Chapter 4 Orion
orion
This Smells Like a Complication
“Ada, chart a course for Minaris. Keep to the lower traffic routes, and scan anything that comes within shooting range. I don’t want any Feds to surprise us on our way,” Lyra says, piloting us up through Xylothia’s atmosphere and away from the two suns I’ve watched rise and set almost every day of my life.
I stare out the window as the lovely swirls of blue and green grow smaller and smaller, until my home world is nothing more than a distant sparkling speck on a black velvet horizon. Tightness builds in my chest—not just homesickness, but the anxious pull of leaving something unfinished behind.
My father used to say the stars looked different depending on what you’d lost beneath them. I used to think that was poetry. Now, watching Xylothia vanish, I understand it was grief. Hold formation. Breathe. Don’t feel. That’s what he would’ve told me. I try.
The voice of Lyra’s navigational assistant, Ada, chimes over the ship’s speakers.
Autopilot engaged. I’ve set a course for Minaris. Estimated travel time: 16 days, not factoring in a mid-journey stop for refueling and supplies. I recommend the port of Turquin on the moon Amphitreas. They do not honor warrants for Interplanetary Federation fugitives.
“Yeah, no shit, Ada. That place is a haven for bloodthirsty pirates and reprobates,” Lyra says, stepping out of the captain’s chair and stretching. I try to ignore the way her lithe limbs flex and her torn shirt bares her soft midriff.
You’ll fit right in, Ada replies.
I scratch at the stubble on my cheek to cover my grin.
“Behave yourself, Ada. We have a guest on board,” Lyra chastises.
She comes to stand at my side and we stare out the window for a few pulses of silence. Melancholy claws at my insides. Xylothia looks so small and fragile from space. Who will be left to miss it when it’s gone?
“When was the last time you were off-world?” Lyra asks.
I purse my lips as I recall my family’s last trip off-world—the last one we all took together before everything went wrong. Snippets of the vacation filter through my memories—the details blurry and faded behind the intervening years.
“Thirty-seven years ago.”
Her brows lift. “You must’ve been just a kid, then.”
I nod. “I was four.”
“Family vacation?”
“Something like that.”
My throat tightens around the words and my palms feel clammy against my knees.
“You never wanted to travel after that? Must’ve been some vacation to scare you outta the stars,” she jokes.
Not wanting to go down that particularly painful road, I remain silent.
I focus on the hum of the engines instead of her voice.
She says something else, but it’s just sound until I realize she’s waiting for an answer.
Too late. The silence between us stretches taut, and I let it hold, suddenly too exhausted to engage.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll want to get cleaned up. I can show you where you’ll be bunking. Ada’s right—I’ll have to make a supply run in a few days, but we should motor out of here as fast as we can to get ahead of the Void Stalkers. Until then, we’ll have enough to get by.”
Her ship is a bit beaten up, but functional.
The wall panels are mismatched, some scorched, others patched with dull metal plates.
The place smells faintly of oil, singed electronics, and dust—a strange mix of survival and care.
It would benefit from a thorough cleaning, but I’m not one to talk.
My living quarters on Xylothia aren’t exactly square, especially with Sylph moving out.
These days I spend more nights in a tent in the jungle than in my drab, lonely apartment.
Lyra points out a bathroom, several other berths—including hers, which she instructs me to avoid at all costs unless I want a stupendously painful death—a kitchen, a small but well-equipped gym, and a combined office/laboratory.
“And here’s your room. I’ll clean it up a bit while you shower, and I think I have some spare clothes in a locker downstairs that might fit you,” Lyra says, showing me into a small berth off the ship’s main corridor.
The room is covered in a layer of grime an inch thick and half-empty crates are strewn about, each one containing some random assortment of expired food supplies, old computer parts, greasy rags, and yellowed paperback romance novels from Earth.
Still, the accommodations are far nicer than I’d imagined they would be.
“Given the reluctance with which you agreed to our bargain, I’m surprised that I’m not stuck in some filthy, dark hold below decks,” I say, absentmindedly picking up one of the ancient paperbacks and smirking.
She snatches the book from my hands and glares at me.
“The filthy, dark hold is available if you continue to piss me off,” she barks, cradling the book to her chest.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” I say, turning my attention toward the rumpled, dust-covered bunk.
