by Erin Raegan
The light from a nearby star system was reflecting against the platform and when it started to shake under us, I looked up in alarm. We were headed straight for a small rock. Shadowed from the stars behind it, I couldn’t make out what it was but we were almost on top of it.
“Hold still,” Killian was hissing in my ear. To who was anyone’s guess. All of us were wrestling.
“Get it off me,” the grey alien hissed back muffled. I did not miss the disgusted tilt to his voice as he said it.
“Uh, guys,” I called nervously. Hysteria creeping up on me. We were going to smash right into that rock. Now close enough to see it was fucking humongous. As fast as we were going, we had maybe five minutes tops. And though that weird haze was protecting my air, I knew it was not going to do one damn thing against a crash landing on a strange planet.
They both ignored me. Pulling me back and forth between them. I was going to have whiplash after this. If we lived through it. “Hello!” I shouted shrilly.
“What?” Killian snarled absently.
“Look!” I let go of the alien with one arm pointing. They both followed my trembling finger. The grey alien shoving against my breasts so he could peek out from below me.
More curses.
I could make out little rivers of something on the tiny planet now. Craters. The shaking was getting bad, my knees bouncing against the platform so badly I knew I would be bleeding if I looked down.
“C-c-c-r-r-a-a-s-s-h-h-h,” I tried to yell, my voice vibrating along with the rest of me. It was like the worst kind of turbulence you could imagine.
Grey alien thrust me up and into Killian, rolling onto his belly and trying to crawl away against the vibrating platform. Killian twisted until I was laying under him, flattening me as best he could as he vibrated. The skin of his cheeks were wiggling. I stared at them, a hysterical laugh bubbling up and out of me.
Unbelievably, he looked down at me, grinning wide with chattering fangs. He winked and placed a shaky kiss on my mouth. I accidentally bit him with my own chattering teeth. It felt like my bones were going to rattle tight out of my body.
“G-gr-av-it-tal p-p-ull,” Killian tried to shout over a weird whistling sound. It steadily picked up volume. Hot air now somehow coming out of nowhere to blow my hair back against my face.
“Y-y-e-s-s-s-s-s,” the grey guy hissed. Somehow coating that vibrating word with a heavy dose of no shit.
“F-f-i-i-x-x-x-x i-i-t-t-t-t-t.”
“T-t-r-y-y-i-i-n-g-g-g.”
“F-a-s-s-t-t-e-r-r-r-r.”
If I could have rolled my eyes. I would have.
The shaking slowed but not enough. We were on the planet’s horizon now. The size of it blocking out everything around us. Pure white haze flooded my vision and a musky smell. Both sweet and hot like fire. I looked up in horror as the blue haze started to wink in and out. The air around me thinning.
“Sh-u-tting d-own,” the grey alien shouted.
“Wh-a-t?” I shouted back. The whistling so high I felt my ears popping.
“Have to jump!” He shouted at us both.
I looked at him upside down incredulously.
He grinned wide and sharp. “Til next time, beasty.”
Then he jumped.
I felt Killian sigh above me.
“TIME TO GO SWEETS!” His voice a whisper even though I could see him trying to shout.
“WHAT?”
“JUMP!”
“WHAT?!” He did not just say fucking jump.
“JUMP!” Killian dragged me to the edge of the platform. Dark clouds below us. No clear ground.
“NO!”
Killian roared laughter, it sounded more like a high hiss to me than anything else but I gawked at the wild grin on his face.
Don’t you dare.
His eyes crinkled with wild glee as I aimed my thoughts to him. He curled his body around me, my dress whipping back and forth against my legs. I shook my head frantically. My feet stumbling against the platform as it started to tip on its side.
Killian nodded, watching me closely.
Then the platform dropped out from under me and we were free falling.
I clung to him, a painful scream trapped in my throat.
Wind whipped at me from all angles like knives. I could see his mouth moving as he held me clutched to his chest, but I couldn’t hear a single word.
The strange planet and the dark sky tumbled in around me. Spinning so fast I grew dizzy, my head rattling on my shoulders.
I felt Killian’s ice cold cheek against mine, his lips moving against my ear, little cold kisses all over my neck and I squeezed my eyes tight. We were going to die.
This was it.
There was no bright flash of all my favorite moments going through my mind. No revelation.
All that was in my head was:
I’m going to die.
I’m going to explode all over the ground in a splatter of goopy Theo mess.
I’m going to die.
Killian’s going to die.
We’re going to die.
We’re going to die. We’re going to die. We’re going to die. We’re going to die. We’re going to die. We’re going to die. We’re going to die. We’re going to die. We’re going to die. We’re going to die. We’re going to die. We’re going to die.
We’regoingtofuckingdie!
I didn’t notice us slowing. My eyes glued to Killian’s shoulder, open wide with terror. Dry as a fucking desert.
But we did slow. And slow and slow. Until the shrill sound of my own scream startled me so bad, I nearly peed myself. And on Killian.
It petered out slowly. My eyes moving from his shoulder and slowly falling to the ground. It had stopped rising. Or we had stopped falling. We were hovering.
