Chapter 16
The Chrono-Cycle After Victory
Khar
One slow morning, Lily was making low, growling sounds in the command hub when Khar entered.
Khar stopped in the doorway.
He had never witnessed such behavior from Lily before. It was… concerning.
“What ails you?”
Lily’s face immediately flushed into that warm human hue Khar had come to recognize very well.
“Nothing,” she said quickly, refusing to meet his eyes. “I was just practicing my Divani.”
Khar’s twin hearts suddenly felt too large for his chest.
“No one learns languages anymore. It is redundant—”
Lily cut him off before he could finish.
“I know, I know. The translator does everything. But on Earth we do learn foreign languages. It’s a chore, sure, but it’s also kind of romantic.”
Khar considered this.
Then he nodded once.
“All right. Practice on me.”
“I haven’t practiced much,” Lily warned. “But here I go.”
She produced a rapid sequence of guttural growls and clicks, then looked at him expectantly.
“So… how did I do?”
“Well,” Khar said carefully, “you sounded Divani. A bit provincial. Perhaps from one of the outer bases. But definitely Divani.”
Lily brightened.
“And what did I say?”
Khar hesitated.
“You told me to mate with a ferish bear-beast. Vigorously.”
Lily froze.
“WHAT? No! Nononono. I just wanted to ask where the space station was.”
“Do not worry,” Khar said calmly. “It was creative swearing.”
Conversation between Khar and Lily a few chrono-cycles earlier
Khar returned to his quarters on the station for a change of clothes, a quick shower, and every calorie sphere he owned. On the way, he placed an order to replace Lily’s torn uniform. In fact, he ordered several. They would be needed.
If the exhaustion caused by imprinting had not crushed him so completely, he doubted he could have stopped after a single round with Lily.
She had seemed satisfied, but the worry still gnawed at him. Under normal circumstances, he could have spent the entire night pleasing her without effort. The developmental phase, however, had overruled everything else.
Khar shook his head sharply. He could not allow doubt to bury him. He would show Lily that he was capable of far more.
Under ordinary conditions, the presence of a third phase would have troubled him. There was not supposed to be one. Now, he clearly was in it. Even so, he had no capacity left to dwell on the anomaly.
Every thought revolved around Lily. His own condition was secondary.
The Divani had abandoned the last institutional forms of religion centuries ago, choosing the supremacy of science instead.
Still, Khar had studied the belief systems of other species.
It was necessary when facing opponents whose lives were governed by imagined gods and rigid decrees.
Their psychology produced choices entirely unlike his own.
He pitied those who would rather end their lives than disappoint a so-called higher master.
And yet Khar had been illuminated.
He bathed in a new kind of devotion, one whose object was, unmistakably, Lily.
Everything had shifted. What once mattered had shrunk into something mundane and negligible. Even the smallest act done in Lily’s interest filled him with quiet satisfaction.
Khar was no uneducated brute. From birth, he had been exceptional, and the Divani colonies had given him the finest education available. Physical dominance alone was useless. Only a trained, calculating strategist could command others and survive.
And Khar had been observing Lily for a long time. If he was honest, since the very first moment he had seen her. Over time, it had become increasingly clear what she wanted. Not what she allowed herself to admit, but what she desired on a visceral level.
Khar had decided that he would become whatever she needed.
He wanted Lily. And becoming what she desired was not a sacrifice.
Above all, Lily wanted safety. Whether that need stemmed from being torn from her homeworld or had always been part of her, Khar ensured that he never abused her trust.
She was also exceptionally intelligent, the kind of mind that demanded stimulation or quickly grew bored. That meant he needed to challenge her. He could not collapse at her feet too easily, or the tension between them would dissolve before any real foundation formed.
Her relationship with sex was conflicted.
Desire influenced many of her decisions, yet she hesitated to fully claim it.
Khar would gladly take on part of that control, setting the rhythm of their intimacy so Lily could surrender to pleasure without having to steer it herself.
She would resist those limits, of course.
That resistance was simply another source of excitement.
The most beautiful part of it all was this: if Khar’s understanding of Lily was correct, then not only was he perfect for her, but it was almost as if she had been shaped for him.
