Prodigal (Maelstrom Chronicles)

by Jody Wallace

  He penetrated her in a single, abrupt thrust, and they both groaned with satisfaction. But his next powerful thrust shoved her backward on the counter. She slid off his cock, and they both laughed.

  “Actually, no.” She pushed him away, and he stumbled. He wasn’t naked—just had his pants around his knees. “This isn’t what I’ve had in mind.”

  This time, Claire Lawson was going to be on top.

  She slid off the counter, the floor cool under her bare feet, and advanced on him. He reached for her but she grabbed his cock, hard.

  “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do what I tell you. Take off your shirt.”

  He did, quirking an eyebrow at her. “Pants?”

  “Nope. Get on your knees.”

  Instead he seized her ass and hoisted her against him. “I don’t think so.”

  He kissed her, clearly intending to dominate, so she pumped his cock a few times to get his attention. His body tensed when she rotated her fingers over the sensitive tip. He leaked pre-cum into her palm, onto her stomach, and he caught her by the chin. “You don’t exactly have the upper hand.”

  She switched from his cock to his balls. And smiled. “I do now. Walk backward.”

  Adam opened his mouth to respond, but when she squeezed, he began a slow shuffle, hindered by his pants. “Whatever the lady wants.”

  The glint in his eyes promised a retribution she didn’t intend to give him.

  His calves met her old bed, narrow but soft, and she pushed him onto it. Clambering atop him, she studied the outstanding body beneath her—the chiseled face, the direct gaze, the well-developed chest and taut abs. She caressed his smooth, unblemished skin, tweaking his nipples before positioning herself over his hips.

  He grabbed her legs and tried to pull her down, but she jabbed a finger into the soft spot in his throat. “It’s not your turn, boy.”

  Instead of gliding onto his cock, she bent over to tantalize him with bites and kisses. Her breasts, the nipples tight and responsive, brushed the crisp hair on his chest. She let the tip of his cock tease her entrance before she drew back, and he cursed.

  “Claire. I can only take so much.” He smoothed his hands up and down her body before bringing her to his lips for a long, deep kiss.

  His tongue entered her mouth, and she allowed the tip of his cock to push into her slit. Adam stifled a groan, skating a hand to her ass. But her position gave her more control—or he allowed her to have it. She hovered there, squeezing her muscles around him, enjoying the hot promise of their joining.

  She was in control…until his hand found her clit.

  He rubbed it the way she liked, and she sank onto his cock. This angle wasn’t deep, but their upper bodies could touch. He sighed, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth.

  “Not too fast,” he said. “I’m really close.”

  “So you do like it when I’m on top,” she pointed out, wriggling her hips. The feel of him made her head spin. She almost wanted to roll over—let him pound into her—but not this time.

  “I like it when you’re anywhere.” He pushed her shoulders up until she was astride him and cupped her breasts. “Ride me.”

  She did. She took her time, exciting them both, prolonging their pleasure. But every time he pinched her nipples or plied her clit, she realized it wouldn’t take much for her to lose focus. He fixed his gaze on her face, her body, lids half closed as they made love.

  She wanted this to take hours. She wanted it to take forever. Why did she get the impression this would be their last time together? Something about the way his eyes consumed her, the way his hands worshipped her, whispered that they weren’t on the same page.

  He must not think Ship would succeed. That was why he wanted her here, now. Depending on what happened in the next thirty hours, who knew if they’d have time to be together or even want to be? After this, she planned to devote herself to easing her daughter’s fears, if she had any, and holding her tight until the very last minute.

  Hopefully, Adam would be with them.

  She increased her pace, enjoying the twitches of pleasure on his face. The glimmers that he, too, was losing control. His cock swelled inside her, and he grabbed her hips and shoved her down.

  Her breath hitched. “Are you—?”

  He sat up, never losing their connection, and kissed her fiercely. His tongue probed her, his cock probed her. He cupped her ass, lifting her up and down on his cock. “God, Claire.”

