by Kyle, Celia
This mating bond stuff is serious business.
I soothe her with soft words, soft hands, and softer kisses as she continues to cry, enjoying the feel of her against me even if it’s not under the best circumstance. After about five minutes, her tears subside and she pulls back to look at me. She says nothing for what feels like hours, but then she leans down to gently press her lips to mine.
Since the first kiss, I’ve known I’ll never, ever grow tired of kissing her. I’d do it tired, bloody, or on death’s door, sick, healthy, or anything in between. I’d kiss her anywhere, in front of anyone, and damn the consequences. She’ll always be my port in the storm, and if she feels even an ounce for me of what I do for her, that makes me the luckiest bastard in the universe.
That smile is back on her lips when she pulls away from me again. She reaches up to cup my cheek before pressing her forehead against mine.
“You needn’t have worried so much, my love. It’ll take more than a few lumpy dingleberries to kill me,” I tell her as I reach up to place a hand over hers.
She laughs but admonishes me for using such a derogatory word for the Vakutan-Odex hybrids. “You know that’s an outdated, racist term. And besides, I can’t help but feel sorry for them. You heard what they said. They’d been experimented on. I’ve never seen creatures like them before. It sounds horrible to say it, but I’m glad you put them out of their misery.”
“Yes, well, be that as it may, the Odex have killed enough of my friends that I believe I’m entitled to use it,” I nearly growl. “But you’re right. What was done to them was inhumane—an abomination.”
She laughs again and it’s such a lovely sound, like a song I’d once heard and forgotten, and I’m only too happy to remember it.
“I’ve got to tell you something.” Her cheeks flush rosy pink and her gaze flicks back to our linked hands, as if she can’t look me in the eye as she prepares herself to say whatever she’s clearly been thinking about for as long as I was unconscious.
“You can tell me anything.” I say, hoping my words provide her with both comfort and encouragement.
She takes a deep breath before she looks up and meets my eyes again. As I always do, I get lost in their smoky depths. I drink my fill of their radiance before dragging myself back to the present and squeezing her hand once more.
“I’m sure this doesn’t come as a shock to you, but—I love you, Grantian. I think I’ve known it for a while now, maybe even before we were confirmed to be jalshagar. I felt a pull toward you even before the first time we kissed. I’d never felt so comfortable around anyone before, even though you were clearly on edge. I just—I love you,” she finishes, her eyes never leaving mine.
I stare at her for a long moment before I speak, wanting to get the words right.
“Of course I’m not shocked, Lamira, because I love you, too. I’ve loved you for so many years before I even knew you. I’ve always felt like something was missing in my life and now I feel whole. The moment I saw you it was like I recognized you, and at the time I didn’t know how that was possible. I do now. My soul knew you—knew yours—and I thank all the gods every day for your love. You’re the best part of me,” I conclude as I bring her hands to my lips.
Shit, now she’s crying again.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Lamira
My arms ache terribly from the heavy bags dangling from my grip, but I grit my teeth and continue on along the burnished copper passage of the Queen. It’s not much further to Grantian’s new quarters—a space he no longer shares with another Kilgari and has a larger bed to fit the two of us. I can make it.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that my destination is our quarters because I’m moving in with my golden-skinned, horned Kilgari mate once he gets released from the medbay tomorrow. It’s been two days and his wounds are mostly recovered.
It just seemed silly to not move in. Grantian had offered to help with the move, but I’d turned him down. He’s still healing and his duties have kept him busy ever since we got back from Solace.
Besides, I had thought it wouldn’t be all that hard. It’s not like I have furniture to move, after all. But I quickly found I had accumulated a lot of junk in a short period of time aboard the Queen. This is my fourth, and I hope final, trip from my former domicile to his quarters.
I don’t quite make it through the door. Giving in to my oxygen-starved muscles, I set the bags down outside the portal and rub my aching wrists for a few moments before finally completing my task.
Then I plop down on the huge bed I now share with Grantian and sigh. That’s done with. Now maybe I can catch a quick nap. My ordeal at the moon base with the Vakutan-Odex hybrids has left me exhausted beyond all logic.
So I lay my head down on the pillow and shut my eyes. Maybe I doze a bit, but I don’t think it’s for long before the door chime sounds.
Sighing, I fling the covers off myself and trudge over to the door, pushing the button to open it.
I’m a bit surprised to see Fiona standing there in the portal. Without being bidden she pushes past me and sweeps into the room, her arms overloaded with the paper documents we recovered from moon base Solace.
“Oh good, you’re awake.” She plops the documents down on the bed in a great pile and turns to regard me.
“I am now.” I sink onto the bed and shuffle through the various papers. Most of the writing appears to have been redacted with black pigment smudged across the text rendering it unreadable. “Is this all the stuff we got from the moon base on Solace?”
“Most of it.” Fiona draws two datapads out of her shoulder bag and hands me one of them. “Here. I need your help to scan these into a digital format.”
“Why me?” Despite my protests, I pick up the datapad and set it to scan mode.
“Because Varia is on the bridge in a meeting of the senior staff, Thrase is arguing with Nicari, Marion would never agree to help on something so tedious, and quite frankly you’re the least likely to say no because you’re nice and hate disappointing people.”
