He chuckles with me for a moment, but the laughter is short lived. However much his eyes meeting mine make me blush, there are other things to be discussed. “So we’re on the same page, then?” he says.
I don’t hesitate. “Yes. I can give you whatever information you need. I can help you find them. I can help you get them.” I drop my eyes and then lift them once again. “But there’s a complication. You heard me mention my brother?”
He nods.
“He’s still with them.”
“Against his will?” Mathios questions and I assume he is already suspicious if it has occurred to him to ask such a question.
I think about lying, but imagine that it will cause more harm in the long run. It is best to be transparent. There is also no desire within me to do anything that might bring distance between Mathios and I. The thought of it leads to a feeling of utter wrongness in my chest, much stronger than any guilt I’ve ever felt.
“No,” I say, after a long stall. “I tried to convince him to run with me, but he doesn’t actually want to leave. I guess it worked out, though,” I say, smiling nervously, afraid of looking up and seeing judgment in the Velorian’s eyes. “Who knows what the slavers would have done with him. I’m not sure what the market price is for human boys.” The words feel like a horrible joke, and I realize as I say them, just how bad this could have been were he with me. Jackson might have tried to fight, no matter what I said to dissuade him. He could have been hurt or even killed before they so much as fished us from the escape pod. “He’s been with the Novas since he was just a little kid. He barely remembers Earth, and even then, we were hungry and we were thieves. He probably can’t see a life worth living without Lukas and the others. To him, they’re his home and his family—just as much as I am.”
Mathios is silent, and I keep going, running at the mouth as I have a tendency to do when something makes me less than sure of myself. “Whatever we do, however we go about this, we have to make sure he’s safe,” I conclude carefully.
“That sort of loyalty is difficult for me to understand,” Mathios says after a moment. “Even the concept of an alliance is hard for me to grasp these days. I’ve never had a family. The closest I’ve come are the soldiers I served with in the war—my unit. Those of us left drifted apart after the war. I only keep in contact with one of them, and that’s his doing. Not mine.”
Seeing as I would not have a family myself without Jackson, I understand. I am not so ignorant to the trials of others that I think everyone is blessed with such. Everyone has parents, sure, but sometimes parents die, and other times they may as well have.
“Maybe that’s why you find it so hard to come back from your ‘beast mode,’” I offer, and he gives a quiet snort, echoing the words ‘beast mode’ incredulously with a slight, melancholy smile. “If you had something to come home to, it might be easier.”
His face turns soft and thoughtful and his stare grows more intense. I feel myself turning red under the scrutiny, and I have to force myself to keep my gaze from dropping to the safety of my lap.
“You’re beautiful,” he tells me, eyes still staring into mine, practically blazing in the dim room.
At the words, I feel a rush of embarrassment mixed with a strange pleasure, and I find myself rising from my seat to escape the line of his gaze. The relief is immediate once I’m on my feet, walking the short distance to the window with the excuse of looking out it. The vastness of quick moving, open space around us feels somehow safer than his eyes.
“I’m not,” I say quietly, as he follows me to where I stand, falling into place beside me. “I’m more than a little disheveled,” I point out, gesturing to the mess of my hair, thrown back in a careless, sloppily done braid, and then moving my hand in front of my face to encompasses the bruise on the left side, the still swollen cut on my lower lip.
“That doesn’t matter,” he says. “None of this matters. I can see you beneath all that. A couple of bruises and some tangled hair won’t change who you are, nor will they change how others see you. Who allowed you to think such things?”
“Lukas,” I mutter under my breath. He must catch the word anyway because I see his brows draw together.
“You’re beautiful,” he reiterates, reaching forward to cup my chin in his hand, tilting my head far enough upward that I have no choice but to look at him and see the passion in his eyes. He means what he is saying. He believes it. “And you are stronger than you realize. The only improvement you can make is to eat the right amount of food for your body.”
The seriousness of the statement coupled with the compliments makes the anxiety within me dissipate. It joins the warmth in my belly, the spreading fire. “I’m inclined to agree,” I say with a laugh, and it is only then his face loses some of its seriousness.
His hand stays where it is, his face moving slowly closer. For a moment, I think he only means to look at me further, to find more things to say. He tilts his head first to one side, then to the next, before deciding on the proper angle and closing in.
I am somehow still shocked at the meeting of our lips, having expected him to venture off course and press them platonically to the crown of my head or perhaps to pull me into an embrace instead.
It seems like a dream to have such lips kiss my own. At first it is slow and languid, the feeling in my bones like liquid gold, making me lean into him as though I want my body to meld with his. It turns quickly to electricity and one of his hands moves down to rest at my hips, coursing through me and making my own hands rise to his shoulders. It is an interesting feeling. As an Ice Velorian, his lips are not quite as warm as my own, but they are no less filled with life. I find that they only serve to further stoke the fire within me.
At last, we pull away collectively, long enough to regain our breath, and I find myself thinking that it might not be so horrible to belong to someone after all, so long as that someone is him and he belongs to me in turn.
