The Gate Jumpers Saga: Science Fiction Romance Collection

by Elin Wyn

  “But you gave me medicine just now, right? Here,” she said, and it was without any sort of hesitation that she slid her bloodstained sleeve off her shoulder. “It’s healed.”

  Sure enough, the nasty wound from the laser earlier was gone, leaving only flawless olive skin behind. “Still,” Zaddik growled, ushering her back into the chair.

  “But this seems like something you’d stand up to hear, right?” she questioned, staring up at him.

  Zaddik scrubbed a hand over his face. “You don’t know anything about it.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No,” Sherre agreed. “So tell me.”

  Sherre

  “I don’t… I’ve never had to explain it before,” Zaddik admitted.

  “Start at the beginning,” Sherre suggested. “Why do they call it a bond?”

  “Because it’s a bond,” Zaddik said, obviously frustrated. “It’s one body calling out to another; pure chemistry.”

  “So it’s just a physical thing?” Sherre asked, surprised. She would’ve thought that Zaddik’s people were a little more evolved than that.

  “Yes! Well, no,” he shook his head, thinking better of it. “It’s the person trying to establish a bond with another person. Two compatible people whose coupling would not only benefit themselves, but also their planet, because of the strong offspring that bonds typically produce.”

  Oh god. “Uh, and, we’re bonded?” she asked, trying to stop herself from getting off topic. “You and me?”

  “No, not yet,” he assured her. “To complete a bond, two people have to…” he trailed off, and an expression that looked a little like shame overtook his face.

  “I can guess where you’re going with this,” Sherre saved him.

  “Yes,” he coughed, clearing his throat. “And the way that it usually goes, the bond will properly form afterwards.”

  “But,” she frowned, “If the bond doesn’t actually happen until after that, then why do you think we’re bonding?”

  Zaddik looked like he didn’t want to say, but then he huffed a sigh and said, quite simply, “There are signs.”

  “Like?” Sherre prodded.

  “Like my hot flashes, and your sense of cold,” he shrugged. “It doesn’t happen with every bond, but it’s not so uncommon, either. It’s thought to help persuade the bonding pair into one another’s arms.”

  Sherre considered that, glancing at the flush on his neck again. But he’d had that since they’d ridden in the pod together, and she’d only just started getting a chill aboard his ship. “Bonding isn’t instant,” he said, apparently sensing her confusion. “I think I’ve been feeling it since we met, but you might have only fallen under it in the past few hours.”

  “What triggered it?” Sherre asked, trying to understand. “Or, is it common—”

  “No,” Zaddik shook his head. “You’re the first person that my body’s tried to bond with.” At her blush, he added, “Though, it is usually driven by the instinct to survive. To mate, really.”

  “Oh,” Sherre said, feeling a little disappointed. “And, we’ve been in danger of the Thagzars the whole time—”

  “I’ll admit,” he cut her off, “That I didn’t actually realize the bond until you’d been hit. But dropping you off inside the control room, hurt and in shock…” he shook his head. “My brain finally realized what my body had been trying to tell me.”

  “But how do you know?” Sherre pressed, trying to understand. How could he be so confident when she hadn’t felt a thing?

  “Your scent, for one,” he admitted. “You’ve never been to my planet, but when you’re around, I can smell an Eldiriak elder tree full of berries, washed clean from a mid-afternoon rain.” He closed his eyes as he said it, inhaling deeply. “You smell like home.”

  “Y-you smell like pumpkins,” Sherre blurted out.

  “Pumpkins?” Zaddik repeated, opening his eyes.

  “And cinnamon. Oh, and vanilla,” she said, taking a deep breath of the air herself. “Scents from fall,” she explained.

  “So you have been feeling the effects of the bond,” Zaddik grinned excitedly.

  Sherre still wasn’t so sure, but she nodded along as if in agreement. But Zaddik wasn’t fooled, and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Earth really doesn’t have such thing?”

  “Well,” Sherre shrugged, thinking. “We have love, I guess.”

  “Love?” he repeated, leaning forward. “Explain it to me.”

