Star Mate Matched

by Margo Bond Collins

  I ached to touch her, to feel her fingers running through my fur, to taste her from head to tail.

  To feel her writhing beneath me in ecstasy.

  And over me and beside me…

  As I moved to the next section of the computer core, I imagined bending her over the bridge console, flipping up that white drapery she wore to reveal all her most intimate places.

  By this point, my cock ached, my mating spines having grown fully stiff, more than ready to mate with Nora.

  If I did not take her soon, make her my own, I might explode.

  Moving to the final segment, I disconnected all the cables and counted in my head as I gave the computer time to spin down.

  As I reattached all the elements, I imagined Nora’s mouth wrapping around my cock, her pink lips pursing into a pout as she sucked gently.

  Part of me knew it was ridiculous to torture myself like this. But from the moment I had picked her up and carried her onto the scout ship, it had been all I could do not to carry her to my quarters and complete the full Drovekzian mating ritual. The one that would bind us together forever.

  It didn’t matter what the computer said. Even if she wasn’t the absolute best genetic match, Nora was my match. She was perfect for me.

  Now all I had to do was convince her that I was every bit as perfect for her.

  “Warning,” the computer announced abruptly. “Karlaxon soldier detected en route to the bridge.”

  A jolt of sheer terror flashed through my body. I could not lose Nora before we even had a chance to be together. The Karlaxons would do terrible things to her. I had seen females who had escaped from Karlaxon clutches.

  Those women were never the same again, broken in body and in spirit.

  I would never allow that to happen to my mate.

  Almost without warning, my beast burst out of my skin, taking over our shared body and racing toward the bridge, one thought echoing in our mind in time to the beat of my paws on the floor.

  I have to get to Nora before the Karlaxon soldier does.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nora

  The hiss of the door opening alerted me to Dax’s return. “Can you show me how to use this thing?” I asked as I turned to face him.

  But it wasn’t Dax at all. It was one of those horrifying rhino monsters, and it was leering at me as it thumped onto the bridge. If anyone had asked me before what a leering rhinoceros looked like, I would have laughed. But there was nothing funny about this monster. His expression radiated menace.

  If he got his hands on me, he would hurt me—and he would enjoy it.

  I raised the gun instinctively, but I had already announced I didn’t know how to use it.

  Can’t be too hard, right? Aim and pull the trigger.

  I prayed silently that it didn’t have some kind of safety catch as I tried to remember anything I’d ever seen about guns on TV.

  The beast took another step toward me and I squeezed the trigger. The rifle-shaped gun recoiled against my shoulder, knocking me back, leaving me disoriented for a second.

  Unlike an Earth weapon, the sound it made was muffled, a puff and a thump rather than a loud bang, which allowed me to hear the rhinoceros-alien’s grunt as the bullet—or whatever these weapons used as projectiles—hit him.

  It didn’t stop the monstrous alien, though. He kept moving toward me, his leer shifting to an angry snarl. He reached up and flipped down the face visor on his helmet just as I fired another round.

  This one didn’t hit him at all—it slammed into a wall. I realized my hands were shaking, so I took another step backward until my back was against the gun cabinet, steadying me. I forced myself to inhale once deeply, waiting to shoot again until he was almost close enough to reach out and grab the gun. I didn’t know if his thick, scaly skin had stopped the first bullet from hurting him or if he wore some kind of armor in his black, flexible, spacesuit-looking unitard thing.

  I did my best to simply aim for the center of his torso. That’s what all the cop shows on TV said. Aim for the center mass.

  He was almost close enough that I could have reached out, flipped up the visor, and shot him between the eyes.

  God, what I wouldn’t give for some pepper spray right now.

  The thought flitted through my head as I squeezed the trigger again.

  This time, it hit him hard enough to send him sprawling back onto the deck.

  I used that moment to begin making a wide circle around him, keeping the gun trained on him to the best of my ability—which, admittedly, wasn’t much.

