HeartFast

by Linda Mooney

  “My schooling was centered around being a top-ranked girth man for the web ball team, but, yeah, what little I remember from my sciences, that sounds about right.”

  “Star. Flare up.”

  Behind the deepflyer he saw StarLight spread herself until she resembled a five-point star, her fingers stretched out at shoulder level. An aura of violet light circled her, and the effect on the creature was instantaneous. Its serpentine neck bent backwards as the magnetic field she was generating pulled the deepflyer closer toward her, the metallic substances in the meteoroids inside its body reacting to the draw.

  No longer in danger of being bitten or clawed, Hunter hastened over to the trapped wing and managed to unhook it from the spacecraft. A second later, Star released her hold on the creature, and the deepflyer gave a huge shake of its ebon body before flitting away into the void of space.

  “Well, you’re welcome,” Star sarcastically remarked to the departing shape.

  “I take it you got it loose,” Time Merchant remarked.

  “Yeah. Mission accomplished. We’re coming home,” Hunter told him.

  “Right. I’ll inform our great leader. Good job, you two.”

  Drifting to one side, Hunter watched as Star regained her gravitational hold on the remaining craft, none the worse for wear even after its meeting with the deepflyer, and began to turn it toward the Amman system. She lifted her arms to give it a push. Almost simultaneously, one of the engines of the long-dead ship burst into life, firing the last of its fuel in a two-second burst that caught them both unaware. Birisium power cells never decayed, but after years of non-use, they were known to become unstable. The struggle with the deepflyer must have been enough to trigger the last remaining power.

  Star was caught directly in the center of the blast, and Hunter screamed her name as he launched himself toward her.

  She was tumbling out of control away from him. Quickly he adjusted his trajectory and popped directly into her path. He caught her in his arms as Time Merchant demanded to know what had happened. With the man babbling in his earpiece, Hunter scanned the unconscious form, checking to see if she’d suffered anything permanent. Relief washed over him as she moved slightly in his embrace, and deep violet eyes opened to see his face mere inches away.

  “Hold, Merchant!” Hunter yelled at the man, then turned to woman he was holding. She’d lost her earpiece, leaving her without the ability to hear him or talk to him.

  Still dazed, Star glanced down to find herself cradled against that strong chest as he launched them back to the transport ship.

  Once they reached the outer door, he started to lower her legs to free up a hand, but her arms went around his neck and refused to release him. Hunter pressed her closer, silently acknowledging her request. After all, he had told her if there was anything she wanted him to do, all she had to do was ask. At this moment, she was asking.

  “Hunter, for heaven’s sake, what happened?” Deceiver had joined Merchant at the console.

  Using his elbow, Hunter pressed the button to seal the airlock and begin decompression. “That last ship had an unexploded power cell. Star must have triggered it somehow, and she was caught in its backflow.”

  The airlock light went from red to green, and Hunter jabbed at the wall panel to open the inner door. StarLight continued to press herself against him.

  “Is she all right?” Deceiver asked worriedly.

  “I think so. She lost her earpiece, so I can’t ask her. We’re going back inside Two. I’ll run a diagnostic on her there,” Hunter informed them. “Apparently whatever power she has that allows her to move about space without a protective suit was enough to save her.”

  The inner door opened with a loud whoosh of air. Hunter carried her over to the nearest seat and started to lower her into it. Reluctantly Star released her hold, keeping her face averted from his gaze. Once he pulled off his helmet, he knelt before her. “Are you all right?”

  Star nodded slowly. “Yeah. I managed to hold my breath, so I didn’t inhale any of the fumes. Thank goodness it was a short burst.” Beating her thigh with a closed fist, she angrily swore at herself. “Stupid! I know better than to face an exhaust.”

  Sitting back on his heels, Hunter touched his headset. “Did you copy that, Command?”

  “We copy,” Time Merchant replied. “Ahh, geez, life is not going to be dull with you two around, is it?” he teased lightly. Instead of waiting for a reply, Merchant said, “Three’s run into a snag. I’m going over to see what I can do to help. I’ll get back to you in ten minutes.” A crackle followed his words, and they were left alone.

  Hunter got to his feet and fetched them both something to drink from the kitchenette in the back. Handing her a bottle of water, he then grabbed a medical scanner from the console and checked her vitals.

  “So, what’s the prognosis, Doctor Vosstien?” Star wryly asked, taking a long swig from her drink.

  “It confirms what you’ve already told me. You didn’t suffer any ill effects from the blast. At least, none that I can read. Thank heavens.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Were you worried?”

  “Of course I was. Why wouldn’t I be?” He returned the scanner to its slot before going back to where she sat, and taking the seat directly across from her.

  “I mean … if something happens to me, then you’d be released from the HandFast. That’s all.” She was reaching out to him emotionally, almost in fear. Without question, Hunter knew she was wondering if he still resented the laws that were binding them together, because she no longer did. At this stage he had no idea what kind of response she needed from him, but he had to say something. Or else that small step they’d made last night might be lost.

  Yet, it was too soon to admit his real feelings to her. Not until she also understood the emotions she was feeling and unconsciously nurturing.

