by C. F. Harris
In addition to being impressed with her, this was giving me a new appreciation of the value of making sure the computer systems on a ship were updated so no one could do what she and Vlox had already done to me.
Finally there was a small ping from the console. The Terran winced at that noise and glanced up and down the corridor, but there wasn’t anyone in here with us.
“Fucking piece of shit!” she said, slamming her hand against the screen again. Which also caused her to bang an elbow against the bulkhead. She yelped and cradled her arm.
“Motherfucker!” she hissed.
I was next to her in an instant. I ran a finger along her elbow. She locked eyes with me, her mouth falling open, and shivered again.
I was suddenly very aware of how close I was to her. Heat radiated off of her body, and her breathing started to pick up. I ran my eyes down the curves of her body as I continued stroking up and down her arm, then started moving up to her shoulder.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I asked, then cleared my throat. “I wouldn’t want you to injure yourself. I need you to retake my ship.”
“Of course,” she muttered, though she had another one of those thin smiles on her face that said she wasn’t buying my thin excuses any more than I was. “I’m suddenly feeling a lot better.”
She scooted down and repositioned herself as she continued working on the panel with her free hand that wasn’t attached to the arm she’d just injured.
And when she repositioned herself the tight quarters were suddenly to my advantage. There was just enough room for two people to work side by side in these conduits, which meant there was enough room for her to push the curve of that oh-so-intriguing Terran posterior right into my cock.
I hissed as I took in a sharp breath. She had to know what she was doing, because she gave a little wiggle that was far more alluring than anything I think any woman had ever done with me before.
She continued working the panel as though nothing was going on behind her, quite literally, but then her free hand started gently stroking along my chest in time with my own strokes along her supposedly injured arm.
She let out a low purr that I almost would’ve missed if I hadn’t been paying such close attention to everything she was doing in that moment. I let out a low growl of my own as months of pent up energy from being trapped on a ship with no women, coupled with the adrenaline rush of being in constant combat for the past several hours, finally started to overwhelm me.
I pressed my cock into the curve of her backside, and she answered by pressing right back into me. Something told me this wasn’t what the Standard Shipyards designers had in mind when they honeycombed their ships with these repair conduits, for all that this was something that happened regularly on ships with coed crews.
I moved my hand away from her arm and wrapped it around her. Used what little leverage I had to press into her with more force. She almost gave up whatever she was doing on the console as she gasped and pressed back into me, and we set up a rhythm as neither one of us actually said anything or acknowledged what was happening and she pretended to work.
“Oh fuck,” she finally gasped. Then again. “Oh fuck!”
There was something about the way she said that now familiar word that had my undivided attention. As though there was something wrong. As much as I hated to do it, I stopped pressing against her and pulled back.
At least I pulled back as much as I could in the cramped repair tunnel. After all, there was barely enough room for the two of us to fit in here in the first place, so I was still wedged up against her.
Not that I was complaining. My cock was twitching and I felt the tip leaking in anticipation of all the things I wanted to do to this nameless, exotic, and alluring Terran.
“I can’t access the systems,” she said.
“Then we need to get to your ship and go with my plan,” I said.
“Hold up,” she said, frowning. I could barely see that frown from where I was positioned behind her. Though she also pressed her body back against me as she frowned, so I found myself wondering what could be done to continue displeasing her if that’s how she reacted.
“It’s weird,” she said. “These repair conduit systems don’t give me full access. They only access the system they’re attached to. I need access to something that gives me full access to the ship’s systems.”
“Like the one you were messing with in the cargo bay?” I asked, letting out a resigned sigh. Everything came back to getting back to her crew in that damned cargo bay.
“Exactly. If I can get to a full console without people shooting at me for five minutes then there’s a good chance I can get through whatever the fuck this is and stop the autodestruct before it blows,” she said. “Not that it’s a pressing issue considering how much time we have. Seems kind of silly to have an autodestruct with a long timer like that.”
I frowned. “But I thought the countdown said there was less than an hour?”
“And whoever coded this thing wanted you to think that,” she said. “The countdown says less than an hour, but it’s actually more like a day or so.”
I frowned. “But why would someone do that?”
“My guess is a hijacker,” she said.
A growl started in the back of my throat. Hijackers. I’d heard of them, though of course I never thought I would fall victim to one of their ploys.
Though that was before Vlox was stupid enough to use something he no doubt downloaded from the Vlox Galactic Net to try and take control of my ship.
“Yup,” she said. “Classic ploy. Someone downloads a virus that activates the autodestruct. The crew evacuates when they can’t get access to their systems. Then the hijackers either come along within the time allotted, or the ship blows up and destroys any evidence of their crime. Cold shit right there.”
“I’m not complaining about it if it gives us a chance to retake the ship,” I said. “That simply means we have another deadline if there are hijackers coming for us.”
