by Lea Linnett
Despite the rarity of seeing a levekk in the flesh, people in the outer districts loved the scandal of a disgraced levekk official or businessman being brought down by salacious claims that they visited red-light districts cruising for sub-species partners. And the scandal was always greatest when a human was involved.
The reason why was the worst-kept secret on Earth: humans could bear levekk children. And vice versa.
It was something Lena had only been dimly aware of before being sent to Kharon, but once she was there, surrounded by procurers and traffickers and prostitutes and more, she’d come to realize how well-known it was. Everyone in that line of work had some story about smuggling a human and her hybrid child off-planet, or had heard about an entire brothel being raided when an accident caused some rich levekk’s reputation to be threatened.
Lena hadn’t wanted to believe it—she’d certainly never seen a hybrid walking around. But then, she didn’t really want to know what might become of such a child if they were discovered by enforcers.
And she’d never have to find out. She’d none-too-gently been stuck with a contraceptive implant on her first day at Kharon, and it would be years before it needed replacing.
Kormak probably received the same shot, so he was out of the reproductive game for a while, too. With that in mind, she and Kormak could potentially…
She felt a twitch in her core, that familiar little firework of anticipation—
No. No, no, no, no, no.
She splashed water on her face in an attempt to cool the burn of embarrassment. She could not go there.
Legal or not, it was obvious to Lena that she had a crush, and it’d be better if she stamped it out now. It didn’t matter how surprisingly human Kormak often seemed, or how easy it was becoming to talk to him. Or how nice his shoulders were.
Lena bit her lip, scrubbing frantically at a patch of caked-on dust at her ankle.
Finally, she ran out of places to clean, and took a deep, steadying breath. She looked down at the water, at the lank blond hair now falling into her vision. It was visibly unkempt, no longer falling in the loose, healthy way it had when she still lived in Rockford.
Not that her hair had ever been that stunning—working in a factory tended to take the sheen off even the cleanest hair—but it had never been this bad.
So Lena rolled her shoulders, preparing for the dunk.
The water felt like a blow to the head when she finally dipped beneath the surface. The world went quiet, the only sound being the rush of running water beating dully against her ears. She held her breath, and wasted no time in digging her fingers into her scalp, working the water into the thickest sections of her hair.
She surfaced for breath once or twice, but dove back in without hesitation, using the water to work the knots out. Without soap, she knew it would never be squeaky clean, but she could feel the oils lifting all the same, and breathed an internal sigh of relief.
If it helped her shift the oily feeling even an iota, then it was worth it.
Finally, she resurfaced for good, standing fully to get a reprieve from the water’s icy fingers. Her hair covered her face still, and she ignored her shivering in order to grab it and wring out the worst of the water.
She flipped her hair back, rubbing the water from her eyes, and froze when a muttered curse cut through the silence.
“Fuck.”
She made eye contact with Kormak almost by accident, her head instinctively swiveling to face the direction of the sound. He was only just visible in the dark, but his wide eyes glinted as they raked up and down her body.
Lena stared back, her brain unable to work out what commands it should be sending to the rest of her, until she finally let out a squeak of embarrassment and dropped back down into the water as deep as she could go. The cold registered distantly, her entire body lighting up with embarrassment.
Kormak looked away, planting his eyes on the ground before him, and nonsensically, Lena almost missed the scrutiny. He was standing next to one of the larger rocks, having obviously just rounded the bend of the river and pulled up short at the sight of her.
“I…” he tried. Lena almost wanted to laugh. The levekk seemed to be at a loss for words, his taciturnity suddenly making him seem small and off-put rather than large and threatening as it usually did. He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Thought you might have gotten lost. I called out, but…”
She grimaced. Her head had been underwater; no wonder she hadn’t heard him. She looked down, her cheeks feeling hot. “Not lost. And I’m nearly done, so…”
“Right,” the levekk said mechanically, shaking his head and turning. He disappeared around the corner without another word, his gait stiff.
Lena let out a moan of embarrassment, which quickly turned into a nervous giggle as she splashed the water half-heartedly.
Really? Did that… just happen?
---
Kormak balled his hands into fists as he stalked back to camp, the diamond-hard tips of his fingers digging into his palms. He focused on the pain, trying to drown out the waves of embarrassment that were currently rolling over him.
He stopped dead by the spent campfire, frowning. Why was he embarrassed? Seeing naked human bodies—those of males and females—wasn’t a new experience. They were a permanent fixture of the inner-city underworld that he could never hope to avoid, even if he was happy never to touch.
But after seeing her standing there, poised in the middle of the river like a statue, every soft plane and gentle curve of her body catching the meager light... His lips thinned, and he brushed a cautious hand down the front of his jumpsuit, where the first hints of his arousal could be felt through the fabric.
“Fuck.”
That was reason enough to be embarrassed.
He shouldn’t be reacting like this. He was no stranger to sex. His people didn’t have hangups about that sort of thing. Sex was like a hobby to levekk, and like all hobbies, it only became a problem when it distracted you from your work. Kormak wasn’t an enthusiast like some, but he had experience.
But it had also been a very long time—years—since he last had a partner.