Tugging the dirty blanket off the bed, I uncover a set of garments that resembles underwear, but has four leg holes.
I hold it up between my thumb and forefinger, raising a questioning brow at her.
She dives for it and shoves the item in the pocket of her mud-caked shorts.
“Space is lonely,” she snaps, cheeks flushing. “And I like human romance novels. Happy?” Her voice is sharp enough to cut through the air, but there’s something brittle under it—a crack she doesn’t want me to see.
Sensing I’d made more than a flirtatious misstep, I raise my hands in surrender and take a seat on the edge of the bed.
“I was only curious why you’re suddenly being so accommodating, given you promised to kick my ass less than a day ago.
You don’t seem particularly put out by the fact that I have every right and reason to turn you into the Feds at any time, and now you’re being forced to take me to your dealers. ”
“We made a bargain,” she says simply. “Despite whatever misconceptions you’re laboring under regarding who I am, I don’t go back on my word. And call me crazy, but I get the sense you don’t, either.”
“I do not.”
“Well, there you have it. We can play nicely until our business is at an end. I’m more than a little flexible,” she says, tossing her long braid of pink-streaked hair over her shoulder.
Whether she intends the words to be taken at face value or laced with libidinous intent, blood rushes to every inconvenient extremity. My heart thuds in my ribcage and my gaze reflexively caresses her body. How flexible…my traitorous thoughts start to venture.
“Yeah, you’ll have to deal with that, by the way,” she says in a singsong tone. “We’re going to be handling some serious shit on this fun little adventure, and I can’t have you getting all hot and bothered every time we’re in some cramped space together. This is a small spaceship, you know.”
“Wha…what?” I stammer, trying to shake the wave of intense lust from my mind.
Heat floods my neck and ears, my synesfores pulsing with awareness.
I drag a hand through my hair, suddenly aware of how close she’s standing—and how easily she reads me.
Stars, she’s enjoying this. I force myself to look anywhere but at her mouth.
She smiles at me, but there’s an unnerving edge to it.
“My mother is—was—Velusian. One of the last full-blooded heads of the pleasure houses. Surely you’re familiar with the stories…I mean, just because you haven’t been off-world in decades doesn’t mean you’re that ignorant, right?”
I struggle to focus amid the haze of desire—Stars, her breasts are perfection—and the rising ire at her insults. She casts a pitying look in my direction and sighs.
“Velusians have been bred for pleasure since the universe was mostly clouds of dust and little baby protoplanets. Desire is their stock and trade. The closer you get to one, especially in an enclosed space, the more you can scent their vellia. It’s a kind of one-size-fits-all pheromone meant to drive anyone wild with—how can I put it politely?
—overwhelming horniness. The more anxious, stressed or fearful we get, the more we exude—like a built-in chemical weapon against violence.
Sometimes it kicks in when we’re aroused, but it’s more of a defense thing.
It’s hard to kill something you want to fuck so badly.
” A flicker of pain crosses her face. “Though it does happen.”
I suspect pressing her for more information on that particular topic would earn me a knee in my groin, so I leave the interrogation alone for now.
She slides the room’s metal door closed and takes a step toward me. Closing her eyes, she places her hands on my chest, as if she’s waiting for something.
I lean away from her, caught between the worry about her bizarre abilities and the magnetic pull I feel for her. Panic starts to build in me. I don’t want to want her this way.
“There’s no need for you to...” I begin. But then, it hits me like an asteroid slamming into the ground, devastating everything for miles around.
The wanting. No, it isn’t want. It’s need.
Stars, I need her. I need to wrap her pink chocolate hair around my knuckles and slide my aching cock into her pretty petal lips.
To rest seated on her tongue before sliding down her throat…
no, that won’t be enough. I need her bent in front of me on all fours, spread open like a feast for my eyes, hands, lips, and tongue.
I’ll give her such pleasure, she’ll buckle beneath me, thread her fingers through my chest and around my heart, until the boundaries separating our bodies evaporate into the pure energy of love.
Yes. Yes. I love her, that’s all there is to it.
I love her and I would kill for her. I would die for her.
I can’t help myself. I reach for her, sliding my hands up the back of her neck, intent on pulling her lips to mine. I have to claim her—my very soul depends on it.