Chapter 4

CHAPTER

FOUR

TRENCH

In the dark—even with three of the moons at their fullest—the Zone likes to play tricks.

Snow shifts to my left, but the creature that’s hunting me isn’t there.

I can hear it circling to my right.

Vaguely puffed breaths with a tiny wheeze. Something in their lungs makes that sound. I can pick it out over the low wind that shuffles the snow at my feet.

It stalks around me, all six of its feet crunching with each step. It thinks it’s hunting me.

I almost feel sorry for the creature.

Almost.

If it was trying to get away, or if there was some other reason it wanted to get out.

But we can’t let them roam free and kill whoever they please. Even if the ones who’ve gotten out recently have only killed men I might consider worthy of killing.

The cavrinskh finally stalks behind me. The low clicking sound it makes reminds me of a laugh. If I thought they had the capacity for humor, I might feel bad that I’m about to ruin its joke.

There’s a distinct crunch of snow and I turn as it leaps, jamming the base of my spike into the snow as the rest of it glows like an electric blue icicle.

The line of sharp light turns everything but the creature’s blood an eerie blue, and it falls to the snow, twitching.

It’s dead, but I would not call this a clean kill.

The blade didn’t have enough time to cauterize the creature’s wounds fully before it fell off the laser pike.

Flickering blue light still aglow, I inspect the carcass. There’s nothing particularly interesting about this one, but it will be fresh, and maybe Jessica will find something interesting in the gore I’ve come to find mundane.

I wrap the thing up, packing snow around it for the trip home. Most of it will melt before I get there, but it’s necessary.

For reasons I haven’t been able to determine, their bodies decay far faster than any other species on our planet.

Which means I’m always running out of time.

It’s still night when I get back.

Jess should be sleeping. So I load the carcass into one of the deep freezers and go about my normal post-collection routine.

It shouldn’t be any different just because there’s a woman asleep upstairs. But I can’t stop myself from running through all the ways I had thought it would be different.

A bondmate waiting anxiously for me to return. Someone who would make me leave the work for later, until she was satisfied that I was in one piece.

Horror-stricken eyes flash in my mind, and I clench my jaw, looking at the swirling blood in the sink.

If I could scrub all those memories away…

But unlike the blood rinsing from my hands, some things stain permanently.

I try to shove them to the back of my mind as I shut the lights off and head back for the living spaces.

The lights are dim, but there’s enough to see that Jessica didn’t do as I asked. Instead of upstairs, snug in her bed, she’s wrapped in a blanket, sitting beside the plate-glass windows, staring unseeingly out over the Zone.

She’s so still, her heartbeat so shallow, there was nothing for me to hear to know I should have hurried back.

“Why are you still awake?”

Her jaw is hard, and when she looks up at me, tousled blonde hair brushing her face, I might be willing to say her anger is directed at me.

Except that there’s no reason for it to be.

“You were supposed to go back to bed.” I say, quietly, even though there’s no one else to wake.

Her head pulls back and her eyes narrow behind her glasses. “How?”

How?

I don’t— “I was under the impression that humans slept in much the same way we do.”

She rolls her eyes before she drops her head back and groans. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I’m sorry, then I don’t understand the question.”

“How was I supposed to go to sleep, knowing you were out there chasing down a monster?” She looks at me like she expects an answer, but doesn’t give me a chance to give one, speaking as she struggles to her feet, leaving the blanket behind. “I know exactly what you went out there to deal with. How could I possibly have gone back to bed? What if you hadn’t come back?”

I force myself to keep my gaze only on her face. “You could not have done anything from here.”

Her shoulders drop and her face blanks.

“If I had not come back,” we both know the reason I wouldn’t have, I don’t need to say it. “Then you would have had a decent night’s rest. You would not have been abandoned here. Drift would have sorted everything out.”

Her lips tighten like she wants to say something, but she huffs air out through her nose instead, her tense shoulders dropping.

“I have been hunting cavrinskh for a very long time,” I assure her. “The danger was minimal.”

“Well, I didn’t know that.” She looks out at the caldera and lets out a long and low breath. “Couldn’t someone else have dealt with it tonight?”

“This is my job, Jess. It’s what I was designed for. Others could go, but I’m here, why wouldn’t I?”

Her posture doesn’t change.

Her muscles are coiled, like she’s going to bolt… or maybe take a swing at me.

“I am on an alien planet, Trench, and you left me alone. ”

“If something had happened out there, you wouldn’t have been stranded here.”

Her hands flex and something inside them pops, one then the other. “But you get why this was vaguely terrifying for me, right?”

Her heartbeat isn’t racing; she seems eerily calm, despite those words.

