by Presley Hall
But it becomes very quickly evident that it isn’t going to happen—he’s still pissed at me, and he has every right to be.
I feel a little lost for the rest of the day, unsure of what to do. Tycran ignores me almost completely, instructing me to stay out of the way, which basically means going to the only bedroom on the ship and staying there. There’s a data pad, but I’m afraid to touch it, worried that it might somehow link back to the control center on Kalix or that I might erase something important. And it’s unlikely there’s anything entertaining on it anyway.
It doesn’t take long for me to realize that the romantic idea I had in my head was very much an illogical fantasy. Not just the idea of seducing Tycran in space, but also that this would be a wild adventure. Maybe it will be once we get to where we’re going, but space without anyone to talk to is actually really boring.
The other thing I quickly figure out is that Emma and Jade weren’t wrong when they talked about how single-minded and focused Tycran is. I had some idea of it before, but seeing him on a mission is something altogether different.
I slip out of the bedroom just once on the first day, watching him from the bridge, and he doesn’t give even the slightest hint that he knows I’m there, although he certainly does. Any warrior as well-trained as he is would pick up on that. But he stays focused on the logs as he plans out the mission, and I can tell that everything about my plan has backfired so spectacularly it’s almost impressive. If I thought Tycran was uptight before, that was nothing compared to how he is with a mission of this importance to plan and execute.
When night falls, approximated by a dimming of lights on the ship, he speaks to me exactly twice—once to tell me there’s food prepared for us, which we eat in silence, and the second time to let me know that I can have the bedroom to sleep in, and he’ll take the captain’s chair at the control deck.
“You don’t have to—” I start to say, but the expression on his face silences me. I don’t make him tell me twice.
It’s noble of him to do that, I reason as I shower in the small bathroom adjacent to the sleeping quarters and get ready for bed.
It fits with what I know of the Kalixian men, and Tycran in particular. But still, I can’t help wishing that we’d ended up sharing the bed. In other circumstances, I would’ve tried to tease him with that idea, offering and seeing if he could be tempted. But his walls seem even more impenetrable than ever now.
There are no clothes for me to sleep in, so I just drape my dress over a chair and slip into the bed naked. The sheets are cool and clean, and I close my eyes briefly as exhaustion washes over me.
Tycran seems very near, just a few yards outside the door, sitting in the captain’s chair. I wince at the mental image. I know he needs to be rested and alert to pull this mission off, and he can’t possibly be comfortable out there. If only I could convince him to come share the bed somehow.
It’s impossible not to fantasize a little about that possibility—Tycran, frustrated with his sleeping arrangements, coming in to say he’ll make a bed on the floor so he can at least stretch out, or demanding that he have the bed after all.
I can picture his eyes flicking to the dress on the chair, to my bare shoulders above the sheet pulled over my chest, and the realization dawning in them that I’m naked. I’d sit up then, let the sheet fall to my waist, and tell him that I don’t mind him taking the bed one bit… but that I’d really like to stay in it too, if he doesn’t mind…
My pulse speeds up in my throat as I imagine it. I’ve picked up enough snippets from the other women to have a pretty good idea of what the Kalixians are like in bed. They’re built much like human men, but stronger and bigger in every way, sure of what they want even if inexperienced, and hungry from years of deprivation. It doesn’t take much to put all of that together and imagine Tycran’s face turning from fury to desire, his baser urges winning out over his mental discipline, coming to bed and finally putting all of that aside, allowing himself to ravish me.
I feel flushed and hot as a whirlwind of images flash though my mind, the ache in me growing until I feel as if there’s nothing in the world I want more.
It doesn’t entirely make sense—I’ve never been the kind of woman to fixate on one man. I feel almost desperate for Tycran sometimes, needing him in a way that feels like more than the result of my recent dry spell, more than the desire for the novelty of him in my bed.
His attractiveness, coupled with the challenge of trying to seduce him, has become a little too much of an obsession for my own good.
For fuck’s sake, Lucy. You need to let it go.
It takes a long time for me to fall asleep. When I do, I dream about Tycran, and about all the things that flitted through my mind as I lay awake. About his hard, muscled body atop mine, the groan he would let out when he slid inside me, and the hungry need I would see in his eyes.
In my dream, he whispers things to me that I can’t quite make out, but they make my body flush with heat, make me arch against him as if I can’t bear for a single inch of my skin to be separated from his. In this subconscious space, I need more than just his body, more than just the pleasure that sex with him will undoubtedly bring.
I need something else, something I can’t quite define…
But before I can grasp what it might be, the dream is over.
10
Lucy
I wake up sometime in the morning—or at least, I assume it’s morning. Out here in space, it’s hard to separate day from night. But the lights in the ship are programmed to turn on slowly at a certain time to mimic the rising of the sun, and when they wake me, I feel hollow and unsatisfied, and ever so slightly troubled.
It’s hard to shake. But after another day of silence from Tycran and my own frustrated boredom, I decide at last to give up.
