Chapter 20
CORA
The official who married us was not daernir. They were on the shorter side with pale orange skin and a snout that reminded me of an anteater. I didn’t catch their name because they wasted no time drawing us over to a large floating frame that had two documents on display.
“Stand here, Miss Keaton,” the official said, indicating a red dot on the floor. As soon as I stepped onto it, lasers did a lightning-fast sweep of my body. “Excellent. Now touch here to consent to the marriage.”
“Excuse me?” I blinked at them.
“Right here, my dear,” they said, showing me a spot on the screen. The document was written in characters I didn’t recognize, but the translation read I, Cora Keaton, consent to wed Yiri Ahlon.
“Um… Okay.” I tapped the screen, jumping at the cool glass feel of it when it thrummed with energy and light. I’d expected it to be warm.
“Congratulations, you are married. Now touch here to consent to be mated.”
“Oh. Um…” I touched where they indicated, and then stepped aside for Yiri to follow the same routine. We were married and mated in less than one minute.
“The files have already been uploaded to your nexus core, Mr. Ahlon. Best wishes to the happy couple. Send in the next set, please.”
“Holy crap,” I said as we walked out. “That was quicker than a Vegas drive-through.”
“You were expecting it to take longer?” Yiri asked.
I laughed. “Well, yeah. On Earth, it takes people all day to host a wedding.”
“All day?” Yiri’s brows rose. “It’s a long ritual, then?”
“Sometimes,” I said, waving at Brynna again as we passed by on our way out. “There’s the ceremony, and then there’s dancing, and dinner, and drinks, and the cake, and the bouquet toss, and the garter toss, and some people do stuff like breaking plates. It’s kind of a lot.”
“Sounds like it,” Yiri muttered. “Do you want that? We can do it again.”
“No,” I said. “I’m actually relieved. I wouldn’t know what to do if I had to be the center of attention like that all day. And… I don’t know. I kind of always knew my parents weren’t going to be at my wedding, but if I did a big one, I’d be thinking about it all day.”
Yiri made a deep sound somewhere between a grunt and a hum, but said no more.
His big hand closed around my small one again, totally swallowing it up to the wrist. Big hands.
And jeez Louise, I was still shocked by his height.
I guess I’d never had a good grasp of scale during our video calls.
Although. Now I had his hands for scale, and holy shit.
He made another sound beside me, loud enough to cut through the noise all around us as we made our way through the Transport Station. This time I’d definitely call it a grunt. “Aneah,” he said, voice extra deep and gravelly, “what are you thinking about?”
My eyes darted to his hand wrapped around mine again. “Um. How tall are you?”
His head cocked to the side, but he answered. It took a second for the translated conversion to filter through. Six point five nine feet.
“Aneah,” he growled, his hand squeezing mine tighter.
“What?”
“Whatever you’re thinking about, save it for later.”
But my mind was entrenched in the gutter.
So tall. BIG hands. I kept thinking about that night he jacked off on our call.
Yes, he’d seemed big, but that was before I understood that his hand was like two of mine.
I chewed at my lower lip, my eyes drifting sideways to the crotch of his black pants.
Yeah, there was something really big in there. A freaking monster. Oh my god.
“Think about Mr. Darcy,” Yiri snapped. “It’s loud in the docking bay. Vessels taking off and docking, vehicles and caddies everywhere. If he doesn’t like noise, he’s hating it.”
My lustful thoughts evaporated instantly.
“Oh no!” I gasped. “How far are we? My poor baby!”
As it turned out, my new husband was a liar. The private docking bay was actually much quieter than the public parts of the Transport Station. It was probably the perfect place for Mr. Darcy to wait for me, and for that, I was grateful that Yiri had sent him ahead. But…
“You made me worry for nothing!” I glowered up at him, hands on my hips.
Yiri lifted a shoulder. “You were turning a lot of heads. Many species in Bion 8KV have more acute senses of smell.”
“Are you saying I stink?” I raised my arm to sniff at my pit, but I couldn’t smell anything.
“When you start thinking dirty little thoughts, you smell too good to be walking around this place with only me to guard you.”
Oh my god. “You knew? Crap, everyone knew?”
“Not everyone,” he said as if it were no big deal. “Just anyone with a strong nose. Mostly, they looked away when they saw me with you.”
“What if I had been alone?”
“In public?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
Yiri laughed. “Aneah, you will never be alone in a public place. If I can’t be with you, your security team will be there.”
“Security team?” This was the first I was hearing about any such notion.
“Our family is very important to the economy of Eissoi,” he said. “It’s a very wealthy region of an already affluent world. Security is necessary.”
“Like a bodyguard?”
“Yes,” he said, allowing a pause for the translation. “Two of them.”
“Two bodyguards?”
“You’ll meet them in a few days when we’re home,” he nodded.
“I handpicked them from the men who work for me, and they were trained by my aunt’s team, who all have years of experience.
This is us,” Yiri gestured to one of only a few vessels in the private docking bay, and it was possibly the only thing that could have distracted me from the news that I would have two bodyguards with me everywhere I went… Apparently forever.
