Chapter 8
"Any luck?" Brick asked, looking up hopefully from where he'd been sitting.
It had been three days now, and we hadn't been able to find any work. Honestly, I was starting to wonder if someone out there was working against us. That would be ridiculous, because we had just arrived here.
“It really shouldn't be this hard to find a job here," he said, glancing around the group to see if everyone else agreed.
I held my hands up. "A hundred percent, but it is what it is. So I suppose all we can do is move forward. Which begs the question… how much longer will our reserves last?"
Now it was Tiri's turn to frown. She swiped up the tablet in front of her. "Not great. We can’t get the ship back if we don’t make the fifty thousand we need, and the longer it takes, the more we’ll eat into the rest with food," she admitted, hesitating and grimacing at whatever she saw before her.
"Really not great. But on the positive side, we're not using as much fuel, and rent is free until someone comes here to collect some sort of payment.
" The smile on her face was incredibly thin at that fact.
"At least there are some upsides." I smiled, staying positive. Rather than worry about money, I focused on the fact that I had traveled through fucking space and was on an alien planet many light-years from Earth or Veritas-3. There had to be some work we could find.
"There always are," Brick said. "The books are never weighted too heavily against you."
"That does, however, paint a fairly grim picture. If we barely cover the neutron core, then I'm not entirely certain how we get our ship off the ground and back to where we might be more valuable," Melgara agreed, though she seemed less than concerned.
Interestingly, none of them were even considering leaving the Griffin and striking off on their own. Once this was done, I needed to find a way to reward them all. Oh, and probably pay them a salary.
The entire time we were talking, Brick was nervously fidgeting to the side.
"Is everything okay?" I asked, more than a little concerned.
"It's fine. You know, I saw a place asking for mechanics. I know it's not work for the crew, but I could probably swing a few weeks there," Brick offered.
The crew all seemed to lean forward, at least marginally interested in that offer.
"I suppose we should give you a chance to pull your weight," Lily said, and Brick scowled at her.
"Brick is a very valuable member of this ship," I said quickly to Lily.
"Of course he is," Lily answered. "He does keep the ship running. However, there doesn't seem to be any problems with the ship until he finds them."
"His finding those problems is his job, Lily," I told her.
"Of course. I'm just saying he seems to create work…" She held her hands up.
Lily was smart enough to know that Brick wasn’t breaking things. The whole group had grown testy. All of us striking out on work was starting to wear us thin. You could only be told ‘no’ so many times before it grated on all of your nerves.
"I think perhaps we should take a break," Melgara said, trying to be tactful for the full group.
Tiri started to argue with her on finances, a lot of wound and bleeding metaphors like the blindfolded stellari would understand better with vaguely medical language.
I tuned out the rest of the conversation. It simply wasn't that important. We all understood the situation well enough.
The day was over, and it was time to head to bed. I headed up with Lily padding along behind me. There hadn’t even been a discussion. As soon as I picked my bedroom, Lily was there the first night, sharing it with me.
Strangely enough, I didn’t even find a reason to try to dissuade her. At this point, it just felt natural and normal.
Lily paused as I got ready for bed. "Do you think everything is really okay with Brick?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" I turned to her.
"He did not seem to be entirely truthful about his new job opportunity."
I stared at Lily for a moment. "Brick's done enough. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps there's something he has a good reason not to tell us."
"As you wish, Captain." Lily stared for a moment and nodded.
She slipped under the sheets, and I joined her only seconds later, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her close. "I know things are a little messy right now, but it'll all work out. If nothing else, this is an opportunity to expand…"
Whatever I was going to say next died in my throat as Lily began to wiggle against me. The way she pressed herself against me and held my arms to her chest made me think she was having other ideas about what we were going to do tonight besides sleep.
"Lily," I said, with the patience of a saint as my body reacted.
"Hmm." She hummed. "I am just building our engine. There is physical attraction, is there not?"
She cupped my hands and pulled them up to her chest, where she pushed my fingers into it and then pulled, tearing it.
There was a strange satisfaction in ripping that living black bodysuit.
I had no doubt she was grinning, even though I couldn't see her.
I knew her well enough to know exactly what she was thinking at that moment.
"Yes, we are building our engine piece by piece, and physical attraction is a part of that," I agreed.
She slipped my hands inside the black material until I was cupping her breasts, and I no longer let her lead.
I began playing with them. Her chest was big enough that I couldn't fit them easily in my hands, and the way she had bound them up made them seem smaller than they actually were. One thing was for certain, though; they were like firm balls of silk. Lily’s skin was so delicably smooth.
Her breasts overflowed into my hands now that they had been released from their confines, the black material sealing my hands over her chest as Lily hummed.
She twisted just enough to get her lips to meet mine, giving me a kiss filled with searing heat while she cradled my head in her hands. As I began squeezing her chest, she breathed far more than usual.
I shoved my tongue into her mouth, twisting it with hers before pulling back and nibbling on her full pink lips.
Everything about Lily was oddly soft, given how predatory she was.
Her mentality would make people expect claws, fangs, and lean muscle, but however she had built this body, she made it soft, pliant yet with an undertone of firmness that made me want to squeeze her more.
She leaned back, tasting my lips again as if she couldn't get enough of them, and after we tangled ourselves together in the sheets, she paused, licking her lips, and ripped my hands back out of her suit.
In the time I’d played with her chest, it had regrown and sealed my hands in.
