The Gate Jumpers Saga: Science Fiction Romance Collection

by Elin Wyn

  “Here,” Clabaine said happily, picking up a round red fruit. “The ruby rions are my favorite. On the house, my friend, for introducing me to Nayeen and securing this merch in my wares.”

  Dojan just laughed. Nayeen was an old friend of his who had inherited his father’s sea farm – a vast crop full of the best fruits. He’d been looking to sell his wares off-planet for a while, and when Dojan had met Clabaine a year ago, it’d only been too perfect of a business match.

  “No problem,” Dojan smiled, basking in the familiar scents of his home planet’s produce. That, plus the faint smell of the ocean that Stephine was putting off, and he could’ve closed his eyes and believed that he was home. “I’m glad to see that you’re still here, actually. It wasn’t long ago that I called on you last.”

  “I left the day that we did business,” Clabaine nodded. “Just returned yesterday from another run. Had to restock my wares, you know.”

  “Does that mean you have more berries in?” Dojan asked. Clabaine just laughed and bent behind the table, rising up again to slam a heavy basket of red and blue fruit onto the booth. “I’ll take the whole basket,” Dojan practically drooled. “Oh, and a dozen rions.”

  “You sound like you’re going on an adventure,” Clabaine raised an eyebrow.

  “Eh, a short flight, really,” Dojan shrugged, counting out his coins. “You wouldn’t happen to have any of Nayeen’s calyder berry juice, would you?”

  “One of my best sellers,” Clabaine grinned, his teeth sharp. “How many jugs?”

  “Let’s do five,” Dojan said, glancing at Stephine. “Yes, five should work,” he smiled, handing over the money.

  With a final goodbye, Dojan took the juice while Stephine grabbed the basket. “Stay behind me,” he said firmly, winking when she just looked at him. Taking the lead, he marched through the crowd and kept an eye out for Pyrius, a Lusimian vendor who specialized in fuel.

  “He’s always in this section,” he said, glancing behind at Stephine.

  Except, Stephine wasn’t there.

  Dojan immediately whirled around, the juice jugs cradled awkwardly in his arms as he scanned the room for a short brunette with pale skin. “Stephine?” he called, and a few strangers looked his way, scoffing at his anxious expression. “Stephine!” he shouted, louder, as he started walking back towards Clabaine’s booth. They’d only just left it, but there was already a gathering surrounding his table, and fifty more people just standing between it and him.

  “Steph—” he stopped as something yanked on his arm, and he looked down to find Stephine grabbing him, glaring at the floor and looking as miserable as ever.

  “Stephine!” He shifted the jugs in his arms to touch her cheek, searching her face for bruises or cuts. Slavers kidnapping patrons for their trade wasn’t unheard of even at space stations, and he thanked the gods that Stephine hadn’t been grabbed by one of them.

  “Just got a little lost,” she huffed. “I’m fine.”

  She wasn’t. Not in the way that her lip trembled as she talked, or how her eyes shone like glass as she kept them downcast.

  “You get lost often?” he asked quietly.

  She ignored the question, wiping her forehead as she swallowed hard. “I told you, I’m not a navigator,” she hissed.

  “Right, right,” Dojan agreed, putting an arm around her as a group of Gorganals pushed past them. They were a large bunch, all muscle and hunched shoulders, and Dojan could only imagine how they must look to Stephine. How any of these aliens must look to her.

  “C’mon,” he said, keeping her flush against his side as he started leading her out of the crowd. She was incredibly warm, and he could see the sweat gathering at the base of her neck. “How about we take a small break, you and I?”

  Stephine frowned, clutching the basket in her arms. “Isn’t the ship—”

  “We aren’t going to the ship,” he said cheerfully, throwing her the best smile that he could muster, given his current mood. His heart wouldn’t stop pounding, and he just wanted to slug every alien that so much as shoved their shoulders. Not to mention, there was a weird smell in the air – a sickly smell of fire and laser burn, the scents of war that he’d come to associate with the Thagzars.

  He got them out of the thickest pack of bodies easily enough, further marching them to the thinner thickets of aliens buying merchandise of a more deviant nature.

