Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
I woke up in a state of panic. My body tightened in anticipation of a fight. My fingers clutched the silky soft sheet covering me.
“Relax, Emily Nichols. You are unhurt.”
Cair’s melodic voice rolled over me, calming my galloping heart. I opened my eyes and found his. “Where am I?”
“We are on my ship.”
I craned my head around, but the unadorned gray walls revealed nothing. “This isn’t the brig,” I pointed out, while literally pointing at one of those walls.
Cair laughed and captured my hand with his. He rested them intertwined on the sheet. On the bed. Where I was again naked. My face flushed with the realization. I had no idea how this had happened—or what it meant—but a strange warmth stirred inside me.
“You are in my room,” Cair said in a low voice.
Was that uncertainty I heard? Could I recognize that in an alien speech pattern? I thought so.
“Your clothing was no longer usable. I can replicate whatever you want,” he assured me.
“How did we get here?”
“What is the last thing that you remember?”
My throat seized at the immediate memory of Xelthar’s fingers wrapped around it, cutting off my windpipe. Reflexively, I removed my hand from Cair’s, then cradled my bruised neck. A flash of being knocked over by Xelthar’s tackle. Finally, a fight between him and Cair. Then … nothing.
Cair waited while my brain processed everything that had happened.
“You picked me up and told me that the Syndicate ship would arrive before Xelthar’s friends’ ship did. I’m guessing that happened?”
Cair nodded. “Correct. You missed all the excitement.”
“Was that a joke?”
“Did you find it funny?” His deadpan voice and impassive expression added to what I’d come to realize was his bone-dry sense of humor.
“A little bit,” I acknowledged, and we shared a small smile. Such a human moment.
Cair sobered. “The Syndicate ship arrived as expected. Their technicians repaired my vessel as much as they could, moved Xelthar into their holding cell, and dispatched his friends when they arrived.”
“Dispatched?” I tilted my head.
“Explained that they were no longer needed and that they should leave.”
I chuckled. “No doubt that was successful.”
“It was.”
We sat together in silence that was almost comfortable. “Where are we going?” I blurted out my question.
“We are heading back to Earth, per your wishes. Albeit slower,” he added apologetically. “My hyperdrive is not at full functionality.”
Sadness suffused me. “Do we have to?”
“Is that not what you want?”
“It was.” I picked at my nails. “But—”
“But what?”
“I was about to be fired. My birthday celebration—before we met,” I interrupted myself to give him a rueful smile.
“My celebration reminded me I was at a crossroads.” My apartment felt emptier than ever, the city outside just a blur of obligations and missed connections.
Friends were scarce, and love … well, that had never knocked.
I inhaled deeply, pondering my next words.
“I would like to stay. If you would permit me.” At his blank expression, I continued in a torrent.
“I have a lot of skills, and I’m a fast learner.
Maybe we could be a team, a partnership?
” My words faltered as I tried to interpret his expression.
His yellow eyes lit up, and I had my answer before he opened his mouth. “I would very much like you to stay. We can work out the details.”
“That’s awesome.” I frowned. “Although let’s still go to Earth.”
“I do not understand.”
“Maybe let me tell my family I’ll be traveling for a while.”
“That is doable.”
“Excellent.” I breathed a sigh of relief now that my future had a new, more exciting direction. A smirk formed, and I saw the question in his expression. “Let’s finish what we started.”
The pupils in his now amber eyes dilated.
“I will put the ship on autopilot.” Cair stood from the bed and walked to one of the smooth gray walls.
Except it wasn’t fully smooth. One of those glowing squares of a rough-hewn dark stone broke up the monotony.
A panel slid open in that square, and Cair pressed buttons on the revealed screen.
“Cool,” I said to myself, as Cair finished and the panel slid closed.
An ember burned within me at the smoldering look on Cair’s face when he faced me again. The jumpsuit he wore looked like the ones humans on Earth pictured for interstellar adventures in science fiction. I swallowed a laugh at the random thought.
He made short work of the distance between the wall and the bed, but remained standing.
“Are you joining me?” I asked in confusion.
He rocked back on his feet, the action suggesting nervousness. “I have never been with a human before.”
“I’ve never been with an Elkathan before,” I replied with a faux-nonchalant shrug. “We’ll learn as we go.”
“Let me see you.” His voice carried both a question and an order.
I nodded, then gripped the top of the sheet tucked over me under my armpits.
He shook his head. “I will do it.”
I released the sheet, and he leaned over me to take hold of the top. The scent of his maleness—that heady mixture of the smell of rain after it has newly fallen mixed with a light scent of a cut pine tree—enveloped me.
