by Elsa Jade
“The ship would be sucked in,” he said. “We can still make a run for the exosuit, but… I won’t lie to you. It will be close.”
She stared at him. “This ship is everything you wanted.”
“I wanted…” He exhaled brutally. “To be taken in. By someone. I bought my way in, which seemed good enough.” He smiled at her. “I’ll be a Thorkon hero.”
“You’re already my hero.” She kissed him, hard and fast. “Do it.”
“I can give you a head start to the suit.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Her savage kiss still stinging on his lips, he sent the acceleration command and finished locking the sequence. When the larfing mercenary woke, he’d be horrified.
Nor sprang out of the chair—for the last time—and grabbed Trixie’s wrist. “I can’t risk the whole Azthronos system, but…I set a short delay to give us a little extra chance.”
“First one to the exosuit gets the controls.” Her hazel eyes glinted.
“Run, little mishkeet. I’ll be right beside you.”
They took the main corridors. It was a risk, but it was faster. And at this point, everything was a risk.
Through the bulkheads, he sensed the rising tremor as the Grandy pushed to unsustainable speeds, falling toward the singularity’s embrace. They were nearly to the hull access corridors when an angry hiss of yellow plasma spun him around.
He slammed into the wall, the heavy armor protecting him but too unwieldy to let him catch himself. The concussion grenade on the space station had sent a chunk of shrapnel through his side. The med kit Trixie had left with him had patched the worst of the damage—temporarily.
Now, the trickle of blood that had found a way out to his boot was more like a river. Like the river of stars swirling around his head…
He shook himself briskly, trying to straighten. At least he’d blocked the shot from Trixie…
She fired over his armored head with a yell that made his ears ring. The cascade of killing orange light said she wasn’t being good anymore.
“Go,” he growled.
“No.” She kept firing, each shot draining the weapon even as it forced the intruders to stay hunkered down.
“Trixie. I’ve taken too many hits.”
She spared him one wild glare. “Don’t make me shoot you too. I’ll stun you and drag you out.” She slapped at the forearm of his armor, yanking him toward the dubious protection of a doorway. “You said this suit practically walks itself. Just tell it to follow me.”
His head spun as if the gravity was failing. Wait, shouldn’t it be getting stronger as they approached the singularity…? No, he was the one failing. The river of stars constraining his vision was turning as dark as his blood, the light closing down around him.
“I shouldn’t have waited,” he muttered as his fingers spasmed on the armor controls.
“We deserved that chance,” she said.
“Shouldn’t have waited to approach my father. Tell Raz…he’s my brother.” He concentrated the last narrowing gap in his vision at the controls, locked in the programming—for all the good that had done him so far—and looked up at her. When had he fallen? “Shouldn’t have waited to tell you.”
She set her blaster to auto-fire and laid it on the decking to spew aimlessly down the hall. It would take a few seconds to exhaust itself, unless Blackworm’s crew hazarded a peek around their corner. She tugged him to his feet. “Tell me what?”
“That you…” His focus shrank to just her face. “Have such pretty eyes.”
The hazel widened, like a mud puddle that would’ve been utterly irresistible to even a proper little Thorkon boy, and he fell right in.
Chapter 17
To think she had questioned Blackworm wanting a ghostly facsimile of his consort, and here she was running through a dreadnaught with the animated might-be corpse of her lover.
Trixie glanced back at the robotic armor carrying Nor. His eyes were half-lidded. Dropping in and out of consciousness? Or just dead? She couldn’t even stop long enough to check.
And she didn’t want to see the bootprints of dark crimson blood following them.
She guided the armor into the service tunnel, finally grateful for the neuroses that had trained her to count her steps and her turns. Sealing the hatch behind them with a low blast from her smaller plasma pistol, she raced through the slow automatic lights toward the exosuit. The thudding steps of Nor’s armor were slower than her frantic heartbeat.
And her wild heartbeat was slower than the pulsing thrum she felt in the walls. At this speed, could they even exit the ship without being ripped apart?
Did it matter?
“Trixie.”
Startling, she glanced back at Nor again and almost tripped over her own feet.
It wasn’t his voice.
“Trixie,” Blackworm said through the armor’s comm. “Where are you?”
Oh. He knew her name. How…squicky.
She’d have to share that word with Nor. He’d like it.
“I can’t see you,” the cool, cultured, crazy voice continued, “but I see what you’ve done. And I see the blood that means your captain is done.”
Her own blood seemed to fall to her boots. Blackworm must be right behind them.
She almost sobbed when the last pool of light shined on the empty exosuit awaiting them. Nor’s armor halted behind her and stood patiently while she scrabbled at the front plate latches in panic.
“Nor,” she hissed. “Wake up. C’mon now. You have to help me.”
He mumbled something, and this time she did sob. He was still alive.
For the moment.
Blackworm was yammering on, but she ignored him. “Nor, we have to get into the exosuit, but you need to get out of the armor first.”
“You want to get me out of my pants,” he slurred.
She laughed. “Yes! Now!”
He swatted weakly at her hands. “Spread the…mech. Gonna be…tight.”