  “I mean…” she swallowed thickly, glancing up at Zaddik from under her eyelashes. She’d never been in love, but she certainly wasn’t about to admit that to him.

  As an older man and a seasoned traveler, Sherre had no doubts that he’d probably had loads of relationships, even if he had never bonded before.

  “Some people think there is a love at first sight, like when you see someone and know, right there and then, that you were meant to be together. But I think it’s really just two people deciding to be together, and making it work,” she admitted, remembering her parents.

  Zaddik furrowed his brow and asked, “So, it is a choice, not a feeling?”

  “Well, there are different kinds,” Sherre admitted sheepishly. “You know, love from a parent, or a sibling—”

  “There is only one bond,” Zaddik shook his head. “The pride of a parent could never measure up to the care of a partner.”

  Sherre highly doubted that, but she wasn’t about to argue with him on it. “That pride is inherent,” she said instead. “Loving a stranger is not.”

  That seemed to give Zaddik pause. Finally, he asked, “Are we strangers?”

  “Of course not,” she grinned, giving him an odd look. “We just took back a ship together. I’d consider you a friend.”

  “Then,” he said, drawing closer to her. She was still standing, but his superior height made him tower over her. “Would you permit this friend to kiss you?”

  Sherre gulped at the question. It wasn’t like they hadn’t already, but to be asked so bluntly was more than a little nerve racking.

  Normally, she would’ve said no, but she couldn’t deny that there was something going on between them; something that made her want to kiss him again. “Um,” she said, licking her lips. “Sure. Yes,” she stammered, blushing.

  Zaddik only grinned in reply, moving his hands to cup her face. Yet, the moment his fingertips brushed her cheeks, he jerked back. Sherre didn’t have to ask why – she’d felt it, too; had been feeling it every time they’d touched, all the way from the pod to the mothership.

  A sudden spark of fireworks going off just under her skin.

  Zaddik looked embarrassed, standing there with his hands hovering just above her face. “Did you—”

  “Yes,” Sherre nodded eagerly. He wasn’t wrong when he’d said that she was cold earlier, but the adrenaline had made her numb and ignorant of the chill.

  His touch had reminded her though, if only from the way that it’d warmed her up. “Here,” she said softly, placing her hands over his.

  Rather than jumping away from the feeling, Sherre kept herself still, humming as the initial burst of tingles turned into something much more satisfying. It was as if she’d become boneless, melting from the sparks his touch was sending down her arms and into her chest, finally stopping to pool in her stomach.

  “Zaddik,” she said breathlessly, turning her face into one of his hands. He didn’t say anything, but brushed his thumb over her bottom lip, slipping it inside after a moment. Sherre welcomed it, acting blindly on instinct as she sucked it into her mouth further, swirling her tongue around the slight point to his nail.

  “Sherre,” he whispered, pulling his hand away. Sherre was about to protest, but then he was kissing her, pressing their lips together in a harsh grinding of lips and tongue. Sherre only pressed back harder, running her fingers through his hair as she tried to chase that delicious feeling turning her lips numb.

  Zaddik growled into her mouth when she nibbled on the edge of the tong
ue he’d just stuck past her lips, and she gasped at the sudden knee nudging between her legs. Blinking through the haze clouding her brain, she reached forward and palmed his bulge, smiling as she heard him suck in a breath.

  Crowding her backwards into the chair, Zaddik took the edge of her suit’s neckline that she’d left down to reveal her shoulder and pulled, until he finally slipped in a hand and slid out one of her breasts. Sherre felt herself harden immediately from being exposed to the cold air, and Zaddik watched it hungrily, squeezing her as he ducked to take the nipple into his mouth.

  Sherre moaned and arched her back at the stimulation, furiously rubbing at his crotch now. He was hard, she could feel it, and the button she’d just caught a finger on was spurring her to action.

  “Shit,” Zaddik growled, pulling away from her breast to clench his jaw as she gripped his dick, pumping it lazily as she marveled at how it throbbed in her grasp.