  A sharp metallic taste hit the back of my tongue, and everything around me sharpened.

  Adrenaline, an analytical part of my brain noted.

  The monster let out some kind of roar and lumbered to its feet, surprisingly agile for something that looked so cumbersome.

  My gaze flickered to the door, calculating how fast I would have to move to get there before it did. I couldn’t make it. He was closer, and as soon as he saw the flicker of my eyes, he shifted his weight, preparing to move that direction, too.

  He also pulled out a weapon of some kind.

  So there we remained, in a perfect standoff. Like characters in a Clint Eastwood movie. Or one of those old spaghetti westerns my grandfather had loved so much.

  But I was no Eastwood, and this monster was more villainous than anything I had ever seen in a film.

  We froze that way for one heartbeat, then two.

  Then, without warning, the door hissed open again, and a giant green tiger leaped through, landing directly on top of the Karlaxon warrior.

  My giant green tiger.

  My heart soared at the sight of him, and it was all I could do to keep from cheering as he ripped through the Karlaxon’s spacesuit with his claws.

  Dax moved furiously, scratching at the Karlaxon as if he were trying to dig a hole straight through the other alien. Just as he tore through the final layer of clothing and armor and sliced into the Karlaxon’s skin, I saw the rhino-warrior’s hand twitch—the one holding the gun.

  He raised it and buried it in Dax’s fur.

  Everything seemed to happen in slow motion—another effect of the adrenaline, I suspected—and I had just enough time to scream, “Watch out!” as I jumped forward with my own gun in hand.

  I jammed it into the hole Dax had created in the Karlaxon’s suit and pulled the trigger—but at the exact same moment, the Karlaxon fired his weapon, too.

  Blood exploded around me, coming from every direction. I couldn’t tell what was the Karlaxon’s and what was Dax’s. It splattered across my wedding dress and my face. I wiped it out of my eyes.

  The Karlaxon’s hand fell to his side, his weapon rolling out of it and onto the floor.

  Dax collapsed to the deck, too, landing half on top of the rhino warrior.

  Blood pooled around them. Red, I noticed. Just like human blood.

  I kicked the Karlaxon’s weapon farther away, but he wasn’t moving. I was pretty sure he was dead.

  Dax, on the other hand, was still breathing, even though I could see blood pouring out of the wound when I pushed his fur aside.

  “Pressure, I need to apply pressure,” I murmured to myself, glancing around for something to use.

  Nothing.

  Muttering a steady stream of curses, I picked up the top layer of my puffy wedding dress skirt and tried to rip it off. That always happened so easily in movies. In reality, my designer dress was way too sturdy to rip apart. Finally, I grabbed the whole skirt, wadded part of it from the hem up, and held it against Dax’s side, pressing as hard as I could.

  “Computer. Commander Dax is injured. I need to get him to the medical facility.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Dammit. Computers were so literal. “Computer, do you have any suggestions for getting a giant tiger into your medbay?”

  “Commander Dax is a Drovekzian shifter, not an Earth tiger,” the computer informed me.

  I bit back a screa
m and took a deep breath before trying again. “How can I move Commander Dax?”

  The computer was silent for several seconds, trying, I assumed, to come up with some way for me to lug an alien who weighed at least twice as much as I did from the bridge to the medical bay.

  “Your chances are 27.3% higher of successfully transporting Commander Dax if he is in his bipedal form. A float pallet from the medbay is on its way.”

  “But he’s not in his bipedal form, is he?” I didn’t even try to hide my sarcasm.

  “Affirmative. Currently, Commander Dax is in his beast form.”

  Beast form. Of course that’s what they called it.

  “That was a rhetorical question,” I muttered. Then inspiration struck. “Computer, is there any way onboard to force Commander Dax to change shape when he is unconscious?” I paused, then continued before the computer could answer. “And if so, please tell me about it and help me arrange for it.” I hoped that covered all the contingencies.

