Chapter 28 A Vanguard’s Treasure #2
Idan reared back and arched a brow in surprise as Selene choked back a laugh at her husband’s deadpan expression.
Sheba turned to the Sable Khan, clicking her tongue to scold him. ‘Kainan, you’re a trip!’
‘Don’t blame me for wanting to attend another nuptial,’ her brother-in-law muttered with a shrug and a wicked gleam in his eyes. ‘I like wedding cake.’
Sheba shook her head in disbelief. ‘Stop fast-tracking us down the aisle. Regardless, you two are too generous, and sante for embracing Idan and me with such love.’
‘Of course. You’re freakin’ blood, and you fell for the right one this time, and for that I’m grateful. The fact that he stayed with you the other night babysitting the kids, and helped you clean up after, seals the deal for me,’ Selene murmured.
After final farewells, the couple boarded the vessel in the indigo hush of the evening.
Inside, Mirage’s node sat at the pilot’s throne, her fingers dancing across the haptic interfaces as the engines ignited with a muffled growl.
The corvette soon breached the dome, leaving the neon sprawl of Eden II behind as an iridescent orb in the rearview monitors.
‘What shall we call her?’ Idan asked his woman, as he stroked the high-tech bridge console.
Sheba thought for a moment, then leaned in to whisper into his ear. ‘How about The Ignis? It means flaming in ancient Latin, and I think it captures our scorching heat, plus it’s a nod to the battle we shared.’
Idan’s eyes lit up at her suggestion. ‘It’s perfect, because I’mma about to flame you out. I want your back with an arch in it as soon as the second we get into FTL and level out.’
‘Such a nympho,’ she teased him.
‘Only with you,’ he growled.
Sheba sank back into the leather upholstery of the crash couch in the cockpit, hands entwined with her man’s.
The pull of gravity washed over them as they made the jump-leap.
The vessel accelerated, a streak of matte black cutting through the star-fields toward hyperspace, bound for Tansinia Minor, the planet where their souls first ignited with a blaze.
Many hours later, the corvette slid out of slipstream with a muffled growl of stabilizing thrusters.
Mirage sat at the controls alongside Idan as Sheba stepped onto the bridge, the deceleration having woken her from a blissful post-coital nap in the guest suite.
The stellar field ahead appeared empty, a void of velvet blackness tucked between the gravitational pull of two distant, pulsing suns.
‘Where the hell are we?’ Sheba asked, bracing her hand on the pilot’s chair.
Idan reached out, grasping her waist to tug her onto his lap.
‘Just a short side trip. Remember asking me about my small stash?’
‘Naam -,’ she muttered.
‘We’re going treasure hunting, salkia,’ he rasped.
She turned her gaze to the view, intrigued, searching the vacuum.
All of a sudden, the space ahead rippled.
As the corvette glided forward, a geometric monolith emerged from the nothingness, a black iron fortress pulsing with sapphire light.
‘What am I looking at?’ Sheba breathed, her heart rate quickening at the sheer scale of the structure.
‘The Sacran Vanguard Aether-Coffer,’ Idan rumbled.
‘The hidden treasury where Sacran warriors and veterans store their emoluments and spoils from their brutal campaigns. Mirage is using a unique Sacran-coded hex I gave her to emit a pulse that allows us to see it. Otherwise, it remains a ghost to standard radar. The signal also allows us passage without getting gunned down.’
They settled on a landing pad that rose from the smooth surface of the hovering platform.
The couple disembarked, leaving Mirage at the controls and on alert for any surprises.
‘The Coffer is impenetrable. It protects itself with rail guns and screaming hexes should anyone try to breach it illegally,’ Idan grunted as he led his woman towards the structure’s massive entrance.
He produced an artifact from the folds of his jacket, the Astral-Clevis, a key forged from aetheric chondrite that hummed with cold blue energy.
He pressed the device into the vault’s sensor, and the heavy iris of the folded entrance spiraled open.