While he extracted himself from the armor, she widened the opening on the exosuit. It split through the middle like a giant cicada shell. Giant enough for two?
She turned back to Nor and gasped. He was clad only in a thin white tunic lined with thin electrode wires. As he staggered out of the armor, the wires snapped, and the armor collapsed behind him, leaving him swaying.
Blood soaked the left side of the shroud. She wasn’t sure how many pints a Thorkon could lose, but it seemed as if at least that much was dripping down his thigh.
“You could have told me how bad it was,” she said through gritted teeth as she led him to the exosuit.
“We’re about to emergency eject from a spaceship screaming through space toward a black hole,” he said. “It’s bad.”
He slumped back into the suit as if she had cut his wires, his eyes closing. But he held up one arm, reaching out to her.
She turned and backed gingerly into his embrace. He grunted once as she kicked off her boots—every free inch counted—and dropped the plasma rifle to the deck. Naked and defenseless, but together.
Like the deepening howl of the engines, Blackworm’s voice was juddering with fury, nearly rattling the chunk of discarded armor. “I can’t stop the ship, but you can’t stop me,” he roared. “We will greet the gods together!”
“Someday, maybe,” she murmured. “But not this day.”
She shoved her arms into the exosuit appendages and couldn’t hold back a fierce grin as the suit powered up around her. As she slammed the hatch closed across the mech belly, her ears popped with the seal. She surged to her feet—her feet and Nor’s feet, their legs pressed intimately together.
She squeaked. “Are you…aroused?”
He nudged his hips into hers from behind, his cheek pressed to the side of her head. “I can’t help it,” he murmured. “This is literally my dying wish.”
“No dying,” she said. “I’m saving us.”
With the mech’s borrowed power an
d grace, she swung a few steps down the corridor. The automatic lights didn’t turn on, not recognizing her as human, but it didn’t matter; she had the lights and sensors of the suit.
She put her robotic hand on the hull access hatch. “This is how you scrubbed the outside of a spaceship?”
“Never going this fast.”
“Nor…”
“Trixie, you really do have pretty eyes.”
She closed them. “You can even see me from where you are.”
“Don’t need to.” His sigh brushed across her brow. “I’ll remember them always. From the first time I saw you, to the time you shot at me, to the time you saved me.”
She leaned her head back to capture his kiss.
And she blew the hatch.
Chapter 18
The suit screamed.
Or maybe that was her.
But every mech alarm klaxon was blaring, warning lights flashing, and worst of all was the softer, insidious hiss of air escaping from some damage.
They tumbled, the universe around them an incomprehensible blur, like the holographic navigation array gone insane.
She would’ve thrown up but she hadn’t had anything to eat except that little candy she’d found in the bottom of her pocket a million years ago.
Fighting the G forces, Nor snaked his arm along hers to take control of the suit. A few spurts from the rockets slowed their spin, although her brain and stomach still seemed to be gyrating.
Another few gestures and he found and sealed the leaky hiss.
Silence, deep and profound, descended.
She kept her voice to a whisper. “Are we…?”
“Alive?”
“I think so.” She tangled her fingers in his and squeezed.
Under her hand, she felt him tweak the controls. The boosters rolled them expertly, bringing the black hole into view.
The Grandiloquence was poised at the event horizon, caught by gravity and quantum physics and the madness of its last captain. The distortion of the singularity gave the ship a strange and awful beauty as it seemed to flare, taking all the light of the stars around it.
Too bright. She had to look away. Her glance upward locked with Nor’s.
She leaned back against his chest, twisting to bury her face in his neck. “I’m sorry you lost your ship.”
He dipped his head down. “I’m happy I found you.” His slow exhalation ruffled her closed lashes.
And then stopped.
“Nor?”
No answer.
She tried to turn, but the confines of the suit were too tight. “Nor, don’t you dare.” She twisted her fingers against his, trying to find his pulse. “Wake up. You can’t leave me here. Not now. Not after all this.”
Straining back against him, she cried out at the hot slickness of his blood. No god in the universe would be so cruel…
She screamed his name.
And she didn’t look up at the stars even when the armada of ships arrived.
***
He was floating.
Space was vast, and they’d be floating a very long time. Or maybe he was dead.
Either way, he had her.
He reached out to find…nothing.
That jolted him upright when even the thought of death hadn’t done it.
“Trixie!”
“Shh.” A strong, gentle hand eased him back. “I’m right here. Let me turn up the light.”
No wonder he’d thought he was floating. He was in his big, soft, beautiful bed in his rooms at the ducal estate, and it had always seemed too big and soft to him. But with his beautiful mishkeet beside him, it suddenly seemed just right.
“How…?” His voice cracked.
She snuggled close, careful of the thick bandage on his side. “The duke arrived in the nick of time.”
Nor scowled. “He would.”
“I told them what happened. You’re still a hero.”
Was that better or worse than being a pirate or a nobleman? The memory of the Grandiloquence plunging into the abyss would haunt him longer than any virtual ghost.
Trixie touched his cheek, turning him to face her. Her hazel gaze searched his. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Lost the Grandy,” he croaked.
