“How come you were outside?” the third asked, his eyes narrowing before going to the decoder strapped to her arm.
“I was trying to change the goddamn electromagnetic spectrum sensor, that piece of crap the Narays sold me, then this ship comes along, man, it was so damn close, and I think ‘uh-oh, girl, they’re not friendly station personnel, they’re not here to help you’, so I grabbed my bag—but hell, before I knew, BAM, something knocks me out cold. I wake up far, man, like really, really far, and think to myself ‘this time—’”
One of the guys raised his hand to shut her up when his comms link emitted a bleep.
“…there’s something going on topside too, guys. Stop wasting your time and get the hell back up. We’re sending units to the Flashpoint. It’s the Yithians. They’re busting the whole place up…”
Fear crept up her spine. The Yithians were making trouble at the Flashpoint? Was Titan involved? Was he dead? She squeezed her eyes shut and forced the image of his lifeless body far from her mind. No time for this right now.
Her cargo pants suddenly felt tight and uncomfortable. Sweat made her T-shirt clingy under her polymer vest. The stunner she had there pressed against her waist. Kim kept to her breathing exercise as the three turned heel and rushed back up the steps. One of them leaned over the railing.
“Come on, you’re coming with us to the tower. They’ll want to speak to you.”
But he didn’t stay behind to make sure she did follow them. He didn’t care, obviously, just going through the motions. Kim nodded and pretended to follow the three guards up topside but slowed down when she passed the last underground level where most of the maintenance access points were located. After making sure the guards weren’t looking down, Kim hurriedly opened the thick metal door and slipped through.
She felt as though she walked along the inside of a giant engine, with pipes and tubes and electrical wires running along the walls and ceiling, even parts of the floor. Pot lights at regular intervals provided dirty yellow light. She remembered that if she kept going, she would eventually end up past the docking ports and into the station proper. It would only be a matter of coming out of the right one, or at least, one close enough to the Flashpoint to see what the fuss was about.
Titan.
Kim kept replaying their last conversation. She knew he was lying when he said he’d do Drokesh quickly. Shivers raced up her arms as she tried to imagine what Titan would do to him. She met other people down in the maintenance tunnels but didn’t stop to ask them questions for they looked even less honest than she.
She must have cleared the docks by now. Navigating the maze of tunnels and access ladders, Kim soon realized she was quite lost and would have to take a peek up top.
She chose a particular ladder because it looked cleaner than the rest, thus more frequently used. She just hoped she wouldn’t be coming up right in the middle of a gunfight. Or worse…
Chapter Eleven
Titan dodged people as they ran screaming out into the street. He spotted two Yithians guarding the door to the club, their kinetic guns pointing outward while their backs were to the building on either side of the thick metal doors. Perfect shooting position, the blue bastards. They let people run out of the Flashpoint, probably having received visuals of Titan and Kim.
He hated Yithians, hated them with a passion. Their arrogance, the way they looked at humans as if they were cattle, and especially how they just took women—and some men—as lovers and discarded them like broken toys. Drokesh’s bite marks on Kim’s thighs flared in his mind.
Sick bastards, all of them. Too bad he’d been too young to be in the Yithian War for he would’ve liked to blow a few blue heads off.
Thinking of Kim made him lose his focus so he pushed the image of her out of his mind before all the blood rushed to his cock and he started drooling.
Using the crowd as cover, Titan slinked across the street, both guns hidden under his jacket. When he turned and raised both arms, the people closest to him started screaming and running in yet another direction. Jesus, people, get a fucking grip!
He fired his Glock. Boom.
Only six bullets left in the Glock and seven in the SIG. Shit, he had to make them last.
One of the guards knocked back against the wall, the top part of his face covered in bluish gunk. Silver hair and a blue smear followed him down along the wall. Didn’t expect that from lowly humans, hey, big guy?