  Removing the headset, Hunter thumbed the switch to turn it off. Star watched with widened eyes as he lifted his face.

  “Is that what you think I’m in this for, now?” he murmured softly. “Just to make a baby with you?”

  “I … I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “No, Star, why don’t you tell me? When do you want me to come to you tonight?”

  He watched her take a quivering breath. This close to her, he sensed her fear palpitating from her like a second heartbeat.

  “Eight,” she finally managed to tell him.

  Hunter nodded. It would be nighttime then. Another moment of lovemaking in the safe anonymity of the dark. “Eight,” he echoed, and got to his feet to return to the pilot’s seat.

  It wasn’t until after they hit hyper light speed that Star took her seat next to him. Hunter brought them smoothly around the Indii pocket, then glanced over to ask her a question, when he saw she was sound asleep, her head resting at a slight tilt against the back of the seat.

  He couldn’t take his eyes away. The blast from the engines had wiped her out. That, on top of everything else they’d been going through.

  Hunter felt his body responding to her again. His pants were almost painfully tight as he battled with his common sense. Inadvertently, his eyes went to the rear of the transport’s cabin. It has more room. His imagination went wild.

  When she had thrown herself in his arms, he would have given anything to shred the protective suit from his body so he could press her as tightly against him as possible. Right now he wanted to unbuckle his harness and move over to her, and put his mouth along the white column of her neck. To taste her, and savor her warmth and smell. There was no reservation in his mind that if she awoke when he was doing it, she wouldn’t object.

  It has more room.

  What was to stop them from peeling off their uniforms and diving deep into each other back there, back where the blankets were stored at the rear of the ship? To feel her envelope his erection with her unbelievably tight muscles. And her heat—her heat that was like a flaring sun, branding him, setting fire to him.
Making him feel that when he ejaculated inside her, the rest of his body would also explode in ecstasy.

  An invisible hand reached inside him, gripped him, and shook him violently.

  He was thinking madness. A groan came from the pit of his agony, and Hunter was forced to blink several times to clear the almost reddish cloud that had covered his vision.

  Would she send him away tonight? He’d gotten the impression, just before he had crawled out of their bed, that she was regretting her earlier words. But when she’d released him, he had gone ahead and honored her request, although it had nearly killed him to separate from her.

  Please, Terrin. Give us the entire night together, and I promise to share the heavens with you. He fought to cool his ardor.

  He hadn’t slept well the rest of the night. Before the first light of dawn had touched the city, he was back at her chambers, hidden inside his netherworld, to watch her sleep. To see that she had also tossed and turned, like he had.

  By all that was holy, she was the most agonizingly wonderful thing to ever happen to him. Yes, he was her protector now, but after that little incident this morning with Provoker, she had reminded him how well she could take care of herself.

  He smiled. Eight. Why had she picked an earlier time? He may never know the reason, but there was no way he would be late going to her tonight.

  No way in the world.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 11

  Promise

  They were gliding past glittering scarlet suns, riding the waves of their gravitational pull as smoothly as if they were inside a ship. He was holding her hand, letting her show him how to let his body drink in the intoxicating fields of power that gave her strength and the ability to do what she could do.

  Star turned her face in his direction, and Hunter smiled gently back at her. This was the only way she could show him how happy he’d made her. To give him this gift of power and flight.

  They swooped over a spiral nebula, and it tingled along their skin with a million tiny fingers as they fell headfirst through clouds of iridescent greens and blues. She couldn’t remember ever feeling like this. This giddiness. This all-encompassing feeling of perfect joy.

  Hunter squeezed her hand to get her attention, and then he reeled her in, next to him. Against him. Against his warm, wide, strong chest, where his heart became a steady, soothing beat in her ear. A beat that matched the pounding of her own heart, until they were one sound. One body. One love.

  Star opened her eyes, disoriented. Her skin tingled, but then she remembered being caught in the blast of that Cortakian ship. She would have to take a long cleansing bath before all traces of the Birisium were washed away.

  Now she remembered. Lifting her head, she could see their planet looming larger and larger through the transport’s viewscreen.

  “Copy that, Merchant. We’ll be setting down in ten minutes.”

  She swiveled around to see Hunter bringing the craft into the upper atmosphere. He shot her a quick smile. “Welcome back. Sleep well?”

  She started to say something else, but swiftly changed her mind. “Forgive me.”

  “For what? Are you still strapped in?”

  She looked down at herself and nodded. “I slept the whole way back?”

  “And snored loud enough to wake the dead,” Time Merchant’s voice chuckled over the ship’s call system.

  It was then Star realized Hunter wasn’t wearing his headset, and remembered that hers was missing, too. “I do not snore, Merchant!” she heatedly retorted, but smiled in spite of herself. The playful bickering was familiar and comforting.

  “All right, all right. I was wrong,” Time Merchant conceded. “You didn’t snore. But, good heavens, what you talked about! I’m surprised Hunter didn’t shut down the communications feed because of it!”

  Star shot her partner a half-fearful, half-cautious look. He returned with another slow grin and a shake of his head. If she’d really said anything that could have caused her any embarrassment, she knew he would have done exactly what Merchant had suggested.

