Chapter 10
Free to Dream
Lily
Official Protocol on IMPERIUM Protocol Violations
Khar sat naked upon the massive, heavy chair like a king upon his throne.
In the dim, flickering light, his skin looked velvety black, his body sculpted with the lethal elegance of a jaguar.
He was enormous, far larger than any human could ever be, yet perfectly proportioned.
The devilish glow of his eyes and the curve of his horns made the sight decadent, almost obscene.
Like a demonic being beyond humanity, come to claim her body and soul if she did not flee at once.
Lily felt she had never seen anything more unsettling or intoxicating in her life.
“Undress.”
She did not know how she had ended up here. She only knew she could not resist even this simple command.
She slipped out of her fitted uniform and stood before him in nothing but her underwear.
Until now, Khar’s sex had rested heavily against the cushioned seat, dense and dormant.
The moment she moved, it stirred, rising with slow certainty.
As Lily shed the last of her clothing, Khar wrapped his hand around himself and began to stroke, unhurried and deliberate, until he stood hard and unyielding.
Lily was not usually aroused by anatomy alone, yet she could not look away. He was long and thick, so thick she was not certain her body could take him comfortably. The head was sharper than a human man’s, an alien detail that only made the sight more compelling.
She swallowed hard as she imagined tracing the dark skin with her tongue, following the subtle swell of veins down to the heavy weight beneath.
“Come here. Sit on me.”
Khar’s voice pulled her forward as if she were under a spell. Shame did not even occur to her. Want drowned out everything else.
She climbed onto his lap, but once she was that close, his sheer size frightened her. She looked up at him, uneasy, into eyes that burned brighter against his darkening skin.
“Khar, I cannot. You are too big.”
She shook her head helplessly, but he would not let her retreat. He caught her at the nape of the neck and drew her close, his voice low and rough against her ear.
“I know you can take me.”
Lily nodded and slowly lowered herself onto him.
Her breath caught. He filled her completely, stretching her, yet there was no pain. It felt as though her body had been made for this exact shape.
Khar did not look away as she began to move, tentative at first, then faster, finding a rhythm.
His heated gaze, his flawless body, and the overwhelming fullness combined into something irresistible, driving her toward release.
Yet no matter how quickly she rode him, the final edge stayed just out of reach.
The sound she made surprised even herself.
“Please, Khar. This is not enough.”
He laughed softly, dark and knowing, as his hand closed over her hip. Even the touch of his obsidian claws against her pale skin was indecently arousing.
“You are greedy, little female.”
Before she could protest, he thrust upward and took control.
From that moment on, he dictated everything.
He moved with relentless precision, claiming her so thoroughly that tears welled in her eyes.
The world narrowed to sensation, to heat, to the burning intensity of his gaze, until pleasure finally detonated inside her in a blinding white rush.
When Lily opened her eyes, reality crashed down on her like a physical weight.
The details of the dream were already fading, but the aftermath of her release lingered in her body, slow and insistent.
What the hell, Lily?
She stared at the ceiling for a long time, trying to understand the corners of her mind that had led her here.
Having sexual dreams about a coworker was embarrassing enough. Having one this vivid and this unrealistic was worse. It was far more likely that Khar did not possess a perfectly compatible body, and even if he did, there was no guarantee he found her attractive.
Besides, Lily had never climaxed from penetration alone, and something that size without any foreplay would probably hurt more than please.
She wrote all of that off as dream logic. Dreams ignored reality and left only feeling behind.
And the feeling was that nothing in her life had ever been this erotic.
I really need to have sex. Obviously not with Khar. The poor Divani would probably flee the galaxy if he knew what I did to him in my dreams.
She showered for a long time, determined to scrub the last fragments of the fantasy from her mind, and focused on acting completely normal the next time she saw him.
It had only been the previous chrono-cycle that they handed the vukri over to promenade security and said goodbye to the oblivious Silomarila and the ever-performative Vegrun.
It seemed they would part without incident, until Silomarila turned back at the last moment and stepped directly in front of Lily.
