Synnr's Hope

by Kate Rudolph

  He hoped it was just Lena.

  “You’re not going back to sleep, are you?” She curled into the blanket that he’d scooped up from the floor sometime during the night.

  “It’s morning.” It had to be. To confirm, he reached for his comm and checked the time.

  That only made Lena grumble more. “It’s always morning on this stupid moon.” Her words were muffled by the blanket.

  “Are you like this when you wake?” He didn’t know she could be grumpy. He doubted she’d appreciate it if he told her it was cute.

  She threw the blanket off with a groan. “Mornings are for caffeine, and I’ll take whatever weird-ass coffee you drink.”

  Coffee wasn’t grown on Aorsa or Kilrym, but a human resident had managed to create an artificial caffeinated drink that Solan was told resembled the Earth beverage. He’d tried it and found it much too bitter for his liking.

  “We’ll get you your caffeine,” he promised. But looking at Lena was enough to wake him up. All of him. They were bound to have more work to do soon, but he didn’t care. He leaned in close, cupped her cheek, and kissed her, giving her a proper good morning.

  He expected a smile from Lena, not the cautious expression she shot his way. “We don’t have to treat this like it’s a big deal,” she said quietly.

  His heart hammered. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “I think we do.” Did she want nothing more than a night? Had he misinterpreted her desires? It might have made him a hypocrite, but now that he’d had her once he didn’t know if he could go back to the way things had been. “We’re bound together for the rest of our lives.” No matter what they decided, they couldn’t treat it casually.

  “Yes, we’ve established that.” Some of the caution began to dissolve, but she wasn’t smiling.

  “So why not try to be happy?” It was ludicrously simple. Inane. But what was stopping them?

  Her fingers curled around the edge of the blanket, like she was about to pull it up. “This is a sudden change.”

  He knew why she thought that. He’d made their situation far too complicated with his own issues. “It’s not. I’ve been thinking of little but this since we bonded.” She was in his thoughts day and night. He’d tortured himself by denying this thing between them, by imagining her getting fed up and walking away. He’d never thought of someone more.

  But Lena gave a little huff of laughter. “Maybe you should start paying more attention to the challenges.” She leaned in and kissed him, a sweet peck that turned hot when her fingers dug into his shoulder and she swung her leg over his to straddle him. His cock thickened between them, and he was ready to go again when she broke the kiss and met his eyes.

  “I know the stakes are high if this fails,” he said. His family had already been torn apart by a successful Match, so to be bound and a failure? It would be disastrous.

  “I don’t want to cost you your job,” she said, as if that reply made sense.

  Was that what she was worried about? It hadn’t crossed his mind. A job was fleeting, even one as important as defending his people from the Apsyn threat. “Not my job. Our connection. If we fail...” He didn’t have the words to finish the sentence.

  She kissed him quickly. “Then let’s not fail.”

  “As simple as that?” More than half a lifetime of worry, and she distilled the solution down into a sentence. He wanted to trust in her, to trust in them, but he didn’t know if he could.

  “Simple,” she said. “Not easy, there’s a difference.”

  Was there? He was ready to find out.

  HE WAS WORRIED ABOUT her more than his job. Lena didn’t know what to think, and she was scared to be happy. Sleeping in Solan’s arms had been a dream come true, but she hadn’t wanted to wake, worried how he’d react. This, though, was more than she could have anticipated.

  “You really want to see where this goes?” She saw surety in his eyes. He believed what he was saying. But he’d shifted his view so quickly that she was afraid.

  “I do,” he said.

  “With me?” She had to make sure, even though she couldn’t stop smiling or touching him.

  He was smiling right back. “Is there anyone else in the room?”

  She gave an exaggerated look around, as if a third person was waiting out of view. Luckily there wasn’t. Of course, if there had been another person in the room, they’d probably be undergoing a challenge, something she didn’t want to try naked.

  He cupped her chin and peered deep into her eyes, holding her trapped in his gaze. “You’re my Match. Perhaps it’s time to give in.”

  She winced. Give in? Yeah, not so great. “I get that fate has a part to play in this, but I’m more than just some... some... I can’t even think of the right word.” She didn’t want to be the person he was forced to choose. That wasn’t any kind of choice, and the thing between them was bound to fail before it began.

  He didn’t let go, and Lena couldn’t make herself pull away. She was weak for this man. “You want me to say I’d choose you if there was no Match?”

  “It sounds stupid when you say it like that, of course you wouldn’t.” He wasn’t human. This wasn’t Earth. Why did she keep forgetting that? The rules and expectations were different here, and she was going to run headlong into heartbreak if she couldn’t keep that in mind.

  But Solan wasn’t giving up. “I can’t say what I would have done,” he admitted. “But I appreciated your spirit when we met, your dedication. You stood up from a medbay bed and rushed right into battle to save your friends. I thought of you after you left the ship. Would I have acted on it? Probably no.”

  Right. This didn’t sound good, and she didn’t want to hear anymore. She wasn’t going to let the memory of spectacular sex get ruined by this mortifying conversation. She started to pull back.