His companion turned his kinetic gun across the street and fired. The guy didn’t even know who’d shot his friend yet he returned fire indiscriminately. Titan cursed and fired twice, getting the Yithian in the chest. He didn’t seem to register either hit. Maybe nine-millimeter rounds aren’t enough for these blue fuckers?
Blood—red human blood—sprayed in thick arcs while body parts and bits of clothing burst with every shot of the Yithian’s terrible weapon. Titan ran along the opposite wall, using anything and everything for cover, snarling under his breath with adrenaline until he found a narrow recess between two buildings and hid behind a garbage chute. From the sound of the shots, the Yithian had left his post by the door and was coming closer.
No more hiding.
Titan leaped out from behind the garbage chute and fired at will. He was so angry, he barely felt the Glock’s recoil as he shot the shocked Yithian three more times. Titan angled his barrel downward as the piece of alien scum collapsed to the ground in a writhing mess of black clothes and blue tissue and blood.
“You’re not going to fuck with us humans anymore, you got that?”
Titan fired the last bullet in the Yithian’s forehead. His head whipped back, silver hair spilled over his startled face then he slumped supine on the ground.
A couple of loud explosions announced the rest were coming out of the Flashpoint. Titan barely had time to dive aside when both doors flew outward in a shower of twisted metal and broken plaster.
Drokesh was the first one through. Two others followed him. All three wielded regular Yithian hand weapons, a silvery energy-gun that fired red flares. No impact and reach to speak of, but those shots could easily cut through steel…and human anatomy.
Like he had a radar up his ass or something, one of them spotted Titan right away. Titan crouched, drew his SIG and fired twice, lamenting that he only had five rounds left now.
A flash of pain ripped at his arm. Titan heard the Glock clatter to the street. He didn’t even want to look down to see if his arm was still attached. He couldn’t feel it, so no use wasting time. Diving, he used only one bullet on that Yithian—only four left now, shit—right in the throat. A Prussian-blue geyser arced out. He fell to his knees, both hands futilely trying to stem the flow.
Titan was landing and rolling when another red flare zipped through him, this time much closer to his trunk. A spasm shot through him violently and he squeezed the trigger, shot in the goddamn air! A wave of dizziness hit him. He gagged. Titan floundered to his knees. Blood dribbled down his chest. Oh this was a good shot. This one would count for something. Shit.
The finishing shot never came. A split second silence then the hiss of a smaller kinetic gun discharging. Screams. Yithian and human language intermixed. He raised his head just in time to see Carmela, black garments in disarray and blood coming out of her nose, swing her silver kinetic gun at Drokesh—the other guard was down on his front. The crime lord was already on one knee. He looked so surprised, so shocked, that Titan started to laugh, a nervous, “I’m gonna die soon so I don’t care about my reputation” laugh.
Titan brought the SIG out straight, arm in full extension, barrel pointed at the hated face. Their gazes met. Titan forced his deadened hand to contract, pressed the trigger four times. He only had three bullets left but still went through the motions. Too bad Drokesh was already kneeling and hadn’t far to fall. Life could be such a bitch.
The recoil. The smell. A small burst of blue between Drokesh’s opalescent eyes. And strangely, a tiny arc of electricity along his shoulder. Then he tumbled
forward slowly, slumped like an empty coat settling down on the floor.
And behind him, stunner still poised like she meant business, stood Kim in too-big black cargo pants and an awful men’s T-shirt that hid all those nice forms. Why wasn’t she wearing that acid-green suit?
He was so damn glad, Titan felt tears of relief running down his cheeks. She was alive. God, he loved her. Ouch, shit. He fought the urge to look down and assess the damage to his body. Why bother? He knew he probably wouldn’t make it anyway. At least Kim is safe.
He tasted tears on his lips. Oh great, just fucking great, now everyone will want a piece of crybaby Titan. His reputation was completely, utterly destroyed now.
“Titan…” Kim said, her eyes huge in her face. She looked down the rest of him and grimaced. That bad?
“Baby…”
* * * * *
“What are you going to do with him, anyway?” Kim asked as she threw an askance look at the Yithian cramped in the stasis tank.
