Ghost Ship Numenon (Romance Among the Stars)

Epilogue

The ship hung in its anti-gravity cradle, battered by years spent plying the less safe spaceways. Bare metal showed through where micro meteors had stripped the paint away, one comm antenna had sheared off, and laser-burns scarred the drive housing.

I grinned. She was perfect.

The Halloween wasn’t much to look at, but she had it where it counted. Powerful engines, holds twice the size of Magpie’s , and three times the living space. That was going to get important.

Kahdrex gave it one last walk around before pressing his hand to the datapad, sealing his share of the deal. A loud beep signaled acceptance, and just like that, the ship was ours.

“Expensive,” he grumbled. I smacked his perfectly formed ass hard enough to sting my palm.

“None of that, mister. We agreed we needed the extra space.” I shook my stinging hand and tried to ignore his smirk. “Now that we’ve sold my ship and bought this one, it’s a bit late to worry about the cost.”

His rumbling laugh made me shiver and blush. “That’s fair. We’ll just have to find a big score on our first time out, so we can afford more than Maker-mush to eat.”

I snuggled in under his arm and leaned against his perfect chest, listening to the thump-thump of his heartbeats. “Some actual food would be nice, yeah. So we’d better get looting!”

“I already have something in mind for our first trip.” He didn’t give me a chance to ask what he meant before picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder.

“Hey, wait a minute!” My demand went unheeded, as did my squirming. “I’m not some prize for you to walk off with.”

With a laugh loud enough to shake the Halloween, he carried me up the gangplank and aboard our new home. “Now that we’re partners and I’ve claimed you as my mate, it’s a bit late to worry about that.”

My face flushed bright as he turned my own argument back on me. After three tries to come up with an objection, I defaulted to, “Nobody likes a smartass.”

“Maddie, that’s just silly. After all, I like you.”

I groaned and stopped fighting a battle I didn’t want to win, relaxing into his infuriatingly sexy embrace. I needed to conserve my energy, after all. We had a new home, and if I knew us, we’d want to test drive every room before we did anything else.

The End

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