As he slumped down by the fire pit, he couldn’t shake the image of Lena from his head, and his cock stirred. Even in the dull, pre-dawn darkness, he could see the way the river water glistened on her skin, running between the twin swells of her breasts in rivulets and disappearing somewhere between her thighs. She was soft, like others of her race, but as she raised her arms over her head he could see the resilient muscle of a worker. She was tough enough to keep up with him over lengths and lengths of terrain even after a stint in a prison cell and it showed, strength underlying her every soft curve.
He longed to touch her unlike he’d longed to touch anyone. He suddenly wanted to know what every inch of her strange body felt like, from her breasts—a distinctly human feature—to the peculiar thatch of hair between her legs, to even the odd shape of her feet.
But he couldn’t. He’d promised himself long ago that he would never touch someone like Lena, and the shame he felt at wanting her ate into him.
It wasn’t that she was a sub-species. While he’d been raised under the strict code of a military family, his head filled with all sorts of rules about ethics and ‘keeping one’s body pure’, he’d gotten over it after only a few months of seeing how the real world worked. Levekk were told from an early age that laying with a member of any sub-species was morally repugnant, but that didn’t stop a steady rush of credits from flowing into Malcolm’s business thanks to rich levekk looking for expensive sub-species whores.
And it wasn’t like Kormak had suddenly become celibate. He’d made friends with people around him—with all that that entailed—and there weren’t that many levekk at his level in the New Chicago underbelly. He’d quickly learned that sub-species weren’t all that different from him in the ways that mattered.
No, the reason he shouldn’t be thinking this way about Lena, was that she was hum
an.
A small but significant part of Malcolm’s business had involved the sex trade, and human women were a hot—and lucrative—commodity for rich levekk. Kormak had seen how those women looked when they were eventually given back. They never ended up dead, but once or twice it had been a close thing. He’d seen the claw marks in their bodies, the bruises on their faces and wrists, the pained hobbling. He’d almost thrown up the first time he witnessed it—and not just from seeing the damage. When that first woman walked in the door, the fear that filled her eyes upon seeing Kormak was excruciating. She’d looked at him as if she were still trapped in a nightmare, and flinched away from him when he tried to help.
After that, he’d asked Malcolm personally to keep him away from their base when those women were being brought home. Nevertheless, the image had stuck with him.
He’d seen how breakable humans were beneath levekk hands. Hell, he’d ripped apart enough human thugs from rival gangs with his own claws. He would never forget the screams, the fear when they saw him coming.
He hated humans. For being weak. For being willing to hurt their own kind like Malcolm did.
And he hated himself for not doing anything about it.
He couldn’t possibly touch Lena, after seeing what he had. The thought of her looking at him like that woman did sent stones sinking into his stomach, killing any arousal he might have felt earlier.
He put his head in his hands. He would have to ignore his attraction to her. There was no other way for him to protect her—or to atone. He knew Lena would appreciate him backing off too, especially after what she’d told him about the warden at Kharon. The way she’d hid herself beneath the water was only further proof.
He snatched up the backpack that Lena had left by the fire, rooting around in it for a distraction and finding another bruised apple inside. He bit into it, swallowing it down in large chunks as he tried to focus on anything but the thought of Lena.
10
Lena was reasonably sure Kormak nearly bit his tongue on the apple he’d been eating when she arrived back at camp.
He looked round at her, his expression briefly open enough for her to see the multitude of emotions warring on his face before it shut down again.
They watched each other awkwardly for a moment, until Lena looked away. She ignored the butterflies in her stomach, instead reaching down to pick up the bag that now lay beside the levekk.
Her jumpsuit still felt crinkled and unclean against her skin, but it would never dry if she tried to wash it. She ignored the way it itched, and pulled a mandarin orange from the bag.
She sat down by the fire pit, although not directly across from the levekk. He was sitting with his arms slung casually around his knees, but there was something tense in his posture. He kept his gaze averted as he munched on his apple, and Lena decided to busy herself with peeling the skin from her own breakfast.
She wanted to say something, to break the weird silence that had taken hold over them, but she couldn’t seem to find the words. She popped one of the orange segments into her mouth to buy herself more time.
“Sorry. For before.”
Lena paused, looking over at the levekk with her mouth full. She chewed for a second before answering. “It’s fine, really.”
Kormak looked at her with what Lena decided was the closest thing to a raised eyebrow a levekk could pull off. “No, I… I should’ve given you more privacy.”
Lena looked down, trying to hide the small smile that suddenly wanted to worm across her face. “Well I was bathing in the middle of a forest,” she joked, losing the battle with her smile and instead turning it on him. “I mean it, it’s fine.”
There was a beat of silence.
“As long as it doesn’t make things weird,” she added, and Kormak chuckled low. She covered her sigh of relief with an answering laugh, and popped another orange segment in her mouth. “So the water is fucking freezing, by the way. Do not recommend.”
“Uh-huh. Could’ve told you that from drinking it. And you thought swimming was a good idea?”
Lena puffed herself up. “Well, I’m sorry. Not everyone is happy smelling like a stable full of teniisa.”
