by Elin Wyn
No. Maybe... she wasn’t sure, and that annoyed her.
Lyra sat up. “What is with you? Why can’t good sex just be good sex?”
“Lyra, you cannot be serious.” He reached for her, but she pulled her hand away. He scowled. “You cannot tell me that after everything you have seen and experienced—”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, but there is no such thing as a... a psychic bond! Whatever we are feeling, it is a totally normal reaction between two people.”
“And your headache,” he demanded.
She paused for a moment. That was harder to explain, but not impossible. “Look around us.” She gestured to the pod, which literally had holes in the hull to let in beams of sunlight and the planet’s humid air. “We were just in a spaceship crash, not to mention I have personally been dealing with a huge amount of stress. It’s no wonder I’ve been battling a tension headache.”
And the spike in your hormone levels? Asked an annoyingly logical little voice in the back of her mind. Lyra ruthlessly pushed it away.
Sholan let out a bark of a laugh. “You are deluding yourself, Lyra.”
Her temper spiked. She hated it when people didn’t take her seriously. “And so are you if you think I’m going to stay with you because of some... some psychic mumbo-jumbo that has absolutely no scientific backing at all.”
She regretted the words the moment they were out of her mouth, doubly so when he flushed in visible anger.
All the harsh amusement fled. Sholan’s voice lowered, dangerous and... hurt.
“Do you really think I am the sort of man who is capable of making up such a lie? That I need to trick a woman to be my mate?”
Her mouth opened and shut a couple of times. She wanted to take back her words. But she had her pride, and he needed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would not be tricked into anything.
So, instead of answering she turned and walked away to the back of the pod. She could see that her medical bag had opened in all of the bumping and shaking, and the precious contents had been spilled all over the place.
She heard the hiss and click of the hatch opening and turned in time to see Sholan stalk off.
“Sholan,” she said, “Wait...”
But it was too late. He was already gone.
Sholan
Stomping off in a snit probably wasn’t the most mature thing Sholan had ever done, but he was not in the mood to argue with that aggravating woman.
Sholan clenched and unclenched his fists, angry and frustrated with himself.
The bond was something almost mythical among his people—both sacred and precious. He and Lyra were blessed to receive it. He had counted himself lucky to have joined with a woman so beautiful, intelligent, and headstrong as Lyra.
Headstrong. That was the problem.
He was a creature of emotion, and she was one who needed hard evidence. The problem was, he was feeling less than rational at that moment.
He had to leave the pod because he feared she was going to leave him. Somehow, she would find a way to return back to that planet, or simply take some other opportunity—any opportunity to be rid of him completely.
And then where would Sholan be?
He could not see himself with any other woman—not after her. That was how the bond worked.
Perhaps, he thought with growing despair, the bond only works one way. Lyra was an alien.
A completely unknown species.
Was it possible the bond did not affect her?
Perhaps she did not feel what he did for her. If that was the case, what would he do then? He could simply not be without her.
Was his future to follow her around when he was not wanted?
No, he had more dignity than that, but... What were his other choices? He could see none.
Furious with himself, the unfair circumstances of his life, and the woman he was coming to love despite her rejection of him, he increased his pace to a jog. It was the top speed he could go in this dense alien forest.
He told himself he was searching for evidence of alien civilization. The scanners had been cutting in and out, so it was possible he had missed something.
He was a warrior and he was NOT running away from her, or his feelings.
That would be ridiculous.
The deeper Sholan traveled into the jungle, the less likely it seemed that there was any intelligent life on this planet. He saw no evidence of cities or any industry. Not even a footprint.
Thick vegetation carpeted every conceivable surface, including the soil itself. In fact, when he paused for a moment to scruff his shoe, he could not find any dirt. He was walking on a thick, springy carpet of closely interwoven ferns and moss.
Which was why it took him completely by surprise when his next step met nothing but air.
There was a gap in the ‘ground’ well hidden by trailing vines.
Sholan tried to catch himself, but the loose vegetation would not hold his weight. He fell at least a dozen feet and landed with a thud.
“Ow.” Shaking his head, he looked up through the hole he had just fallen through. Then, he frowned and looked around.
This level—no, this layer, received much less light and it took a few moments for his eyes to adjust.
He stood on similar ‘ground’ as he had before, but the plants were darker and sicklier looking as if they were used to living without light. There were also a lot more gaps, like the one he had fallen through.
Sholan suspected that these were yet more layers of foliage.
And with that realization, he began to suspect that they had not landed on the planet’s surface at all.
No, the true surface was most likely a long, long way down.
He padded his pockets and cursed to himself. He had stormed out of the pod so quickly that he had not brought any communication device. The hole he had fallen through was much too high for him to jump, and from what little he could see around him, there was nothing he could use to climb out again.
Falling down another hole would be disastrous.
He was in deep trouble.
