Chapter 10
Nostrils flaring, Suvan caught the musky scent of her arousal. “Are you teasing me again?”
“Not even a little.” She narrowed her eyes. “But why do I get the feeling you are teasing me?”
“Tempting,” he corrected. “Because when you do feel me, you need to understand and be ready. You need to want this.”
From her sexy sprawl, she glared up at him. “I came all these lightyears chasing this chance. I am really fucking ready, Chief.”
Keeping her hands behind her head—exactly as he’d told her—she hooked an ankle behind him and reeled him closer as she tipped herself over backward on the couch.
He had one instant to be impressed by the strength of her leg and her sneaky rebellion before he crashed down into her kiss.
Her gasping moan as he brought his hips against hers—mechanical alignment, indeed—sent a surge of urgency through him.
The sweetness of her breath and the bite of her demanding profanity held an innocent power that might destroy a galaxy of asteroids—and maybe the walls he’d manifested around himself.
That prospect rang through his sensory overwhelm like a mission-critical alarm, but as they kissed, she writhed under him, seeking little adjustments that were not precisely in line but all the more pleasurable for the deviation: her knee raking the side of his thigh, her heel angling higher under his backside, a sideways lean that enhanced the friction between them.
His uniform provided some safeguard for her, but despite his vigilance, the quill-scales on his bare arms snagged in her tunic. The pinprick holes in the plasilk expanded with their every move, revealing tantalizing glimpses of her skin beneath.
Too soft. Too vulnerable.
And in this moment, so was he. And he couldn’t restrain a ragged oath of his own.
“Suvan…”
Her whisper cut through him like a glass cyclone. “Mariah.”
“Don’t you dare leave me like this.”
Had she noticed his hesitation? Had that split second of withdrawal chilled her skin? He remembered that feeling too well, and he would never do that to her.
With a groan of surrender, he kissed her again on the mouth, hard, to silence the doubt, and then he kissed his way across every hole they’d made—a star chart of erotic possibilities, her every breathless sound of passion an irresistible provocation.
Each flaw in the silky covering was a discovery of her. Her collarbone. The upper curve of her breast. The thud of her heartbeat in counterpoint to his own reverberating under his lips.
The hard nub of her nipple between his teeth… Ah, she found her breath then. With a strangled cry, she reached for him.
He caught both her wrists in one hand, holding her in place as he delved into that widening hole.
When he paused, she arched up, panting, the reddened point jutting out, as if begging for more.
And he obliged, wrapping his tongue wickedly around her engorged flesh and squeezing with suggestive rhythm until she was sobbing a wordless plea.
With a quick nip, he snagged the sagging neckline in his teeth—and split the plasilk down the center.
“Suvan!”
She bucked helplessly against his restraint, her wide eyes glazed, her lips swollen and tender. Right beneath his mouth, her breasts heaved, slicked from his tongue. She looked all askew at his touch.
And he loved it.
He fought to steady his voice. “Yes?”
She let out a slow, shuddering breath. “Don’t forget my pants.”
With a growl that was not an Earther laugh, he obeyed.
He used his free hand instead of his teeth to finish disrobing her; since his own trousers had protected hers, there was no need to overtax the fabricators. In one conscientious sweep, he had her naked beneath him.
And then he had to stop to catch his own breath.
The curves of her were magnificent amplitudes intensifying from breast to belly to hips, the expanse of softness a seductive power against which he had no defenses.
“You are so beautiful,” he rasped. “If I remembered my dreams, this would be the most treasured of them.”
With a tremulous sigh, she opened to him.
The perfume of her skin and her excitement nearly wrecked him. Torturing himself as well as her, he resumed his meticulous mapping of her body, from the tips of her breasts to the dip of her navel.
She was squirming and panting his name, straining against his tongue and his confining hand—and to make the final descent, he needed to let go.
So he did.
The moment he released her, both her hands were guiding him to the center of her pleasure.
And now they were exquisitely aligned—her palms over his head in a carnal benediction, cupping the points of his ears so all he heard was her keening breaths and his own rampant heartbeat; his tongue laving the silky hot knot at the apex of her hidden grotto.
As if all his Szauralithyn senses honed from millennia hiding in caves had shaped him exactly for this moment with her.