I looked up at Killian, my mouth gawking. My tongue drying out just as much as my eyes had.
I had to clear my throat a few times before I could speak. I must have been screaming that entire time.
“Y-you have a rocket on your b-back,” I said hoarsely.
Killian smiled at me wide and unbidden. “Alright there, sweets?”
I blinked at him owlishly. “No, Killian,” I told him, too hoarse to inject the venom I wanted to in my voice. “I am not alright.”
“Love you,” he said around his irritating grin.
“I hate you,” I rasped back.
“No,” he said low, his hair fluttering around his face in the wind—wind from the air I was breathing. “You love me.”
“No,” I tried to hiss. “I don’t.”
He clicked his tongue. Leaning against my mouth he whispered his smile across my lips. “Little liar.”
Epilogue
Theo
I didn’t speak to Killian for two whole days.
When that didn’t seem to get my point across, I had no choice but to revert to extremes.
Naked was the only way I could get his irritating aloofness to crack. I slept naked. I ate breakfast in our room naked. I took way too many showers, gleefully rubbing my body in every which way as he watched. I hadn’t worn a bra or underwear once since Leo picked us up from that weird little planet. And I picked out the tightest clothes I could get my hands on to make sure he knew it every moment he looked my way.
Two weeks now I’d pranced around him bare as the day I was born, flaunting what I let him see but refused to let him touch.
Any day now he would break. I could feel it in the air. His hot eyes barely able to leave me for more than a second each day.
I felt powerful. Like I could conquer the galaxy.
See, I did this because Killian was a hard man to love. He did not make it easy on me. My anger did nothing to deter him. He seemed to look forward to our arguments. Silence was no longer an effective weapon. He would just read my mind to get his kicks.
That left sex as my only viable option.
And oh boy was it working. For both of us.
Two weeks without even a finger on each other and
we were both feeling the effects.
And while I knew he was holding out to prove his many points—the biggest one that he planned to settle down with me on this new safe haven of a planet for us humans building a white picket fence and having a dozen kids—I was holding out for an entirely different reason.
At first it was to punish him for terrifying the living daylights out of me. Letting me get abducted. Refusing to have an adult conversation with me about our future—really, the reasons had been endless. But now, now, I was savoring this newfound power I had over him. Not because I wanted to teach him some kind of fucked up lesson, it had started because I was just so damn mad, but my anger had waned pretty quickly. I chose him after all, enemies and rockets and stubborn lord traits and all. No, now I held out because I had needed it.
At any moment Killian could have ended the sex ban. Literally with one simple invasion of my mind he could have wiped my conviction right from me. But he hadn’t.
He hadn’t.
He let me have these last two weeks. He let me test him. His vow to never control me that way ever again.
And now I knew.
I fucking loved him. An alien pirate lord.
I loved him so hard that I kept it up because it was the best kind of tease, and I could tell he was enjoying the sexual build up as much as I was at this point.
I had a feeling this was not going to be the last time we tested each other. It was too delicious. Too addicting. Fucking foreplay at its best.
Now we were just holding out to see who would break first.
Killian’s hot eyes were glued to my pebbled nipples under my shirt. Noah glowered at me from the across the room as I squirmed in my seat. He was talking with Killian, trying to get our arrival time out of him again. But Killian loved keeping Noah in the dark. He got a sick satisfaction out of irritating my brother since I had flat out told him he wasn’t allowed to pummel him into the ground.
After two weeks the two of them were settling into some weird contest. See who could piss the other off more that day. I didn’t care so long as blood wasn’t involved.
I licked my lips as Killian’s eyes ran over my stomach to stare hungrily at my shifting thighs.
Jeremy sighed from beside me. “I can’t sit with you anymore, Theo. You two need to fuck and put the rest of us out of our misery.”
“You’re just jealous,” Iris mumbled around her spoon. She swallowed and looked up at the ceiling, shivering dramatically. “Poor Jeremy. He’s going to catch your cooties.”
We both snickered as he glowered at us.
“It’s making me horny too, man,” Wes mumbled around his food sullenly.
“Gross.” Iris gagged, slapping her bothers arm.
He scowled at her. “There’s mostly alien dudes here, sis. You can get your rocks off if you just shake your ass at one of these guys. Unless I want to fuck May or Marcy, I ain’t gettin’ laid anytime soon.”
Oren thumped him on the back of the head, glowering at him.
Wes winced. “Alright, alright, just May then. Fuck.”
Oren didn’t stop glaring at him until Wes ducked his head in defeat.
Marcy sat with her sister a few feet away, her eyes on her plate, a curious blush on her face. She was quiet these days. Her and her sister both. Not at all how she’d been pre-alien invasion. But then none of us were the same anymore.
I looked at Holden then, sitting beside his brother with a blank look on his face. He’d been handling Abby’s death a little better, but I knew it would take him a long time to accept it. It would be a long time for myself as well.
Jeremy saw me looking and shifted, a subtle attempt to protect his brother. They’d spilled the beans to us last night. After Killian had said we would be arriving at our new home soon. All that time in Alaska, they’d planned to stay on Earth. They’d never realty intended to leave with us. They’d never wanted to go to this new planet. It had hurt to hear, but I understood it. Didn’t mean I wasn’t angry that they had been plotting their escape in secret the entire time we hid out in Alaska.