  “Yes.” She found her clit with experienced fingers and caught up to him. Surpassed him. They rode each other into an orgasm that had them both gasping and clinging in the aftermath.

  He might have forgotten nearly everything about his life, but he had not forgotten how to fuck. And she’d finally learned how to love someone besides her family.

  Or was it because Adam was her family now, too?

  This time she said it first. “I love you.”

  He kissed her and held her for another several minutes. His cock softened, and she realized his zipper was kind of chafing a spot on her butt.

  “I should have gotten you naked,” she told him, easing out of his lap. She’d never felt as safe and secure as she did in his arms. It wasn’t his extra strength, either. It was who he was.

  “It’s all right.” Adam rose, stretching, and helped her get dressed. “Some other time.” He kissed her, slow and lingering, until she thought he might want to have sex again, but he broke off and led her to the door. “We should see if the crew needs help unloading.”

  “Ah. I thought you might want to pitch in.”

  “Anything I can do to help, you know I’ll do it.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes. A lump formed in her throat. Somehow, if he’d believed in Ship’s mission, she could have believed, too. Either way, there was nothing left to do besides get whatever load Ship wanted them to carry and return to Frannie’s side.

  They found the remaining crew in the cargo bay, hustling their asses off. Some were trying not to be upset, while some appeared stoic. Ship directed them all, seemingly calm, but how could you tell with Ship?

  “Forty-one minutes until my departure,” Ship intoned. “Please take the cargo into the base. Medicines and tools are vital in a primitive survival situation.” They loaded shuttle after shuttle, vehicle after vehicle, since Ship was far too big to dock in the base itself. It hovered about ten feet above the ground in a snowy valley. Masses of larger cargo lay strewn all around it, to be retrieved later.

  Claire lost track of Adam in the bustle, dropping into managerial status with her fellow workers. It came naturally, and they mostly followed her advice. The last she’d seen of Adam, he’d been hefting a giant load of medical supplies, much to the amazement of some Shipborn soldiers—enhanced ones—who hadn’t been able to carry as big of a load.

  Braggart.

  In any case, she figured she’d catch up with him underground. Pretending not to notice the number of Shipborn crying now that Ship was about to depart, Claire hopped one of the final shuttles instead of wading through the snow to the base’s ground entrance. She didn’t watch Ship rise into the air, slowly, so as not to dislodge any of the snow pack, any trees—considerate to the last.

  Claire couldn’t linger. Comforting people wasn’t her forte, and Sarah might need help with Niko. She’d overheard a few snatches of conversation about how he’d tried to reboard Ship with the intention of accompanying it into the sun.

  While it would be tough for him when Ship…ceased to be, severing their Shiplink, he could survive it. Whether any of them could survive the leviathan was another story.

  A story they were about to finish.

  Back in the base, she caught a Shipborn by the arm, one of the soldiers who’d been helping with the medical supplies. “Have you seen Adam?”

  She peered at Claire with a worried expression. “Yeah, but…I thought you knew.”

  Dread pulsed through her, like that creepy throb of blue when Ship had greeted them in the matrix cham
ber. “Knew what?”

  “I don’t think he debarked.”

  “What the hell?” Claire’s hands trembled. “Give me your array.”

  “My array?” The woman, Isla something, one of Niko’s field techs, pressed a hand to her head. “It’s not sanitary. I…”

  Claire growled and snatched it out of Isla’s temple. She crammed it into her own head, and the sharp pain of implantation was nothing compared to the pain in her soul right now.

  “Adam, get your ass back down here,” she demanded over Ship’s common frequency.

  All around her, the Shipborn and Terrans inside the base’s docking bay stopped and stared. Isla stepped away, as if frightened Claire might yank something else off of her body.

  Adam’s voice crackled over the space between them. Space that was increasing by the minute. They could be out of the atmosphere—out of orbit. “The leviathan is made of shades, Claire. I eat shades, remember? I’m going to try to stop it when it comes for Ship. And it’s coming. It’s coming now.”

