“Oh, my God!” I shout, cackling uncontrollably.
“How did we go all this time without learning you’re ticklish?” he asks, ruthlessly running his fingertips across my skin.
I shake back and forth, howling with laughter until Kest stops; as soon as he does, he throws himself fully into hammering my aching pussy. My amusement turns to mind-numbing ecstasy as quickly as flipping a switch, and my moans fill the apartment.
“No permission… needed… pet,” Kest says between thrusts.
“Thank… you… sir,” I reply, on the cusp of a powerful climax. I let it go immediately, allowing its energy fill me completely. In seconds, I’m lost in pleasure, beyond coherent thought. All I can do is feel Kest’s every touch until my orgasm is utterly spent and my pussy drips with his seed.
“That was incredible, pet,” he says at last. I’m on top of him now, resting in his grip.
“You too,” I say, my throat dry with thirst.
“We need to get back to the Council, but… in a little while.” He clutches my ass, and I can feel him getting hard again.
As tired as I am, I’m not going to argue. I can already feel my nanites empowering my body to receive him once more.
Kest lifts me up, but whatever he had in mind for us is interrupted by a blast that sends the door of our apartment flying inward, smoke pouring in through the wrecked frame.
Immediately Kest is on his feet, and I’m sitting up on the couch, but there’s nothing we can do: standing before us, in his full battle armor, is Bakan. A pair of Council sentries lie on the floor outside our door, unmoving. Behind Bakan are two more Dominars in matching armor.
“You should have taken my offer, idiot human,” Bakan spits, staring at me.
The first bolt of energy hits Kest. Screaming, I try to stand and run, but the next bolt hits me and all goes black.
Chapter Twenty-One
My head feels like a burst watermelon when I come to. Opening my eyes hurts, but I try to shake it off and adjust to the brightness.
What happened? I was with Kest… and then…
Once my vision clears, I look around and find I’m on his ship, lying on the bed. I see Kest sprawled out in the pilot’s seat.
“Kest, wake up!”
He groans, then jumps to his feet, spinning around. “Haley! Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, pressing my hand to my forehead. “I’ll be fine. What happened?”
He growls, baring his teeth. “Bakan.”
Right. The memory floods back, including our apartment door being blown down. No wonder my head hurts.
“Why’d he put us on your ship?” I ask, not understanding why we aren’t dead.
Kest opens up the ship’s holographic display, which shows our trajectory through the galaxy, closing in on Earth. We must have been out cold a whole day, because we’re only a few minutes away from arrival.
He shakes his head, face grim with worry. “He’s interrupted the Council’s deliberations by putting us on ice, but he knows that won’t stop the proceedings. He’s either really desperate, or up to something.”
He scrolls through the holograms as I get up and make my way over.
“Like what?”
“Nothing good. If the Council finds out he attacked us, he’ll be in serious trouble…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, and judging by the icy chill in my spine, I’m not sure I wanted to hear it anyway.
Kest tries to access the ship’s controls, but an error alert sounds through the cockpit.
“What’s wrong?”
He sighs. “Bakan’s locked me out. I can’t control the ship. I can’t stop or turn around. We’re going back to Earth.”
My fear grows like a pit opening up beneath me. There has to be more going on. “Why would he do that?”
“Let’s see. I can’t change the ship’s orders, but I bet I can view them.”
After a moment, the holographic display changes, producing a long list of directives. Reading it, my heart sinks. “Oh, no.”
“Yeah,” says Kest. “This is bad.”
Written before us is a list of instructions to enter Earth’s atmosphere and systematically annihilate every human being it can detect.
“Can this ship really do that? Kill everyone?”
“It might take a long time… but yes. Eventually it will succeed. It’ll probably only take a few months.” Kest pounds his fist against the control panel, his skin darkening with rage. “And we get to watch the whole time, unable to stop it.”
I refuse to believe that. “Won’t we be shot down?”