Clearly, he’s beyond my powers of seduction, and if there’s one thing sneaking onto this ship has shown me, it’s that my obsession is doing more harm than good. I can’t take back my ill-advised plan now, but I can at least try not to be a nuisance, and maybe I can even help.
Since Tycran is glued endlessly to the data pad and holograms in the control deck, I venture out to try to do what little I can—like bring him meals, which are made from a variety of powders mixed with water or milk and put into a converter that quickly turns them into the food they’re meant to mimic.
At first, Tycran just gives me a quick, curt “thank you” and goes back to his work. But as a couple of days pass and I keep doing it, I get a small smile out of him, and then warmer thanks. I can see some of his anger at me receding to mild irritation, and even that softens eventually.
I don’t know if we’re ever going to be friends, and my fantasies of us having wild, needy sex as the ship hurtles through space are pretty much dead by now. But I feel better knowing that I’m doing something to make up for nearly thwarting his mission by accident.
One evening, after I’ve finished the dubious meal that I’ve made for us, I wander into the common room of the ship. There’s not much to do, but at least the view is better than the small window in my room, and there’s some comfortable seating out here.
To my surprise, I find Tycran bent over the table in the center of the room. An interactive hologram with a number of different pictures pulled up glows in front of him. He’s moving the pictures around, his brow creased with concentration, and he doesn’t even seem to hear me walk in.
I know I should probably leave him be, but I can’t suppress my curiosity. I walk toward the table, peering over his shoulder at the hologram. It looks like bits and pieces of a map, and I crane my neck a bit to see it better. I love riddles and puzzles, and this looks exactly like the latter—like he’s trying to fit a puzzle together.
Tycran glances over his shoulder and straightens a little. “Lucy.”
His voice doesn’t have the same irritation in it that it did before, and he doesn’t sound disappointed to see me. He sounds almost… happy? With Tycran, it’s
hard to tell. But it makes my heart flutter slightly in my chest.
“What are you doing?” I shift my gaze to the table. “Is this something to do with the mission?”
As I look more closely, I see that a few of the pieces have been pulled into a 3D virtual model in the center of the table. They must come together somehow to complete the model, although I’m not entirely sure what it is.
“Yes,” he says, his voice cautious. “It’s a scan of the moon I’m going to. Oryn. I need it whole in order to analyze the best method for attacking it.”
I feel a little surge of excitement. This is, if not the sort of adventure I was hoping to have, still thrilling in and of itself.
“I could help,” I venture, biting my lower lip. “I’m really good at puzzles. And I took a couple engineering classes when I went to college briefly.”
He looks at me, his brows furrowing. “College? Isn’t that what your people call your institutions of learning? For scholars?”
I laugh. “Yes. Why, are you surprised?”
He has the grace to look chagrined. “I’d heard that you worked, that’s all. Our people generally do not do both at the same time.”
I raise one eyebrow. “You know, a lot of women strip on Earth to put themselves through college. It’s far from free, where I’m from. Not that you would know, since you don’t even have those kinds of places on Kalix. Colleges or strip clubs.”
He frowns. “Our people believe that to be a true scholar, you must learn somewhere other than the world to which you are accustomed. Our scholars go elsewhere for their education. And as far as the other, well…”
To my surprise, I realize he’s flushing a bit, as if embarrassed. “I’ve seen them on other worlds,” he finishes tightly, looking away from me. “I don’t think less of you, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I know.” I nod quickly. This is the most we’ve spoken since he caught me on board the ship, and I don’t want it to end in awkwardness. “It’s okay, really. And I’d like to help,” I add, my gaze flicking from the hologram back to his face. “I think I can.”
“All right,” he relents. “Perhaps with two of us, the task will go quicker.”
Over the next several hours, I learn a different side of Tycran.
I’ve guessed from seeing him in the ring with the younger warriors that he’s a good teacher, patient and encouraging. And he’s the same with me. The tech is unfamiliar to me, but it doesn’t take long for me to pick up on how to move and arrange the pieces. I’m quickly absorbed in the process of learning how to use it, and I’m completely fascinated by it.
“If we can complete this,” he says from over my shoulder as I practice dragging a piece into the model and rotating it to see if it fits, “I can hopefully find a way to sneak in undetected. I need to be able to analyze all possible entrances, and the pathways through the base.”
It’s tedious work. Many of the pieces look as if they fit at first glance, but closer inspection reveals that something is slightly off—a passageway that doesn’t match up, a missing doorway, a blocked exit. Some of the scans are duplicates, and we have to find those and remove them.
But throughout the whole process, as we find a rhythm working on it side by side, I’m filled with a sudden and deep sense of pride.
I’m helping.
This mission could not only save Kalix, but people on my planet too. Human women are probably still being kidnapped by the Orkun, and they’ll continue to be unless the brutal warlords are stopped. What I’m doing could directly contribute to making sure that what happened to us doesn’t happen to anyone else, in any part of the universe.
