Chapter 24 #2
"Krix'vorr." I pull the last strip of tape away myself and press down against him. The slick friction makes us both shudder. "Stop memorizing. Start entering."
His hands grip my hips and lift me slightly. I feel him position himself beneath me, blunt and hot and thick. Then he lets me set the pace, lowering me slowly, watching my face as I take him inch by textured inch.
The stretch is new. The fullness is overwhelming. Every ridge catches and drags in ways I didn't know I could feel. By the time he's fully inside me I'm shaking, hands braced against his chest, mouth open, unable to form a single coherent word.
"Breathe," he says, and his voice is rougher than I've ever heard it.
I breathe. Then I move.
His hands tighten on my hips but he lets me lead, lets me find the angle and the rhythm that turns the impossible stretch into rolling waves of pressure exactly where I need them.
The training room echoes with sounds I would be mortified by under any other circumstances, but the way his eyes darken and his antennae flatten against his skull with every noise I make kills any self-consciousness dead.
"You fight like this, too," he manages. "All instinct. No hesitation."
"Shut up," I gasp, and ride him harder.
He shuts up. His hips begin meeting mine, thrust for thrust, and the combined force of it drives the breath out of me in sharp, stuttering cries.
His hands slide up my back and pull me flush against his chest. The cool hardness of his carapace against my bare, sweat-damp skin is a contrast so sharp it borders on electric.
I come with my face buried against his neck, biting down on absolutely nothing because there's no soft place to bite, just hard chitin that doesn't give. The climax rolls through me in deep, clenching waves, and I hear myself making sounds that have no business in a training room.
He follows a moment later, both arms locking around me as his own release shudders through him. His wings flare out behind him with a sharp snap, then fold slowly forward, enclosing us both.
For a long moment we stay exactly like that, tangled together on the training room floor, breathing hard, surrounded by scattered strips of tape and the faint, lingering scent of sweat and sparring.
"So," I manage eventually, still straddling him, still joined. "Is this what happens every time I beat you?"
A rumble moves through his chest. "You didn't beat me. I won that exchange decisively."
"I touched your eye first."
"And I touched everything else after."
I rest my forehead against his. "Best two out of three?"
His arms tighten around me. "I accept."
- - -
We're spooning on the floor, half dozing, when the door membrane peels open and Lucius floats into the room.
The black disk hovers in the doorway for several seconds. His sensors move from me to Krix’vorr and back again, as though evaluating the scene. “Excellent. You're both available.”
“What is it?” I ask, getting up and winding the tape back on me. “Thanks for waiting, by the way.”
“I have learned what those sounds mean,” the drone says. “It seemed appropriate to wait them out. I am in need of assistance with accessing certain information.”
I fasten the tape with pieces that still have adhesive on them. “So?”
“So the Beast is keeping many records of her travels, but many of them have been hidden in various compartments that she refuses to open. At least she won’t open them for me.”
“She’s been alive for a long time,” Krix’vorr says. “You want to find out what she remembers?”
“Exactly, Chief Harrower.”
“Can you just ask her?”
“I can, but her answers are slow and incomplete. I suspect she stores her memories outside the brain, in other compartments.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Krix’vorr says. “But I suppose it’s worth a try.”
Lucius rises an inch in the air. “Wonderful! A try is exactly what I need. I have some useful data from the crew, but not enough to even make a guess at the location of the Gzet planet. Could you assist, sir? Now?”
Krix’vorr reaches out and strokes a hank of my hair behind my ear. “I think we’ve done everything important today, so we have time for it.”
Lucius rises another inch. “Oh, I assure you, sir, this could be far more important- ah. I see. It was a joke. Will you come too, Captain?”
“Is it dangerous?” I ask.
The drone wiggles in the air, its way to shrug. “I see no danger about it. But it means going into parts of this Beast that I haven’t seen.”
- - -
As it turns out, the parts of the Beast that keeps memories is on the other side of a labyrinth of tight tubes that Krix’vorr and I have to crawl through. He’s in front after the first membrane simply wouldn’t open for me.
“The Beast likes me more than she likes you,” he calls back over his shoulder.
I crawl on. “We already knew that. Two attempted murders is a language of their own.”
“To be fair, you did set yourself up as an easy kill both times.”
“And someone really helped me along that second time.” I point out, glancing behind me at Lucius.
“Yes? I did wonder,” Krix’vorr says.
I snort, but the sound is strangely dampened in the cramped tunnel. The walls pulse gently around us, warm and alive. Every few seconds the passage narrows enough that my shoulders brush both sides.
Behind me, Lucius follows at a cautious distance, occasionally bumping into something and producing irritated mechanical noises.
“I was not designed for this environment,” he complains.
“You think I was?” I ask.
“You have joints and feet and hands. Your knees appear highly useful in this context.”
“And you have rotors that you can fly with. Seems a fair trade.” I’m starting to sweat. This may be the Beast’s real body temperature, and it’s getting hot.
Krix’vorr manages to be both majestic and confident as he crawls ahead of me. It’s quite a feat, but nothing about him surprises me anymore. Except maybe how he always manages to make me come harder and harder.
The tunnel bends downward. The living surface beneath my hands becomes slick, forcing me to move more carefully. Somewhere deeper in the Beast, a series of hollow thumps echoes through the organic structure. Krix’vorr stops abruptly and I nearly crawl into his feet.
“What is it?”
“Listen.”
The passage becomes still. For several heartbeats I hear nothing except the movement of blood and fluids through the ship. Then something moves ahead of us.
A membrane snaps across the tunnel.
I barely register what I'm seeing before Krix’vorr throws an arm backward and catches me against his side. The membrane slams shut where my face would've been a moment earlier. Long needle-like structures punch through it from both sides.
I stare. “Those are teeth!”
“So it would appear.”
“Your ship has fangs on the inside,” I marvel.
“Surely disliking intruders this close to her brain is only healthy,” Krix’vorr points out.
“I’m beginning to understand that.”