He motioned for her to enter, his mouth still set in a frown.
She pushed open the door, closing it behind her and locking the bar before she glanced over at him. Seeing him still sitting there, staring at her, she motioned at the padded bench directly across from him.
“Can I sit in here?” she said. “For the take off?”
He motioned her silently towards the bench, his mouth still set in a frown.
He watched her as she sank her weight where he’d indicated, then as she gripped the edge of the cushion with both hands.
Right then, the whole cabin went up.
Straight up, in a smooth, nausea-inducing line that was nearly soundless.
Jet hadn’t been on many of these transport ships before, but she’d known more or less what to expect. Even so, for a few seconds, she only gripped the edge of the seat, riding the flip in her stomach from the abrupt change in altitude.
When she felt some part of her wanting to turn that into real nausea, she forced herself to turn her head, staring out the viewport at the view of the Green Zone lights below.
She watched those lights grow small––rapidly––until eventually she could see the actual dome. Unlike with the culler ship, this seemed to happen in seconds rather than minutes. They passed through the open doors of the dome and Jet found herself looking down at the city lights through them, right before the thick panels of the dome began to close.
There was scarcely a pause before the ship changed directions.
The dome and the more muted lights began to move under her in a multi-colored blur.
Even going as fast as they were, it seemed to take a long time to pass over the entire structure, reminding her again how insanely large the city really was.
She watched the whole thing, and by the end, she’d adjusted to the motion.
Well enough to look away from the viewport, at least.
When she glanced at Trazen, she found him staring at her.
She saw him look over the clothes she was wearing, focusing the longest on her bare feet, which were covered with cut grass from the lawns around the landing area, and probably filthy from walking across the tarmac.
She looked at her own feet for a second, then flushed, looking back at him.
A faint accusation touched her voice.
“You left,” she said.
He stared at her, the gold flecks and rings in his eyes seemingly brighter than usual.
Then he got up, walking over to her and sitting deliberately on the padded bench next to her.
Before she could say anything, he wrapped his tail around her waist and yanked her up against him. Her breath left her lungs in a sharp exhale when he did it, but she didn’t fight him, or pull away once he had her half-leaning against him.
Reaching for him once she’d caught her breath, she wrapped her fingers around his muscular arms, looking up at him.
“You left,” she said, softer.
He was studying her face, that faint frown still hovering at the edges of his lips.
She still didn’t know Nirreth facial expressions well enough to know exactly what the look meant, so she just waited, letting him be the one to speak next.
For a long moment, she wondered if he would.
Then he exhaled in a kind of purring sigh, leaning back from her.
His tail loosened its grip around her waist, although he didn’t retract it entirely. Rubbing his face with one hand, he pulled away from her gently, a rejection he seemed to want to disguise as something else.
She let go of him reluctantly, but now she was the one frowning.
“You wanted to leave,” she said, her voice carefully neutral.
He gave her a sharp look. “No.”
“No?”
“No,” he growled.
He moved a few inches further from her on the bench, turning his body so he faced away from her more squarely. Coiling his hands around his thighs, he stared into the center of the cabin, as if thinking.
After another pause, he let out a rumbling growl.
“Jet,” he sighed. “I have… commitments. I am…” He hesitated again, glancing at her. “…Owned. In a sense.”
Jet’s frown deepened. “Owned? Like a slave?”
“No.” He shook his head again, giving another purring sigh. “No, I chose this. I made this pact. I made vows. Vows I am bound to.”
“But you said before…” Jet trailed.
Remembering their conversation on the ramp before her last Rings match, she closed her mouth, fighting with how to ask him what she wanted to ask him. Or maybe say to him what she wanted to say to him.
Then again, maybe she’d said enough.
He seemed to understand.
Part of it anyway.
“I thought I would stay in the Green Zone,” he explained. “I thought my life would be there, that even if we fought against Isreti, I thought I would do so on the ground. Either in the rebel forces or in the Green Zone itself. But that is all different now. With everything that’s happened…”
He let his words trail too, then stared away from her again, focusing sightlessly on the other side of the cabin.