“Good point,” she said with a sigh. “As much fun as this was, we should probably get to some weapons sooner rather than later.”
I blinked at her acknowledgement of whatever it was we’d been doing. She moved her head to the side and winked as she wiggled that incredible Terran backside against me one more time.
“I’m Rachel, by the way,” she said. “I don’t think we were properly introduced earlier, but considering…”
She blushed as she pulled away from me and scooted down the repair tunnel. I followed her with my gaze, staring at that backside that’d been pressed against me. Oh the things I would do to her if I could, but it seemed the fun was over for the moment.
Rachel. A name that was as exotic and Terran as the rest of her. I didn’t know how I was going to survive this, and I wasn’t talking about the mutiny or all the heavily armed traitors wandering the ship.
17
Rachel
I forced myself to keep my eyes forward. The last thing I needed was to think about Vrath crawling along behind me staring at my ass.
What the fuck had I been thinking grinding against him like that? We were in the middle of a potentially deadly situation here, for all that the deadline wasn’t as pressing as I’d initially thought, and I was pressing my ass against him like some idiot teenager grinding against her boyfriend in the back of a hover car going on a tour of one of the arcology arboretums back home or something.
Still. He’d been right there running his hand up and down my arm. I shivered thinking about it, and that shiver seemed to go right down to behind my belly button before it moved down between my legs where there was an impossible heat threatening to overwhelm me.
Motherfucker. I didn’t need this kind of distraction on top of everything else!
“You’re sure it’s up ahead?” I asked. “Because this is supposed to be food storage on your typical Standard Shipyards layout.”
“I’m certain,” he growled from behind me.
I wanted to turn and look at him. There was something about that growl that sent another thrill running through me. Something that said he was barely holding himself together. It made my gut twist thinking about what he might be thinking of.
I didn’t turn to look at him, though. No, with everything going on I knew that turning to look at him would end with me doing something that would really be a distraction when we were trying to break my crew out from the nice alien ship that’d attacked us.
“Here we are,” I muttered.
“I will go first,” Vrath said.
There was no hint of a question in his voice. No, he was telling me he was going first, damn it, and that was the voice of a pirate captain who was used to having people follow his orders. For all that we were in this situation because some of his crew weren’t all that great at the whole following orders thing.
“Be my guest,” I said. “Not all that eager to drop into a room that could be filled with armed mutineers.”
Of course there was a slight problem with him going first into a makeshift armory that was potentially filled with armed mutineers, and that was that he’d have to go past me to get there. I tried to hold in the shiver that threatened as he scooted up and past me.
Only this time he was facing me. This time I got to see the intense look in his eyes, almost crazed, as he moved past me. This time I felt that rock hard beast between his legs trailing along my leg until it nestled between my own legs.
There wsa nothing for it. We were stuck in some very tight quarters, and I couldn’t avoid it. Not that I would’ve wanted to avoid that monster even if I could.
The Vosk were definitely better endowed than your average human. Turns out all those rumors were true. Or at the very least they were true in Vrath’s case, though admittedly I hadn’t been with enough of them to know if that held true for all of them.
My mind was filled with thoughts of all the things I’d love to do to this golden-skinned alien as I felt that monster nestle between my legs.
I licked my lips as I stared into his eyes. Yeah, those thoughts of all the terrible things I wouldn’t mind doing to him were getting more and more insistent.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked.
The way he pressed against me was no accident. If this was Dirk and we were in some of the repair corridors on the Linda I might be pissed off that he was pulling something like this, but this wasn’t the Linda and he was a hell of a lot more interesting than Dirk had ever been.
Finally he looked away and he was sliding past me again. I wanted to growl in frustration, but I figured acting like I was frustrated that he wasn’t dry humping me in the middle of a repair corridor wouldn’t be sending the right kind of message, so I kept my big mouth shut.
Though there was another slightly awkward moment as that hard monster in his pants moved past my face. I contemplated sticking my tongue out and giving it a lick, or maybe just wrapping my lips around it as he passed by, but I couldn’t be entirely sure how he’d react.
Not to mention the corridor here was close enough that I couldn’t be sure if we would even have the space for that kind of fun. So I kept it to myself and mentally kicked myself for acting like a horny teenager and not doing anything productive in the middle of a hostile alien invasion, damn it.
He slipped through the access panel into the armory below. I held my breath and listened, sure I was about to hear the sound of some skulls being crushed down there. At the very least I figured I might hear a plasma blaster going off as his ass was shot off while he was in the middle of shimmying his way into the weapons locker, but the sound never came.
A good thing, too. The last thing I needed was to have someone stick their weapon up into the repair corridor and start shooting at anything that moved. That would mean shooting at me, and I really didn’t want to end my time traveling between the stars by having a plasma bolt lodging in my skull boiling my brains from the inside out.
“It’s safe,” Vrath said after another long pause that had me wondering if there really was something going on down there and I just hadn’t heard it.