  “Solution-injection device available.” With a whirring noise, a panel on the wall opened, and a gun-like object extruded from it. I recognize it as the same object Dax had used to dope me up when he first brought me onboard.

  Dropping the pressure from Dax’s wound, I jumped to my feet and raced to grab the injection device, my blood-soaked skirt swishing around my ankles with a wet slapping noise as I rushed back to Dax.

  “Warning,” the computer said. “Forcing a shift on Commander Dax could exacerbate his injuries.”

  “But it’s not absolutely certain that will happen?” I scrunched up the bottom of my skirt again and held it against Dax’s bleeding wound.

  “Confirmed. Drovekzian males sometimes use shifting to heal injuries. The odds are roughly fifty-fifty.”

  “Here goes nothing.” I breathed out as I held the solution to the neon tiger’s neck, burrowing it deep into the fur until I felt it come up against his skin. I found myself whispering a prayer to some unknown deity as I pulled the trigger to inject the medication. “Please work, please work. Don’t leave me stranded out here alone.”

  While I waited for it to take effect, the med bay doors hissed open again and I scrambled to grab a weapon—but it was only the float bed the computer had promised, literally hovering several feet above the air. It entered the room and moved until it was directly beside Dax’s body, just as he began to change into his human form.

  I hadn’t watched the process very closely before, but now I found myself fascinated by it. His fur seemed to retreat into his skin, like one of those videos of flowers opening—but run backward at quadruple speed.

  When he was back in his human form entirely, I checked the wound. It was a huge, ragged hole in his side, and although I could hear him breathing, there was an odd bubbling noise in his chest that worried me.

  “Computer, lower the float bed.” It dropped to the floor and I hooked my hands under Dax’s armpits, grunting with the effort of dragging first his torso onto the float bed, and then his legs.

  “Computer, send the floatbed to the medbay now.” As I took a step to follow, the Karlaxon’s hand shot out and caught my ankle. I let out a yelp. I’d been so convinced he was dead that I had ignored him entirely.

  His hold on me was weak, though, and I jerked my foot out of his grasp.

  He said something that my translator didn’t translate, a strange gurgling growl that faded away into nothing. And then his hand dropped back down to the deck as he blew out a long rattling breath.

  “Computer,” I instructed as I hurried out the door and into the hallway to catch up with the floatbed, “inform me if the Karlaxon on the bridge…well, if he does anything at all.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  I raced to catch up with the green alien tiger man who had abducted me—and who was now the subject of my prayers.

  I was now terrified for his life.

  What the hell is wrong with me? By all rights, I should be happy enough to see him die.

  I swallowed the emotion clogging my throat and stepped into the medbay, ready to do anything I could to help make sure he lived.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dax

  An aching pain throbbing in my side woke me. Still groggy, I sat up on my elbows and glanced around, relieved to see I was in the medbay of my own scoutship—I half expected to find myself in the brig of some Karlaxon mothership.

  “Oh, thank God. You’re awake.” Nora moved up beside me and peeled back the healing pack plastered to my wound.

  “What happened?” I asked, wincing as she squinted at my wound, then patted the sticky side of the pack back into place.

  “One of those rhino-aliens shot you.” She moved back to the computer interface panel, checking some readouts before tapping in information. For someone who had never been on a spaceship before, she seemed remarkably adept with my computer.

  “Where are we?”

  “Same place we were when you got shot. You’ve been out for hours.”

  Hours… my translation matrix gave me a sense of time-units similar to Drovekzian sundrops.

  “Where’s the Karlaxon?”

  “Still on the bridge. Your computer says it’s dead.”

  I pulled a face. “We need to space it before it starts stinking up the place.” I tried to sit up all the way, but a flash of fiery pain shot through my abdomen. I subsided with a groan. “Garlockian hells, that hurts.”

  “Yeah, you’re not going anywhere for a while.” Nora managed to sound both sympathetic and stern at the same time. “Computer, prepare the sedative we discussed earlier.”