Lyra
Lyra paced around the pod—or what was left of it.
The more she looked, the more damage she saw. In addition to the scorch marks left over from their previous two encounters with the Thagzars, the jungle foliage had taken chunks out of the hull as they had landed.
They were lucky that the cockpit itself had been so heavily reinforced.
She was no engineer, but from the mangled state of the engines, it was clear that this pod would not be flight-worthy again.
The precious vial with the bio-toxin was intact, but it hardly mattered now that they could not get off the planet.
Why hadn’t Sholan come back yet?
“Stubborn man,” she huffed to herself, angry and not really knowing why. After all, it was Sholan’s expertise and brilliant planning that had gotten them this far.
What had she done, other than reject him?
Lyra shook her head and rubbed at her arms, hating her nagging sense of guilt.
After all, she was the wronged party here... wasn’t she?
There was one way to prove it.
Quickly going back to her repacked medical bag, she drew out a blood sample analyzer with much more sensitive settings than the previous device she had used.
Slower than the quick diagnostic tool, but it would detect any chemicals or infection.
Using a finger stick, she pricked her index finger and dropped a drop of blood on the analyzer.
She watched the readout greedily. Surely, there had to be some kind of poisoning or evidence of infection.
Something. Anything.
Except for her hormone levels, every single metric she could test for came back within the average, and almost perfectly synced up from when she had last given herself a physical.
Lyra tapped the delicate machine, frustrated.
No, there has to be something wrong with me, she
thought, almost panicked now. I’ve been dizzy, flushed, head-achy, horny as hell...
... And every single time she had only felt better when she had touched Sholan.
And the way he had made her feel... Just kissing him had been a high all on its own. She’d had good lovers before, but no one had made her feel like that.
She shoved the diagnostic equipment away, irritated, and paced around the interior of the pod hugging herself.
Lyra had the sinking feeling in her stomach that she had been in the wrong. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it was distinctly unpleasant.
As unsettled as she was, she wished Sholan was with her again.
That was natural, right? She had recently crash-landed on an alien world. All alone.
Not to mention that this place was weird. Although they were in a forest, she had heard no birdsong—
Panic slammed into her all at once. Her breath whooshed out as if she had been punched.
Lyra curled over herself, letting out an inarticulate cry of surprise.
Sholan was in danger.
She knew this all the way down to her bones. There was not a hint of doubt. He was in danger, he was hurt, and he needed her now.
Lyra sprinted out of the pod as fast as she could, not even pausing to take her medical bag with her.
There was no time...
The jungle was as thickly forested as she had seen in videos of old earth, before the deforestation. Everywhere she looked was a wall of green in a thousand different shades. Even the ground was covered with it and was weirdly springy under her feet.
She could not see for more than a few feet in front of her in any direction. Yet, she ran on, unerringly, in the direction that she knew Sholan had gone.
It was as if there were a hook in her heart and it was tugging, hard.
She fell to her knees in front of a hole that was so thickly camouflaged it should have been easy to miss. But Sholan was down there. She knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
“Sholan!” she called.
There was a moment of silence while she held her breath.
Then, “Lyra?”
“I’m here. Are you hurt?” She peered down, but it was dark and she could not see him.
“No,” he replied. “No, I fell, but it’s all vegetation down here and I can’t find my way up.”
She nodded and forced herself to take a few calming breaths. “Do you have a rope or some cabling onboard the pod?”
“Nothing that would support my weight,” he said, “You’ll have to find something in the jungle, but Lyra, be careful. We haven’t crash landed on the planet’s surface.”
“What do you mean?”
He chuckled and some of her nervousness subsided at the rich sound of it. “I think we are actually in this planet’s equivalent of a giant tree. This is the canopy, and the real ground is a long, long way down.”
Lyra frowned and took a look around. It took a few moments, and she had to make herself let go of her assumptions of what a standard ‘tree’ should look like according to her narrow Earth view.
Now that Sholan had pointed it out, there was something very odd about the foliage here. If she tilted her head and squinted, she could almost imagine herself on a giant leaf-like structure with coexistent plants growing out of it.
“How certain of this are you?” she asked.
“As certain as I can be without a proper scan from the sensors,” he replied. The grim humor in his tone at least assured her that he wasn’t too injured. “But please, watch for gaps within the ‘leaves’. If you fall down a hole like I did—”
“We’re both screwed. I got it.”
The acerbic reply helped reset her good sense again. She took another bracing breath and stood. “Stay right there.”
His reply was definitely amused now. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Lyra was as good as her word, and stepped carefully from then on out. It was a good thing, too. There was more than one hole in the springy underbrush.
As she walked and explored, she got more of a sense of what Sholan had been talking about. Indeed, it seemed that the grassy field he had tried to land on was merely a part of a top branch in an unimaginably giant fern-like tree. It was so large that it supported its own ecosystem with hundreds of millions of other plants woven in and out of one another.