  Solan’s arm stopped her, not gripping tight enough to hurt. She could have pulled away if she needed, but she wanted to hear what he was going to say. “You’re adjusting to a new world, literally. You’ve been hurt. And though Synnrs are not nearly bad as Apsyns, the people I’m forced to associate with can be... unkind.” He spoke quickly; he had to know he was running out of time to make excuses.

  “Quit the bullshit.” She didn’t need to put up with this.

  “What?” His brow furrowed in confusion, and Lena was not going to find it cute. No. Why did the man have to be so damn sexy? It was screwing with her brain. At least the blanket was covering up his most... interesting bits.

  She didn’t want excuses. She wanted the truth. “Pretend all the rest of your problems don’t exist. Is this something you actually want?”

  He didn’t hesitate to answer. “I want nothing more.”

  This was a turning point, even more than the sex. The sex they could write off as something that happened in the heat of the moment, something neither of them could control. This was choosing to move forward. Lena didn’t believe for a second that their issues would suddenly resolve like they’d never been there if they took the plunge. Solan had decades of resentment built up against his father and the Match that had sent his life off on a different path.

  She couldn’t fix him. She didn’t want to. This sexy, complicated, wounded, wonderful man was who she wanted, bullshit and all. And she wasn’t going to pull away just because there would be challenges in their path.

  She leaned in close and trailed her hands up his chest. “Then kiss me like you mean it.”

  He did, devouring her as thoroughly as the night before, his tongue tangling with her as his fingers gripped her tight. She found herself on top of him, legs straddling his as his cock hardened against her. Yes. That was what she wanted, and there was nothing keeping her from having it, not when Solan was groaning under her and arching against her.

  A lazy morning in bed had its advantages. Even better? A vigorous morning in bed.

  Lena’s core tightened and she wanted him inside her. Now. Her fingers gripped him firmly, the different shape of a Zulir cock
already familiar.

  But before she could do anything more than tease, the lights flashed red and they both froze.

  A challenge.

  Fuck.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THEY’D BOTH TAKEN A minute to splash cold water on themselves and change into clothes. Was the computer going to mark them down for that? Lena didn’t care. The water hadn’t done much and the adrenaline surging in her blood was only making her desire worse. Hopefully it would go away. Or this would be a quick mission and they’d be back in bed in no time.

  She couldn’t look too closely at Solan or she might jump him, and that would definitely be an automatic failure.

  They were wearing bulky life support suits that would have weighed them down if they weren’t in the decreased gravity field of a dying space ship. The mission was simple: get in and quickly retrieve a sample from the ship’s lab before the ship destructed while avoiding getting killed by the security robots. No living people to worry about.

  But the ship was falling apart. A giant breach in another part of the ship made it unrepairable. The self-destruct sequence hadn’t been activated, but the breach could turn into a bigger rupture at any moment. Their suits would protect them for long enough to get back to their own ship so long as they didn’t get damaged by debris or robots.

  Easy.

  After their last mission and the night spent together, Lena was feeling confident. They were going to get this done quickly and perfectly. She wasn’t going to screw up.

  Of course, she’d feel more confident if her suit was equipped with a blaster, but none had been provided when they’d stepped into the simulator.

  “Why no blaster?” She kept tracing her palm over her hip, looking for the weight that wasn’t there.

  “One wrong shot and you could damage the system to the point of failure,” Solan explained.

  “And my wings can’t?” Had he seen her try and aim with those things? She was far from accurate.

  “Once you have control you’ll be more precise than a blaster ever could be.” He said it like he believed she’d get there one day soon. Lena wanted to trust him.

  They entered through the air lock near the storage compartment and kept close together. With the ship at risk of falling apart, they couldn’t get separated. And Lena was relieved. Splitting up had led to disaster last time, even if it had been her idea. She didn’t want to ruin things again.

  A whir, sort of like a power drill, was their only warning before a security robot shot a beam of light their way, tearing through the floor. Solan’s wings flared out and he sent a blast of his spark at it. It popped and fizzed and stopped moving. Dead.

  “Is that going to notify the other robots that we’re here?” Their intel didn’t say whether or not the machines were networked, only that there were potentially dozens of them. If they weren’t careful, they’d be overwhelmed.

  “I guess we’ll find out.” He wasn’t concerned. And Lena supposed it hadn’t been that difficult to kill one. They could handle more.

  But they still moved carefully, because of the fragile state of the ship and to avoid alerting the robots. The gravity was unstable and they both kept their wings out to improve balance. It only took Lena two tries to pull out her wings and she was calling that a win.

  To get to the lab they had to walk across a long catwalk, and the damage had severed some of the planks, leaving a gap of about twenty feet. Too far to jump. Well, too far if the gravity was right and they didn’t have wings. Lena looked down. It was a long way to fall, and she wasn’t sure how she’d get back up.

  “If you miss, use your wings to guide you down,” Solan said gently. “I’ll follow after. We’ll find another way around. But I think you can make this jump.”