Kest shakes his head. “No weapon on Earth can touch this ship, Haley. Not even a nuclear bomb would stop it.”
I’d be impressed if there was time. “Then we have to stop it ourselves.”
“Yes, yes, we do.”
Fuck Bakan. We’re not letting him win.
Kest places his fingers on the ship’s control panel, and for a moment the holographic display fizzles from interference.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting my nanites to hack the ship. Maybe they can do something, but I don’t think it’ll be enough. Even with all of them working in concert, they may not break through the ship’s security.”
I hold up my hand. “Can you use mine?”
He nods. “Sure, come here. It may not be enough, but it’s worth a try.”
I plant my fingers against the same panel. Kest closes his palm over my hand, and uses his other hand to pull me onto his lap.
“I’m sorry, Haley. I shouldn’t have let my guard down. I never expected Bakan to act so brazenly.”
“Don’t talk like that,” I snap. “We’re going to figure this out. Can you call Briette? Maybe they can intercept us before we do too much damage?”
Kest activates the ship’s controls, bringing up the communications system.
System error. Array nonresponsive.
“He broke it,” says Kest. “How creative.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Unlikely. The ship should have fixed it itself already; Bakan’s taken a lot of vital systems offline, or this plan wouldn’t work. He’s smart enough to have thought of everything.”
That can’t be. There has to be a way!
An alarm sounds on the ship, and out the window the streaking stars of hyperspace turn into stationary dots. In front of us I see a familiar sight: Earth. It fills me with awe—though I recognize my planet from photos and holograms, I didn’t get to see it for real when we left. Now that it’s there, in front of me, I can’t let Bakan’s plan work. I didn’t stand before the Council, naked, just to see this all end with my people being eradicated.
No, that’s not going to happen.
“Kest… I know what we have to do. Does the ship have a self-destruct?”
His eyes widen in shock. It doesn’t surprise me that a being who is basically immortal might not consider the idea of suicide. Yet, he doesn’t respond at first, his expression growing distant.
“I know I’m asking a lot, for you to sacrifice yourself, but it’s that or my entire species…”
He snaps out of it, suddenly working the ship’s control system. “There isn’t a self-destruct, but… maybe instead of hacking the ship’s security, I can hack the engineering… trick it into causing a reactor overload.”
“Will that work?” I ask, growing surprisingly excited, considering it means our deaths.
“Possibly. The nanites are working on it now.”
I take his free hand in mine, and lean in to kiss him. “Thank you for doing this. I can’t even imagine what this must be like for you.”
He gives my hand a squeeze and reclines, allowing me to rest my head on his shoulder. “What do you mean?” he asks.
“Well, you’re thousands of years old, right? You’ve explored the stars, fought in battles, affected the fates of entire worlds. You probably didn’t think your life would end like this, so suddenly and so far from home, wit
h no way to contact your friends or family. I don’t know how you’re not more… affected.”
Kest nods solemnly and wraps his arm around me. “Haley, you’re right. I’ve seen and done it all, had experiences a mortal human could never imagine. But that means I’ve led a full existence. There’s no end to a life like mine: it continues on seemingly forever. That means, there’s no point at which I figure I’m finished. There’s nothing I have to accomplish, or a goal to realize that makes me feel complete. The only thing in my life that was missing is someone to love. And now I’ve found that.”
I wipe a tear from my cheek. “Kest… We’ve barely had any time together…”
“No, we haven’t. But the time we’ve had has been incredible, Haley. I can’t remember the last time I was so happy.”
“Me neither.”
He kisses me, and wipes away another tear. “But Haley…”
“Yes?”
“We’re not going to die.”
I get up off Kest and spin around to face him. “What? How?”
He lifts his hand from the control panel and points to a small door at the back of the ship. “We’ve got an escape pod, pet. We’re getting off this thing before it blows.”
I blink a few times, making sure I didn’t mishear. Then I punch him in the shoulder. “You jerk! Why didn’t you say so?”
