Chapter 3
What. Was. That?
It was an orgasm, she was sure. A little one, like a tease. But it had shaken her to the core.
That was what they called it, right? Her core. The epicenter of her pleasure. The wet, throbbing heart of her release.
Her clit.
Oh. Just oh.
Mariah’s cheeks—and her palm and various other less exposed parts—burned as she scuttled out of the engine module, up the long, slanting passageway back to the passenger-approved public corridors of the ship.
Okay, now her thighs and lungs were burning too, from the burst of exercise and adrenaline.
In one of the shallow alcoves along the main hall, she paused to catch her breath.
Closing her eyes, she box-breathed until the aftershocks faded from her body. Mostly, although a few tingles still emanated from her hand.
Where his spikes had pricked her.
Where he’d rubbed the healing balm into her.
As her brain caught up, she tried to tease apart the scrambled moments, putting them in order. Finally she huffed out a laugh. What a remarkable close encounter. And she hadn’t even had a chance to tell him about her dream of him.
Well, she couldn’t do that now.
She’d never again be able to look into those mesmerizingly luminous eyes, pale as clear quartz, without bursting into mortified flames—and uncontrolled open fires were rightly prohibited on a spaceship.
Except it had felt sooo good.
Unbelievable that she’d had to come all the way to the dangerous Zarnax Zone to come.
Pleased with her own brazen delight—even if she would never tell anyone else what just happened—she straightened. She was a wanton woman. This Earth girl was easy.
Take that, every boy back home who’d said she was too weird to fuck twice.
Phew. With a full body shake, she stepped back into the corridor.
She’d wanted to talk to the chief engineer about why he might’ve manifested in her dreams. Now… Well, she didn’t need to talk it out. She’d felt it.
The universe wanted her to find the love she’d always imagined.
Of course, that definitely wouldn’t be the peeved, toxic, green grump hiding down in his engine cave, so shadowy she’d gotten barely more of a look at him than in her dream.
But, she nodded magnanimously to herself, she’d always have a soft spot in her heart for the elusive gargoyle man who’d literally handed over her first orgasm.
+ + +
Later she had dinner in the stateroom of one of the friends she’d made among the passengers. There were six of them gathered, and as they ate, they talked about how they’d vote for continuing their journey—or not.
“This morning I was leaning go home,” said Anoushka, their hostess, over a dessert of gulab jamun.
“Collision course with a null cloud is not what I signed up for. But…I think I was just scared.” She’d already told them she’d been with the Big Sky IDA for almost a year before winning the cruise ticket but still hadn’t found the right match.
“And I’ve been scared too long.” She cast a shy glance at the Graveri male seated next to her.
“I’m voting to continue. To see where this is going, even if there are risks. ”
Fahrol gazed back, his feathery yellow frond-like hair turning the faintest baby blue at the tips; a Graveri blush. “I too wish to continue.”
Mariah loved the way they looked at each other: the svelte, doe-eyed Anoushka and the rather wood-elvish ET physician. It was one thing to be stuck together, but to choose each other?
That was love.
The rich, rosewater sweetness of the dessert—Anoushka had gathered petals from the atmo-hall to make the syrup—wreathed their gathering like an ethereal glimpse of their shared future.
Later that night, back in her room alone, Mariah grabbed her datpad and cast her vote. To journey onward, of course. The instant reply informed her the captain would share the results the next day.
She got ready for bed, but when she lay down on the large, luxe mattress, she knew sleep would not be coming.
Because she kept remembering coming…
With a groan, she rolled to her side, staring out the viewport at the blackness of the Zarnax Zone.
The ship had been adrift in that uncharted space, like her own erogenous zones had gone all but unknown, she the lone explorer lingering on the fringes, wary of the darkest jungle.
But even as her hand drifted down between her legs—not entirely a jungle since the stateroom amenities included personal grooming devices, also luxe—she paused.
She wanted more than her own touch or any of the sensual toys available through the in-room fabricator.
Flopping to her back, she lifted her hand, angling it toward the night light. The med-seal had dissolved in the tub, and no sign remained of the minor wound.
But if she rubbed the center of her palm, as Suvan had done, a distant echo of release teased her.
He should bottle that venom of his.
Giggling to herself, she got out of bed. If she was not going to sleep—or sleep with someone—she might as well amuse herself some other way.
