She clung to his shoulders, bracing herself as he thrust back in, pleasure rushing through her too powerful to resist, a tide sweeping her away. He squeezed her hips, pulling her into his thrusts to strike deeper, harder, making her feel him in places she'd never felt anyone else.
She was stretched open by him till she could feel the outline of him branded into her and knew every inch. His thrusts were rough, wild and almost bestial as he drove into her, taking her like he wanted to break her, leave his mark on her forever.
"Mine," she heard him gasping as he pinned her arms to the bed, his teeth sharp against her throat, "mine!"
She felt his rhythm stutter as pleasure crashed over her, leaving her nearly blind as it surged like electricity through every nerve in her body. He was throbbing within her and she felt the spreading warmth of his seed, a soothing final note to the dizzying orgasm still rocking her.
He seemed to stay inside her forever, pouring into her until every spare inch that was not filled with him was filled with his issue, overflowing around them. When at last he pulled out she still felt overfilled with what he'd left behind.
There was a low rumbling sound almost like a purr coming from Shang's chest as he separated from her, nuzzling into her throat.
"Well?" he asked after they'd rested for a moment, "Did I entertain you?"
Erena snorted as she remembered their argument.
"You didn't exactly blow my fluffy little head off," she replied, quoting him, "But I guess it wasn't completely boring."
"I'll just have to try again," he decided, pulling her closer, "And again and again, until I can make you come just by saying your name."
"Sounds like a bet," Erena laughed, "You're on."
They kept at it until they both passed out, exhausted. Erena succumbed to sleep wondering what this meant for the two of them. She didn't love him. She was fairly certain he didn't even like her. Was this just going to be how they passed the time from now on?
Chapter Seven
She woke sore, wrinkling her nose at the stench of sex which now permeated the small bunk. The hatch was open, trying to air it out presumably, and Shang was not beside her. Groaning at the complaints from her back, she sat up and climbed out, pulling her discarded suit out with her.
Shang was in the pilot's seat. There were holographic star charts and some sort of silent news feed open on floating screens before him, but he was staring past them vacantly at the stars.
"Hey, is there a shower on this thing?" Erena asked, "And a washing machine?"
"Neither," Shang replied, shifting to look back at her as she struggled into her suit from the day before, "But we'll be stopping soon. We can shower there."
"And wash the sheets I hope?"
"Probably."
Erena ran finger to comb her hair, wishing she had a comb and some conditioner, and pulled it up behind her head, tying it in a knot since she didn't have a hair band. He suit was pulled up to her waist, the top not on yet.
"If we're going to be doing this kind of thing regularly," Erena said, "We're going to need to change the bedding. That little bunk is way too small to ignore the smell."
"You're alright with doing that regularly?"
Erena glanced up at him and saw he was watching her, half turned in his chair. She shrugged the rest of her suit on.
"Why wouldn't I be?" she looked away as she straightened her top, "It was great."
"You seemed shy before, that's all."
Erena finished dressing, her feet still bare, and padded over to sit in the chair next to him.
"It wasn't about being shy," she scoffed, "You were a stranger and I'd just been abducted by aliens and sold like a piece of meat. I was scared, not shy."
He shrugged, accepting that she had a point, and looked back at his star charts again.
"Also, maybe I'm just more comfortable up here," she finished, looking out at the stars, "I've always been kind of awkward on the ground. Things feel simpler in space."
Shang hummed thoughtfully at that, not looking at her.
"Is that where we're headed?" Erena asked, pointing ahead of them at a distant blue sphere, about the size of a grape from this far away.
"Diamat," Shang replied, eyes on his work, "We'll be there in a few hours. It's a popular vacation spot, so there are cheap accommodations and lots of people. Plus, with so many tourists, they won't look too hard at an unusual species like you. I'll probably claim you're a female from my race. An albino or something."
"What is your species?" Erena asked curiously, "I haven't seen anyone else who looked like you so far. Granted I haven't seen a lot..."
"Dyfedi," Shang shifted, getting the closed off expression Erena was beginning to recognize meant he was uncomfortable, "We were called Dyfedi. There are not enough of us left to be called anything anymore. We just get lumped in with the other terminarch species now."
"Terminarch?"
His jaw tightened at the further question, and she worried he was about to get annoyed at her again.
"Anyone ever tell you that you ask too many questions?" he said with a huff.
"I'm a scientist," she shrugged hopelessly, "It's literally my job to ask questions. Even if I never get home, I'm the first member of my species to meet an alien. It'd be a waste not to learn everything I could."
He nodded absentmindedly, acknowledging she was making sense, and dragged a hand over his face with a sigh.
"Terminarch, or relict when they're in small groups, are what's left of a species," he explained, "Usually after a big disaster, like colony collapse or genocide. When there's so few left that there's not even enough viable breeding pairs to maintain the remaining population. When a species is about to dwindle out of existence and go extinct, the last few individuals are called terminarch."
Erena felt a touch of sympathy as she realized what Shang was saying.
"So, the Dyfedi," she frowned as she leaned closer, "So, your species is going extinct?"