Kest leans in and kisses my cheek. “I wanted to hear what you were going to say.”
“Remind me to kill you when we land,” I mutter, though I can’t wipe the smile off my face.
A chime sounds from the control hologram. “That’s it. The reactor is compensating for an energy deficiency that doesn’t really exist, and the emergency shutdown safeguards have been disabled. Quick, get your clothes. We’ve only got a few minutes.”
I’ve had to dress in a hurry before, but never because I might literally die if I don’t. Fortunately, it takes seconds for me to don a singlet, and then we’re squeezing into the escape pod, which was clearly only meant for one occupant. There’s room for us both to fit, since I’m so much smaller than him, but it’s cramped.
“Hang on,” Kest says. He takes a look around as emergency klaxons begin to sound. “This ship was kinda my home for centuries. I’m not one to get sentimental over spacecraft but… I’m gonna miss this thing.”
He gives the ship a last look, but then the clanging alarm rises to a shrieking whoop.
“Can we go now?” I shout over it.
Kest kisses me, then pulls the hatch shut behind us. “Come on, pet. Let’s go home.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
We shoot from the ship like a bullet, the stars spinning way too fast through the window.
“I’m going to be sick!” I shout, trying not to focus on the stars.
Kest grips my hand. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Nanites, remember?”
Sure enough, I’m not actually experiencing nausea—just the extreme acceleration, followed by some kind of shock that rocks the pod like it’s been slapped.
“Was that your ship?” I ask.
“Yeah. And I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s no way your space agencies didn’t notice that. So, we’re not out of the fire just yet.”
“Great.”
The spin of the shock wears off, but is replaced by more heavy turbulence as we hit Earth’s atmosphere. Everything shakes, and out the window of the pod I see fire that quickly turns to daylight. Kest lifts me into position against his body, folding his arms around my head, creating a helmet of muscle. I breathe in his scent and sigh in relief.
“Is this going to be a rough landing?”
“Shouldn’t be. Not taking any chances.”
I smile. I’ve never had a guy shield me with his body during a crash landing in an escape pod before. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.
The descent takes longer than I expect, though I don’t mind being held. I can feel his hard body through my singlet, and the site of Earth’s blue sky brings tears to my eyes. While I’m happy to be back on my home world, soon to be surrounded by humans, there was much I enjoyed about being out there, in space. It was an incredible adventure, and I’m not sure I want it to be over.
However, like it or not, the ground soon comes into view around us; fields of green and white stretch to the horizon like floor tiles, which I recognize as miles and miles of farmland.
“Where are we?”
“South Dakota.”
I laugh, shaking my head. After living my whole life in Manhattan, I’d probably be more at home on the Dominus than the Midwest.
Although I half expect our pod to slam into the countryside at full speed, some sort of engine activates with a soft trill from the onboard computer. We decelerate immediately, and soon we’re touching down on solid ground. Outside, thousands of cornstalks have been flattened and burned by our ship’s thrusters.
“Holy shit! Kest, did you make the crop circles?”
He laughs hard and winks. “Maybe some of them.”
The hatch to our pod opens, allowing Kest to carry me out, which he says will be easier than just letting me go. “You really have to watch your step getting out of these things,” he adds.
Beneath us, singed cornstalks crackle under our feet, and the smell of roasted corn makes my stomach growl. Kest drags me away from the crash site, hand tight around mine; though all I hear is the distant rumble of combines and the chirping of birdsong, I feel a looming threat. Even Kest isn’t tall enough to see past the cornstalks, but his hearing reaches much farther than mine.
“That’s good enough,” he says at last. “Once they start looking outside the immediate landing zone, they’re going to see us on infrared no matter what. Let’s just make the most of the time we have until then.”