“Gee, thanks. I think.” I peer at the papers and shake my head. “I don’t see the point in scanning all of these. Can’t we just do the pages with un-redacted text? It just makes more sense to me.”
Fiona’s brows climb high on her face, and her eyes gleam with intensity.
“Ah, but I have yet to tell you about my glorious algorithm, which took me most of last night to complete.”
I cock my head to the side.
“You wrote an algorithm?”
“A glorious algorithm. You have to say the glorious part.”
“Fine, a glorious algorithm. What does it do?”
Fiona picks up one of the sheets of crisp paper and holds it out for my inspection.
“If you’ll notice, sometimes the black pigment line doesn’t quite cover all of the letters. Parts show at the top and sometimes the bottom. Not only that, whatever they were using to apply the pigment seems to have run dry at several points, and it is semi translucent.”
“All right, I can see that, but I still can’t make heads or tails of this stuff.”
Fiona taps her datapad and pouts. “But you’re not remembering my glorious algorithm. That’s a key point you should take away from this presentation. My algorithm can ‘read’ the partially exposed text and extrapolate what its likely characters are. Not only by the shape of the exposed parts, but by the cadence of the sentence, grammatical structure, syntax… it’s all very involved, but I think it just might work.”
I chuckle helplessly and spread my hands. “Fiona, if you tell me your little datapad can do all of that, I’m not going to argue with you.”
“Good. Smart people never argue with me.”
“So how long is this going to take?’
“To scan this stuff? Between the two of us, not long. Maybe an hour…”
“No, no.” I put my hands up to forestall further words tumbling out of her mouth. “I mean, how long will your algorithm
take to decipher—”
“My glorious algorithm.”
“—you know what I mean. How long will it take to decipher the hidden text?”
“Hmm.” Fiona’s face scrunches up, and her gaze grows distant as she makes the tricky calculations in her head. “Six, seven hours per page?
“Six hours per page? That’s going to take forever.”
“Not forever, six hours.”
“No, I mean to do the whole stack of documents. There’s hundreds of sheets of paper here.”
“Huh.” Fiona puts her hands on her hips and purses her lips as she stares at the mountain of paper documents. “Guess you’re right. Fortunately, once the documents have been scanned, the datapad will work independently of further input from me. I’ve got it set up to notify me every time it finishes a page.”
Fiona is right. It doesn’t take all that long to scan the documents. Sometimes I don’t hold the datapad steadily enough and the picture comes out blurry, so I have to start over. But by and large it’s a simple task with the only drawback being I now have half a dozen paper cuts all over my fingers.
Once we’ve finished scanning, Fiona has another idea. “Why don’t we try and read what we can of these documents? I’m impatient to wait for the results of my glorious algorithm.”
There’s no polite way to refuse, even though I’m sick of dealing with these things already. Soon I find myself getting lost in the paper trail, however. There are many names of women, all of them human from IHC space, but I can’t find a match for a single member of the Frontier crew on any of the documents.
“Have you found any familiar names at all in your stack, Fiona?”
She shakes her head, her gaze remaining fixed on her task. “Not yet. I’m beginning to suspect there aren’t any.”
I blow air out of my lungs in an exasperated sigh.
“How deep does this affair go? There are hundreds, maybe more than a thousand names on these pages, and that’s just what we can read.”
“I don’t know, Lamira. I intend to cross reference the names on our list with all known databases of the Alliance, Coalition, Helios Combine, and League origins, as well as the IHC network. It should come back with something. At least, I hope it does.”
We work in silence for a time. Besides names, the un-redacted sections of text list pretty mundane things—cleaning supplies, office equipment, and that sort of thing. I even check it carefully in case there’s some kind of code, but if there is, I can’t find any.
At length we both sit back from our respective piles and share a long gaze between us.
“What do you think they’re up to, Fiona?” I shake my head. “Those—those poor monsters in the moon base have me worried. What if something similar has happened to the women on this list?”
Fiona’s grim silence is all the answer I need. Something happened to these women, and it probably wasn’t pleasant.
I resolve to get to the bottom of this mess if it’s the last thing I do.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Grantian
“This is it, huh?” Standing at the center of the room, both hands on her hips, Lamira looks around her and smiles. Most of her things are already here—a few scattered clothes and some trinkets she picked up on the market—and the room has finally started to feel like home. “We’ve finally got a place for ourselves.”
“And it was about time,” I tell her, trying my best not to laugh. “Otherwise we’d have to sneak around.”
“Would we?” Turning toward me, she gives me a little wink, her smile widening. “I wouldn’t mind it. All these bunkrooms, the cargo bay… sneaking around might be fun. But if you think it’s time for us to become more conservative about things, then—”
“That’s not what I meant.” This time I don’t bother restraining my laughter. “At all.”
“So, how’s it going to be, then?”
“Sneaking around is still on the table,” I say, “but it’s nice to have some privacy.”
“And what do you need privacy for?”
“I think you can figure that one out on your own.”
“Maybe if you showed me, it’d be easier.”