"Haven't seen another of me since my mother died," Shang shrugged, trying to act like it didn't bother him, "The Dyfed world was wiped out in an ecological disaster centuries ago. The only survivors were the ones off planet at the time in the handful of colonies and ships. They lost contact with the home world. Hell, we don't even know where Dyfed is any more. If there'd been some kind of organization, if the displaced colonies could have found each other, they might have survived. But we were scattered for too long, afraid to meet in large numbers, and it doomed us."
Erena looked away, able to imagine it all too well. She'd had nightmares about it more than once, of going into space and losing contact with earth. Of returning and finding she was the only one left. She shuddered. Then realized something didn't make sense.
"Afraid?" she asked, frowning, "Why were you afraid to meet?"
Shang flinched like he'd said more than he meant to. He was quiet for a long few minutes and Erena forced herself to be patient, realizing this was probably hard for him.
"Remember what I said before," he asked, "About the authorities finding your planet and turning it into a petri dish? It wouldn't be the first time they've done something like that."
Erena paled in horror. Would the government of so many planets and species really do something like that? Shang had never lied to her before, that she knew of. But it seemed too awful to be real.
"Alright," Shang said after a moment when the silence had lingered too long, "It's your turn. Tell me about earth."
Chapter Eight
They continued to talk while Diamat grew slowly larger in front of them. Erena described earth and growing up there, telling him about her training days, her crew. He asked a few questions, got a little huffy when she mentioned her relationship with Paolo, but for the most part just listened, taking it in.
Erena realized how much she'd needed to talk about it, the home she'd left behind, the friends she would probably never see again. She hadn't really processed it yet in all the madness of the auction and then runn
ing away with Shang. Before she knew it she was crying as she described the farm she'd been born on.
"You must really want to go back, huh?" Shang asked, watching her with a strange look in his eye.
"I do," she confessed, scrubbing at her eyes impatiently, "I really do."
"Hm."
He didn't say anything else, but he reached out to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and Erena smiled gratefully, embarrassed but glad he understood.
Soon they were approaching the atmosphere of Diamat. Up close, Erena could see it was a lot larger than Earth, and appeared to be primarily ocean. She couldn't spot any continents the size she was used to, most of them appearing smaller than Australia.
Primarily, the planet's surface was dotted with thousands of island chains, most of which didn't look very green from up here. Maybe the vegetation here was a different color?
If the sun was more red or blue than Sol, earth's sun, then the plants might have adapted to absorb a different wavelength of light. Or maybe it wouldn't have plants at all. She couldn't rule out that vegetative life might be rarer than they'd thought.
She strapped in, her hands shaking, as Shang prepared to enter orbit.
"Why are you so nervous?" he asked, frowning, "We're just landing."
"This is still probably the most dangerous part of the mission where I'm from," Erena confessed, swallowing hard and gripping the seat.
"What the hell is your species doing exploring deep space if you haven't even mastered takeoff and landing yet?" Shang shook his head in dismay, tilting the nose down and slipping into the atmosphere as gracefully as a fish into water.
They fell towards the surface like a feather on the breeze. Erena could swear the hull hadn't even heated up.
"You're going to have to teach me how you did that," Erena said, dazzled, as they floated towards one of the larger landmasses.
"Yeah right," Shang scoffed, "Last thing I need is the pet alien trying to fly."
"Excuse me? I trained my whole life to fly space craft!"
"Yeah, yeah..."
The ship was soon taxing above what looked to Erena as she stared out the window almost exactly like an average downtown airport. If it weren't for how weird the craft landing on it were and the fact that the buildings here seemed to favor three sides rather than four.
They landed without a bump, Shang muttering credentials to a controller over the ship's coms as they pulled in. They coasted on the magnetic landing gear through wide streets behind a few larger personal craft until they reached the parking garage for Shang's ship class.
He complained bitterly as he went that smaller ships always got to park closer to the airport. His was outfitted to carry cargo, and was thus bigger than most non-commercial craft.
Erena was reminded of the fact that he was a pirate and it caught her temporarily by surprise. She hadn't asked him anything about that yet. She wondered what he would say if she did.
"Oh, hey, take this."
They were about to leave the ship when Shang handed Erena a small disposable package. Inside there was what looked to Erena like a cotton medical mask.
"Put it on," he said, "It'll help you adjust to the atmosphere faster. It can be kind of a shock to the system otherwise."
Erena frowned but put the mask on anyway, seeing that he was doing the same. He opened the doors and the outside air hit Erena like a brick to the face. She dropped to her knees at once, wheezing and swearing.
"Burns like a son of a bitch, right?" Shang commented casually, walking past her.
"I'm gonna die," she replied, eyes tearing up, her lung screaming, "Air!"
"Take deep breaths, Fluffy," Shang rolled his eyes, waiting for her at the bottom of the ramp, "You're not dying."
Erena responded by falling over and blacking out.