8
Mathios
She’s the sweetest thing I’ve tasted, and there is no desire in me to stop, but I have to warn her. When she begins to pull away, I do the same, trying my hardest to ignore the urge to immediately dive back in. I will happily explore her body with my lips for hours on end, so long as she knows what she is getting.
“Anna,” I say. Her name feels like it belongs on my tongue. “This—” I gesture with one hand, encompassing the two of us and all that we can be. “This is not so simple with Velorians. My dragon longs to make you mine, and so do I. But if we allow it to happen, you are mine for life.”
“I know,” she says, her voice a whisper, surprising me. “You think I’ve hopped from planet to planet all these years and never learned some Velorian lore?”
Anna is taller than most human women, but she would still need to stand on her toes to reach my lips when I am standing at my full height. She settles for pressing them briefly to my collarbone, visible thanks to the fact that I unzipped my suit a few a notches after climbing aboard the ship.
“Believe me, Mathios,” she says, “Worse things have happened to me than an incredible, stunning, bizarrely enthralling dragon-man wanting my heart.” Her eyes are blue and earnest, but as she speaks, I see them harden a bit defensively, as if in regret of something. “I want to, believe me—but this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gotten myself in too deep by rushing into things. At the moment, my brother is my priority. Right now, all I want is for him to be safe. I can’t afford to worry about anything else.”
From the way she speaks of her brother, they have a bond that someone of my background cannot hope to understand. What I can understand is her skepticism regarding forming a bond so quickly. Given what she has told me of Lukas, the two were only hours away from completing the human version of such a bond when Anna decided to run. She barely knows me. How can she possible trust that forming a bond with me would not lead to similar regrets?
“At least allow me the privilege of tasting you again,” I say, and her lips
quirk upward in response, an invitation that I answer quickly and with enthusiasm. It is instinctual, I find, to slip my tongue between her lips, teasing. She returns the favor, one hand sliding into the opening of my suit and working it further open. Her hands feel outrageously warm against my cool skin, as though her fingertips are lit with flames. From the beginnings of the first gentle, explorative touches, I feel myself growing hard within my suit. I distract myself by cupping a breast with one hand and finding her backside with the other. She may be too thin for a human, but these parts of her are softer than the rest of her firm, muscled body, and I find them pleasurable to hold. Anna sighs softly, but it deepens into a moan when I give her breast a slight squeeze. All the while I continue to kiss her, taking great enjoyment from the way her cheeks have begun to redden, two high points of color on her open face. When we break apart again, the hardness in her eyes has vanished like a harsh winter by broken by the first signs of a thaw.
“You taste like something familiar,” I say. “And yet, something I have never encountered in my lifetime. You taste like home.”
The color on her face deepens from a flush of pleasure to one of pleased embarrassment. “That was both incredibly sweet and incredibly cheesy,” Anna says, giving my hand a squeeze.
Her last word gets lost or garbled, or else my translator is simply experiencing a slight glitch, as it does from time to time. “Could you repeat that last part for me,” I request. “My translator denoted the final word as one applied to food.”
My lips are on their way to her neck, but they are delayed by her boisterous laughter. The sound of it is loud and full. She places one hand on her stomach as the muscles there tense, eyes bright with mischief and more easy joy than I have seen there since we met.
“It’s kind of like ‘corny,’” she says, which my translator remains confused by. She pinches the bridge of her nose, still laughing lightly but a bit frustrated with the lapse in communication. “Crap. That’s kind of a tough one actually. It means inauthentic, clichéd, maybe trying a bit too hard. But I know you meant it,” she says, smiling as though to soften some perceived blow to my self-esteem. “It’s just that it sounded a bit like something from one of those over-the-top romance vids.”
I don’t find the words upsetting; in fact, they have the opposite effect. Watching her speak and laugh so freely has only served to arouse me further. She smirks at me, as though she knows exactly how much, despite my suit being too thick for any evidence to be visible. She leaves the window we’d been standing beside and heads for the cockpit, and I find that it is no small struggle to keep my hands to myself as we make our way there. The control panel is lit up, easy to see even in the dimly lit space. When she settles into the co-pilot’s chair and I sit down beside her in my usual seat, her face is lit with a soft glow that makes her skin look ethereal.
“What exactly are we doing?” I ask.
Her answer is quick, confident. “I told you I could help you,” she says. “I know where they’re headed, but I’m not familiar with this model of ship. Show me how to chart a course.”
The Red Novas were going to a planet with an extensive market—not unlike X24, but not quite so lawless. They had a cargo hold full of stolen pharmaceuticals to offload, after which they planned to rob another small village. Anna, I find, is surprisingly knowledgeable regarding navigation and often helped the Red Novas choose the quickest, safest route to their next destination. We work well together, mulling over the pros and cons of different directions, without ever devolving into argument. I have never considered that partnership might come so easily.
When the route is finally locked into the navigational systems, the hour is late, and though she is the one to mention going to sleep, yawning with genuine tiredness, the same desire is mirrored in her eyes. The look she gives me as she heads to the small room I allotted her is lingering, but tinged with a small amount of guilt for bothering to want such things while her brother is in peril.