“I don’t, I’m sorry.”

The frustration on her face bursts like a bubble and the tension seems to drain from her.

“No, of course not.” She exhales and then looks up at me. “ I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you didn’t ask for me to be here any more than I asked to be foisted upon you.”

On my way out the door, I hadn’t notice how very little she was wearing, or how the shiny fabric flows over her body.

I could kiss her.

I clench my jaw and my fists at that thought, because no. No, I cannot.

“Will you go to bed now?”

After what she’s just said, I can’t leave her down here, but I need… space.

She blinks at me. “Sure.”

The sky has just started to lighten out the window, and the light creeps up over me. Jess’s mouth purses and her gaze locks on my ribs. “Looks like it got you.”

I look down, and there is a tear in my suit, but it didn’t get to the skin, and the way the edges are crinkled…

“I’m fairly certain I did that to myself.” The pike doesn’t care what it slices and burns.

“You should be more careful out there.”

She’s right. “I should.”

“I brought this one back with me. We can look it over later,” I say. “ After we’ve both slept.”

Still, she doesn’t move.

I don’t know what else to say, so, “Go back to sleep, Jessica. There’s no point in being mad at me when you could be getting your required rest.”

“I will go, but only if you do too.”

I dip my head in agreement. “If we had not had this conversation, I might already be there.”

She turns on her heel, the fabric of her sock making a soft sound on the floor, and I follow behind her as she jogs up the stairs.

My jaw tightens again as her ass wiggles in those too short shorts.

She pauses in the open doorway of her room and looks up at me.

“Was tonight really easy for you, or were you just saying that to make me feel better?”

“I try to be honest, always.”

“Good. I don’t need coddling, but I think we may need to talk more tomorrow. This is going to make me sound like a control freak, but I always want all of the information.”

“All of it.”

She nods.

“Then I have a question.”

She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders. “You’ve answered plenty of mine, it’s only fair.”

“Is it disrespectful if I make myself come to the thought of you?”

Her mouth opens, and her pulse quickens. “Um,” she swallows and shakes her head. “No. I—” her cheeks darken and she looks away, “It’s not generally something you would ask of another person. Especially one you just met.”

“I will remember that.”

“You remember everything.” She licks her lips, opening them as if to ask me something else, but she shakes her head and takes a deep breath, exhaling.

“Good night, Trench.”

“Good night, Jess.”

But she doesn’t move right away. “You can think of me.”

She disappears into the darkness of her room, but not quickly enough for me to miss the way she bites her lip.

That small movement lives at the forefront of my mind as I strip out of my suit and under the water of my shower.

You can think of me .

The curve of her smile from earlier flutters through my mind, the memory of her wide eyes and her quickened pulse…

I wrap my hand around my thickening cock and stroke.

I want her.

My body doesn’t lie.

I want her. I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want her.

Maybe if I hadn’t abstained from Margot’s for the last year and a half, this urge wouldn’t be so strong, because this want feels far too much like need .

My imagination can supplant memory. It places her on one of those beds, the silky top of her pajamas rising up her stomach, her knees falling open, welcoming me.

I grip myself tighter, squeezing myself the way I want her to squeeze me.

She’s not mine, but I want her to be.

“ Fuck, ” I curse as my cum sprays onto the shower floor in dark ropes.

A dark little voice in the back of my mind tells me it should be inside her. That I should have made her mine and spend the rest of my life learning to be worthy of her.

Still hard, still aching, I breathe through that hunger.

Jess shouldn’t be here.

I can’t have her.

But she wants to know everything, and a small spark ignites in the depths of my chest.

Maybe she’ll want to know everything about me, as well.

You have three months to make her stay .

I fuck my fist harder, shoving that thought away.

She’s beautiful, she’s intelligent… she’s everything I’ve been told I want and need. And I’m just a horny asshole.

I squeeze harder than I need to, pulling harder than I need to.

She doesn’t deserve any of this.

One more release and I will lock those thoughts away until she’s safely back on her own planet.

I coax my second load from my painfully abused cock and watch it wash down the drain, wondering which of the Saints I’ve angered to bring her here and yet keep her so far away.

The water stops and the pounding in my head disappears when I step out and hear her in the new silence. She’s not asleep.

The sheets shuffle, her breathing is ragged… she whimpers.

That sound…

Saints.

That sound brings me to my knees and I come— again —on the floor after barely touching my cock.

This is going to be a problem.

JESSICA

I try to be quiet.

God . I am trying so hard to be quiet.

But I know I’m not quiet enough.

If he leaves for any reason other than monster hunting, I am going to use that gift from Margot.

Screw impropriety.

Or maybe I’ll blame this on sleep deprivation tomorrow.