  Ripping at the clasps to her suit, Zaddik tore it down the middle, making her giggle as his eyes roamed over everything he’d just revealed. “Your turn,” she demanded, pulling at his belt. He didn’t have to be told twice; shimmying out of his pants and throwing his top to the ground, Sherre pulled her arms from her suit, shoving the thing down to her knees.

  Zaddik’s fingers at her entrance sent shivers down her spine, and she wrapped her legs around his hips to urge him farther inside. He was only happy to comply, but there was only so much she could take, and soon she was begging – for what, she wasn’t sure, but definitely for more.

  She had her hands tangled in his hair and her mouth on his neck when she felt him spread her legs even further. Sherre tried to angle herself better for him, biting into his collarbone as he bumped against her entrance.

  “Please,” she breathed, desperate.

  “Damn,” he muttered. “You’re so…” But he couldn’t seem to put it into words, and then he was moving, sliding inside with a smooth roll of his hips. Sherre gasped, scrambling to grab onto his shoulders as he pulled out only to push right back inside.

  It felt amazing. The sparks flying under her skin had turned into one big giant hum, and Sherre had to bite her lip to keep from crying out as he picked up the pace.

  “Z-Zaddik,” she breathed, the warmth pooling in her stomach rolling and clenching. “Zaddik, please, I’m going to—”

  “Me too,” he grunted, thrusting inside as he lifted her legs up higher, the sweat rolling down his forehead.

  “Zad—!” Sherre cut herself off, biting her lip as her whole body seemed to tense up. Zaddik only moved faster, huffing out breaths as he tried to finish with her.

  Riding out the aftershocks, Sherre clenched down especially hard when she tried to move her arms and was hit with an odd squeeze of tingles across her chest that raced down into her gut. Zaddik sputtered as she did it, and he suddenly slowed, moaning as he bent his head into her shoulder.

  Sherre could only breathe, boneless and spent underneath him.

  After sleeping in the control room, Zaddik and Sherre agreed to turn the ship’s central temperature to the lowest it would go, lest any Thagzars were still onboard.

  “I don’t know about your ship, but this one usually needs three to man it,” Zaddik said as he jogged back and forth, firing up the main controls.

  “Ours is the same,” Sherre said, oddly at peace with the cold bite in the air. Still, even though their internal temperatures had returned to normal after their activities last night, Zaddik had still demanded that she wear something a bit thicker than her suit.

  She hadn’t bothered trying to explain the insulation technology that went into it, and accepted his extra jacket instead.

  “You’ve got navigation, and I’ve got piloting and engineering, right?” Zaddik double-checked, looking at something on the third screen to the left.

  “Yep,” Sherre nodded. She was in a wonderful mood, feeling oddly satisfied but also quite excited. Plus, the jacket wrapped around her was soaked in Zaddik’s scent, and every time she moved she got a whiff of pumpkin spice. “Ready?” she asked.

  “Just putting in the coordinates to the lab,” Zaddik replied. “You?”

  Sherre grinned to herself. “More than I’ve ever been.” Zaddik didn’t say anything to that, but threw her a glance. He was grinning too, his blue eyes beaming.

  “Begin countdown to warp drive,” he called to the computer. As an artificial voice started rattling off numbers, Zaddik took a seat beside Sherre. “Let’s get out of here,” he winked.

  Sherre couldn’t have cared less, so long as they were together.

  Lost with the Alien

  Jeline

  Jeline couldn’t stop blushing. She knew what she had to look like; could feel the heat of her own face burning as she stuttered through her introduction. As a redhead, she’d always been prone to hot cheeks and pink ears whenever she got embarrassed, and, tragically, this was one of those times.

  “But yes,” she said quickly, her mind scrambling as she looked squarely at the stranger’s forehead lest his oddly colored eyes trip her up even further. “I fly the ship. The mother ship, I mean, not the pods. Oh, but I can fly those too! Of course, I can—” With a huff, she stopped herself and turned her eyes down to look at her feet. The scuffs on her usually immaculate boots caught her off-guard, and she had to close her eyes to properly gather her thoughts (not to mention her composure). “To answer your question, yes,” she nodded sharply to herself. “I am the pilot of my crew.”

