Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Elaine

I watched Karkonar make his mark, trying to convince myself that what I felt was relief. With the contract signed, our roles were clear: he was my boss, my responsibility. Not a romantic partner. It simplified things, took unwanted options off the table. No matter how hot he is, I will not fuck someone who’s paying me.

And I was relieved about that, not regretting it already.

Honest.

Fuck.

Another awkward silence filled the mess until I pointed out that I needed to consult my charts to find a new destination with one of these Cirial Nexuses. I pointed Karkonar at the gym down below the residential level. It offered somewhere to beat things up in hologram sims, a chance to work off some of his aggression.

Watching him leave, I tried not to stare at his muscular ass, and failed. Failed again to keep myself from imagining him working out, taut muscles moving under his crimson skin. I bit my lip and closed the mess door, leaning back against it and squeezing my eyes closed.

“Fucking fuck, he’s got no right to be that hot. This is going to be trouble .” I shook my head. “I have to get him off this ship soon.”

Onyx gave me a pitiful meow, his eyes huge, and I held up my hands. “Don’t start, Onyx. I’ve already kept you, and that’s my limit for strays.”

He hissed in response, tail flicking from side to side. “Bad Elaine. Bad.”

“You don’t know anything about it, Onyx. I’m human, he’s Arisran, and you’re an alien cat-bird-thing. We have completely different relationship styles.”

“No. Elaine No Relationship. Bad.”

I pressed my lips together, swallowing what I wanted to say long enough to count to five. That let me give him a gentler version. “You’re not wrong, but that’s also fucking rude, Onyx.”

He gave one last flick of his tail, dismissing my criticism, and launched himself out of the mess. It would have been a more elegant exit if he hadn’t clipped the doorframe with a wing on his way past. His squawk of alarm, followed by a thump, turned a dignified exit into a slapstick routine.

“Onyx Meant That.”

“Suuure.”

I left him to sulk, making my way to the bridge and the navigation computers. I needed to find a system with a Cirial Nexus, whatever that was, and get us pointed that way, fast.

With an air of inevitability, the computer gave only two results near enough to reach, both of them familiar to me. Aris, at nine days away, was stretching my ability to feed two of us and a cat. Possibly too far — Karkonar didn’t seem like a guy to eat small portions, and I couldn’t risk the paying customer starving to death. That left Sudoya, which made me groan. Fuck fate and fuck this job.

Sudoya wasn’t just home to a Cirial Nexus. The almanac listed a half-dozen settlements in the system, but only Harry’s Moon mattered. There seemed to be no avoiding it.

###

The next two days were uneventful but frustrating. I stayed out of my devilishly handsome alien client’s way as much as I could. He kept his distance from me, too. It made for a miserable, but bearable, trip.

If only Onyx hadn’t become a complete nightmare. Every time I looked away, the furball found something new to mess up. So, on the third night, when the environmental alarm sounded at 2am, I was sure where to place the blame. “My cat is a saboteur,” I grumbled as I fumbled on some clothes and checked what had triggered the alarm.

“Oh great. Onyx, you’re a saboteur and a menace, and I’m going to — ”

I trailed off, unable to come up with a satisfying threat. The glowing red dot on a hologram map of the Dashing Rogue told me that whatever the flying cat had done was in Karkonar’s room. Fuck.

Grumbling, I stamped my feet into boots, grabbed my emergency kit, and pulled my way across the zero-g corridor to what I’d started calling the Royal Suite. The previous occupant, Valnisse, had been the last crewmember to leave, so her room was the easiest to get running again. It also had the Akedian’s tacky taste all over it, but Karkonar would just have to deal with that. I hammered on the door — the intercom wasn’t working right yet — and wondered how long to leave it before barging in.

The door slid open almost immediately, and Onyx flew past as though fired from a cannon, complete with a smoke trail. Behind him came a coughing Karkonar, and the acrid, awful smell of burning hair.

Fire aboard a spaceship is a deadly danger. I didn’t wait for an invitation, pulling myself past him and into the room, looking for the source of the gray-white smoke and covering my mouth. My boots hit the deck, and I adjusted to the gravity with the ease of long practice.

Behind me, my employer landed with a loud thump and grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t go toward the fire, idiot.”

I shrugged him off. “You’re going back into a burning room, and I’m the idiot?”

Too much talking. I choked on my next breath, dissolving into a coughing fit which only strengthened his argument, but I’d spotted the fire. Fumbling at my tool belt, I pulled out the fire extinguisher, pointed it at the open panel, and pulled the trigger.