  “I don’t need a sedative,” I protested.

  “Maybe not, but you’re getting one. According to your computer, you’ll heal faster if you’re asleep.” She moved to the dispensary cabinet and plucked the sedative solution-infuser out of the recess as soon as the door opened. “I’ll see what I can do about the dead rhino on the bridge while you’re out.”

  I opened my mouth to protest again, but Nora held the injector to my temple, and everything went black.

  The next time I woke, it was to the sound of Nora arguing with the computer.

  “We have no such item aboard,” the computer said in its usual maddeningly calm voice.

  “Okay, if not scissors, do you have a knife? Something sharp I could cut this with?”

  I opened my eyes to find Nora holding up the skirts of her voluminous white drapery—but it wasn’t so white anymore. The bottom half was stiff with dried blood.

  “Perhaps I could help,” I croaked, my mouth dry from the sedative and presumably several more sundrops’ worth of sleep.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake.” Nora rushed to my side. “Your ship says there’s nothing on board to cut things with. What the hell kind of place is this?”

  My laugh threatened to turn into a cough, and I cleared my throat. “The kind with a Drovekzian crew.” Concentrating a little, I popped a claw out of my forefinger.

  Nora blinked, shrugged, and stretched the fabric out front of me. “Cut the bloody part off. In fact, just cut the whole thing to knee-length, if you don’t mind.”

  I tilted my head and examined her clothing. It was elaborate, layers of soft shiny cloth topped with one layer of shimmering semitransparent fabric, and a final top layer made of delicate threads in an intricate pattern.

  “What you waiting for?”

  “I hate to destroy something so lovely.”

  Nora paused to stare down at her clothing and spoke softly. “It was a beautiful wedding dress, wasn’t it?” Then she shook her head and her voice turned brisk. “But it’s ruined now—and I wouldn’t want to keep it, anyway. I just need it to be wearable for however long it takes us to get back to your planet. I assume I can get something there to wear? Your computer said there’s nothing else on board that would fit me.”

  I assumed the computer would have caught plenty of video images of Nora. I could have the clothing replicated if she wanted.

  She called it a weddi
ng dress, which translated as some sort of special outfit to wear during a mating ritual.

  A horrible thought crossed my mind. “You are not mated to someone else already, are you?”

  Nora laughed bitterly. “No. I was supposed to get married, but that didn’t work out so well, after all.”

  Good. With my extruded claw, I ripped a line in the fabric where Nora indicated. Working together for several minutes, we cut through all the layers, leaving her in a shortened, ragged version of the long wedding dress she had been wearing until now.

  Only then did I realize my side no longer hurt. Peering down at the healing pack, I gently peeled it away from my short fur. The area beneath was still tender, by the wound had healed nicely. Pushing myself up, I slung my legs over the side of the medbay bed. “I’m fine now,” I assured Nora as she stepped forward to try to steady me. “I’m ready to get up. Were you able to deal with the Karlaxon carcass on the bridge?”

  Nora wrinkled her nose. “No. I tried to roll him onto one of those floatbeds, but it didn’t work. He was too heavy for me.”

  “Time to space the trash, then,” I said, and dropped to the floor to move toward the hallway. “And then we can continue our trip to Drovekzian space.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Nora

  “Did you get the computer sorted out?” I asked as we worked together to roll the enormous corpse onto the floatbed. I assumed I already knew the answer, since the computer and I had been working together for hours to heal Dax’s wound, but I wanted to be certain.

  “I believe I did. The Karlaxons managed to sabotage it somehow.”

  With a thump, the dead Karlaxon’s legs landed on the floatbed.

  “Where now?” I asked.

  “Computer, send the floatbed to trash cute three and dump its contents. Then space the waste hold.”

  “We’re just going to leave him out there floating in space?”

  Dax shrugged. “It’s what the Karlaxon do with their own dead.”

  “No funeral or anything?”