A laugh burbled up my throat at the large, silver thing looming over us. “A flying saucer?! Are you kidding me?”
Yiri paused, a look of confusion crossing his features. “From the translation I’m getting… yes? Have you seen a cruiser before?”
“Not a real one,” I laughed. “Oh my god, is it going to suck us up in a beam of light?”
“It can,” he said, “but it’s not legal to do that with sentient lifeforms.”
“But like… cows maybe?”
Yiri frowned, probably taking in the definition of cows. “Why would I want to light-lift livestock into my cruiser?”
“Hey, you tell me, buddy,” I chuckled. “Rumor has it that’s what these things do. Only I don’t think it’s just cows. There have almost definitely been a few of these zipping around the countryside breaking your little no-sentient-life laws on Earth. Oh. But maybe it’s legal there?”
“It isn’t,” he said, frowning as a metal disk detached from the underside of the saucer and floated down to us.
“Step onto this.” He guided me onto the disk, and my feet stuck to the surface like magnets.
As soon as we were both standing on the disk, it began floating upwards.
My stomach swooped, and I latched onto Yiri’s side, wrapping my arms around his middle.
His arm settled around my shoulders, and I felt a little more secure as we drifted toward the vessel and a round hole that was opening up to let us through.
“It’s kind of like we’re going in through its butt,” I said, trying not to giggle like a ten year old. But the way the round opening moved, sizing itself perfectly to admit us, was uncannily like a sphincter.
Yiri chuffed and rolled his eyes. “That’s what Evik says.”
“You see it, though, right?”
“Yes,” he admitted sourly, “I see it. Don’t tell Evik I said it, though.”
We emerged into a cylindrical room with windowless metal walls. There were a few metal crates on one side, and directly in front of us was the flying thing with Mr. Darcy and all my luggage. Yiri tapped on the control pad, and it beeped.
“Get him, if you want,” he said. “We’ll unload the rest in the living quarters.”
“Hey, Mr. Darcy,” I said in my most soothing voice as I opened his carrier. “How was that ride? Are you okay?” He let out a plaintive yowl as I scooped him up, but started purring right away when I hugged him to my chest. “You’re alright, aren’t you? Hmm?”
We followed Yiri through a sliding door that opened into someplace very familiar.
I recognized the black couch and the windows along the wall, currently blacked out.
But the bed looked different. I was pretty sure the one I’d seen in our calls had been metal with black sheets, pillows, and blankets.
This one was made of some kind of wood, and the linens were a medium gray.
“Is this your room?” I asked, looking around.
Yiri rubbed at the back of his neck. “It’s the only bedroom on the cruiser,” he said. “The bed is yours. I can sleep on the couch if you want.”
“Oh.” I looked at the bed again. It was plenty big enough for two.
Yes, he was massive, and it might be a little bit cozy, but it would be a much better fit for him than the couch.
Unless he didn’t want to sleep with me. But that was crazy, right?
He’d made it clear that he found me attractive.
Why wouldn’t he want to sleep with me? “Do couples not share a bed in Venastea?”
“Some do,” he said. “It’s up to the female.”
“Oh. Well, you can sleep in the bed. If you want. I can sleep on the couch if I need to, but you’ll never fit.”
“You will not sleep on the couch,” he said with such simple matter-of-factness, he might as well have said you breathe oxygen.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Neither will you.”
He nodded. “I’ll show you the rest of the cruiser,” he said. “Come with me.”
He led me through two other rooms, which comprised the other two-thirds of the saucer part of the vessel.
The first was a kitchen with a small table for two, and the last was a bathroom.
This one, unlike the ones on the BMM vessel, had buttons, although some of the labels seemed to have worn away with use.
Yiri pointed out the necessary things, and then we were back in the bedroom.
“This is the access to the control room,” he said, tapping a panel on the wall.
Another door slid open, revealing three steps up into the glass-domed space at the top.
I followed him up, peering around at all the screens and control panels laid out in a circle.
At the center was a single swiveling seat.
There were buttons and blinking lights, everything looking a little old-fashioned.
Not analogue. It was a spaceship. But maybe the spaceship equivalent?
“Close quarters up here,” I noted.
“These old vessels were meant for only one to two passengers,” he said.
“How old is it?” I wondered.
“This one’s about eighty years old. Eighty Venastean years.”
“Wow. It’s in good shape,” I said, impressed.
If I hadn’t glanced at him, I might have missed the way his face lit up for a second before he locked it down.
“I did most of the restoration,” he said, shrugging like spaceship restoration was no big deal.
“That’s so cool,” I said, watching him. “It must mean a lot to you.”
Oh, yeah. Something was happening in there. His face smoothed out into a careful expression, his chest filling with a deep breath.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess. I like vintage things. You might not like it, though. The vessels they make now have more passenger features. Better kitchens, more space. We can get something new if you want.”
If I want. It’s up to the female.
“But you like this one,” I said, slipping my hand around his forearm. “I think it’s nice. I can get with the retro vibe. It looks like something off the Jetsons.”
Yiri’s face creased as whatever translation he was getting explained my reference. “It reminds you of children’s entertainment?”
“Retro-futuristic children’s entertainment,” I said.