Chapter 53 #2
“The whole room is white and sterile. Why would you assume we’re in hell?” I shook my head at the ridiculous person in my arms.
“Because you’re here.” She pressed harder into my shoulder, like she was desperate for contact, trying to ground herself to something real. “If they let you into heaven, they need to raise their standards.”
Even out of her mind, she still made me laugh. Fuck, I love this girl.
My whole body froze as that thought passed through my mind, practically echoing through the furthest reaches of my head. An absent and accidental thought that had me shaking an unsteady breath through my nose, as I tried to pretend it wasn’t lingering and rewriting my DNA.
An idle thought. A figure of speech. Not important.
“Are you okay?” I whispered softly in the silent room, wanting to drown out my mind with spoken words.
“I think so,” She whispered back. “Did we win?”
You’re still here, so yes. “Reinforcements showed up just in time. We’ll be on a transport home in a few hours.
” I found myself idly stroking a soothing motion through her short platinum hair.
It had grown a bit since she’d arrived, now long enough to cover her ears, and it swept back slightly at the bottom, as though it would be full blown waves if it was longer.
“Professor Kitagawa wanted you to know you need to listen to me more though,” I paraphrased, and that made her shake with laughter despite herself.
Though there was no question now that she was awake, she still held onto me.
She still rested her head against my chest. She never tried to move away.
“I’m sorry if I got in the way.” She scrunched even smaller into fetal position. I kept her steady on my lap.
“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you to handle yourself.” I rested my chin on top of her head. I didn’t have the excuse of alcohol this time, so I’d just say it was because I’d run out of energy, and she was a convenient place to rest.
“You did the right thing. I was just scared that you wouldn’t make it and it would be all my fault,” she muttered, so quiet, yet so sweet.
“Mishka, if you’re waiting on the other side, I will always make it back to you.” I said it, and it was getting harder and harder to catch myself from saying what my soul wanted to say, no matter how stubborn my brain was. “That was a hell of a baptism by fire though.”
“Breaker and I would have beat you if the game hadn’t been interrupted, for the record,” she poked with a teasing grin. At least her priorities were still in line.
“You really are cute when you’re wrong.” We both shared more quiet laughter between us. Maybe I shouldn’t say things like that now that I knew what I knew. It didn’t feel so ironic anymore to call her cute.
She always had been cute though, with or without her A2.
With a deep breath, slowly inhaling and exhaling until I found something that resembled calm, I placed a kiss atop her hair. I wasn’t thinking as I placed one more on her forehead. She tilted back her chin and stared up at me with those crystalline eyes that were always issuing a challenge.
I caught myself as I looked down on her slightly parted lips.
Fuck, I…
No… I can’t…
This was too far.
That would be too far.
She craned her neck, just enough to move a little closer, like she was daring me to take just one more inch. I obliged only enough to graze the tip of her nose. Her breathing hitched, while our eyes stayed locked.
I delicately slid my fingers up the side of her neck, until I was cradling her cheek in the palm of my hand. She remained still as I slipped down to her chin and held her in place. It was with gentle curiosity that I stroked her bottom lip with my thumb.
Would it be too far?
She broke our gaze and started to pull back, the heaviness of the moment creating a gravity between us, but I wasn’t ready to give up this feeling. My heart was beating as hard as it did in the heat of battle, as I tightened my grip on her chin, and kept her where she should be.
“Eyes on me,” I whispered, low, firm, and commanding, and now close enough to feel her warmth entirely too vividly.
Obediently, she forced her gaze back to mine. Her throat bobbed. Then she let her eyelids gently fall shut.
I took that quiet invite to close the last of the space between us.
At first, the connection of our lips was soft and barely there. A ghost of a kiss that may not have happened at all. It was a test and a question and a promise in a single gesture.
Then it was more. It was exploration and trust and curiosity in that slight parting of her lips, that accepted the first teasing slip of my tongue. It was the answer to all of the words that neither of us knew how to say.
Then it was everything. It was starvation and desire and a snapping line that finally gave under deadly tension, as I forced myself to stop pretending that anything else existed, and anything else mattered other than her, in this moment, pressed against me, and gripping my shoulder like I was her salvation and her damnation in one.