  The tug of gravity was already guiding them into the planet’s skies. Far to the west, their sun was beginning its descent below the horizon. Star glanced at the chronometer in the console. It was nearly seven; she had told him eight.

  At the realization, she felt her body go tense with expectation. Her heart beat against the walls of her ribcage and ricocheted off her lungs. If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel his hands touching her. Stroking her. Arousing her with a force greater than the suns that flung her across the universe. Heightening her senses until she was forced to beg him to do what he wanted, do anything he wanted, as long as it was as mind-searing as it had been last night.

  “You sure you’re all right, Star?” his voice penetrated her thoughts.

  “Med Lab is waiting at the bay to take you in for examination,” Time Merchant reminded them.

  “Med Lab? No, wait—” Star began to protest.

  “Orders, StarLight,” Deceiver told her, cutting into the conversation. “As per HandFast edicts. ‘If any party should become ill, or associated with any illness—’”

  “I know the damn edicts!” she angrily growled back at the man.

  “Star.”

  She jerked her attention back to Hunter. He knew why she was mad. No, not mad. Afraid. Anxious. Fearful of missing their eight o’clock rendezvous.

  “I can count on one hand how many people I’ve known who have felt the blast of a Birisium power cell and lived. They need to check you out, to make sure you’re in full health,” he urged her quietly.

  “But…” She started to say more, but knowing others could overhear them stopped her. To her surprise, Hunter nodded, raising his eyes to the overhead speaker.

  “No ‘buts,’” Deceiver responded. “Don’t worry. They can’t detain you overnight for observation.” As usual, Deceiver had some notion as to her reticence, but this time he was a little more off the mark.

  Hunter brought the craft into the docking bay, where a small medical lab had been set up to examine StarLight. She unbuckled herself and got to her feet, and strode over to the hull doors, ready to unlock them as soon as Hunter gave the all-clear. Once the ship had settled in and began to power down, she reached for the handle, only to have a pair of arms suddenly encircle her, and his hands stayed hers for a moment.

  He was pressed along her back, fitting behind her as firmly and perfectly as if they had been created to fit that way. She could feel the heat of his body through his uniform, and she remembered how well that heat had covered her and penetrated her last night, warming her from the inside out. His face was bent low over her neck, allowing him to whisper in her ear where he couldn’t be heard through the ship’s speakers.

  “I want you well, Terrin,” he caressed her ear with his spicy breath, and she shivered. “I’ll be waiting for you when they finally release you, don’t worry.”

  “Hunter…”

  “Yes, my heart?”

  “Udo…” She wanted to ask him to stay with her while they did their tests, but she hesitated. Did she have the right to ask him to remain by her side? Other than their moment to procreate, she really had no rights over him, no hold to keep him.

  Slowly, she shook her head as she bit her lips to keep from asking. Behind her, she felt him move slightly as he stepped back and withdrew his arms.

  And then he was gone.

  It was as if he had opened a huge void inside her with his disappearance.

  Opening the doors, Star moved slowly toward the lab where a half-dozen physicians were waiting to check her out. She was halfway across the bay when Hunter’s last words came back to her, nearly causing her to stumble.

  Yes, my heart?

  My heart?

  Oh, sweetest heavens! Please tell me he meant it!

  She closed her eyes and swallowed. Somehow, knowing he had called her that, even if the words may have meant no more to him than a casual l
ove name, was enough to give her the patience to withstand their prodding and poking for the next hour and a half.

  Hunter materialized into his chambers to shower and change, when he noticed the blinking light on his communications console. Striding over to it, he punched in his personal code, and the viewscreen lit up.

  He had two messages. The first was from the Committee. Curious to see how they would notify him, he opened up the mail.

  “Udo Vosstien. The Committee has found that you have complied with the edicts of the HandFast law this past cycle. However, conception was found to be negative. Resume your normal duties. Good fortune.”

  Not only short and sweet, but painfully blunt, Hunter told himself. Good boy, Udo. You coupled with your partner, but you didn’t quite finish the job. Now go back to her tonight and do it right this time.

  “Screw them,” he muttered angrily, punching up the second message. The moment it flashed onto the screen, he stared at it in disbelief.

  Well, it was only right they contacted him. When was the last time he’d gone to see them? At least a year, maybe a bit longer.

  Hunter checked the clock. Barely five minutes had gone by. He could go now and be back in plenty of time, if he hurried.

  Taking a deep breath, Master Hunter sent a quick missive to Command where he would be, and how long he thought he’d take, and then he left, transporting himself nearly six and half parsecs away, to a small planet on the farthest side of the Tri-Secular galaxy.

  His mother was fixing supper when he popped into the corner of the kitchen where he’d always appeared when he’d been a kid growing up. Cara Vosstien glanced up, instinctively knowing when her oldest child was around, and she flashed him a big smile. “Udo! Your father said you’d come if we sent you the message.”

  Hunter wrapped the woman in an enormous hug, and kissed the top of her head. “Where is Dad?”

  “Outside, messing with the engine of that slider he bought a month ago. Udo…” Cara stepped back to examine her son’s features, checking him out to see how he was faring as only a mother could. “You know why we contacted you, don’t you?”