It didn’t matter now though. We were all going. That choice had been taken from them by Killian. By our trip home and finding everything and everyone…just gone.
Jeremy and Holden had nowhere else to go anymore.
After a quick escape from a Veel army near Litsipith, narrowly avoiding a war with them, we’d had to meet up with the Dahk for emergency repairs. And now they were escorting us to this new planet in their big ass—but still not as big as Killian’s—ship.
I caught Killian’s flared gaze and ducked, hiding my smile.
We would be there soon. And me and my family had a big decision to make.
Well really it had already been made.
Uncle Sal and Aunt Bets were not happy with my decision at first—particularly Sal—but they understood. I had a feeling they didn’t trust this new home any more than I did.
Noah would stay with me—for me. Jeremy and Holden didn’t feel passionate one way or another. So they agreed to stay with us.
We wouldn’t be rehoming to some strange planet.
We wouldn’t feel safe there. I doubted any human would.
I did not hide our plans from Killian. It would have been impossible anyway. He knew what was coming when we landed.
We would have probably already confronted him if it weren’t for Iris, Wes, Tibert, and the others. Tibert was still their father and May and the others still followed him blindly. They still needed to get to that new planet, regardless if I had zero intentions of ever stepping foot on it.
Killian had until we arrived to get with the program. After that, all bets were off.
That next morning I woke up to him just as naked as me. Both of us wrapped around each other. I was so entwined with him I might as well have been an octopus.
We both groaned out loud. Both of us sweaty and panting from rubbing against each other all night.
“Ready yet, sweets?”
“You first,” I grinned down at him. I would not be the first of us to surrender.
He smiled, wicked and tempting, palming my naked behind.
“No touching,” I said inches from his mouth. Breathless and panting.
He looked down at my breasts smashed to his chest and raised one dark brow.
“Who is mounted on me, Theo?”
“I am.” I shivered as his palms slowly ran up the back of my spread thighs.
“Who’s cunt is spread across my cock?”
“Mine.” I couldn’t help but grind. Just a baby one.
He licked one of his fangs, flicking his tongue against it sharply.
“It is not I that begged for release in sleep last eve,” he claimed boldly.
But I had. I so had. I could remember every filthy minute of my dreams. I couldn’t not have tried to act them out in my sleep. They had been so damn vivid.
One more lift of my hips and my forehead beaded with sweat. The effort to hold back nearly impossible.
I jumped up from the bed. My desire coating the insides of my thighs as I backed away from the bed.
He lay completely naked across the sheets, his head propped up on a fist as he watched me escape. I had to close my eyes to block out the sight of him palming his cock in his other hand.
“I will not surrender!” He shouted to me as I ran to the bathroom.
“Neither will I!”
He roared a dark laugh. “Today Theo! You will be beg me this day!”
I rolled my lips between my teeth to hold back a hysterical giggle.
God, I hoped so.
Killian
“No,” my Theo’s uncle choked on the word. “I’m fine.”
I looked back at my queen, a brow lifted in disbelief.
“He’s fine,” she insisted.
I shook my head. “It will not be for quite some time before we dock anywhere again.”
Sal nodded slowly. His mind a haze of uncertainty and determination.
The poor human
must love her. There was no other reason he would agree to this.
I looked back at her. A frown weighing me down. “I don’t want this for you.”
She shrugged. Unconcerned. Not even a hint of fear in her mind. “I don’t want this for you.”
I looked out on the lush planet. The other humans already having said their goodbyes and disembarked. They stood there, fear and excitement warring within them as Burin animatedly greeted them. A cadre of Dahk and Xixin at his back, ready to help the new arrivals integrate within the small human population.
“You don’t even want to see?” I asked her worriedly.
The rest of them spoke for her. “No, we want this.”
I looked them over. Her family. Sal, Bets, Jeremy, Holden, and even that cretin Noah. All of them prepared to follow her into the stars. The other two females, Marcy and Liza still undecided. Though Oren glowered at them both. His stance shifting anxiously beside the elder of the two sisters. He was already attached. They were waiting to see what my Theo did. If they chose to leave, I worried he would go with them.
Then what? Give my ship to Leovin? He would have the thing torn apart and sold before I could step foot from it. There was no other I could pass down my position to. Not without infighting.
I sighed in resignation. “Are you sure?” I asked her again, my eyes only for her. I already knew her decision. She was so stubborn. Her hot gaze both alight with lust and determination.
She was mine. Finally. In every way that she could be.
And I was a fool for her.
“But you have yet to even see it.”
The planet was truly beautiful. We could have a life there. A simple, quiet, safe, life.
She lifted her chin stubbornly.
I held back a snort.
My Theo did not want safe and quiet.
My own doing.
I had ruined her in the best ways.
“Very well,” I said, grinning despite my wavering emotions.
If a life in the stars was what she was after, then who was I to deny her?
“On or off,” I told the two females Oren watched with longing. “We leave for Rederend!”