  “No.” Her legs quit working. She sank to the ground, right in the middle of the docking bay. “The sun will kill it. Let Ship do this. Not you.”

  “Maybe this is what I came back to do,” he said. “I’d do anything to save you and Frannie. And the planet. I get a second chance.”

  Ship cut in. “I discussed the potential of failure with him, considering the leviathan appears to be comprised of more shades than his ability can handle. However, I do believe, between his efforts and mine, our chances of eliminating the leviathan have increased by forty-eight percent.”

  “Bring him back,” Claire cried, tears welling out of her eyes. “Bring him back.”

  “I cannot. My sensors indicate the leviathan is already leaving the planet’s surface in pursuit,” Ship said, and Claire could tell it had expanded to the public band. Everyone who had an array grew silent as they listened. “Cullin and Raniya should be able to track the leviathan, and myself, as we progress toward Terra’s sun. It should not take long. Please consider relaying the data we gather today to the greater Shipborn community. It is not their fault that the enforcers do not allow sealed system reentry. Perhaps this information will change that.”

  A hand grasped her shoulder. Tracy. “Come on, Claire. Your baby needs you.”

  Claire stood, feeling more hopeless inside than she had in her entire life. Considering the planet was three years into an apocalypse, her level of hope had vacillated wildly. While Adam’s plan had a certain morbid completeness to it, she fucking hated it.

  And now, with the improved chances for Terra’s survival, she might have to live her life without him. But so would Frances—and that brought her to her feet as Tracy tugged. Frances gave her the strength to walk out of the docking bay. Because of Adam, Frannie was forty-eight percent more likely to survive this.

  When the news came that the leviathan had reached Ship more swiftly than expected—that Ship had promptly disappeared from their radars—Frannie was knocking over her eighteenth tower of specimen cups.

  Claire built another tower and laughed when her baby toppled it like a tiny brown Godzilla. This was how she would spend her last hours alive, and it was enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “It looks like a shade pool,” Adam said dubiously. The leviathan rose above the planet’s surface. On the screen it resembled a giant, black splotch. He’d stationed himself on the bridge—for now—though Ship required no input from him to operate.

  “It covers a larger square footage than I do and appears to be malleable. I approximate I can stay ahead of it if I maintain current speed,” Ship said. “At what juncture would you like to attempt your attack?”

  They continued away from Terra’s orbit until the planet shrank, but the leviathan didn’t. It became impossible to see in the blackness of space. Ship reverted to a radar type screen and plotted a faint outline around the mass so it would be easier for Adam’s human—humanish—eyes to distinguish.

  “Where do you think it will need to touch you to drain your sentience? Your hull?” If he had to spacewalk to get to the leviathan, that might prove tricky. While he had donned a Shipborn spacesuit to be ready, his hands would have to be exposed.

  Ship paused briefly before answering. “My matrix chamber. The rest of my body is extraneous.”

  “So we’ll have to let it breach you.”

  “I doubt we have a choice in that matter, else we Ships would be safe from leviathans.”

  Would the leviathan be able to affect Adam physically, like the daemons could, or would he be immune, like he was to shades? Was this going to be a wasted effort on his part?

  No. Not a waste. It was his second chance.

  “I want to try my thing before you reach the sun. That way if I succeed, you can change course. If I don’t, there’s still the sun.” The thin shell of the suit covered his body in a flexible layer, with a clear section over his face. The breathing pack didn’t require extensive endo-organics like wing packs did. While the leviathan didn’t seem to be affected by the vacuum and temperatures of deep space, he certainly would be if Ship’s systems crashed. This was assuming he had no need to spacewalk.

  “Would you like to try now?” Ship asked. “I can slow down.”

  Was Ship that eager to die? He sure as hell wasn’t. The tingling that preceded his exposure to shades hadn’t made an appearance. Mild nausea caused by tension, on the other hand, had.

  “No,” he said firmly. “We should wait.”