She sat up and retrieved a squeeze packet of fluid that she held to his lips. The light flavor of pixberries revived his throat. When he struggled to sit—and frowned at her attempt to keep him down—she plumped more of the big, soft pillows behind him.
“Raz has already contacted transgalactic authorities and demanded restitution for them losing their prisoner in the first place,” she said as she settled back on the covers beside him. “They wanted to see proof of Blackworm’s demise and the destruction of the ship, so he sicced the dowager on them. Now turns out, not only are they paying restitution, there was a reward.” She grinned at him, although her green-brown eyes were shadowed. “You’re a rich hero.”
He glanced away. He’d never cared about any of that. He’d just wanted… Ah, larf it, he’d spilled his guts to her about what he wanted, hadn’t he, when he’d been spilling his actual guts?
“Raz knows, by the way.”
He twisted back to look at her, wincing at the pull in his wounded side. “Knows what…?” He stiffened. “No.”
“It wasn’t me,” she said hastily. “The dowager again.” When he groaned and thumped his head back, she rested her hand on his shoulder. “When they brought you onboard Raz’s ship, it was…bad. Doctor Boshil wasn’t sure… Anyway, the dowager told Raz because she wanted to make sure he did everything in his power to save your life.”
Nor grunted. “More likely he would’ve finished the job his father started by exiling me.”
“No. He was…well, he was shocked. But he had his own troubles with his father. I think you have more in common than you might’ve guessed.”
He curled his lip in a half-hearted sneer. “The parts we have in common are ones neither of us approve of.”
She patted his shoulder. “See? I bet he’d agree with you about that too.”
Ignoring his grumble, she rose to putter around his room, straightening the bedside stand with its meds and vials, fussing with the translucency of the window to let in a little more light, helping herself to one of the candies he always kept on the vanity. Her simple bronze day gown was rumpled, the loose blond braid of her hair frayed, and he wondered how long she’d been by his side.
And why.
He had nothing anymore, nothing worth noting anyway. Some riches, some renown. Nothing like a dreadnaught and the freedom of the stars.
Watching her circle his room, he wasn’t even sure he wanted those things anymore.
I wanted to be taken in by someone.
That’s what he’d told her. And she’d let him in. His bruised and broken body stirred at the sweet memories.
But the first time had been only a night of forgetting, and the second time, a reckless coupling to reject the sorrow of searching for those stolen souls. Why would she want a third time?
Much less forever.
“Trixie.”
She spun around, the pleats of her skirt flaring a little to catch the filtered sunlight. “Can I get you something?”
“You,” he said huskily.
She tilted her head, and the braid fell across her shoulder. “Mmm-e?”
“Mishkeets don’t stutter,” he chided. “They scratch, they bite, they shoot.”
With each word, she took a step closer to him. “Shoot?”
“Maybe not that,” he admitted. “Maybe…cuddle.”
“Scratch, bite, and cuddle.” She pursed her lips.
“Even mishkeets like a big, soft, warm bed.”
“And heroes? How do they feel about bed?”
“Too big,” he said softly. “If they’re alone.”
With a soft sound of surrender, she crawled in beside him again. “I don’t want you to think I’m needy and scared and small.”
“I do not
think that,” he assured her. “I saw you at target practice, on the space station, facing Blackworm. I know you are the hero. You didn’t have to command that stolen armor—I would’ve followed you anywhere.”
“Oh, Nor.” She threw one arm over his chest and burrowed her face into his neck. “I was scared. And I do need you.”
He cupped his hand at her nape to hold her close. “And you are exactly the right size for my bed. And for me.” Gently, he shifted his grip to lift her chin.
Tears trembled at the corners of her eyes, turning the hazel to a misty gold. “I’ve never had an alien boyfriend,” she said.
“I’ve never had an Earther girl, so I think on this journey we’re a perfect fit.” His throat tightened. “And I won’t need any ship. Just you.”
She boosted up against him to lay her mouth over his, not like the desperate last kiss in the exosuit, but a long, sweet, lingering promise of more to come.
He reached up to thread his fingers through her hair and unwind the locks around him in a golden curtain. Then he took her shoulders and rolled her beneath him.
When she smiled up at him from the chaos of pillows, he saw a treasure any pirate would prize. She squirmed a little, and the gown slipped down around her shoulders, exposing the creamy upper swells of her breasts.
She laced her arms around his neck and arched back. The hard, little peaks of her nipples peeped free from the neckline of the loosened gown. “We shouldn’t,” she gasped. “You’re hurt.”
“I ache,” he confessed. “And only you can save me.”
Ignoring the twinge in his side—what was pain and blood and regeneration when he had her?—he suckled her breast and then the other until she was moaning with her own ache. The triumph in him was unseemly.
And he loved it. As he loved her.
Her bronze skirts were a cloud nowhere near as soft and beautiful as her body taking his, and when the powerful convulsion of her hidden core engulfed him, it was a cosmic orgasmic pleasure that would delight him forever.
And maybe even that wouldn’t be long enough.
Before she could catch her breath, or notice that he was bleeding again, he propped himself on one elbow and gazed down at her. “I’m an ex-pirate, and now ex-dreadnaught captain,” he told her. “And you are an ex-bride. But what if…one of those still came true?”