She slid her hands up my body, feeling along the plains of my chest, then she leveraged my shoulders to reposition, until she was straddling my waist with her thighs spread wide and her hips on top of mine.
I speared her mouth with my pierced tongue, sliding over hers with the metallic beads, and she let out a quiet moan directly into my parted lips, letting me have every bit of her need.
Her kiss wasn’t confident, nor was it experienced, but it was desperate and determined and willing to give it all in that way she always was, be it on the battlefield or in my hands.
I unbuttoned Seba’s jacket and nudged it from her shoulders, wanting to feel the shape of her real body that I’d barely so much as seen until now.
The jacket fell to the floor, and I was gripping her small waist, pulling her closer, increasing the connection between us.
I was hard as fuck, and I was sure she felt it, as she kept grinding against my lap, with only our suits to create a barrier.
Yet that friction was hell and heaven in one, and I wasn’t going to waste another minute without getting to feel her skin beneath the material.
I undid the fusion fasteners at her back, and peeled the skin tight material down her body.
She helped me undress her, until her upper body was exposed.
She didn’t protest as I undid the bandages on her chest, freeing her body from the confines of her lie.
I wanted to feel her. I wanted to know Fianna beyond her alias and her disguises. I needed the real person who I couldn’t get out of my head, and nothing short of everything would ever be enough.
Her small breasts fit perfectly in my hands, and kneading her soft, feminine shapes was enough to have her wrapping her arms around me, whimpering into my kiss.
Fianna ground more eagerly against my hard cock, before she started undoing the fasteners on the back of my suit, and I let our kiss break only long enough for her to peel away my suit, too.
She slid her hands up the ridges of my abdominal muscles, then over the hard shape of my chest, before she threaded my pierced nipples between her fingers.
The deep blush, the curiosity, and the bashfulness written all over her face, as she looked down at the way I was touching her while feeling her way around me, was so fucking cute and sexy and fuck, I can’t take it anymore.
I grabbed her hips, and I stood from the chair, lifting her with me, and forcing her to wrap her arms and her legs around me for stability.
I walked her back to the window, then pressed her against the glass. She gasped and clung all the tighter to me.
Through the window, the battle was still waging, with clashes of light and spheres of fire lighting up the otherwise pitch black void.
I ran my hands up and down her sides, supporting her between myself and the window and massaging her tired muscles, then I started rolling down the rest of her one piece Imperium suit, slowly tugging the material down her hips.
“E-Elio—”
“Shhhh, not yet. Let me give you more of a reason to scream my name.” I took her lips again, and she was suddenly very, very cooperative as I removed the rest of her suit, then lowered her body so her feet were back on the ground.
Every inch of her skin was sensual perfection, and the only crime she’d committed in my eyes was hiding that from me for so long. I flipped her around, and used all of myself to shove and trap her naked body against that cool glass, facing the battle in the stars.
“What if they can see us?” The question sounded like it should have been a protest, but the way she said it was almost more of a dare.
It wasn’t possible to look inside the windows of any space ship from the outside, but the way her pulse was pounding against my lips on her neck was too enticing to risk dispelling the illusion.
“You might give them more motivation to fight if they can,” I whispered against her, as I felt my way back up the slopes of her shallow yet muscular curves.
Her body was firm, shaped by months of hard training, while still innately soft and feminine in a way I couldn’t stop touching.
I made my way back up to her perfect breasts again.
I played with her nipples for our deep space audience, pinching and tugging the nubs until they were firm, then I pressed my hips into her, to better communicate everything she was doing to me.
By the stars, I wanted to fuck her more than I wanted to breathe right now, and every minute that I wasn’t inside her was torture.
But I knew better. Because…
“Mishka,” I said softly, grounding her racing heart with familiar words, while she was so shamelessly pressing herself into my heat. “I hate that I have to ask you this, but…” I had a feeling I already knew the answer, and I wished I didn’t. “Are you a virgin?”
Bright red. Of everything that had happened so far, that was what made her breath hitch.