by Kate Rudolph
“Okay, surprise me.” Gamma Station was a monument to entertainment and pleasure and Ruby didn’t even try to imagine what the night would have in store for her. She and Nyco walked hand-in-hand down the corridor to one of those ever-present platforms. A few humans shot them curious glances, eyes focused on their hands, but Ruby didn’t spare a thought for their judgment. Earth was a bit of a backwater and while the alien population was steadily growing, it was still small and centered in large cities. Human/alien couples were still new, and she realized that if this thing with Nyco developed into something real, something beyond an inferno of excited attraction, she would be dealing with those looks possibly for the rest of her life.
Whoa. Rest of her life? She hadn’t even known the guy for an hour and she was already thinking about wedding bells and societal oppression.
She shook her head. Calm down, girl, she admonished herself. At least kiss the guy first. That sounded like an excellent idea, but before she could act on it the platform came to a halt and Nyco was guiding her off and down another corridor towards one of the entertainment quarters.
They were surrounded by families, children running around and circling their parents while other couples walked close together, their sides brushing. Gamma Station had a section dedicated to risqué nightlife, but this part wasn’t it. Ruby’s curiosity grew. She would expect dinner, or maybe dancing, but she didn’t see a restaurant, and the gentle music that pumped in from unseen speakers was not the kind that encouraged bumping and grinding.
Nyco finally stopped at the end of a small line of people congregating outside of one of the ornately decorated doors. Stars and galaxies were painted across black metal, sparkling as if lit from within. There was no sign by the door, nothing but the decoration to hint at where they were going.
“Are you going to tell me what we’re doing yet?” she asked. She didn’t actually care which way he answered, she just liked the game.
Nyco let go of her hand and Ruby was disappointed for a moment until he slung his arm over her shoulder and pulled her close. She leaned into him, wrapping one arm around his waist so that they were practically sealed together from shoulder to hip. It felt so good to touch him, like a relief from a pain she hadn’t realized she was feeling. “We’re almost there,” he promised.
A moment later the line began to move and she and Nyco shuffled forward along with the rest of the guests. The doors opened to darkness and Ruby’s mind scrambled to figure out what was going on. But when she stepped through a black curtain she gasped as the room came alive around her. She squeezed close to Nyco, keeping him close by touch since it was so dim that she could barely make out the outline of him.
Lights flickered all around them and the stars came to life as if they were floating in the middle of a distant galaxy. Between one breath and the next all her weight disappeared as the room engaged artificial antigravity. And then she and Nyco were floating around among the stars, swimming from galaxy to galaxy and giggling like school children as they made their explorations. It was childish and wonderful and unlike any other date she could remember. This beat the hell out of an awkward dinner or a boring movie, and she was almost certain that it wasn’t just because of the company.
Time didn’t flow steadily in the darkness among the stars. Eventually she and Nyco were forced to separate and the seconds they spent apart dragged from one to the next, interminable. But when they came together again time contracted to make up for the discrepancy and before she knew it they were floating back down to the floor slowly as they came back down to gravity and their time in the star chamber came to an end.
She held Nyco’s hand as they filed out of the room and when she noticed the clock on the wall outside she was shocked to see that more than two hours had gone by. “What’s next?” She wasn’t willing to let this night end and from the way Nyco was standing close and hovering over her, he felt the same. He leaned in and she was sure that he was going to finally kiss her, finally after that eternal two hours since their first meeting, that impossible length of time where they could’ve been kissing, their bodies acquainting themselves in the most intimate of fashions.
She was sure he was going to kiss her until someone jostled him from behind and Nyco spun with a growl, managing to put her body completely behind his as he turned to face the threat. Something feral within him came out and when he turned back to her his eyes were twin pools of red, a molten promise of danger that should’ve sent her running. It certainly shouldn’t have sent a thrill of arousal to her core, but Ruby was quickly coming to realize that she would never have any sense around this man. Her survival instincts were shot when it came to him, and she didn’t care, not one little bit.
“Your eyes.” She wasn’t scared of him, even if the sudden change was a little startling. Her hand raised up of its own volition and she brushed her fingers against his temple.
“What about them?” They were barely whispering, but despite the sounds of the people around them, she could hear him clearly.
“They’re red.” Could he feel it? Or was it involuntary?
His eyes slid shut and he turned his face to the side as if he could hide from her. “I’m sorry if I frightened you, it’s just...” He sighed and took a moment to collect his thoughts. “I don’t normally act like this, I have more control. But I’m...” This time when he trailed off, he didn’t pick up his thought.
“I’m not afraid. It’s kind sexy, actually.” The red might’ve been a little demonic, but Ruby found it alluring in a way. To see his emotions, his passion, laid out so sharply with a tell like that was kind of seductive. Would his eyes go red when they kissed? When she had him in her bed? Because if the last hours had told her anything, it was that their meeting had only one logical conclusion, her laying down on a soft mattress while he thrust into her hard enough to make her gasp.