As much as she hated most of them, the poor guy did look uncomfortable in the small pod. It’d been meant for humans, not Yithians. His hair was much darker than any she’d seen, and he looked mean. Meaner than even Sekmeth, who could glower like no one’s business.
Carmela said something in Spanish as she ran her hand over the thermoplastic window. “We may need him for later.”
“Need him for what?”
“Bargaining power, barter, information.”
“You going to torture him for information? What do we want to know anyway?”
“Yes, I will, and humans always need to know more on Yithians. They’re the enemy number one. Especially now.”
The woman had a point. After the incident on Land’s End, with Collins sneaking the whole of the Yithian population back on their two ships, ties would surely become strained at best. Some people already talked about another border dispute with the fearsome race.
Kim crossed her arms and stared at the Yithian through the frosted thermoplastic. She had to admit he was gorgeous, even by his species standards. His traits were hard and angular, his mouth curved upward on one side. She thought he looked cruel. “He’s half dead, we should finish him off while he’s still unconscious.”
Kim couldn’t believe she’d just said that. Only a few days ago, she was going on with her life like nothing had ever happened, like she’d never been Drokesh’s sex slave, and now, now she was talking about killing someone in their sleep. She’d been hanging around Carmela and Titan for too long.
Thinking about him caused an ache in her heart. She left the Spaniard to her trophy boy and slowly made her way to her cabin, which had been transformed into a temporary sick bay. Carmela’s many connections had provided a physician. The old man had declared Titan a lost case. No one had ever survived two shots from a Yithian ray gun. After Kim’s vehement argument—that and threatening to throw the old fart out the nearest airlock—he’d given them medications and supplies. Kim had become an impromptu nurse, following the physician’s instructions to the letter. She had recorded them on her decoder and had reviewed them periodically over the last few days. Titan had been out for pretty much the entire time. First delirious with fever then his vital signs barely registering on the monitors. He seemed better now, or at least more stable.
Still, the sight of him in this state punched a hole in her newfound hopes for a life with him.
Kim slipped into her cabin and stared at him. The regularity of his breathing soothed her nerves. She checked and rechecked the instructions, cross-referenced what she could on the ship’s computer and made silly adjustments on his monitors. When she was done making a complete nervous wreck of herself, Kim tucked the sheet under him. He looked like a mummy. And he needed a shave. Both his beard and hair had grown a quarter of an inch. Maybe he was too cold? Too hot? Just so she’d have something to do, Kim gave him a sponge bath, checking the water often so it’d stay the right temperature.
“I’m a total loser,” she grumbled under her breath.
At loss for words and everything else, Kim lay by his side, snuggled up to his shoulder and closed her eyes. She’d missed a few spots with the towel for patches of skin were still damp. She kissed a water droplet from his throat. As if it moved by itself, her hand floated downward, caressed his chest and waist, the long bulge of his muscled thigh then back in the middle over his cock. She’d give anything to be able to argue with him again, couldn’t wait to hear him call her “baby”.
Kim realized with shock Titan’s penis was responding to her caress. A nice little tent was forming in the sheet. She pushed herself up on an elbow and caught him with his eyes partly opened. He cringed when she jumped off the bed and leaned over his face.
“Titan?”
“Thanks, baby.”
Tears of joy welled up her eyes. She resisted the urge to give him a total bone-crushing hug.
“Thanks for what?” she asked softly, as if her voice would push him back into unconsciousness. She knelt by the bed.
“I dreamed they’d shot it off.” He closed his eyes again, which kept her on needles the entire time. Then he opened them, wider, more alert. “My dick is there, did I lose any parts? What about my guns?”
Kim laughed. “Your guns are safe over there. Everything else is where it’s supposed to be.”
“No, it’s not,” he replied, weakly patting the bed by his side.
Grinning, she carefully snuggled up to him, her arm over his chest, her hand around his neck. The heat of his skin seeped into her, chased away the last of her doubts. He was going to make it. She’d be sure to send a message to that old fart. Someone had survived two shots by a Yithian ray gun.