  “Here we are,” Dojan said, releasing her to walk at arm’s length while he held her hand. “Derraer’s Tavern.”

  It was a small building, especially compared to the taller towers of metal and copper in the distance, but one that Dojan had been long familiar with. “Whenever the captain lands us at a station for the night, I always look for a Derraer’s. Good prices, spacious rooms – and let me tell you, absolutely no one offers a softer bed. The most important part, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I thought getting the toxin to your lab was of the utmost importance,” she said quietly.

  “And four of my brothers are racing toward it,” Dojan shrugged easily. “We’ll get there, but they can worry about deadlines.”

  “If everyone thought like that,” she said, “Then nothing would get done.”

  “No,” Dojan countered. “But priorities would get muddled.” And she was his priority right now.

  Stephine followed him inside without a word, but, as usual, her eyes proved to be far more telling. They swept over the outside of the stone building with interest, and only seemed to dance when they stepped inside to a dark room with a roaring fire in the center as the only light.

  “Cozy,” she commented dryly, but as she stared at the flames her uneasiness seemed to disappear. Apparently, going to Derraer’s had been the right move.

  “State your business,” a voice croaked from the corner, and Dojan turned to smile at the clerk standing there.

  “A room,” he said pleasantly, leaving Stephine to her fire as he stepped over to the clerk’s counter. “With two beds, please.”

  The clerk raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. He rattled off his price, watching Stephine suspiciously as she stepped around the room. It made Dojan’s blood boil, and he quickly slipped him a few coins in exchange for a room key.

  “First floor?” Stephine asked, glancing at the number.

  “It’s the only floor,” he said, taking her hand again. They turned down the left doorway to follow the dozen doors leading up to theirs in the long hallway. “There we are,” Dojan said cheerfully, unlocking the steel door to step out of the way and let Stephine go inside first. As he locked it behind them, he tried to calm down, his body literally thrumming with unleashed adrenaline. It was like his anger had shifted, transcending into a hot excitement.

  “I don’t feel well,” Stephine admitted quietly, leaning against one of the beds before her legs seemed to give out and she collapsed onto it in a heap. “Verdomme,” she muttered.

  Dojan walked over to Stephine as he peeled off his heavy armored jacket. He kneeled next to her on the edge of the bed and cupped her face with a gloved hand, pressing their foreheads together. Stephine kept her eyes closed, but Dojan stared at her, taking note of the red blush creeping up her neck and the way that she slowly slipped her hands between her legs.

  “Is it natural for humans to be this hot?” he asked mildly, blinking slowly as he moved his hand from her cheek to her neck, rubbing it just underneath her short brown hair.

  “It’s a fever, I think,” Stephine sighed, her breath warm on his face.

  “We get them, too,” he said, moving his head back to give her room. He stayed kneeling beside her, and offered, “We usually take a dip in a spring when our bodies overheat. Or an ice soak.”

  “Mhm,” she hummed. “I remember taking a cold bath. No,” she frowned, scrunching up her face. “Not a bath. It was a lake – a lake in the middle of winter. Mother was so scared, because I wasn’t getting better. She dropped me in, and the bite,” she cut herself off, shivering. “I’d never known pain
before that. It was like a full body burn, surrounding me all at once.”

  “Why didn’t she just drop ice into a basin for you?” Dojan asked.

  “Ice was hard to come by, where I lived,” she shuddered. “Well, ice that wasn’t infected. There was…a war,” she said slowly, trying to distract herself from her brewing headache and clenched stomach. “So much fighting, so much, ugh, hate,” she hissed. “Even after the jump gates.” She paused, then, but Dojan wanted to keep her talking – keep her awake.

  “Jump gates?” he asked gently. “What are those?”

  “It’s,” she sighed, “How we travel. How we got here. A gate, a portal in the universe that lets us zoom ahead, jumping from star system to star system. It’s how we found Peshdushdar, and how the captain found your captain.”

  “Ah,” Dojan nodded, pretending to understand. Maybe if he could concentrate – but there was a buzzing in his brain, a demand that he couldn’t recognize. “A gate sitting in the stars… Does it hurt to pass through?”