I check the ship’s systems one last time before heading to my own room for rest, doing my best to ignore the quiet sounds emanating from next door as she prepares for bed. I hear the shuffling of sheets, the slight creak of a thin mattress. I cannot stop myself from imagining her lying naked between the sheets. In the privacy of my room at last, I take myself in hand, gasping at the first touch of my fingers on the overly sensitive flesh. I have not grown harder since our kiss, but neither has my arousal managed to dissipate. Each time Anna shot me a smile or brushed her fingers over my own where they rested on the controls, I felt another jolt of want rush through me. Now, I picture her gasping beneath me, or perhaps on top. I imagine my hands cupping her small, firm breasts, the slight way they might bounce as she rides me. I imagine smaller, more intimate things as well—her teeth biting her lip playfully, her mouth shaping my name with a mischievous smile, the gentle rasp of her hair against my bare skin. I can almost feel the way her tongue might trace a path over my body, soft breath against my hips. It takes little work on my part, and I finish with a quickness that would be embarrassing given another situation, spilling over my own hand.
I am left warm and sated, but with Anna just down the hall, I cannot imagine it will last. The dragon within me is burning for her, the ice of his power spreading within me, trying its best to compel me to head to her room, wake her, and press my lips to her once more. The beast seems to think that she will not be able to resist a second time, if we give her the chance to mate with us again. In all my years of avoiding connections, I would never have guessed how much my dragon yearned for attention. I sit on the edge of my bed and count my breaths, slowing them down, until the creature’s wants have stopped overshadowing my own.
The dragon wants her as our mate and would never intentionally hurt her. But I fear that pushing her toward this when she has already expressed desire to wait—to think and rest and take her time, to focus on her brother’s rescue—I fear that this will only push her away. There is also, always, the chance that the dragon might harm her in its enthusiasm.
For Anna’s safety and my own sanity, this mission must end as soon as possible.
9
Mathios
Our first attempt at tracking leads us to disappointment. A scan of every ship in the planet’s various docking areas pings no matches with the model of ship that the Red Novas fly.
“Shit,” Anna says, not even bothering to hide the immediate drop in her mood. “I was sure they’d be here. With so many goods to offload, it would have to be either here or X24. And we would have run across them already if they’d been there.”
“You’re right,” I answer. “My ship is configured to note any ships of that make that it crosses paths with. Had they been there, we should have caught them either coming or going.”
She walks into the crowd without so much as an explanation. “I know some of Lukas’s contacts here,” she says, at my questioning look. “Never dealt with them directly, but they might speak to me. Just…” She stops walking for a moment, looking me up and down. “Hang out in the background somewhere, yeah? You’re a little conspicuous even without a uniform.”
The words are true enough. Even dressed in my civilian clothing, most criminals would be suspicious of a Velorian in such a place. Given our sense of honor, we do not often knowingly take part in behavior that is overtly illegal. Mercenaries are often the closest we come, and even the least righteous of them tend to take on jobs that will result in fixing a problem, in helping someone, however indirectly. It is our eternal penance for the problems our ancestors caused throughout the galaxy, desperate for power and any good fight.
I follow Anna at a careful distance, watching as she speaks to a man at a stall. I remain far enough away that no one glancing in our direction will connect us to each other, but close enough that I can intervene should she happen to find trouble. When she returns, she is grinning.
“They were here,” she says. “And they mentioned their next stop.”
We return to th
e ship immediately, not willing to risk discussing details on a street filled with people who collect secrets and sell them like baubles to the right buyer. Anna pulls the map of our current system up, zooms in, and drags it to the place she wants to view.
“Here,” she says. “Nadar—on the outer rim of this system.”
“I don’t know it,” I answer honestly. The planet on the screen is small and tinged yellow, tiny enough that it could have been mistaken for a moon. “The name is known, but I have never visited, nor heard or read anything about it.”
“Not surprised,” Anna answers. “It’s a little farming planet, nearly all prairie. We hit a village there once in the Northern hemisphere when I was with them. Lukas never hits the same place twice. I would look south, wherever the largest population can be found.”
It makes sense, given the Red Novas’ propensity for hitting small, more or less undefended villages and stripping them of their crops and valuables. It is close, but not so close as to easily be connected with their other crimes in the area. This, coupled with the confidence with which Anna speaks, is more than enough evidence for me.
“Very well,” I say. “Let’s chart a course.”
She remains impeccable at navigation.
We pass the first two days of the journey in a friendship that feels effortless. I grow used to the sound of her voice, and in turn, to the sound of my own. It is normally little used, aside from the investigative portion of a mission, when civilian observations often come in handy or speaking to Takkan when he feels compelled to call. Anna is full of questions and comments and stories; the constant noise keeps my dragon quiet, does not give it a chance to rise up within me and threaten to take over. There are a few more glitches with my translator and its struggle to understand certain parts of Anna’s speech. She laughs joyfully each time it happens at the look of utter confusion on my face, and I find that I cannot feel irritation at the inconvenience when the sound of her happiness is ringing through the ship.
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