"Okay, so, maybe I underestimated what the antihistamines in the mask would do for you alien physiology," Shang hunched his shoulders defensively as they sat in the airport adjustment room, a quiet, soothing pastel yellow lobby full of comfortable seating, while Erena breathed into an oxygen mask and glared at him, "I still say you over reacted. If you hadn't panicked the reaction would have been much milder."
He was sitting beside her on a comfortable padded bench, his arm around her half to help support her and half, Erena thought, to reassure himself.
He'd panicked at least as much as her when she'd passed out. Though she was annoyed with him, she couldn't help being slightly pleased by his concern. A handful of other aliens in the room, also adjusting to the atmosphere, eyed their bickering curiously.
"If you... had properly... prepared me..." Erena wheezed between puffs on the oxygen mask.
"I said I was sorry."
"You did... not."
"I said it while you were passed out."
"That... doesn't...count!"
When she could breathe again, he helped her outside. The air still felt uncomfortable in her lungs, somehow too heavy, leaving her feeling permanently short of breath, but she was getting used to it. But now that they could finally leave the airport, Erena could see the planet properly at last.
"Wow..."
She leaned on Shang for support, staring openly. The wedge shaped buildings, all copper gold and glass, formed strange jig saws as they interlocked, opening up before them to the horizon. There were no plants, as she'd wondered on the way down.
The ground seemed instead to be a semi translucent kind of firm silicon, opalescent and shimmering, occasionally ruptured by strange crystalline forms not unlike trees.
In the far distance, Erena could see crystal mountains glittering in the light, catching the pale blue sunlight reflected off the deep jade colored sea. It was dazzlingly beautiful, almost to the point of hurting Erena's eyes.
"I had a feeling you'd appreciate this."
Erena looked up at Shang as he spoke to see him staring off at the horizon as well, his expression oddly peaceful.
"I grew up in the Labyrinth City," he was saying, "Back on the planet where you were sold. I was raised in the lower levels, where the buildings are so dense you rarely see the sky. When I finally got off planet, this is the first place I came."
"It's incredible," Erena leaned against him, awed, "I guess I didn't really process it before. I'm really on another planet. I'm the first human being to see this."
"Are you going to pass out again?" Shang asked with a frown. Erena laughed.
"No, no, I just wish I could take samples or something!" she shrugged, "If I could just get something back to earth about all this... it would change everything."
Shang looked momentarily troubled, but Erena was more concerned with the view. A handful of what she guessed were children of one species or another were running down the beach pulling a huge kite shaped like a squid. Its ribbons curled and waved in the air like the real thing. She let go of Shang's arm to hurry towards the beach, eager to investigate.
The alien children let her examine the kite, then showed her where to find tide pools were tiny crystalline crabs, their backs decorated with spires of rose quartz, scurried back and forth snatching at darting, jewel colored fish.
She'd been scrambling over the shore collecting sea shells, transparent but for the iridescent pink nacre that lined them, for nearly an hour before she noticed Shang watching her.
"Where have you been?" she asked, breathless, as she hurried towards him, "I saw the most amazing crustacean-thing! You won't believe how its segments are connected."
"I found us a place to stay," Shang explained, "It's getting late. You wanted that shower, right?"
"Desperately," Erena agreed with a laugh.
Despite her situation, she couldn't help smiling as they walked back through the broad streets towards the hotel Shang had found. The hotel wasn't so different from what Erena had expected.
Although the lobby was a bit strange, the room itself was designed to accommodate bipedal mammalians, and so the furniture and accommodations were very close to what she wa
s used to.
They had difficulty finding the bed at first, until they moved a round wooden lid near the balcony and discovered a pillow lined nest like area. Erena wanted to fall into it immediately, but she didn't want to dirty the sheets.
"You can shower first," Shang offered, "I'll see about dinner."
"Thank you," Erena clasped her hands in gratitude and hurried to the attached bathroom, only to have to return a moment later and ask for help figuring out how to turn on the water. Shang rolled his eyes but showed her how the panel worked.
As she washed, Erena couldn't help thinking how much things had changed since a few days ago. She'd been taken from her ship scared and alone. Now she was on the kind of outer space adventure she'd read stories about as a kid. Seeing incredible new planets, meeting new species.
If she were a dashing space captain like in the stories, she'd probably have fallen in love by now too. She thought of Shang, remembering his face as he'd talked about visiting here for the first time. Well, it wasn't love, but it was something, and it was something exciting.
Chapter Nine
When she left the shower, Shang had dinner waiting for them. The food looked strange, but also beautiful, colorful and artfully plated.
"I sent the kitchen your dietary requirements," Shang assured her as she sat down at the low table in the center of the room on which the food was spread, "So nothing should be dangerous."
"Like how adjusting to the atmosphere wasn't supposed to be that bad?" Erena asked pointedly.
"If you don't want you food, I'll take it," Shang replied with a shrug, reaching for one of the plates near her. She slapped at his hand with the chopstick like utensils they'd been given.
After dinner, which was delicious and didn't kill her, Shang showed her how to open a holographic screen to watch local television. She flipped through channels while he showered, though she found the translator didn't work as effectively on television as it in life.
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