This was a biologist’s dream.
She did eventually find a long, thick vine. Using her standard belt knife, she cut a length from it before returning.
Again, she was able to find the hole where Sholan had fallen through without any problem. It was as if there was a compass in her heart, always attuned to his direction.
Well... damn. She had some apologizing to do.
Lyra set that aside in her mind and focused on coiling the vine around a solid woody plant growing not too far away. She held onto the end for extra leverage before she tossed the rest of the vine down the hole.
“Okay, I got you. Come on up!”
The vine went taunt and creaked as it took Sholan’s weight, but it held. Within a few moments, Sholan’s fingers gripped the edge of the hole and he dragged himself up.
Lyra reached out. His hand clasped with hers, and she heaved backward with all her strength. He pulled at the same time, and in one great effort he was out.
In fact, he fell practically on top of her.
He grinned down. “My hero.”
She reached up and brushed a twig out of his hair, not minding his weight over her. It was surprisingly comfy. “Are you all right?”
“I am now,” he said.
She frowned and started to sit up. He took the hint to give her space, rolling to the side.
Lyra drew her knees up with a grimace. This was the part she hated the most. Crow tasted awful.
“I’m sorry, Sholan. I was completely out of line with what I said earlier. And... I was wrong about the bond, wasn’t I?”
“Lyra,” he sighed. “You were angry. This is all very new to you. I just wanted to give you some space to calm down. And yes, the bond is real. What caused you to change your mind?”
She smiled, wanly. There was no reason for Sholan to have forgiven her that easily, considering how borderline cruel she had been... yet, he had. It was just that simple for him.
He really was a good man.
“I suppose I finally got the evidence I needed.” She smiled, wanly. “I knew the second that you needed me, and I ran over here through this entire jungle.” She waved her hand around. “I don’t think I could find my way back to the pod if you paid me, and yet I found my way right here to you.”
He blinked and then smiled, lifting his arms. She took him up on his invitation and crawled to cuddle up next to him. Bending, Sholan kissed her softly on the lips.
“There is nothing to forgive,” he said. “We will always be able to find our way to each other, Lyra.”
Sholan
It took some exploring and quite a bit of backtracking to find their way back to the crash site.
Not only did this forest world have giant trees, but the foliage grew at a phenomenal rate. It had obscured the path they took out there.
Finally, Sholan was able to locate a few broken twigs which had not healed itself yet. Between that, and a little creative guesswork, they found the pod again.
Or at least, what remained of it.
Sholan frowned as he gazed upon the poor ship from the outside for the first time. Some of the enthusiastic foliage was already winding around some of the broken struts. He would have to clear some away.
Lyra pulled at his hand. “Don’t worry. You should have a few days before the pod is completely covered by this stuff. We will figure something out before then. Meanwhile, I think we both deserve a break. Don’t you?”
Her smile was impish and full of promise. Before he could reply, she stood up on tip-toe and kissed his cheek before darting in the open hatch again.
With a growing smile, he followed her.
&nbs
p; The damage to the inside of the pod was extensive, but Sholan did not care. He only had eyes for Lyra. As soon as the hatch was closed and the outside jungle world was as shut out as it was ever going to be, he pulled her into a kiss.
She went willingly, opening up beautifully to him. This strong, tempestuous woman who was bonded to him and him alone.
He felt like the luckiest Eiztar in the world.
They took their time stripping each other of their clothing. Sholan laid her down on the nest of blankets and pillows that was left of their cot, cupping her breasts in his hands.
She threw back her head and groaned, her hips rising to tease at his erection as he held himself over her.
“Sholan,” she said, reaching down to rub her palm over the head of his cock. “Don’t tease me. I need you.”
Well, with an invitation like that, who was he to refuse? He was outrageously hard and ready.
Her thighs opened for him. He kissed her again, swiping a thumb over her swollen clit, sliding downwards to the place they both wanted him to be. She was slick and ready.
He grabbed her hips and pushed in.
“Oh,” Lyra whispered, eyes half lidded, lips pulled away from her teeth in a hiss. It was not pain—the pleasure seemed to sizzle through them both, drawn from the lines of the bond.
Lyra cried out, voice rising in euphoria. He grunted, rocking into her. It was as if her body was made for him, so slick and so tight.
They gripped each other, moving against one another and then with one another as they picked up the pace. He shifted the angle of his hips, bucking into her hard and deep. Lyra took everything he had and with her throaty cries demanded more.
She was close—he sensed and felt it as if it were his own pleasure. Slipping a hand between them, he circled his fingers harshly over her clit.
She moaned, clenching inside and out. He felt her orgasm rippling around his thrusting cock.
He came deep into her, over her, clutching her tight, growling into her hair.
They slowed to a stop as the waves faded. Breathing hard, he reluctantly pulled out and moved to collapse beside her, feeling boneless.