He might’ve feasted for another millennium if she’d let him, awash in the sensual splendor of her. But her hips bucked up into his mouth as her hands crashed down on his shoulders, holding him tight and spasming around him as her orgasm seized them both.
With her thighs clamped around his skull, he felt the violence of her release reverberate through his bones. Closing his eyes, he reveled in the flavor of her ecstasy flooding his mouth.
This was better than dreaming.
As the aftershocks rocked her, he gentled his touch, keeping only the lightest contact with his tongue against the easing throb of her flesh.
He stroked the quivering muscles of her inner thighs until she finally relaxed with a deep sigh, all her limbs going lax on the couch, her head lolling to one side.
He ached, not only with a ferocious desire for his own release, but at the soft bliss that radiated from her on wavelengths he felt even through his quill-scales.
His spines… A jolt of alarm raised his head.
She’d grabbed him when she orgasmed. Had she stung herself? What if she’d become sensitized to his venom after the first exposure and was decompensating right under him…
“That”—she sighed, shifting her lazy gaze back to him, though she didn’t lift her head—“was amazing.”
So, not dying.
He propped himself on one elbow beside her, watchful of all her bare skin. “Give me your hands.”
“And all the other parts, happily,” she purred, as he grabbed first one wrist then the other.
He grunted as he inspected her palms and fingertips. No punctures or even scratches. He pressed her knuckles to his lips.
Her lambent stare was fixed on his face. “You feel like satin under the thorns.”
“Don’t tell anyone else.”
With a smile both sweet and sly, she brushed her thumb over his lips. “Our secret.”
She stretched luxuriously against him, and he couldn’t help but stroke their still joined hands down her body. When he paused to tangle their fingers in her thatch of midline hair, she shuddered.
“You are hot as plasma,” he whispered. “You crushed my tongue like a collapsing star. And yet you say you’ve never found release with another? Why not?”
“I guess I never felt they took the time or cared about the trust.” She nudged her pubic bone against him. “Or maybe they didn’t have the tongue…”
She caught her breath on a gasp when he eased one finger into her. The smallest spines on his largest knuckle brushed against her nerve bud. “Suvan.”
“You climaxed without my venom. What would happen if I pierced you here?”
With a moan, she arched toward his hand.
But he rode the motion, teasing her, his fingers seeking the other hidden nerve endings that had met his questing tongue.
When she came apart in his arms again, he kissed her, hard and deep, capturing her ragged cry, never to let it go.
In the end, the couch was too narrow to stay there forever. Curse the Cosmic Connections Cruise remodeling specs; they should’ve anticipated all the possibilities for various horizontal and reasonably accessible vertical surfaces.
He would file a professional suggestion.
Later.
For now, he swung to his feet, lifting a sleepy Mariah with him.
She let out a little laughing gasp, snuggling down into his grasp. “So strong,” she murmured. “So spiny.” She kicked her dangling legs lightly against his forearms.
“Too trusting,” he warned her.
“I see you, remember?” She rested her head against his bare shoulder. Luckily, the absolute chaos of her hair protected her from punctures.
Gritting his teeth, which helped him constrict his quill-scales somewhat, he carried her to the bed. He’d have to master autonomic control of the involuntary muscles beneath the spines if he wanted…
If he wanted to hold her closer.
He gazed down at her curves tucked against him. What was closer than this?
Where the bed was half unmade, he lowered her to the luxury sheets. She rested so languidly against him, he was sure she was already fast asleep. But as he stepped back, her brown eyes were wide and steady on him.
“You won’t stay.” Her tone straddled the line between question and statement.
“I intended only to bring you the gift,” he said.
“Which you did.”
He might’ve been slow to understand Earther smiles, but the quirk of her lips now was gentle.
He put his hands behind him, gripping his own wrists. “You told me you were ready—”
“Fucking ready,” she reminded him as she angled herself slightly, putting those curves on display.
He gave her a look. “But maybe I…am not.”
Though she’d lowered the prismatic lights, tiny rainbows still danced in her eyes. “Then thank you for what you gave me. All of it.”
Studying her, he locked the moment into memory. “This isn’t over, Mariah.”
“Nothing ever is, Chief.”
It sounded a bit like a threat.
And he liked it.
But he forced himself back another step. “Sleep now. When we deploy the fake goblhob guns, I’ll call you.”