Thump.

The extinguisher slammed back into my hand, firing a pellet of fire retardant into the flames. Meanwhile, the recoil hit hard enough that I felt the impact in my shoulder. Already off-balance from the coughing fit, that was enough to tip me backward into Karkonar, who wrapped his powerful arms around me to keep me from falling. My back pressed into his torso, the burning heat of him enveloping me, taut muscles moving under his skin. Arms like mighty tree trunks, strong enough to break me, held me with the gentle care one might give a work of art.

For a moment, those sensations were all I could pay attention to. Fire? What fire? Then I took a deep breath, letting the smoke burn its way down my throat, and things snapped back into place.

I pulled away as though Karkonar’s touch scalded me, which was, to be fair, close to the truth. He made no move to stop me, thank goodness — I had no chance of escaping his grip if he hadn’t.

With the fire out, the air cleared fast, recyclers pulling in the smoke and replacing it with healthier air. My coughing subsided just as fast, and I leaned back against the wall, wiping my eyes. Karkonar sat on the bed, about as far from me as possible in the small cabin, waiting for me to recover. He should have looked a mess, streaked with smudges of smoke and fire-fighting goo. Despite being singed and soot-stained, he looked better than ever.

Once I caught my breath, I looked at the fire’s source and cursed. A fine, fire suppressing film coated the panel and the surrounding wall, and I brushed it away to retrieve a water glass. “What the fuck is that doing in there?”

The prince shook his head. “I only looked away for a moment, Captain. Then Onyx knocked the glass from the table and — ”

“You’re blaming this on the ship’s cat?” I wanted to sound outraged, but what came out was more long-suffering than angry. I sighed, raking my fingers through “I mean, fine, I guess it checks out. He can be a little shit sometimes. How did he get in here, anyway?”

“I truly do not know.” The prince sighed and leaned back. I tried not to think about joining him on the bed. For one thing, it barely had enough space for him. “When it happened, I was looking through your shipboard library for something to read. I left my drink on the desk, and then Onyx was yowling, and smoke everywhere.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. I could picture the scene. Onyx, up on the desk, pushing the water glass to the edge — and then batting it across the narrow room to land in the exposed wiring. What did he think he’d achieve, though?

“That cat is a menace. I don’t know why anyone would give cats wings.”

“Whoever taught them to speak is worse.”

I shot him a mock glare. “Shut it, Your Highness. I built him that translator collar myself.”

“Oops.” The gleam in his eyes didn’t look the least bit apologetic. “I suppose that’s better than him having to resort to this kind of thing to communicate.”

His airy wave took in the cabin’s smoke-streaked walls, the gray-blue dust the fire extinguisher had left, the singed carpet beside the hatch. I shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps he has a future in abstract art.”

The prince’s laugh surprised us both, a sharp quick sound, gone as quickly as it appeared. “Maybe so, but it’s an expensive hobby, at least for you. And he’s shown no sign of cleaning up the mess he made.”

“Speaking of which, let me get the cleaning supplies,” I said with a sigh.

I saw no sign of Onyx as I crossed the hall to the storage closet and back. Smart move under the circumstances, but I hoped he was okay. Angry as I was, I didn’t wish him any harm.

How much trouble can he get into? I wished I hadn’t asked myself that — just an hour earlier, I wouldn’t have thought he could get himself into this trouble. “I guess I just have to pray he doesn’t blow up the hyperdrive or something.”

Returning to Karkonar’s room, I tried to put the flying cat out of my mind and set to work putting the place back together. To my surprise, Karkonar pitched in without comment, and while he didn’t have any skill at cleaning, he was quite willing to put in the effort. With his help, the work didn’t take too long, and against all expectations, I enjoyed it. We shared a look as we uncovered the hot pink carpet from the powdery film, shaking our heads at Valnisse’s strange aesthetic. At least I’d changed the bedding from the gold-lined powder pink stuff she’d left behind, though it would have been hilarious to see Karkonar try looking dignified reclining on that.

It took an hour, but at last the room was clean. We exchanged glances and shared a grin. If I looked half as messy as he did, I couldn’t expect him to be not amused by what he saw.

“Come on, we’d better get washed up.”

And that’s how we ended up showering together. It shouldn’t have been a big deal. The communal showers were set up for five people to shower with some amount of privacy. Until today, being separated by translucent panels had been enough.

Today, the frosted plex concealed just enough to tease. Karkonar discarded his tunic as we separated, and my gaze kept slipping sideways to his fuzzy silhouette as he stripped the rest of the way. Watching him slide off his clothes was an exquisite torment, my mind trying to fill in the blanks.