Padding down to the salon in her socks (things had gotten a bit casual around the ship ever since they’d been stranded; at least she’d put on some heavy knit pajamas that could be clothes, and how would aliens know anyway?) with her tote full of supplies, she paused under the resonark.
“Are you having a good night?” she murmured, studying the softly glowing sphere. “I hope you don’t mind if I sit with you awhile.”
As she understood it, the resonark was not an entity, as such. But she talked to plants, her coffee cup, sparkly rocks, and anything with glued-on googly eyes, so being polite to a love wave-particle wasn’t a big stretch.
She made herself a little nest in the corner booth near the viewport—the moon-face applique on her tote seemed to smile out at the void—and scattered her yarn around her.
Ikaryo had adjusted the screen settings so that even the most distant stars in this empty part of space were revealed.
Remy had said it seemed like cheating at first, but Mariah was intrigued by the incontrovertible truth that some realities existed beyond her perception: the infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths of a simple rainbow, elemental emotions, shared pleasure…
As if she’d conjured him with the thought of simultaneous orgasms, the chief engineer appeared in the salon doorway.
Startled by her own witchy power of conjuring, Mariah didn’t speak at once.
And when he paused under the resonark as she’d done, staring up, shy silence froze her tongue in place.
When she’d visited the engine module, it had been too dark to really look at anything. And even after he’d turned up the lighting, she’d been…distracted.
To see all of him now in the plasma glow was a bit overwhelming.
From that glimpse of his profile in the captain’s datpad, she’d imagined “gargoyle”, all stony edges with an overtone of cold moss and malachite greens. But were gargoyles usually so muscular?
He was wearing the silver-gray crew uniform, except in a sleeveless version. His exposed arms were scaled like armor and rippling with strength. Bristling spines down the backs of his biceps extended to his taut forearms, which explained his sleevelessness.
She tightened her hand where the smallest of those spikes on the outer edge of his wrist had pierced her. A double crest of spines arched over his skull above his pointed ears, and the ones across his broad, bulked shoulders were much thicker and twice as long.
Sooo…probably a bit kinky that she wanted to touch those too, right?
Being on the crew of a ship intended for Earther compatibility, it made sense that the chief engineer would be relatively humanoid and adapted to the same environmental conditions and bioelechemical necessities. But did that mean he had to be so sexy?
She had let the silence go too long. When he saw her, it was going to look like she was hiding—and she was—but what should she say?
Wanna poison me again, just a little?
Even the mere chance her mouth might make those sounds in that order—and anything was possible in the infinity of spacetime—made her want to melt into the couch cushions, through the bulkhead, and out into space.
At least in that lethally cold vacuum, her face and body wouldn’t be on fire. Or not for long anyway.
He spun around, tilting his head. His large, pale eyes, translucent as quartz crystal, glimmered beneath the resonark’s light. “Mariah.”
He didn’t see well, she realized. Like his half pit bull, half anglerfish pet, he seemed exquisitely suited to the dark, cold depths of the ship. Although his pet seemed friendlier since the goblhob hadn’t poisoned her.
“I’m here,” she said. An odd hitch to her voice, huskier than usual, made her clear her throat. “It’s just me.”
He didn’t move or speak.
“I thought I’d do some knitting,” she explained awkwardly.
After a long pause, he asked, “Why?”
She pursed her lips at his gruff tone. “Because I like knitting? It’s relaxing, and I couldn’t sleep anyway.”
“Why here?”
His demanding questions felt a little rude. “I like the resonark too. It gives me…good vibes, I guess. And it makes me happy to see my knotwork holding it.”
With one last glare at the love light, he stalked past the bar toward her booth. She had one moment to wonder if being caught in the corner was a bad idea, but then he was looming over her.
“Why did the anomaly materialize in your knot?” It sounded like an indictment.
Enough was enough. She glared back at him. “Ask the loveffervescence.”
He stiffened. “The…what?”
“The resonark,” she clarified with a sigh. “I’m trying to come up with a more meaningful name for it.”
“You haven’t.”
“So rude,” she muttered under her breath. “Love plus bubbles makes perfect sense.”
“It very much does not. The anomaly does emit vibrations, but it is not a bubble, and it is not…love.”
With a shrug, she picked up her needles to signal an end to the conversation—or maybe as a weapon. He should know he wasn’t the only one with pokey bits.