She twisted around and wound her legs around my hips in a way that made clear that if she didn't want me to leave, it wasn't going to happen. It was like being caught in the jaws of some apex predator, though I knew she had no desire to eat me. Well, at least not in an unenjoyable way.
I pressed my palm to her abdomen and pushed hard, running it up along her side. Lily liked pressure.
She sucked a deep breath through her nose. "Captain, how much longer must we keep building this engine?"
I kissed her several more times before I answered, "Honestly, I still find this"—I pointed between the two of us—"strange."
Lily narrowed her eyes. "It is not me that is strange. It is your reluctance that is the problem, if there is any."
As a wise man, I knew when to back off. "Strange is perhaps the wrong word. Perhaps unlikely is a better one."
"Better, but far from good." She frowned.
I kissed her again.
"You will not silence me," she demanded playfully, grabbing me by the lapel and suddenly rolling us over, pinning me down. "You frustrate me to no end, Rayden Valcrest. If you were prey, you would already be little more than nutrients already digested and put to use in my body."
"Gee, thanks."
"You should not thank me. That was not a positive measure of your capabilities." She narrowed her eyes. "Despite your lack of predatorial capabilities, I do find myself desiring to mix my genetics with yours."
"The romance is palpable." I chuckled, and Lily frowned, not fully understanding my joke.
"The point is," Lily growled, "I have waited almost an entire week of building this engine."
"What if I told you it was going to take much longer than a week?" I asked.
"Then you should have put a time frame on building this engine. I am impatient." She growled and pushed me down into the bed. "I hunger."
The way she said that word, and the way her eyes turned bright pink, was marginally unsettling. I reminded myself there was very little chance that Lily would do anything like force herself upon me. Even if technically she could, she wouldn't.
"What would you suggest?" I asked, remaining calm, knowing the situation was well in hand.
"A concrete set of steps," Lily stated, crossing her arms and straddling my chest.
"What if I told you this is an engine we have to figure out as we go? There are even going to be some mistakes along the way that might make us start over."
Lily gasped. I could tell she was grappling with that concept and certainly not liking the idea.
"Human mating rituals are ridiculous," she spat. "It is amazing your species has survived as long as it has."
"Well, it helps that there's a lot of us, so we can make plenty of mistakes. Someone will figure it out," I offered.
"I do not want someone. I want you." She weakly held onto my shirt.
I kissed her a few more times to disarm her. "I understand, and I'm trying. Going out and looking for jobs with you has been particularly nice. Well, being with you has been nice."
"It has," Lily agreed, her scowl melting into a soft smile. "Oftentimes, it gives me ample opportunity to watch you in various situations. Though I must say I protest against returning to that massage parlor. I do not believe she had any good intentions."
"No," I said to Lily, smirking. "I'm fairly certain she just wanted to take me to the back room and have some fun."
"Exactly, Captain. You must be careful. You are highly desirable, and at present, I don't believe you're carrying any mark that would indicate you are taken. Though I believe the kikai have sensitive noses. If you were to lie with me, I'm certain many of them would give up."
"Is that what this is about? Getting them to give up?" I narrowed my eyes at Lily.
"It would be a relief if they were smart enough, but I generally believe these women are not intelligent enough to realize when they are barking up the wrong tree. This tree is surrounded by a very dangerous predator that has claimed it." Lily scowled, trying to think through the words.
I held her close, feeling the moment she suddenly went rigid and shot to her feet. I was alarmed at her being alarmed. "Is everything okay?" I asked quickly, pulling a blaster from the bedside table.
"Yes, things are fine. Someone is bothering Melgara outside. I'll go and make sure she doesn't get herself into any trouble." She waved a hand.
Lily peeled herself out of the bed and stared back at it regretfully for a moment before shaking her head and muttering under her breath.
"Security Officer Liliana of the Griffin. The crew's safety is my priority," she muttered like a mantra as she left the room, leaving me suddenly very cold and feeling remarkably alone.
There was absolutely a part of me that missed her presence almost immediately. "Don't take too long!" I shouted after her. "I like it when you're in bed when I wake up."
"That feels like a part of our engine that we should build off of. Perhaps place it near the center. The warm, gooey center." Lily had been storming out, but she paused at the door frame, smiling back at me.
Her choice of words made me raise an eyebrow at her.
"Tiri has been sharing some of her entertainment with me. 'Warm, gooey center' gets used often. I was curious about its effect on you, but it does not seem substantial enough to use again." She paused. "I will be back, Captain," she stated and marched away in a hurry.
The woman was predatory to a fault, yet in the same breath, she was trying very hard to learn and understand what I liked. It was flattering, and honestly, I needed to get over my reservations before that caused more problems than the reservations themselves.
I shook my head and couldn't believe the relationship I found myself in with Lily.
It was something out of a dream, yet one that, if it went wrong, could go oh-so-horribly wrong.
I wasn't lying when I said that I wanted to build something stable and steady with Lily.
I didn't want to rush what we were building, but that was simply because I wanted it to work out.
Not for any reasons of safety, but because since I'd come to the future and a universe I no longer recognized, Lily had been an anchor of stability for me.
Should I screw this up, I would likely regret it for however long I lived.
Lily was borderline obsessed with me. No, if I was honest with myself, she was completely obsessed with me. Taking advantage of that or brushing it aside carelessly could do far more harm than good.
So I breathed, did my best to relax, and perhaps relieved some of the tension that Lily had built up in me. Hopefully, she would take at least a few minutes.
The idea of her straddling me and saying she ‘hungered’ for me leapt to the forefront, and my imagination took over. I wondered what it would be like to rip other areas of her suit…