  “All right,” Ship said. “That is wise. The longer you go between periods of absorption, the more you can absorb, if I am reading your residue correctly. The thirty minutes it will take to reach the sun should benefit us both.”

  Thirty minutes before he and Ship probably bit it. It was a good thing they’d cut off communications with Terra, or Claire might have been able to change his mind. Her raw pain, her despair when he told her his intentions, had sliced him through and through. He had no idea if he’d ever loved anyone like he loved Claire, but it hardly seemed possible.

  “They really did soup up your engines,” he commented, making conversation.

  “They were motivated,” Ship agreed. “Terran ingenuity also helped. Terrans are quite a clever subspecies of human, if somewhat atavistic in their contemporary political and cultural structures.”

  Adam sighed and flexed his fingers. He couldn’t tell if the seconds were speeding or dragging, but according to the clock, only eighteen minutes had passed. “You’re sure you can’t outrun it?”

  “The leviathan is closing the distance at the expected rate.” Ship shifted one of the screens back to Terra, scanning for something. Adam couldn’t tell what. “I have detected many remaining shades and daemons on the planet. It appears the leviathan is not comprised of all the entities.”

  “Okay.” He wasn’t sure how that factored in, but he wasn’t about to be surly with his partner-in-martyrdom.

  “Terra is demanding an update,” Ship said. “Shall I share one?”

  He crossed his arms, a chill running through him, as if he were neck deep in shades. Should he have planned a meaningful proclamation, like Neil Armstrong? “One giant idiot nearly ruined mankind…now that giant idiot will try to save it.”

  Granted, if he and Ship failed, there would be nobody left to record his quip in the history books.

  “I’m not your boss,” he told Ship. “That’s your call.”

  “I already shared my own updates. I meant, do you wish to share an update?”

  “No thanks.” When he’d made love to Claire in her old quarters, that had been his good-bye. Nobody else would miss him. Nobody else cared. That didn’t matter—he wasn’t attempting this to be remembered, to be a hero. He was attempting it because it was the right thing to do. Even if he’d never failed once…or twice…to save the planet, he’d still be on Ship, using his hell-power to try to prevent the rest of the apocalypse.

  Half an apocalypse was enough for any pla
net.

  The blips on the radar continued to blip. The leviathan continued to pursue them. Tiny hissing noises occasionally interrupted the silence. Were they past the moon yet? Mercury?

  Adam was about to ask when Ship spoke first. “I appear to have miscalculated the leviathan’s velocity. Adjusting course.”

  “Miscalculated how? The leviathan looks like it’s getting really close.”

  “It is,” Ship agreed. “I am travelling at my top possible speed, and I haven’t quite reached the planet Venus. I do not believe we will reach the sun in time.”

  Adam paced in front of the screen with the damning blips. “And you’re just telling me this now?”

  “I did not wish to distress you.”

  “Fuck.” Tension zinged in his body so sharply that his skin hurt, and Adam punched a chair. “When does it get here?”

  “Seven minutes,” Ship said.

  “So you can’t make it to the sun no matter what happens with me?”

  “That is correct.” Ship paused. “I can confirm that previous leviathans, according to final Ship data packets the Shipborn have received throughout the eons, never achieved greater speeds because the Ships they pursued were slower than I have become. I can no longer predict how fast a leviathan can travel in space.”

  It was up to him now.

  “Open the rear docking bay doors so it will come through there first. I gotta get ready.” He dashed out of the bridge, trusting Ship to highlight the correct passageways, since it had deactivated nonessential services, like life support on lower decks.

  He reached the huge, empty docking bay before the leviathan reached them. Dim blue emergency lights flickered on, casting unearthly shadows. He slid on his gloves and tethered himself to a wall just in time for Ship to begin the process of opening the rear doors.

  He didn’t, however, have time to find handholds. His body shot forward as the drag of venting air caught him and the loops of the tether.

  Shit!

  Luckily the tether hit a snag before he spat out of the vessel. It stopped his forward movement abruptly. Very abruptly. He hung, midair, limbs flailing, like a dog on a leash.