Another whimper leaves my lips and I try not to squirm as I toy with my clit.

He’s at the end of the hallway, jacking off to me, and well… turnabout is fair play.

My hips jerk when I hit my clit in just the right way.

“Jess?”

I freeze and look up at him, eyes wide in the dark, he’s blurry at that distance without my glasses. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to be quiet.”

I shouldn’t apologize. He wouldn’t. He doesn’t.

He’s silent in the doorway, and then, he sinks to his knees. “Can I watch?”

Can he…

I want him to do a lot more than watch.

He’s not wearing pants, but there is something that keeps his cock securely behind fabric. So, I calculate the risks.

And immediately ignore them.

I don’t say yes.

I kick the covers away and pull my shorts off the ankle I’d left them hooked on.

He doesn’t move toward me, but the way his posture shifts sends another little thrill through me and the next time I touch my clit, I have to reach up and squeeze one of my breasts to relieve some of the tension.

Hands on his thighs, he grips the fabric in his fists and I see the way it tents.

Since touching myself isn’t enough, and I’ve always been bad about taking risks…

“Do you like eating pussy?”

He exhales as he drags his gaze up from where my fingers work.

“The taste of your pussy would be a memory I cherished.”

A shiver runs down my spine and I point to the floor.

He goes without any other command.

On his knees in front of me, he licks his lips, one with each tip of his tongue…

Fuck. I am playing with fire.

I slick my fingers one more time and then raise them to his lips.

Pupils dilated, he sucks my juices from them, and he fucking growls.

Jesus fuck.

“Trench?” I ask as he finally releases me, teeth raking along my fingers. “If I let you tongue fuck me, are you going to be content with that?”

His lips purse and his eyes travel down my body. “I am not going to trap you here, so I suppose I will have to be.”

“Good boy.” And thank God. “I would have hated to send you back to bed without your supper.”

Hands caging around my thighs, he pulls me to the very edge of the bed, and I drop onto my back, wondering if this was the best or worst idea.

When his tongue parts me, I know the answer: Yes.

It’s both.

He’s not hesitant, he’s hungry.

He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he’s good at it.

Reminder to self, forked tongue: phenomenal for clit stimulation.

Do the pamphlets already include that?

Do I care?

I grip his head trying to hold myself closer even as my body tries to buck me off each time his tongue flicks over my clit.

I’ve felt need before, but never this acutely.

I pull my shirt off over my head, needing to be naked, and when my own hands aren’t enough, I reach for one of his, dragging it up my body and placing it where I want it.

The first time his fingers roll the bud of my nipple, my head drops back on a cry that makes me ache.

“Saints, Jess.”

The way he says my name against my wet skin makes me bite my lip.

His face is buried in my pussy before he finishes the sentence, but it’s in Sianese anyway.

It might not matter if he’d said it in English. A moment later, the only word I seem to know is fuck .

It escapes me in panting breaths, punctuated by pleas that take the shape of his name.

I twist my hands in the sheets and try to rock my hips to get more of him.

But I don’t have to search for more, he gives it to me with every stroke and flicker of his split tongue.

My toes curl and my cry echoes off the windows and the walls, filling the room, and still, he doesn’t stop.

He feasts like I’m his favorite snack and he’s determined to make himself sick of me.

But I’m greedy. I don’t ask him to stop. I just enjoy every second of it.

My head spins a little when he finally draws back from me, half of his face glistening in the light that comes through the windows.

There is a dark spot on the fabric over his groin. He came, just from eating my pussy.

He didn’t even touch himself.

His hands never left me.

I’m breathing too heavily to talk. When he stands fully, he slings one hand under my legs, the other around my back, picking me up to place me back at the center of the bed.

“Good night, Jess.” He pulls the covers up over me. “Sleep well.”

He doesn’t even try to kiss me.

Tongue fucking and nothing else.

“Trench?” I ask, watching him go with heavy lids.

He pauses, and I almost ask him to come back. I almost want to give him a reason to say goodnight to me a fourth time. But I’m only willing to push this risk so far.

I have three months to make plenty more bad decisions.

“You told me to tell you if I need anything for the room?”

“I did.”

“A rug.” For my feet… and his knees.

His gaze goes to the floor and he nods. “We will order it after we wake.”

He presses a few things on the panel beside the door and the windows dim and darken, and then, he disappears

I snuggle down into the bed, my bones liquid.

I don’t bother dragging my pajamas back on.

I’m alone with an alien who could very easily take anything he wants from me, there are monsters outside, a lava pit in the basement… and I’ve never felt safer.

Maybe something’s wrong with me.

By the time sleep takes me, I’ve decided I don’t care.