They strolled along a series of corridors with numbered portals until they reached a silver door.
Idan repeated the unlocking procedure, and the steel hatch swung ajar with a whisper.
Sheba followed Idan into a cavern of such refracted brilliance that she blinked to take in the light, as her mouth gaped in awe.
Shelves of dense gold bars lined the walls, standing sentinel beside weapons of intense ancient potency; they warped the very dimensions of the room.
Blocks of raw xentium ore, pulsing with a rhythmic, violet luminescence, sat alongside diamonds the size of paperweights.
Emeralds with the verdant hues of a dying nebula, and heaps of heavy bullion coins from extinct dynasties, spilled from an open chest in a glittering tide.
Strands of translucent pearls vibrated with a mysterious frequency, arranged in jewelry cases along with rings, necklaces, and tiaras forged from fallen stars.
The wealth was staggering.
‘Small stash, my ass,’ Sheba muttered, lost in disbelief.
‘Tis a hoard capable of purchasing a galaxy or two and still fund a private militia for a century,’ Idan confirmed.
He dragged out a series of hover crates as he began filling them with his freakin’ treasure.
The sheer volume of the valuables was almost too much to get her head around.
‘How many years have you collected all of this?’
‘Eons salkia, and a few epochs, over one thousand and one wars, plus a smattering of battles, wagers, bets, and card games.’
She got over herself soon enough and joined him in packing.
An hour and a half later, they guided the levitating containers back onto the corvette, locking up after themselves.
Mirage paused at the rear stern threshold of the Corvette, her nanite-powered eyes scanning the new cargo. ‘Buying a planet, my friend?’
Idan shrugged. ‘Rainy day change, I’ve left 90% back there as my children’s trust.’
Mirage’s brow arched in a silent expression of disbelief before she turned and glimmered away to the flight deck.
As she initiated a gentle lift-off, the couple secured the loot in the ship’s internal safe.
Sheba worked alongside Idan to stack the gold bars into the repository.
‘So, I suppose I should start making a list for a shopping spree?’ she teased, winking at him. ‘Or do you plan on spending every cent of this on your own vanity?’
Idan straightened, his massive frame blocking the light from the open vault.
He folded his arms over his chest, his expression hardening into a mask of absolute, unyielding sternness.
‘Woman, I have no plans to spend a single credit on you. You won’t get zip, zero, nada from this pile.’
‘Fine by me!’ Sheba retorted, a playful spark igniting in her eyes despite his grim facade. ‘I was never in it for your money, honey.’
He maintained the ruse, his jaw locked in a stubborn line.
‘I might buy you one bottle of your favorite gold-flecked champagne, but that’s the extent of my charity. Do not expect more.’
‘Nada, don’t want it,’ she countered, matching his tone. ‘Keep your bubbles.’
‘You’re just playing hard to get,’ he growled, his timbre dropping an octave as he took a step toward her, lips twitching.
‘So I might be forced to put diamonds on your wrist to quiet your complaining, but that’s about it.
Fokk it, I might even wife you and buy you the home of your dreams on Dunia, but that’s all. ’
‘Stop,’ she whispered, a giggle escaping her as the absurdity of his ‘stern’ offer hit her.
‘Wait,’ he interrupted, his finger pointing at her with mock authority. ‘I might take care of all your needs so you never need to work again if you don’t want to. But that’s it. Not a penny more.’
By this time, Sheba was laughing so hard her ribs ached. ‘Keep your stash, god-warrior! I don’t want your stones or your charity!’
Idan reached into an open crate, grabbed a handful of raw diamonds, and tossed them at her.
They bounced off her blazer like heavy, sparkling hailstones.
She shrieked and ran toward the sleeping quarters, but he was a deity with speed built for the chase.
He caught her at the threshold, swinging her up high in his arms, before striding inside to fling her onto the sheets.
He threw a massive diamond onto the bed, the rock capturing the cabin’s light.
Idan straddled his laughing woman, took the hefty precious stone and traced its facets along the curve of her throat, the stone leaving a trail of chilled friction against her skin.