All thoughts of anything but what we’re working on are completely gone, and I start to see why Tycran is so focused. It enables him to see clearly what needs to be done, without distraction or confusion. I thought it must be joyless to live the way he does, without any pleasure or luxury, but I can see that it has its own reward, that the sense of purpose and accomplishment is a sort of pleasure too.
It’s not for me, but I can see how his way of life could work for him—especially after everything he’s gone through. I don’t know his story, but I know it must contain loss, like everyone on Kalix. There’s no one on that planet who’s entirely untouched by it.
After several hours of working on the scans, my eyes start to go a little blurry, so we break for the night. But over the next few days, we continue working together, falling into a sort of routine.
Whichever one of us wakes first—usually Tycran—makes the “morning” meal. He meditates after that, and after the first time I see him doing it, I begin quietly going through my series of exercises and stretches that keep me limber and fit on the other side of the room where I won’t disturb him.
He doesn’t say anything about it, but sometimes I think I can feel his gaze on me when he finishes with his meditation first. It makes my pulse speed up a little every time, but I do my best to ignore it. If Tycran can master his desires, I can too, and I’ve come to see there’s no place for that right now.
This, his mission that has somehow become ours, is far too important.
Once our morning stretches and mediation are done, he goes to the control deck to check on the ship’s trajectory, and I stay in the common room, poring over the maps.
Later in the day, we work on the puzzle together. I show him the progress I’ve made, and he looks at it with fresh eyes, making adjustments as I keep sorting through the pieces.
As the days pass, we knit hundreds of scans together, and slowly the 3D model in the center of the table takes shape. Every time we have a small victory—making a particularly tricky piece fit or completing a section that allows Tycran to start analyzing a full quadrant of the model—I can feel us getting a little closer.
We’re united in something now, with a common purpose.
It feels good for my time on the ship to mean something. For the first time, it feels as if my entire journey here, from my abduction to my arrival on Kalix and my foolhardy decision to sneak on board the ship, might have been for a reason.
If Tycran succeeds in his mission, I will have contributed in some small way.
And I realize, as the days pass, that he’s starting to soften toward me. On the evening we’re set to arrive at the ship’s first destination, I look up as he walks into the room—and he smiles at me. It’s not a broad smile, or even much of one at all, but I can see it in the slight curve of his mouth and the warmth in his eyes.
“Hey, come check this out,” I say, gesturing him closer. “We’re down to the last handful of pieces. I figured out that section where something seemed off before. I just needed to swap two of the scans; we had them backward.”
“Ah. Good spotting.”
Tycran crosses the room and settles at the table beside me. For the next several minutes, we work in near silence, murmuring quietly from time to time as we analyze the remaining scans and fit them into the model.
As the last pieces of the hologram slide into place, I hear Tycran’s sharp intake of breath. Rising from his seat, he spins it around and around, looking for any flaws, any corridors that don’t match, any mistakes we might have made. Then he lets the breath out, long and slow, as his eyes meet mine.
“We did it,” he says, and I can hear happiness in his voice—real, true happiness.
Satisfaction and pride rise inside me, filling my chest until it feels like it might burst. Without thinking, I leap up and throw my arms around his neck, rising up on my tiptoes and squeezing him as elation rushes through me.
“Yes! That’s amazing, Tycran!” I exclaim, everything else forgotten in my sheer excitement over the fact that we’ve succeeded.
We did it.
Us. Together.
Tycran goes rigid, every inch of him tensing under my touch. I let go of him as quickly as I threw my arms around him, backing up as I feel my face flush hot.
Shit. I didn’t mean to do that, and for once, I wasn’t even thinking ab
out charming him into bed. I was just so thrilled that we succeeded. But my body reacts to the contact too, desire heating my blood. It’s all I can do not to let my gaze flick down to the front of his loincloth, my curiosity desperately wanting to know if he’s aroused like I am.
I can feel his gaze on me, and I keep mine glued to the table, and to the model slowly rotating in the center of it.
Oryn.
His mission, now our combined purpose.
It’s become almost as important to me as it is to him, and I’m determined to help him succeed and come back safely.
But for a moment, the desire flooding me trumps all of that. All I want is for him to clear off this table and fling me down on top of it. Or even the floor would do, if he didn’t feel like waiting long enough for us to make it back to the bedroom…
Fuck. I can’t look at him.
If I do, he’s going to see the raw lust in my eyes, the evidence of how much I want him. And if I don’t see that same desire reflected in his? Something inside me feels like that would hurt more than I can bear.
I don’t know why. I don’t know why I care so much, or why I want him so badly. The time we’ve spent together seems to have only increased it now that it’s come flooding back, our shared camaraderie turning simple desire into something more personal.
That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? my mind whispers. Friends with benefits, instead of just a one-night-stand.
I grip the edge of the table to stop my fingers from trembling. Tycran clears his throat, and I wonder what he’s going to say. Nothing has changed, I know that much. He’s not going to suddenly want me just because we built a model together. He’s not going to drop his guard now, not at this turning point in the mission.
The engine whines softly as the ship slows, cutting through my thoughts.
“We’re here.” Clearing his throat, Tycran turns to look out the window.