He pulls me in for a kiss, one that seems to go on forever, our lips locking us in bliss. I have a million questions about what’s going to happen to us, but I don’t care. Whatever comes, we’ll get through it, I know. I trust Kest completely, and if right now all he wants is to be with me, then that’s what I want too.
During our kiss, we find our way down to the ground, lying in the dry soil. Cuddled against his body, I feel the calm beat of his heart and sigh, almost feeling as though I could sleep. Escaping his ship caused a rush of adrenaline that’s only now starting to wear off.
“Do you think your people will come for us?” I ask after a while, looking up into the sky.
“Not right away, no. Bakan probably had a plan, something to keep the Council occupied until my ship destroyed Earth,” Kest sighs. “I’m guessing Bakan faked an attack on himself and made it look like we did it. When it failed, we fled the Dominus.”
I nod. “And if we were on the run, Earth would be too obvious, so why would we go there?”
“Exactly. Not a terrible plan.”
“Do you think it will work? Will your people really believe we attacked Bakan? Why would we do that?”
Kest plants his fingers into the soil and draws circles in the dirt. “When he and his associates left the Council meeting, they acted disrespectfully. If I wasn’t busy falling in love with you, I might have cared. Still, I was within my rights to demand a formal apology. Maybe people will think Bakan and I came to blows over that.”
“I hope not,” I mumble, feeling my strength ebbing. I’m on the verge of losing consciousness, so comfortable I am in his arms, but then I hear a noise that makes my eyes shoot back open. It’s soft, but I can make it out, the distinct hum of a helicopter in the distance.
“They’re coming,” I whisper, though by now Kest surely hears it too.
“Yes. Don’t worry, pet. We’ll be fine. Just tell them the truth. Try not to be insulted if they don’t believe your story, even though you’re not lying. They’re going to want to believe you’re crazy, rather than the alternative…”
“Okay,” I say, fear growing in my gut despite his reassurance. “What about you? Will you tell them the truth?”
He chuckles. “Oh
, yes. In fact, I’m looking forward to it. It’s so rare I get to tell members of a lesser species who I really am. The people who think they’re in charge always take it the worst.”
I laugh too, imagining their incredulity. They have no idea what they’re in for.
We’re kissing, embraced in each other’s arms, when the helicopter gets close enough to drop a dozen armed soldiers down into the cornfield, the stalks whipping back and forth in the chopper’s wake. They scream at us to stop what we’re doing and to put our hands on our heads for what seems like an eternity. We keep kissing, refusing to part until we’re ready.
“Okay, pet. Do as they say,” Kest finally orders, lifting his hands into the air and getting on his knees. I smile at him with a hint of sadness, and then obey. I laugh as the soldiers use zip ties to bind our arms, knowing Kest could certainly escape from a few pieces of plastic, if he wanted.
The soldiers escort us both out to the edge of the field, where dozens of military vehicles are waiting for us: trucks full of soldiers, unmarked SUVs and even a pair of tanks. Drones circle overhead like hornets, ready to strike. I don’t complain when they load Kest and me into separate vans; it was to be expected.
After more than an hour of driving, the opaque walls of the van keeping me from having any idea where we are, I fall asleep.
* * *
I wake up with my hands cuffed behind my back, the restraints threaded through the bars forming the back of a chair. I’m seated, with my ankles also cuffed, before a black table. When I look around, all I see are gray cement walls, a metal door with an electronic lock, and a long mirror.
An interrogation room.
Well, that fits.
I try to doze again, but soon a man enters. Middle-aged and moderately handsome, he wears a black suit and a guarded expression. He says nothing. He sets a tablet down on the table as he pulls out a chair to sit across from me.
After months of being in the presence of Dominars, it’s an odd experience to meet another human. Normally a man like him—a government agent, no doubt—might seem intimidating. I refuse to say I feel like Bakan, looking down at an inferior, but I definitely no longer see a person like him as someone to be feared. After all, I’m the one who’s traveled across the galaxy and he’s the one who knows nothing.
His Human Captive Page 15