Sheba’s pulse jumped as a surge of wet drenched her underwear.
He moved the gem lower, following the contour of her collarbone and the valley of her breasts.
Lips quirking, he used the edge of the jewel to slice her jumpsuit off.
It fell off her in ribbons as she protested. ‘Idan, the fokk? You can’t cut my shit off.’
His eyes glittered. ‘We can either get into it, or we can get intimate,’ he growled.
When she objected, coming up on her elbows, her tits in his face, he bit his lips, eyes glittering with lust. ‘Fine, I might buy you an entire wardrobe to make up, that’s about it, and only if you ride me hard and work those hips.’
‘Damn you, warrior-god.’
She gasped as the cold stone met the heat of her pussy lips, her breath hitching as he used the gem to map every inch of her body.
Her nipples hardened, and her skin pebbled with desire and need as the cool pressure of the diamond ignited her, before he lowered his mouth to hers.
She wrapped her legs over his midsection, one arm around his shoulders.
Her other hand went to his crotch, freeing his obsidian-tipped cock from his pants.
She’d scarcely gripped his throbbing shaft when he thrust forward in, groaning as his length sank into the heated suck of her pussy.
Sheba mewled, canting her pelvis higher as he filled her to the hilt.
‘So freakin’ good,’ Sheba gasped.
She swung her ankles back to hitch her calves on his outer thighs to find purchase and rode him as Idan fokked her deeper into the cushioning below them.
‘Flip over,’ he grunted into her ear.
His hands went to her ass, squeezing it, before he knifed up, twisted, and brought her above him, straddling him.
This only served to push him even further into her, and she cried out, throwing her curls back, eyes closed as pleasure mounted.
‘Eyes salkia,’ he growled.
She gave them to him, bending so their noses almost touched, their gazes locked in.
‘Mouth,’ he commanded.
She obeyed as their kisses melded, and his pelvis kept working, gripping her backside to ensure maximum friction, his phallus arching into her like a thick pulsing lightning rod.
Huffing, puffing, and mewling into his parted lips, Sheba lost herself in Idan, waist swirling as his ragged inhales drove her wild.
She sank her hands into his hair, undoing the twist in his hair to free his locks.
Bucking and twisting on his driving penis as he fokked her to oblivion.
Her bliss hit her with the force of a maglev train, surging and washing over in waves, and she fell into his chest, writhing through an incandescence of ecstasy.
Idan growled at how Sheba’s body shuddered in his arms.
‘Come for me salkia. Fokk, I love how your pussy spasms over my cock.’
His hips thrust accelerated, his shaft diving higher, deeper, and harder into her as she panted through her rapture.
With a long growl, he bucked one final time, then collapsed onto the bed, his torso heaving.
‘I love you so much, Sheba Munene.’
‘I love you more, Simi’Ren Idan Caliostheles, my uso’m.’
Sheba locked her thighs around him, unwilling to let go, head buried in his nape, hands stroking his hair, breathing in his sensual, heated flesh.
In that moment, a rush of emotion and a surge of realization hit her, one so profound that her soul soared and her mind whirled.
Idan was her Singularity.
He was the gravity pulling every stray, chaotic piece of her life into a singular, perfect focus.
Her Ssignakht prescience kicked in; peering through the veil of time, she glimpsed a luminous future with him.
One in which she was no longer a fragment drifting through a cold expanse of time, but a complete, radiant being, treasured, prized, and safe.
Her self-protective walls, as well as her armor, were long shattered; every toxic ex, ghosted date, and burnt-out connection was erased from her soul.
Through her new lens, she indulged in an endless loop of new beginnings, a perpetual dawn where she would wake up and choose Idan, day after day.
Theirs was an unbreakable tether that wrapped around their shared love, a cosmic pulse that would beat until both their souls rejoined the stars.
It was heaven, and she sighed in utter bliss as she pressed her lips to his veined nape, her heart having found its true north.