Over her lover’s massive, armored shoulder, Vegrun fixed them with a sharp, warning look, making it clear that their safety depended on his companion remaining unaware.
“Lily, is it?” Silomarila asked. The words were ordinary enough, but her voice conjured images of bubbling marshes in Lily’s mind.
“Yes. Is there something else I can help with?”
Lily straightened, projecting innocence.
“What a short, charming name. Among the Mokra, the shorter the name, the lower the rank, or the simpler the mind.”
Lily swallowed her reaction and replied evenly.
“I see. Did you need anything else?”
Silomarila opened her wide, lipless mouth and produced a wet, coughing sound. Lily’s translator informed her it signaled amusement, though her spine prickled at the sight. She felt Khar tense beside her, silent but imposing.
“Vegrun told me you chose my gift. Such a clever little game. On real paper, no less. Very antique. Of course, we cannot judge other species by our own values, can we?” She gestured toward Vegrun.
“As the saying goes, even broth boils in cold water. In any case, I only wanted to thank you. It was the best part of my trip.”
Without waiting for a reply, Silomarila turned and left, Vegrun hurrying after her.
Lily and Khar exchanged a baffled look, then returned to their duties.
Docking protocols kept them busy enough to push everything else aside. Vitro’s robots handled the cleanup, sparing them the task of scrubbing blood from metal plating. The surviving vukri and the bodies were already gone.
Nothing remained of the incident except Lily’s memories and the unsettling way Khar’s skin continued to darken from granite gray toward something deeper wherever it showed beneath his uniform.
“Khar, are you sure you are all right?”
He answered with a low grunt, his usual response when he did not want to talk.
Lily shrugged and returned to the control center, running diagnostics and reviewing results. Once she was satisfied the ship was stable and all necessary replacements ordered, she allowed herself to browse information on solar collectors.
Maybe Vegrun would allow her to order something better than the cheapest model. She gazed dreamily at the device, imagining crossing the galaxy at a fraction of the cost.
“Greedy female.”
Lily flushed to the tips of her ears when she heard Khar laugh and instantly cleared the data from the main display, as if she had been caught watching something obscene.
Even though Khar had not used the same words as in her dream, and his intonation had been entirely different, she could not stop her mind from connecting the two. Her traitorous body reacted immediately in response, and she made sure not to look at him directly.
Stupid dream.
Khar settled into his comfortable armchair, and Lily silently thanked every known force in the universe that it was not the same chair she had seen in her dream. That would have been far too much.
Still, the longer she looked at her colleague, the more her concern for his condition outweighed her embarrassment.
“If you say everything is fine, I believe you,” she said carefully, “but what is happening to you looks ominous. With humans, a drastic change in skin tone is never a good sign. I know I cannot measure you by human standards, but I cannot help thinking about it.”
The Divani avoided her gaze with deliberate care, focusing on the main display as if it demanded his full attention.
“This is natural among Divani,” he replied. “It does not happen often, but it does not signify anything harmful.”
Lily let out a breath she had not realized she was holding.
She hesitated, unsure how to answer, and a foolish saying escaped her before she could think better of it.
“On Earth, there’s a saying that once you go black, you never go back.”
She giggled at her own joke and failed to notice how Khar went utterly still beside her.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing important,” Lily said quickly. “Just something darker skinned men sometimes say to women. Mostly a joke. It is not meant seriously.”
Even with a flawless translator, Lily had the distinct feeling that some things simply refused to cross cultural boundaries.
She was rescued from the awkwardness by someone she had not expected. Horos’s voice came through the console.
“Crew of the Vitromium, I request permission to come aboard.”
Khar grumbled as if he had stepped in something foul with his favorite boot, but this time Lily was grateful for the secretary’s arrival.
They granted access through the main gate, and it did not take long before the tall, ash gray being entered the control room.
“Vegrun sends his thanks for your swift and efficient handling of the recent inconvenience,” Horos said smoothly.
He raised his VoidBrace, performed a brief sequence of gestures, and Khar’s own console lit up.