She tucked her hands under her chin, eyes narrowing with satisfaction. “You saw the inspiration.”
“Lub was also impressed.”
“I hope it scares off our pursuers.”
The way she peered at him through her lashes, he wondered if she hoped the opposite for him.
He hoped so too.
+ + +
It was late as he headed back to his engines.
All systems were nominal, but he wanted to check on the main fabricator.
He also needed to plan a schedule for routine inspections since the ship would not be returning to port as scheduled.
Maybe he’d ask the captain to promote Griiek from deck tech to shift engineer.
After all, he wasn’t alone on the ship. He could ask for help.
Despite the tasks lining up in his brain, he found his boots carrying him to the Starlit Salon.
Maybe this time he wouldn’t glare at the anomaly.
Maybe he’d stand in its light and dream about the power of—
To his surprise, the ship’s owner was sitting at the bar next to the sensor aimed at the resonark. Evens had one hand clenched around an empty glass, a bottle tipped on its side next to him.
Suvan might technically work for the stowaway Earther, but he had no reason to speak to him.
Except with Mariah’s taste lingering in his mouth, maybe he needed a drink to clear his head.
He went to the public cooler and grabbed a bottle of soda pop. The dark amber hue reminded him of Mariah’s eyes, and the bubbly sweetness was all her.
He took a long draught before turning to Evens. “You know the synthequer won’t make you forget what you did.”
Evens cocked an eyebrow. “Will no one give me even the slightest benefit of the doubt? Or at least concede that this is the adventure of a love-time?”
Suvan drank again while his translator glitched on the imaginary word play. He wished Mariah were here to provide a nuanced Earther scoff.
The bubbles in the soda pop burped out of him in answer: “No.”
But then in fairness, he had to add, “To the first question. As for the second…” He realized he was looking at his employer the same way he’d glowered at the resonark. “Why did you lie about them winning these precious tickets?”
“There was no lie,” Evens objected. “Just…not the totality of truth.”
When Suvan started to turn away again, the Earther sputtered. “Would you have believed in an elemental manifestation of love if you hadn’t seen it? Would you have come aboard?”
“I still don’t believe it,” Suvan countered, but he found himself refusing to glance at the sensor on the bar.
Had the readings flickered at his rejection?
“And I am not a part of the Cosmic Connections Cruise,” he continued stubbornly.
Evens raised both eyebrows. “Aren’t you?
” Without waiting for an answer, he gave the empty bottle a resentful spin.
“I wanted to give the resonark a fighting chance to show what it could do, so I chose profiles with preexisting compatibility and thought if the tour went a little beyond three sunsets…”
The bottle rotated longer than seemed predictable by physics, the hollow sound of it eerie.
Finally, Evens slapped his hand on the bar, bringing the spin to a halt. “I had no idea it would hijack us, or that we’d be hunted by marauders in the Zarnax Zone. I merely wanted…”
Suvan waited, half his attention on the resonark.
He’d listened to this Earther and Felicity, Ikaryo and his Remy, talk circles around the anomaly. Every conflicting datapoint and wishful avowal added to the tangle of confusion. And so far, all that speculation had been mostly pointless and thoroughly maddening.
The loveffervescence. That was what Mariah had called it. Love and bubbles, as if that was enough for her.
And what if it was?
He swallowed the last mouthful of soda pop, savoring the sweetness.
Perhaps sensing Suvan’s evaporating patience, Evens said, “I launched the Big Sky Intergalactic Dating Agency ten years ago because I wanted to find love for myself. Discovering the resonark trapped in this ship… I wanted to see where it would take me, but I was afraid to come alone.”
The confession seemed torn from him, and he gripped the edge of the bar like he might fall without it.
Suvan suspected Mariah would’ve reached out to touch those blanched knuckles, to offer some solace and understanding.
But she wasn’t here. “You say you wanted to find love, but you lied, locked yourself in an empty cabin, and now sulk here alone.” Suvan gathered all the empties in one hand and took them to the recycler. “Sorry, boss. But I’m not sure any ship will get you where you want to go.”
Not waiting around to see if he was fired, Suvan sauntered out of the salon, pausing in the doorway long enough to glance back. “Good night.”
And if Mariah had been there to ask, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to say which he was talking to: the glum Earther or the mysterious anomaly sparkling above.