out.

When he's finally, finally satisfied, he drags me into his sleeping pod and drops me on his chest. His breathing goes even, and he sleeps with me, again, for the second time since we embarked on this unwelcome entrapment.

I trace my finger around his dark gray nipple. His chest is bare, hairless. I don't mind hair, but I think the differences in our physiology are interesting.

He should take more care with me. Leaving himself open, vulnerable, is dangerous. And if he's not going to be wary, I have to be, so I can protect him for the both of us.

I awaken clegs later when his hands suddenly contract on my bare bottom. His arousal presses against my thigh. I let him part my still-wet thighs and bury his cock in my tender pussy.

He stills and strokes my cheek. "You're in pain."

"Just a little stretched."

His eyes darken. "I'll heal you."

"In a moment."

"Zeerah—"

I rock against him. He goes silent, and I enjoy the reminder that he's not the only one who can make a point.

Then his fingers dig into my hips, and he thrusts true, and I don't think about anything until his shift timer buzzes a warning. We can't be late to the bridge.

His shift is my shift now.

He gets out the med kit, starts the healing process, and sees me yawn. "Humans need more rest than Arrisans."

I wave off his concern. "I'm used to sleeping on the bridge."

He's worried, but I limber up as I make the short walk from his chamber to the bridge. I slide into my new see-through officer's console close to him and slump in the seat, deliciously mushy. The judging glares of my new coworkers can't touch me. I cross my arms, drop my head onto the console, and fall straight asleep.