That’s a challenge, no doubt about it. The thing is, I love a good challenge, and I’m quick to act on it. Returning her smile, I walk across the room and close in on her. I wrap my arms around her torso, thread my fingers into her hair, and hold her tightly. And what do you know? It’s absolute perfection. The curious thing is that now, after everything we’ve gone through, it feels even more perfect than before. It shouldn’t be possible, but here we are, our love strengthening with each passing day. Just the way it should.
“I’ll never get tired of this,” I tell her, cupping her face with both my hands as I lean in. “Never.”
“You better not,” she says, her words reaching me right before our lips touch. When they finally meet, she presses her tiny body against mine, her breasts mashing against my chest. Enjoying the closeness and warmth of her body, I close my eyes and part her lips with my tongue. She melts into my embrace, allowing her own tongue to dance with mine, and that’s when the real world stops mattering. Right here and now, the only thing that matters is that we’re together.
Allowing lust to take over me, I run both hands down the side of her body. I stop once I reach her waist, her curves fitting my hands perfectly, and then I pull her shirt over her head. Allowing it to fall to the floor, I take both hands to her shoulders and push the straps of her bra down, eager to lay my eyes on her naked skin. The cups droop over her breasts almost at once, her right nipple peeking over the rim, and that’s enough for me to lose it.
Unclasping her bra with a quick flick of my fingers, I rip the damn thing off her body. Now with her breasts bare, their perfect shape making my mouth water, Lamira looks straight into my eyes and offers me a teasing smile. “Are you just going to stare?” she asks me, and I don’t need words to offer her a reply.
Placing one hand on her backside, my fingers digging into her flesh, I pull her toward me and lean in. I take my mouth straight to her right nipple, suck it into my mouth, and unleash the sweetest of punishments upon it. Lapping at her rosy bud with my tongue, her flavor inundating me, I then take an extra step and use both my hands to pull her pants down. The moment she’s standing in front of me with nothing but her black thong on, I flatten one hand right between her legs and start caressing her wetness. The drenched fabric of her underwear presses tightly against my fingertips.
“That feels so good,” she whispers. A slight croak leaves her lips as I push the fabric aside. Using only one finger, I move it up the length of her inner lips and then gently press down on her clit. She moans softly, her voice slipping past my eardrums and coiling itself around my thoughts. I start stroking her clit more fiercely now. Swaying her hips, she does her best to push her pussy against my hand, and it becomes impossible to resist her eagerness.
With a growl rising up in my throat, I pull back from her and lay both hands on her hips. I force her to turn around on her heels and then give her a slight push toward the wall. Immediately knowing what’s on my mind, she spreads her legs wide and places her hands on the wall for support. Without even thinking about what I’m doing, I go down on my knees.
“You’re so fucking delicious,” I whisper, placing both my hands on her backside. She angles herself down to reveal the drenched pink skin between her legs, and I attack it right away. Opening my mouth wide, just like a predator, I crush my mouth against her aching pussy. She lets out a quivering moan and, eager to hear her voice rise in pitch, I push my tongue past her inner lips.
“Oh, Mother,” she moans, thrusting back against my mouth. That just makes me devour her even more fiercely, my tongue ravaging her with frenzied intensity. Digging my fingers into her backside, her flesh molding itself to my hands, I keep her in place as she starts to tremble. Her knees threaten to buckle under her weight, her moans turn even more ferocious, and then…
She comes wi
th a vengeance, every muscle on her body twitching and spasming as a seizure of pure ecstasy overtakes her. I keep my mouth firmly pressed against her wetness as she explodes, enjoying the way her sweet taste floods my mouth. I only pull back once her moans have subsided, the ragged sounds of her uneven breaths reaching me.
“Holy shit,” she whispers, finally turning around to face me. I go up to my feet, the shadows cast by my horns falling over her naked body, and her tired but ecstatic expression lights up once more. “That was just the warmup. Wasn’t it?”
“You’re starting to learn.”
With that, I go on the offensive.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lamira
Pure, unbridled madness.
Whenever we’re together, it’s always like this.
“Let’s get to the main event. Shall we?” I ask him, my heart tightening inside my chest as he removes his shirt. My eyes are immediately drawn to the chiseled contour of his pectorals and abs, every single line on his body making me feel absolutely delirious. Even though I’ve just come, desire is already starting to bloom inside me again and I’m ready for more.
Taking the lead, I move one step toward him and unbuckle his belt. I pull it free from its loops, and then push his pants down until he’s wearing nothing but his boxer briefs, the outline of his two hard cocks already in full sight. Running my tongue over my lips, I keep my eyes on him and push his boxers down, freeing his two erections. They spring free, almost slapping my hand in the process, and I look down to see precum glistening on their tips.
Sweet mercy.
Gingerly, I reach for his hardness and take both his cocks in my hands. I hold them by the root, his thick flesh throbbing against my fingers, and then start stroking him at an ever-growing pace. I only get to do it for half a minute. Before I know it, Grantian peels my fingers off his hard members and then picks me up from the floor. Carrying me in his arms, he makes a straight line toward the bed and puts me down on the mattress.