  “Captain likes it,” she gulped, slouching. Her eyes were still closed. “I don’t,” she said simply. “It’s like a shot of fire through the bones, and it hurts.”

  “Sounds invigorating,” Dojan grinned.

  “It’s the worst,” Stephine promised.

  “No worse than a dip in a winter lake?” he asked, getting her back on track.

  “There are so many lakes, where I’m from,” Stephine said, and Dojan noticed that her breathing was getting shallow. “It was called the Kingdom of the Netherlands, before the end of the war – before we all just became citizens of Earth.” Squirming, she crossed her legs and added, “I haven’t been back in years, but it’s probably still just as war torn as it was in my childhood.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dojan said, placing his other hand on her knee. “I didn’t realize that you also had a recent war on your planet.”

  Stephine snorted, but seemed to immediately regret it as she held her face in her hands. “The war ended over a hundred years ago,” she said. “But in the grand discovery of jump gates,” she said angrily, “Earth forgot about their own.”

  Dojan wanted to apologize again, but he didn’t know how without sounding repetitive – useless.

  “…Here,” he said finally, handing her a red berry from the basket. “Try a chentir.”

  She took it with shaking hands, her fingernails blunt and translucent as they bumped his gloves. They were a far cry from his sharp white ones, strong and hidden away as a last chance weapon. It made him wonder what else might be different about their anatomy; if the variances outweighed the similarities.

  The moment she put it into her mouth, his thoughts seemed to cut out. She bit into it with her teeth – hesitant, cautious – and broke it apart, the juice squirting onto her tongue as the sweet scent split the air. It mixed impossibly well with that sea-side scent that she’d been oozing since they’d first met, and he belatedly realized that he was panting, his jaw open as he sucked in the smell.

  He snapped his mouth shut, but before he could pull away Stephine edged closer, her hand coming up to rest on the gloved wrist of his hand at her neck.

  “Stephine,” he gulped, staring at her lips stained red with the berry. “I—”

  She didn’t stop, not until she’d bumped her mouth against his, their noses brushing as she pulled back just as quickly as she’d pushed forward. They stayed like that for a moment, frozen just a hair’s breadth apart. It wasn’t until Stephine gulped, and a burst of the berry’s scent carried on her breath as she exhaled, that Dojan moved.

  Sliding his hand from her neck up into her short hair, he stared into her dark green eyes. They were anxious, unsure, but most of all, curious. Her irises were blown wide, and she was fucking insatiable with wonder.

  “I-I feel better, after that,” she said, licking her lips.

  “After the berry?” Dojan whispered.

  “No,” she said, her inquisitive eyes flickering to his mouth. “Not the shenti.”

  Dojan chuckled. “Chentir,” he corrected her, rubbing a thumb over her cheek. He couldn’t feel her skin, not through his glove, but the way she turned into his hand made him close the space between their faces and kiss her back.

  They bounced apart again, but this time it was a blink before they were kissing once more, a more desperate seal of lips before pulling away, and then pushing back.

  When Stephine wrapped her arms around Dojan’s shoulders, her blunt nails scraping desperately at him for purchase, it was over. He growled into her mouth as he dove upward, rising from his knees to dip her backwards onto the bed and climb over her body, pinning her down between his legs. She moaned back, twisting to keep their kisses going, and he could only grab her hips and hold on when he felt her start rolling them against his crotch.

  “Stephine,” he hissed, his pants growing tighter by the second. “We… If you don’t…” he sputtered, struggling to find the words.

  Stephine just pulled back and blinked up at him, her green eyes daring him to disagree as she demanded, “But I do.” He paused, wondering if she even knew what she’d just agreed to – how the Saros did things – when he felt her cross her legs over his back, urging him forward. “Do you?”

  “Hell yes,” he breathed, kissing her deeply as he finally met her hips in a slow thrust. She moaned, closing her green eyes as she flipped her head back against the mattress. He did it again, faster this time, and again and again until they had an odd rhythm figured out where she met every lunge with a measured thrust of her own.