  “I thought so,” the man chuckled, and Jeline couldn’t help herself; she glanced back up to look at his face. The stranger, ‘Kogav Alken,’ as he’d introduced himself, was grinning, and those odd purple eyes of his were practically glowing. “You have strong hands,” he added. “And a firm grip. It’s something I’m beginning to think must be a universal truth of all pilots,” he winked.

  Jeline almost frowned in confusion, but quickly realized that he must’ve been talking about their handshake earlier. “Um, you too,” she agreed. “Does that mean that you do, as well…? Fly, I mean,” she blushed even harder, embarrassed to be tripping over her own words. She wasn’t usually this bad – well, aside from the blushing – but his hypnotic stare was leaving her flustered.

  “I don’t fly,” Kogav chuckled. “Well, not normally, though I can fly my pod.” Jeline jumped as she felt him brush a calloused finger across her wrist. “My hands are rough from fixing our ship, not steering her.”

  “Y-yeah?” Jeline swallowed nervously, trying to be discreet as she tucked her arms out of reach behind her back. “You must be your ship’s engineer, then.”

  “That I am,” Kogav boasted brightly. “But our pilot is there,” he said, motioning to a tall man in braids standing just a few feet away. “Zaddik Wangari. Man’s been fighting the good fight since before I was born.”

  Jeline followed his finger and glanced at ‘Zaddik.’ The man had a weathered look about him that was nothing if not a stark contrast to Kogav’s own youthful energy, and yet it was one that Jeline could tell had been earned from not only his age, but hard experience.

  It was why she was so surprised to see the man smiling while talking with Sherre, her own ship’s newest navigator and youngest crewmember. Of course, Sherre was a bright woman in her own right. There was no denying that, but all the books in the world couldn’t teach a person social skills.

  And after living in a tight-knit earth colony all her life, Sherre was naïvely annoying at best.

  Jeline looked back at Kogav with a furrowed brow. She wanted to ask him how such a veteran was dealing with Sherre so easily; how he could have the patience, considering the miserable history that her own captain had shared about Kogav’s crew.

  “What?” Kogav asked kindly, raising an eyebrow as he leaned in closer. “You look like you want to say something.”

  Jeline’s eyes widened as he spoke so close to her. She hadn’t noticed it before (hadn’t really noticed anything but those purple eyes of his), but his teeth wer
e pointed. Glancing away quickly, she looked back at Zaddik and Sherre again.

  If nothing else, the two of them were an odd juxtaposition in appearance alone – he, an older man towering over her, and Sherre, a shorter woman with her head thrown back in an attempt to look up at him properly.

  Jeline flexed her jaw. Now that she thought about it, she doubted that Zaddik was much taller than the man currently leaning in so close to her. She wondered how she and Kogav must’ve looked to the other men surrounding them.

  No, not men, Jeline reminded herself.

  Aliens

  It was a big difference, one that Jeline couldn’t help but keep forgetting. Months of academy training should have prepared her – borderline desensitized her – to every kind of alien interaction imaginable.

  And yet, this purple-eyed humanoid was affecting her more than any of the academy professor’s simulations ever had.

  “Jeline?” Kogav asked again, calling her back to their present situation.

  The one that left her blushing while a very human-like sort of handsome alien continued to crowd her personal space.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Kogav finally stepped back, shrugging as he sighed. “And yes, it’s just what it looks like: our pilot is a hardass.”

  Jeline blinked at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Kogav said, rocking in place as he balanced on the balls of feet. “He’s just very protective of his ship. Not exactly the type to leave her controls free for anyone to practice on during their lunch break, if you know what I mean—”

  “A-actually!” Jeline interrupted him, feeling more than a little uncomfortable to hear someone badmouthing one of their superiors. “I just wanted to point out our engineer,” she said quickly, almost jumping for joy as she spotted Willovitch over his shoulder.

  “Yeah?” Kogav asked, turning to follow her gaze.