“The agreed amount has been transferred to your account, Khar. Lily, if you permit, I would like a word with you.”
Lily raised an eyebrow.
“With me? Is something wrong?”
Horos lifted both hands in a calming gesture and laughed politely.
“Quite the opposite. I would like to discuss the details of the solar collector order. I have time before my next meeting, and I have not yet eaten. I would be pleased if you joined me.”
Lily shrugged and slipped on the looser jacket of her fitted uniform.
“Sure, if you like. Khar, I will be right back.”
Khar looked as though he wanted to say something, but he remained silent until the door closed behind Lily and Horos.
Lily had explored parts of the station where Vitro was docked, but the more expensive restaurants and entertainment venues were far beyond her budget.
She happily accepted Horos’s offer to treat her, even if it felt a little excessive.
Vegrun was likely grateful, and Horos’s generosity probably reflected that.
She hummed softly while browsing the menu.
It automatically analyzed her biological profile and digestive tolerances, offering only dishes she could safely eat and genuinely enjoy.
Lily felt slightly self-conscious in the upscale environment, surrounded by well-off alien socialites, so she made sure not to commit a faux pas.
As they waited, Horos coughed once, and every being around them looked over disapprovingly, raising her guard a little more.
Once they had both ordered, Horos steered the conversation away from neutral topics and into more personal waters.
“So, Lily,” he said, “how does a being as unusual as you come to work at one of the known galaxy’s bastion stations?”
The question caught her off guard. She was not sure what the correct answer was. She was not ashamed of the truth, but she had no idea what was considered acceptable in universal circles. The acclimatization program had focused more on keeping her from falling into depression than on social nuance.
She wished she had asked Khar. He might grumble endlessly, but he did not strike her as hypocritical. “As I wrote in my application,” she said, “I own a Herion-6 class ship. That is how I arrived here.”
Horos smiled at her reply. The simple expression transformed his otherwise alien features, and Lily was surprised by how approachable he suddenly seemed.
“Yes, but you are not a Registered Spacefaring Species,” Horos said. “I reviewed Vitromium’s report on the confrontation. What you did was remarkable. Why did you lower the gravity?”
Relieved that the focus had shifted away from her past, Lily eagerly explained her reasoning.
“When I traveled through space, I trained a lot in higher gravity. In lower gravity, I played ball games to pass the time. The ball behaves differently, you see. Most beings are used to standard or zero gravity, but the state between the two feels strange to them. I thought it would give me an advantage over the vukri.”
Horos tapped long black fingers against the table as he listened.
“Very inventive.”
Lily was not sure how to respond, so she blurted out the first interesting thought that came to mind.
“On Earth, there were countless religions and myths over the millennia. One of them is long dead now, but they built incredible monuments to honor their gods and rulers. They are still so significant that we call them wonders of the world.”
Horos hummed in agreement.
“Yes. Most sentient species preserve relics of their past. Age makes them sacred.”
“I only mentioned it because one of those gods was named Horus. Or at least that is how we think it was pronounced. You even resemble how he was depicted, a little.”
The secretary leaned back in his chair and laughed openly.
“The universe is full of strange coincidences.”
Lily nodded. The fact that she was here at all felt improbable enough.
Now that she had spent more time among the stars, she was beginning to see patterns across species. She found similarities between alien races and the creatures of Earth’s myths.
She could not tell whether her mind was drawing connections where none existed, or whether aliens had once reached her homeworld and left an imprint on humanity’s collective memory.
The rest of the meal passed pleasantly. Horos proved to be engaging company, and Lily was delighted when she finalized the order for the solar collector model she truly wanted.
Horos escorted her back to Vitro but did not board with her.
All in all, Lily felt she was making real progress toward the life she wanted. She was closer to financial independence and free travel aboard her own ship. She had gained her first alien friend in Khar, even if the friendship was still tentative.
Horos still made the hairs on her neck rise slightly, but nothing she could not brush off. He was only her superior in the loosest sense, someone she rarely saw.
Smiling to herself, Lily stepped back onto Vitro’s deck, eager to share the good news with Khar.