His eyes snapped back to her and glowed red for a minute before subsiding to their normal dark color. He grinned. “Let’s go, I’m not done with you yet.”
CHAPTER FOUR
DENYA. DENYA, DENYA, denya. The word tapped an insistent beat in Nyco’s mind as he walked beside his mate, unconsciously brushing up against her at every chance he could. He wanted to drag her back to his room and seal the bond between them, to bring her to the heights of pleasure and show her exactly what she could gain by choosing to stand at his side. Every tale he had ever heard of the denya bond suddenly made sense, and at the same time all of those stories were insufficient to explain the intensity of this thing that had so suddenly blossomed within him.
And while most of his brain was dedicated to pleasing his mate and celebrating her discovery, a small seed of doubt nestled deep within him and threatened to bring his joy crashing to the ground. She was human, not Detyen. He didn’t hold that against her, couldn’t care that she was someone he had never known to expect. But she was human and she couldn’t understand the denya bond like he did, like a Detyen woman would. One of his own kind would have shared in his recognition, would have understood what it meant and how they could save one another.
Ruby didn’t know. She wasn’t Detyen, and so she couldn’t feel the soul affirming call of the bond. She could walk away without a backwards look and never know that she had the power to destroy him by inaction. Not that she owed him her mating, of course not, but their connection was so precarious that he was terrified that he might not live up to what she needed.
“Is everything alright? You’re a million miles away there,” Ruby interrupted his thoughts and pulled him out up the spiral he was descending into.
He didn’t want to share this burden of his doubts with her, not when all of this was so new, not when she could run away at any moment. She didn’t need to hear about his worries when surely she must have worries of her own. “Just thinking,” he tried to assure her. And he was thankful to discover that they’d arrived at their destination. “I hope you’re hungry.”
She made a noise caught between a groan and a growl a
nd her eyes darkened. If she had been Detyen, they would have been red. “I could eat something.” She flicked her eyes up and down his body to make it clear she wasn’t talking about food. Arousal coiled deep within Nyco and his cock twitched in interest.
He shot her a grin. “Good,” he said, “the food here is excellent.”
She laughed at him and shook her head and followed the android attendant when it led them deep into the heart of the restaurant and beyond the main seating area to a private room where one wall was made of windows that looked out into space with Earth, that bright blue dot on a sea of inky blackness, at the center of it all.
Ruby pulled away from him and walked towards the window, a faraway look in her eye. She reached out slowly and had to pull her hand back when she encountered the force field that protected the window from space debris and human interference. “It’s so...” She shook her head and glanced back at him, a confused smile on her lips. “I’m not sure if it’s bigger than I expected or smaller. Is that weird? I’ve seen photographs and vids, but it’s so different in person.”
He closed the distance between them and stood behind her, his hand resting on the small of her back. She leaned into him and Nyco rolled to the balls of his feet so that they were pressed up close against one another. “Is this your first time off the planet?” He had been born in space, and as a Detyen had no home planet, not any more. He wondered what it was like to be so firmly rooted to a single place and for the first time he realized that he was with someone who might answer that question, who might make him understand why a person would want to stay.
Ruby shook her head, but she didn’t hear tear her gaze away from her view of Earth. “I went up to one of the space stations when I was a kid, it was a school trip. My family always planned to go to Mars, but that never happened, and then...” She sighed. “It never happened,” she repeated. “How did you end up here? And what kind of alien are you anyway?” She spun around, eyes wide. “I’m sorry, that sounded really rude.”
Nyco chuckled and placed his hands on her hips, keeping her from retreating, keeping her close. “I’m a Detyen, and a bit of a wanderer. I’ve lost count of how many planets I’ve stayed on, how many places I’ve lived.” Memories played in his mind on shuffle and Nyco was reminded of an incident from years ago that he’d almost forgotten. “I’m actually a minor lord on this tiny little moon a long way from here. I did them a favor, but they had no money to pay me. So I have a nice house there, I’ll take you someday. There’s a waterfall running through the whole thing, it’s beautiful.” He didn’t realize that he might have been getting ahead of himself until he was done talking.
Before he could try to backtrack, Ruby smiled and ran a hand over his shoulder and down his arm. “I’ll hold you to that. I’ve never been out of the system.”
Their meal came and they took their seats, their table looking out at the beautiful view. They sat beside one another and couldn’t stop touching, their hands and shoulders and legs brushing against one another every chance they got. Ruby’s soup was bright blue with some sort of yellow sauce on top. She tried it and her eyes closed in pleasure as she moaned around the spoon. “This is so good,” she said. “Here, try some.” She held out her spoon to him and Nyco took a bite, the dish sweet and a little acidic, nothing he recognized, but delicious all the same.
“It is good,” he agreed.
They must’ve been more hungry than they realized, as all conversation between them ceased while they tore through the meal that had been set down before them. Their only pauses came when they shared bites of food and the little touches that they couldn’t resist. But sometime later they’d sated one hunger and collapsed back onto their chairs, sharing contented smiles as their food settled.