Trying to keep my eyes, and my mind, off him, I undressed quickly and without ceremony. Leaving my clothes in a heap on the tiled floor, I couldn’t resist looking up at the prince again.

Fuck. He looked at me, eyes burning bright enough that I saw them glow through the plex. I shivered, my skin tingling under his gaze, and turned to step under the showerhead.

Did I put some extra sway in my hips? If so, I’ll never tell.

Pipes groaned as the showers activated, the water appearing first as a trickle, then as a torrent. Hot, cleansing water pounded my skin, and I breathed deep. Across the room, Karkonar sighed happily, loud enough to catch my attention. I couldn’t help glancing in his direction.

A mistake. He was soaping himself up, and I had a hard time keeping my eyes off him. The muscular bulk of him was more than a little distracting, and I bit my lip when he turned sideways, and I saw he was erect. And massive. I couldn’t help staring. It was all I could do to not applaud.

That was the moment the hot water cut out. Ice cold liquid hit me, making me jump and scream in shock, practically teleporting out from under the showerhead. The plex wall flew aside as Karkonar burst through it, wreathed in a cloud of steam. His eyes sought the threat to me as he swept me up in his arms, warmth flooding through me from his touch.

It felt like being hugged by a friendly sauna. Wherever his skin came near me, the water evaporated, and part of me wished I knew how he pulled off that trick. A tiny part; the rest was consumed by the sensation of his touch.

His skin was smooth and hot, like heated glass, and I tingled under it. With a growl, he lifted me and pulled me back, his dick pressing against me. It felt even larger than it had looked, and I gasped. Shuddered. He hardened against me, growing even larger.

Fuck it. We were here now. I wriggled against him, wringing a hungry growl from him. Whatever self-control he had left broke, and he pushed me against the tiled wall, icy water washing over us, turning to steam. The contrast between his aura of heat and the cold of the water was delicious, even more so when he slid his hands around me. Fingers traced the curves of my body, left hand rising to my breasts, right hand heading downward.

I tried to reach back, to caress him as he teased me, but he wasn’t having any of that. Pushing me forward again, pinning me to the wall with his weight and strength, he had me helpless. And I loved every second.

His lips planted a kiss like fire on my shoulder, then another, kissing his way up to my neck, alternating each kiss with a bite. Each bite was harder than the last, the waves of burning pleasure they sent through me growing, too. Fingers teased and pinched my nipples with a gentle precision, and I realized I was panting for breath.

“Mine,” my alien lover growled in my ear, claiming me. I whimpered something, and his fingers teased across my pussy, making me aware of just how desperately I needed him. “Mine!”

My breath caught as he slid a finger between my folds, and I arched back against him with a wordless snarl. I couldn’t have wanted him more, needed him more, craved him more, and when his finger found my clit, I was so desperate for his touch it pushed me into an orgasm almost instantly.

“Mine,” he said again, voice so low I felt it in my bones. He bit down, hard, into my shoulder, and I jack-knifed into ecstasy. Together, we sank down onto the hard deck, and I squirmed around to look up at him. His eyes blazed with passionate fire, his mane of black hair was plastered to his shoulders, his muscles gleamed as water ran over them, sharp teeth showed in his hungry grin. He looked every bit the demon lover I craved.

I glanced downward, needing to see. His cock did not disappoint — long and hard, as thick as my fist, skin ribbed. I could hardly imagine it fitting inside me, and I’d never needed to try something as much.

Grabbing his horns, I pulled him down to meet my kiss, hungry for his touch. He roared at that, a cry of triumph and lust, and he thrust into me, pinning me to the cold tiles with the force of it. I gasped and bucked wildly as he thrust again. And again. Slow, steady thrusts speeding into a crescendo of intense sensation. He was too large, or should have been, but my core opened to welcome him, and he was perfect. With each thrust, the whole massive thing vibrated inside me until it became too much to bear. I howled up into the pouring water, orgasm after orgasm racking me.

“Please,” I begged. “Please, come, come with me.”

I think that’s what I said, anyway. In the middle of so many orgasms, I’m not sure I managed comprehensible words.

The meaning must have carried, because my demonic lover took the cue to fuck me harder, almost brutally. Clamping down on him, I writhed, and that’s when his cock’s vibrations went into overdrive.

The world melted under the relentless waves of ecstasy, and Karkonar came with me, his hot seed filling me to overflowing.