  Lena took a deep breath and gave herself as much of a running start as she could. Height was important here and she launched, pumping her wings as hard as she could to rise a couple of feet. They couldn’t do much more than that, but it was enough. Then she spread them wide and glided down gently, clearing the gap with two feet to spare.

  Solan landed after her a minute later.

  She heard the whir of a robot powering up and lashed out with her spark before she could over think it, her power tearing it in two.

  “Ha! Take that!” She pumped her fist in triumph and grinned at Solan.

  His own smile was proud, even if his eyes were warning her to keep quiet.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. She knew.

  The lab was just around the corner and there were no other robots lurking. Solan watched her back while Lena transferred the sample from where it was stored to the container she was carrying. Once it was all ready, she stood and squared her shoulders.

  “You know this thing is about to go all wrong, right?” Two robots and one jumpable gap were no challenge at all, and Lena was beginning to think the computer lady running their lives was bit of a sadist.

  “You think?” He took a second to squeeze her arm, and Lena would have kissed him if not for the survival suits.

  “Yeah. I really do.” She normally loved to be right, but when they spotted three robots lurking right outside the lab door, she could have cursed her instincts. “See?”

  “Not the time to gloat,” he warned, letting his wings flare out.

  “The computer lady isn’t as smart as she thinks she is.” Lena hoped she was listening, then realized that taunting the computer in charge of their life and death was probably not the best idea.

  “Not the time,” he repeated. “I’ve got the one on the far left and center. Take out the one on the right.”

  She had retracted her wings when they made it to the lab and regretted that when they misfired, flaring out for a second before disappearing. What was the fucking trick? In the time it took her to get her wings out and stable, another security bot joined the fight, whirring up in warring.

  “Fuck. How many robots are there total?” This was an easy place for the robots to overwhelm them, but she wasn’t going down. They were going to win this damn mission.

  “Intel doesn’t say.” Solan was calm as could be and Lena wanted to emulate that. “You start from the right. I’ll start from the left. You can do this.”

  She appreciated his faith, even if nothing to this point said she deserved it. She was going to live up to his expectations. They blasted through the doors, which the robots didn’t seem to expect. Lena took out her first one with one shot, and sent a second blast towards her other target, but that robot had enough time to figure out what was going on and shoot her. The blast hit her in the arm, but her suit absorbed most of the damage.

  Still, it was enough to knock her off her game and her wings disappeared. She cursed and scrambled out of the way of another blast, and by the time she got her wings back under control Solan had shot his spark and taken the robot out.

  “You only get half credit for that one,” she muttered, “I killed it most of the way.”

  “Sure you did,” he agreed, placating her. He helped her to her feet, and then they were on a mad dash back to their entry point. Lena’s wings came out when she summoned them and she successfully took out a robot before it could even whir up to hit them. She barely noticed the gap in the catwalk, and in under two minutes they were back in the main storage bay and exiting through the airlock.

  The simulation dissolved around them and the computer lady’s voice came over the speakers. “Mission completed successfully.”

  Lena took off her helmet and couldn’t hide her smile if she tried. “Two successes. Maybe we’re doing something right.”

  “Yeah.” Solan smiled back. He took off his own helmet and let it fall to the floor.

  Their gazes caught, and all that lust from before came flooding back as if it had never gone away. Lena wasn’t sure who made the first move, but in a flash her legs were around Solan’s waist and their lips locked together in a desperate kiss.

  SOLAN’S WHOLE BODY was attuned to Lena and he couldn’t stop kissing her. All that
existed in the world was her body pressed close to him, and if he didn’t get inside her soon he was going to die. He’d never been driven by desire like this before, but now he could not imagine giving it up. Lena was his in a way he’d never imagined. He didn’t want to go back.

  But he needed to move forward. His cock was hard enough to burst out of his pants and he feared he’d come at the slightest pressure. But it didn’t make him stop. Not when she was kissing him back just as furiously as he kissed her.

  They weren’t gentle right now, not riding high on a successful mission, the danger and destruction still heating their blood. He could give her slow and kind some other time.

  They ripped off their clothes in a mad rush until they were strewn across the floor without a care.

  Lena tore herself away and Solan clutched her tight, only letting go when she tried to sink to her knees. She licked her lips and flicked her eyes up at him. “I’ve been wanting to taste this since I first saw you.”

  “Braz.” The curse tore out of him, and somehow his cock got even harder. She was a temptress sent from the bowels of Brazon to lead him to perdition. And he followed willingly.

  Seeing her kneeling before him made him feel like some dark god, but she was the one he wanted to worship. And when her lips touched his cock, he saw stars and galaxies. She teased the head and wrapped her fingers tight around him, her grip sure.

  Her tongue did devious things to him, and she glanced up with the sure knowledge in her eyes that he was completely under her spell. She owned him completely. And if she kept doing that he’d spend far too soon. He tugged her away reluctantly and watched with rapt fascination as his cock slid out of her mouth.

  She licked her lips and he groaned.

  He hauled her up and crushed his mouth against hers. Her naked body was a temptation he couldn’t resist, and his hands roved over her, finding the wet heat of her core. “You did like that.” It came out a primal growl. He barely recognized his own voice.