Cair pulled the dark green sheet down my naked body in a slow, oh, so slow motion. His amber eyes flicked everywhere as the sheet passed my breasts, slid over my stomach, then revealed my naked form to his hungry gaze.
My legs, bent at the knees where they pressed together, shifted to the side of the bed closest to Cair.
He reached out, his hands gripping my knees. “Let me see you,” he repeated as he parted my legs, his fingers trailing on my thighs.
I lay there, legs splayed, hands resting on my stomach, uncertain.
“You are so beautiful.” His voice carried a thickness it had not before.
“Let me see you, too.”
At my request, he pulled his jumpsuit off his shoulders and shimmied it down his body. I would have laughed at the idea of such a big man shimmying. But. Oh my god. “You’re beautiful, too,” I breathed, reaching out one hand.
His hand engulfed mine. I marveled anew at the swirls of blue, green, and purple in his pearlescent skin.
Of their own volition, my eyes found his crotch. “Where are your balls?” The question flew out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Hopefully, I didn’t just kill the mood.”
He sat next to me on the bed, his emanating heat brushing against my bare skin. “You did not,” he assured me, lifting my fingers to his mouth and gently kissing them, one at a time. “Our species has their … balls … on the inside, to protect them for mating.”
“Fascinating.” It had always seemed a bit like a defect for a man’s testes to be outside their bodies, so easily susceptible to damage. “Your body heat doesn’t damage your version of sperm?”
“It does not.” His eyes, now that molten amber color, pinned me to the bed. “Do you have more biology questions?”
Like a reflex, my gaze returned to his cock.
Covered in that gorgeous lustrous skin, the round corkscrew shape intrigued me.
And intimidated me, despite how exquisite it had felt in my hands and mouth.
“What will that feel like inside me?” I babbled, struck with the thought of an alien penis inside me.
“I can describe it,” he began, lowering himself to me, “but would you rather feel it instead?”
The heat from his body on mine ignited a low fire from that earlier ember. My hands fondled his chest, enjoying the feather-like feel of the soft hair. Cair propped himself over me with one hand, while the other explored my body.
“I assume humans also prefer preparation prior to copulation?” His question came as his free fingers played with my nipples, cupping each breast before gliding to my bush.
The words confused me for a moment before I nipped his chin playfully. “Yes, we do.”
Cair cupped my pussy, his palm providing external stimulation while his fingers rubbed along my sensitive folds.
I moaned into his chest. Sliding my own hands lower, I grabbed his ass cheek with one and wrapped my fingers around the hard spine at the base of the coiled penis.
Cair’s moans joined my own as we enjoyed each other’s bodies. My hips rose to push against his hand, and he inserted first one digit and then a second one into my cunt.
I arched my back in response. Cair’s fingers moved in and out, bringing my pleasure higher and higher. Not wanting him to be left behind, my hand on his cock followed the corkscrew edges, my fingers running along the soft, brush-like skin.
As the crescendo grew, I whispered, “I want you inside me.”
I had a moment of emptiness when Cair withdrew his fingers from my pussy.
And then the most unusual sexual feeling I’d ever experienced with a dick or a dildo filled me.
The spiraled edge of his cock created incredible, undulating friction as the edge moved along the walls of my vagina.
The velvety skin, almost downy, generated an internal feeling of being stroked by smooth flower petals. It was intensely erotic.
Cair’s mouth crushed mine. His tongue darted between my parted lips and danced inside my mouth.
I moaned against him, our bodies enmeshed as his hips rose.
With each movement of his curving cock, my craving ascended.
The waves of desire rose in time with his hips.
He pushed his cock in and out, in and out.
The ridges along his penis drove my hunger higher.
The tight fullness of his cock combined with the downy, spiral edges brought me to the brink of ecstasy.
And then I screamed his name as he grunted into my shoulder.
Our climaxes intertwined much like our intertwined bodies.
Pulsating bursts of energy ripped through me.
I rode the blissful release, Cair’s heated body shuddering above me.
Tingling aftershocks flowed through me. My body jerked with each one, feeding off the electricity.
I clung to Cair’s shoulders, holding him to me until we lay together in a contented tangle.
Cair whispered into my ear, “I could get used to this.”
I closed my eyes, enjoying the melody of his voice combined with the aftereffects of our lovemaking.
“You and me both.” His fingers caressed my shoulder, a silent promise that this was no fleeting thing.
The quiet hum of the ship under us, the soft lights above, and the steady warmth of his body made me realize that wherever we went next, I’d have a place to call home.
And for the first time in my life, the future felt less like something to survive and more like something to step into.