His temperament, his motivations, his entire life path formed an alloy with this astonishing creature that he would never have dared imagine.
Until last night, all of it had been speculation.
When Lily gave her consent, there was no turning back. Khar had to commit fully to his chosen strategy. A thousand battles had trained him to make swift, decisive choices, yet he had never felt the stakes so sharply defined. A fight without risk was nothing but slaughter. He chose courage.
And he was rewarded when he saw the unfiltered desire in Lily’s eyes as he took control.
He had been right. By the Cradle of the Universe, he had been right.
Khar grinned the entire way back to his quarters. Victory had never tasted so sweet.
For a moment, he had almost faltered when Lily threw his own words back at him and suggested there might not be a next time. He had nearly dropped to his knees and begged her forgiveness. Instead, he forced his fear aside and returned to what he knew worked.
Lily had reacted exactly as she had the first time he confronted her with his dominance: with unmistakable anticipation.
Once inside, he stripped and stepped under the shower, cleansing himself and finally examining his body in full light for the first time since the night before.
He had grown used to the glossy black of his skin, but the night had brought further changes.
Along the length of his shaft, small ridges had formed.
At the base, precisely where Lily’s pleasure center would meet him, two horn-shaped protrusions had appeared.
They were positioned to massage her gently with every thrust. Their shape even echoed the horns on his brow.
Khar could barely wait to show her.
He allowed his thoughts to drift back to the night, even as his body responded instantly.
Lily had been extraordinary. That silk-soft skin.
Those curves, slightly alien to a Divani eye and therefore even more intoxicating.
He could have spent a lifetime in the shallow hollow where her neck met her shoulder, or tracing the elegant line of her abdomen.
Her scent alone had already undone him, and it had only been a faint promise of the euphoria waiting between her thighs.
He had not been joking when he told her she was food.
From now on, only her tight, sweet heat would ever satisfy his hunger.
Unfortunately, he could not spend the entire cycle lost in fantasy.
Reality was better, even if work awaited.
Khar had already planned how the cycle would unfold.
He would tease Lily, provoke her, and keep her on edge until the end of their shift.
By then, she would be too irritated to care about anyone else’s opinion and too aroused to think of anything but him.
Seeing her initiate would be intoxicating.
Khar smiled.
The universe, in reply, decided to trip him.
By the time he reached Vitro, Lily was waiting outside the ship.
She looked dangerously angry.
Perhaps I pushed too far this morning.
Khar was already revising his strategy on the fly.
As he drew closer, Lily lifted the hand braced on her hip and jabbed a finger toward the massive cargo stack unloaded on the dock.
“Vegrun gave Silomarila another chance.”
Khar did not immediately see the disaster in that. Yes, Madame Turtle made his skin crawl, but at least he was not the one expected to entertain her.
“All right,” he said. “And what’s this? Gifts? Should we load them?”
Lily shook her head, defeated.
“Exterior hull paint for Vitro. Augum-3 moon shade. Silomarila’s favorite color.”
Ah.
Now he understood.
Painting an interstellar cruiser from the outside was brutally exhausting work, but in seven cycles it was manageable.
Even with overtime, they would still have evenings to themselves.
Lily, however, looked as if she were standing in the center of a natural disaster, still struggling to believe it had chosen her.
“Khar, you don’t get it. He wants it done in three chrono-cycles. They arrive in four. He wants that color to be the first thing she sees. Triple overtime pay, and a full seven cycles of paid leave after the flight.”
“All right,” Khar said calmly. “I don’t care about the extra credits. What do you want? We’ll do that.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Lily replied. “And I need the triple pay. I can barely save anything as it is.”
She rubbed her forehead as if fighting off a headache, then shot him a suspicious look.
“Wait. Since when do you not care about money? You haggled with Vegrun even when our lives were at risk.”
“That was different,” Khar said. “Everyone needs a hobby. Mine happens to be fleecing Vegrun. As for the leave, I would enjoy that. More uninterrupted time with you.”
Lily looked him over slowly.
Only then did Khar realize something was wrong. He had been too focused on her, on pursuit and anticipation, and now felt like an untested recruit for missing this sooner.
“Lily,” he asked carefully, “how much do you earn?”
She immediately shut down.
“Khar, you can’t ask that.”