I dropped into the refrigeration unit turned armory and stared up at a Vosk. I nearly lost it. I guess it was the panic of everything that had happened, but for some reason my brain saw the Vosk in front of me as a dangerous attacker and not Vrath.
I mean sure he’d attacked our ship and sure he was about as dangerous as any other Vosk, but he was also on my side for the moment so it’s not like he was all bad.
Still. My brain saw Vosk and panicked. Thankfully that only lasted for a moment before I realized he was my Vosk.
“Are you quite okay?” he asked in his passable Terran.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” I said.
I blushed as I said it. I wasn’t about to tell him we were in the middle of a life threatening situation and there was a self-destruct countdown going on in the background and all I could think about was how much I wanted to lick that bare chest of his and trace my hands along his body.
Yeah, really not the kind of thing to be brought up in a life threatening situation like this.
“Here,” he said, reaching overhead and plucking a plasma pistol off the wall and tossing it to me.
I caught the thing. I was no stranger to working with a plasma lance, and the principles were the same with a plasma pistol. Vrath reached for a larger plasma rifle, but I had my plasma pistol up and charged before he could touch it.
He went still. I looked at the plasma pistol in my hands. It was a little larger than was comfortable for me, which made sense if we were talking about something designed for Vosk hands, but I could pull the trigger and end his life if I wanted to. Though as I stared at the pistol I realized that the last thing I wanted to do was end his life.
“I assume you’re going to give me the same respect I’ve given you since this all started,” he said, eyeing the pistol and seemingly realizing just a touch too late that giving a pistol to a human who might not want to remain a captive might not have been the best idea.
I lowered the pistol. What the hell was I going to do with it? Shoot him and then go out and take on a ship full of mutineers? Not likely.
I fully expected him to take it from me, but he didn’t do anything of the sort. He simply grunted as though he expected nothing less.
Motherfucker. What was wrong with me?
18
Vrath
It took a great deal of my self control not to sigh in relief as I turned away from Rachel. She could’ve ended me if she wanted to.
Lucky for me it would seem she wasn’t in the mood for ending me. Not just yet, at least. Still, that had been a terrifying moment where I thought maybe a human would be the one to end me rather than one of the mutineers.
And through it all I couldn’t help but feel that intense arousal that’d been coursing through my veins since the first time I saw her out between the ships. It was back in full force, and pressing myself against her in the repair corridors certainly hadn’t done any favors.
I busied myself with attaching a shield belt. It wasn’t one of the more powerful versions that would be able to shield me entirely, but I’d be able to take a couple of shots before the plasma bolts started digging into my flesh and really giving me a bad time.
The Tenets might require us to go into combat with our chests bared as was appropriate, but that hadn’t stopped my people from coming up with ways to obey those Tenets while also not getting our asses shot off at the first plasma bolt to hit us.
That was something, at least.
“So what we’re about to do here is going to be pretty dangerous, isn’t it?” Rachel asked.
“Very dangerous,” I said. “My loyal crew are stuck on your ship, so anyone we see out there is going to want to kill us.”
“It seems a little odd, though,” she said.
“What is that?” I asked, turning to her.
I shouldn’t have turned to her. Turning to her gave me a view of those dangero
usly alluring human curves that had so distracted me every time I found myself staring at her. It was even more distracting now seeing her in a form fitting jumpsuit designed to fit inside her atmosphere suit.
I wanted to forget all about everything that was going on around us and rip that form fitting suit off. See what she looked like underneath. Feel her. Savor her. Taste her. Run my hands over every inch of her body as I explored her.
I pushed those thoughts down. Again, not the kind of thoughts that were helpful in our current situation. Killing Vlox would be the only thing that would help our current situation.
“I mean sure I’m not exactly a Vosk privateer or anything,” she said. “But it seems to me that the middle of human space where the Aegis Fleet could come along and frag your asses at any moment isn’t the best place to have a fight over who controls the ship.”
“You’re right,” I grunted.
“So why did they choose to do it here when there’s so much risk involved?” she asked.
I pursed my lips to a thin frown. The last thing I needed was to get into a discussion of Vosk politics with a human. There were explanations for why Vlox was doing what he was doing, explanations that had a lot to do with my family connections I was sure, but I wasn’t going to talk about those reasons with a human. No matter how alluring that human might be.
“Vlox no doubt has his reasons for wanting to take the ship,” I said. “I’m not going to go over those rasons with him, though. All that I need to know is he has betrayed me, and his life was forfeit the moment he tried to do that.”
“Whatever you say,” Rachel muttered.
I concentrated on adding a charge to my plasma rifle. I was also able to distract myself with pleasant thoughts of how much fun it would be to empty the plasma rifle into Vlox. To watch the life draining out of him as he looked on in surprise, not realizing the depths of his mistake in taking me on until the moment I relieved him of his life.