Kormak’s jaw dropped, his brow plate rising further than she’d ever seen it go before. Lena could suddenly see just how big his eyes were, and the effect was interesting. He immediately looked younger—or what she thought young might look like for a levekk—and she wondered just how many years he’d spent scowling.
“You’re smiling,” Kormak was saying, “because you think you’re being funny. But I’ve seen humans faint when they come into direct contact with a teniisa’s scent gland.”
Lena blinked. “You’re kidding! Wait, just the scent gland?”
“Uh-huh. They make perfume out of them.”
“For who?” Teniisa were huge animals, twice the size of an Earth bull and with three times the stink.
Kormak chuckled. “Kel-kor.” At Lena’s confused look, he added: “You won’t find any on Earth.”
Lena sat up straighter, her orange forgotten. “Are they… Do the levekk…?”
Kormak looked away. “Yeah. They’re part of the Constellation. They have stricter health requirements than some species though, from what I’ve heard. They’re not very compatible with the atmosphere here.”
Lena nodded in understanding. The Levekk Constellation was vast. Even before Earth, there’d been thirty-one planets in the levekk’s grasp, so it made sense that there’d be species and planets that she’d never even heard of.
“That’s crazy,” she said. “Have you ever seen one?”
Kormak shook his head. “Nah. Not in person. I saw a picture once in one of my dad’s books. They were pretty ugly.”
Lena laughed quietly. She could say the same of a lot of alien species she’d met.
“So, your old crew used to sell the glands?” she asked.
Kormak’s gaze turned distant, and he worried at his lip as if he were weighing something up. “Yeah,” he said, turning quiet. “On the black market.”
Lena hesitated. “That how you ended up in Kharon?” She knew she shouldn’t ask. Her heart beat faster, scared she’d offended him, but he met her gaze with calm eyes.
“In a way,” he said. “I was in Kharon because I’m a criminal, and as a criminal, I saw a lot of the black market.”
“But you weren’t busted for smuggling dangerously smelly animal parts?”
Kormak snorted. “No. Not quite.”
Lena took a moment to really look at him as he studied the ashy remains of the fire. Even sitting like this, relaxed and calm, there was a quiet power to his movements. His claws glowed in the dawn light; his muscles pressed against the fabric of his suit as he reached up to scratch at his neck. He could crush just about anything in his grasp, but instead of the fear that had flooded through her when they first met, she now twitched with… interest?
Oh jeez. She really was far gone.
“Why do you think I got sent to Kharon?” she asked a few minutes later, trying not to blush at where her thoughts had ended up again.
Kormak raised his brow plate. His eyes ran up and down her once, as they had at the river, and Lena felt her cheeks tinge with red. If he saw, Kormak ignored it.
“You hit someone, right? Finally stopped taking shit from what’s-his-name—Silick?—and he pressed charges.”
Lena’s laugh erupted out of her. “No way,” she managed between gasps. “I only started hitting people after I went to prison. That’s how I got sent to Iso—popped Garross right in the face.” Kormak grinned at that, and Lena’s laughter was quickly replaced by a fluttery feeling in her stomach. “But really, conveyor-belt Lena wasn’t going to be taking a swing at anyone.”
“I could see it happening,” Kormak said playfully. “You can build a fire and steal a transport—maybe you’ve got more hidden talents.”
Lena’s blush deepened and she looked away, unable to wipe the grin from her face. “Uh-huh. No.” She
rolled her eyes, reigning in her laughter. “No way. Boss Silick was out of the picture by then. Although you are right about me losing my temper with him. Tried to get more shifts out of him and maybe got a little too angry about it. Fired me in seconds.”
Kormak frowned at that, but she smiled. “I mean, it’s not like I was polite. I was practically giving him a reason to fire me. It put me, Ellie, and Augusta in a bad position though. It’s hard to feed three people on a seamstress’ earnings—that’s what Augusta does. So I, uh… I tried to steal from someone. A pindar. He was pretty rich so I thought he wouldn’t miss it—but that didn’t matter in the end since he caught me red-handed.”
“What was your sentence?”
“Six months?”
Kormak blinked at her. “Why are you here then?”
She bit her lip. “Garross was promising to add time to my sentence in any way possible—and I knew he would.”
Kormak nodded, his expression sobering. He was silent for a while, long enough that Lena thought their conversation was over. But then the levekk spoke.
“I was gonna be in there for fifty years.”
Lena’s eyes widened. “How much time had you done so far?”
“Only three.”
“…No wonder you wanted to escape.”
Kormak blew out a chuckle, his eyes meeting hers. “Yeah.”
She opened her mouth, curiosity burning at her, but she fell silent as the levekk stood up.
“We should get moving,” he said briskly, extending a hand down to her.
She took it with a nod. His palm felt smooth in hers, his claws gentle. She desperately wanted to ask him more questions about his past—like what could land someone in prison for fifty years—but she pushed the questions aside.
The sun was just filtering through the trees as they gathered their things, Lena packing up what supplies she could salvage from making the fire. The sunlight reflected off Kormak’s skin as he stretched, making it shine like gold, and Lena had to ignore the way her heart stuttered happily whenever he looked over at her.