  Stephine’s hands were just as prying as her eyes, and they searched his body while she kept him distracted. Dojan tried to copy her actions, but his gloves made for poor fingertips, and he finally sat up to rip them off. It was only after he’d thrown them away, unveiling his sharp claws just inches from Stephine’s face, that he realized how crazed he must look. Surely Stephine would want him to get off, to go and fetch his gloves, if nothing else—

  His right hand felt numb as she grabbed it and pulled it closer, swiping a tongue over the pad of his finger. He hissed, biting the inside of his cheek, and warned, “S-Steph, don’t. It’s sharp!”

  He had half a mind to check and see if his comm was still attached to his ear as she blatantly ignored him, but then she flashed an amused grin his way right before sticking his finger in her mouth.

  “No!” he said, yanking his hand back to his chest.

  “Ouch,” Stephine whined pitifully, sticking out her tongue. A tiny red scratch was on the tip, and she gave Dojan a look.

  “Don’t blame me,” he cried incredulously. But then Stephine was snickering and he glared, realizing her complaint for the joke that it was. “Oh yeah?” he huffed, bending his knees in preparation.

  “Wait—”

  “Take this!” he laughed, pouncing on her. She dissolved into giggles underneath him, and he lightly ran his nails up and down her sides, tickling her as he bit into her shoulder. She sucked in a gasp as it turned deep, and she slapped him on the shoulder for it.

  “Humans. Don’t. Bite,” she said seriously, her flushed face ruined by her scowl.

  “Sorry,” he said, refusing to drop his grin. “Guess it’s just a Saros thing.”

  She just popped an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?” she asked, her voice sly. “Let’s see how you like it!”

  “Stephine, hold—” he cut himself off with a hiss through clenched teeth as Stephine sunk her blunt teeth into his arm. If he wasn’t thinking with his dick before, he certainly was now. He flipped her, sending her to the bed on her stomach as he crawled over her.

  As Stephine tried to talk through her own laughter, he slipped his arms underneath her and seized her breasts, squeezing them as gravity forced them to fill his hands. It made Stephine moan, and he moved to kiss the base of her neck.

  She took that moment to turn back around, her eyes dancing with amusement. She looked like she wanted to say something, maybe another one of her sarcastic observations, but h
e didn’t want to hear it just then, so he kissed her.

  He didn’t expect her to open her mouth, but he wasn’t about to waste the opportunity to slip his tongue past her lips. He wondered, the second after he did it, if humans didn’t do this either, and if he should be scared of losing his tongue. But then her tongue swirled around his in response, and he sighed against her, sliding a hand down between them.

  The moment his fingers met coarse fabric, he was reminded of the thick black pants that she wore with a thousand pockets. Grunting, he refused to pull away from her lips and that tongue, so he moved his other hand and tried to tackle her pants with both hands.

  He found the button easily enough, but undoing it was another story. Apparently, it had about six different loops stitched around it, and he couldn’t seem to snag a single one of them.

  “Nnnhh,” Stephine complained, and he moved his hands as hers slapped him out of the way. Jutting her hips up for better access, she seemed to pop the button in one flick of the wrist, yanking down the zipper to start pushing the thick fabric down her hips.

  Dojan kissed her sweetly for the help, and gently took over from there. He slid her pants past her knees until she could finally spread her thighs and kick them off, sending the pants tumbling to the floor. She began undressing him in kind, her mouth a smile as she had a much easier time with his button.

  As he also lost his pants and took the initiative to step out of his underwear, he looked down upon Stephine and realized that she was still swamped in her flannel shirt. Not to mention, she was wearing entirely too much underwear.

  Hooking the thin piece of fabric with his fingers, he slowly pulled them down just far enough to reveal her perfect triangle hidden underneath.

  “What?” she said when he stopped to look. “Are all of the women on your planet bare, or something?”

  “Or something,” he breathed, pulling her underwear away to reveal more. While it was a relief to see that their anatomy was nearly identical, he couldn’t help but marvel at how neat she was compared to his people. For a woman who wore work pants and shirts three sizes too big, she was immaculate.