“Where are we?”
“On the Femme Metal, a few jumps from the Rim.”
Titan nodded. “My ship?”
“Happily tagging along. I piloted it out of Land’s End air space while Carmela did the same for mine, ‘cause we’re going to visit friends, my former captain, so we’ll be safe there while you get better—I was sooo worried, you wouldn’t believe—and this old fart—”
Titan cringed, and she shut up. “Sorry.”
“No problem, baby, it’s just that my brain is going to melt out of my ears.”
With a sigh of contentment, Kim snuggled deeper into his neck, breathed in the scent of him, the subtle smells she was beginning to recognize as his own and become familiar with to the point that she knew she’d be lost without a daily dose of her Titan. A soft groan rumbled in his chest.
“Hey, aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?” she asked, abruptly coming up on an elbow. “Are you thirsty? Hungry?”
“Horny.”
“How can you be horny after being knocked out for a week?”
“Don’t ask me, you started it,” he replied, shifting his pelvis slightly, cringing. “Groping a comatose man. Shocking.”
Kim stood and retrieved the washcloth from the basin, ran it under hot water and returned to Titan’s side. His gray gaze was on her the entire time. The one-sleeper tent on the bed grew to circus proportions. She grinned.
His cock felt hard and hot in her fist when she grasped it.
“Ouch, shit, it burns.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t very good with the catheter at first.”
Titan’s eyes flared wide. “You put a tube up my dick?”
“What? I couldn’t let you pee on yourself, could I?”
“Argh, fuck, there goes my reputation,” he snarled. “Oh no, wait, I lost that when I started crying like a little girl back at the Flashpoint.”
“That’s because you were so glad to see me.”
He snorted and rolled his eyes. “Someone come rescue me from this crazy woman.”
“You need rescuing from this?” Kim said as she gently slid her fist down to the base of his shaft then slowly up to the thick glans. That shut him right up.
With his eyes closed the entire time, Kim rubbed his cock with all the tenderness she could mu
ster. Her first instinct would have been to yank her fist up and down until he started twisting then swallow the entire thing into her mouth. But not this time. She worked diligently to give him pleasure but spare his abused body at the same time. The poor guy had suffered enough.
A drop of pre-cum heralded his imminent orgasm. Kim rubbed some more and angled his penis downward when she felt the subtle pulse at the base. The hot washcloth ready, Titan came with his usual violent jets, which she trapped in the cloth, before wiping his glans and pulling the sheet back over him. When she returned from the bathroom, she found Titan with his eyes closed, a satisfied grin on his lips. His breathing was deep and rhythmic.
Kim bit her bottom lip. Now she was the one all horny with no place to go. After a while debating, she stripped and slipped into bed with him, this time under the sheet as well, and fished around for her trusted plastic companion.
She found it with a sharp little jab of thrill between the legs. It felt so nice and smooth along her lips. Kim angled it downward and turned it on. The soft vibrations created a nice tingle of numbness in her cleft. She turned it on full blast. Her legs began to twitch. She wanted to spread them wide but didn’t want to wake Titan, so instead she cramped them as tight as she could and gyrated her pelvis, following her hand’s rhythm. But the dildo, a toy she usually enjoyed, wasn’t doing anything for her right now.
She ventured under the sheet and found Titan’s warm hand. Slowly, she pulled it close, angled her hips so his fingers would rest along her sex. Pressing her hand over his, she parted her lips with his middle finger while with the other, she rubbed her toy back and forth.
Now, this was much better.
Forcing the rest of her body to remain immobile, Kim pushed her pelvis outward to meet Titan’s hand, so his finger would enter her and with her guidance, would find her pearl and force it out of its shell.
The vibration began to work its usual magic as well, and soon Kim was writhing on the bed, biting her lip with suppressed pleasure. She spilled her honey, gathered it with the tip of Titan’s fingers and spread it by moving her hips.
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