“Who are you when you’re back on Earth?” he asked his mate. For the moment, they existed out of time, and though he never wanted this weekend to end, he wanted everything that Ruby would give to him.
But that question made her groan and she rolled her eyes. “I’m no one important, I promise.”
“You’re important to me.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but after a moment tilted her head to the side with a grin. “I expect better lines than that.”
He placed a hand over his heart as if he were wounded, but he couldn’t stop the small laugh that escaped his mouth. “Nothing but the best for you, my denya.”
She seemed confused by the word, but Nyco was relieved when she didn’t ask what it meant. He hadn’t meant to use it, but it came naturally. In time, he promised himself he would tell her. But not tonight, not yet. They had only just met, and there was no need to rush into anything so soon. How would a human even react to hearing about the denya price? Nyco wasn’t ready to hear, wasn’t ready to face the rejection, or the horror and the sadness. That could all wait. It wasn’t like he was going to die tomorrow.
“Okay, so I’m the personal assistant to a CEO. Basically, I make stuff happen for my boss.” She shrugged as she said it, as if her work was meaningless.
But Nyco had been around enough to know just how important assistance could be. “Stuff?”
Ruby groaned, but she didn’t try and change the subject. “My boss has completely unreasonable expectations. I mean, she just does not understand what reality is sometimes. And she’s fired 14 assistants in the last five years. It is... a precarious position. I don’t know how long I’ll last.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t know how long I want to last. I’ve been there for a year and I have committed felonies for that woman.”
Nyco leaned closer. “This is getting good.”
Ruby ran her thumb over the edge of Nyco’s index finger, idly tracing it. “I probably shouldn’t admit to any of this, but you don’t seem like the kind of guy who’s going to turn me in to the cops.”
He gave her his most serious look and vowed, “I would never.”
She smiled at his ridiculousness. “We had this event a few months ago and we were going to give out these brand-new tablets to everyone who attended. They were all big-name people in the industry, and we couldn’t look bad in front of them. Unfortunately, no one thought to order the tablets in time. That ended up with me on the comm talking to the shipping company and impersonating more than one executive. I had some poor guy convinced that their entire system was broken and that we were meant to have expedited shipping. Of course, when we got the product I saw that it hadn’t even been our order that arrived. Some other company missed out on their shipment because I hijacked it. And, of course, my boss didn’t even thank me for the theft. She just told me that next time I had to make sure to order the shit in time.”
“You’re a problem solver, and clever one.”
She waved her hand dismissively and shook her head. “I just do what I’m told.”
“And what of family? Friends? Who knows you beside this overbearing boss?” Would he fit into her life back on Earth? Would she want to go away with him in his ship? What was their path forward?
“No family, my parents passed away a few years ago and I never had any brothers or sisters.” She relayed the information simply, as if the pain of her loss had lessened as time elapsed. “Dee is the closest person to me in the world. She’s the reason I’m here, she just got married and now she’s obsessed with finding someone for me.” Ruby looked away from him, casting her gaze back towards the window, towards Earth. “I guess I’ll have to thank her.”
Nyco’s heart clenched at that sentence. She was feeling the bond between them just like he was.
She looked back towards him, her expression clear. “What about you? What’s your story, Lord Nyco?” She drew out those words as if she didn’t quite believe that some planet would give him a noble title.
“Have you heard of Detya?”
He wasn’t surprised when she shook her head. It had been a long way from Earth, and the tragedy a long time ago.
He took a deep breath to steady himself, to let the ancestral pain flow through him witho
ut sticking. He had relayed the story before a dozen times, and heard it many more. He could not forget the blow dealt to his people, but he had to find a way to live with it, to survive. A life could not be lived completely in the past. “My planet was destroyed a hundred years ago, long before I was born. We don’t know who did it, or why, and there is no hope for justice. My parents passed on not long ago, and I lost my brother last year. I am the only one left of my line, one of the few surviving Detyens. It is my honor and duty to carry on their memory.”
His story cast a pall over them and they lapsed into silence, Ruby never letting go of his hand. Though the distant pang of memory sat in his chest, he was not consumed by the pain as he might have been at one point, and he owed that all to the woman beside him. The woman who could be his.
The door separating them from the rest of the restaurant slid open and a small human child darted inside, her blonde hair held back in tight braids. She was dressed in bright pink, and giggled as she ran towards the window.
Nyco and Ruby shared a confused glance before Nyco sprang into action, rising from his seat and crossing the road to scoop the little girl up. She squealed when she saw him and reached for his hair, grasping the dark strands in a tiny fist. “Bwue!” she exclaimed.
“Blue,” Nyco agreed. He turned to see Ruby looking at him with a stunned expression on her face. It softened into something he could only describe as longing and he carried the little girl towards her until Ruby rose and joined them.
“What’s your name?” she sweetly asked the girl.
“Bwue!” was the child’s reply.
A human man raced in behind her and let out a sigh of relief when he saw his daughter in Nyco’s arms. “I’m so sorry, she just got away from me.”