“I made vows. I should go back, Jet. I should ask them what they want of me. Maybe I cannot stay near you now. I don’t know.”
Remembering what the female Nirreth told her under that dome of stars, Jet pursed her lips. She honestly wasn’t sure if she should bring that up now.
What if this was just Trazen looking for a way out?
What if she’d just reveal it all as an excuse?
The longer she thought about it though, the more she realized she had to tell him.
Sighing herself, she leaned forward, resting her forearms on her legs, in part so she could look up at his face.
“What if you had a choice?” she said. “A different choice?”
He glanced at her, his dark eyes wary. “What do you mean?”
Jet studied his high-cheekboned face, feeling her throat tighten. Her own face flushed in the same set of seconds, and she clasped her hands between her knees.
“It would be a lot easier if you just stung me,” she said finally, frustration touching her voice. “If I could just show you this, instead of having to explain it all. I don’t even know if you want to hear it. But I’m pretty sure she wanted me to tell you.”
When Trazen let out a low hiss, she shook her head, clenching her jaw.
“I don’t mean it like that. The stinging part. I…”
Hesitating, she glanced up at him, letting him hear the sincerity in her words, hoping he could hear it, at least.
“Something happened in there, Trazen. In the library. I need to show someone. I’d rather if it was you. I think she wanted it to be you. But I want that, too.”
His frown deepened.
She saw something behind it that time though. Glimpsing some flicker of vulnerability that lived behind his harder look disarmed her entirely.
“I love you,” she said, feeling her jaw jut forward slightly.
He flinched, his eyes widening.
Looking away, she went on stubbornly, focusing on her grass-stained feet.
“But this isn’t about that. Not entirely.” She shrugged, forcing herself to look up again, to hold his gaze. “I don’t want someone else to sting me, so how I feel about you is a part of it. But the message wasn’t only for me. It was for you, too. It was for all Nirreth. I need to share it with someone. I need to share it with someone soon, or it might cause problems.”
When she looked up at him that time, she couldn’t read his expression at all.
“Can you just tell me?” he said.
She thought about that, then shook her head.
Then, thinking some more, she realized that wasn’t entirely true.
“I can tell you part of it,” she admitted. She looked up at him again. “Some of it’s not really that kind of message. I’m not sure I have words for some of it.”
“Tell me the part th
at is. The part where you can use words.”
Jet sighed, leaning back on the bench.
Then, still thinking, she conceded defeat, combing her fingers through her hair.
She thought about what the female Nirreth said to her before she’d blacked out on the library floor. She tried to decide which parts would make sense with only words.
After a few more seconds, she felt her defenses drop even more.
“I’ll just tell you all of it,” Jet said finally. “Everything I can. If you want to know more, you can sting me. But maybe just telling you would be enough.”
She said the last part with more than a little embarrassment.
It had already occurred to her by then that maybe he was right.
Maybe she’d been trying to manipulate him into stinging her.
Pushing that out of her head, she started talking, her voice matter-of-fact.
She relayed all of it, word for word where she could, including her thoughts and impressions as she remembered them, including her impressions of the female Nirreth, and Alice, and Alice’s reactions along with her own.
Her memory didn’t really work as well when it came to conversations and people as it did with maps and underground tunnels, but it all happened recently enough that she was pretty sure she’d gotten most of it.
When she finished, she fell silent, leaning deeper into the back of the padded bench.
Trazen just sat there for a few seconds too, not looking at her.
Then he exhaled, coiling his tail tentatively around her arm. The contact made her jump, but she only looked down at it, trying to decide if she should touch him back.
“And you think she was talking about me?” he said, before she could make up her mind.
Jet shrugged. Reaching out a hand tentatively, she stroked her fingers along the silky skin of his tail, feeling him shiver.
“I don’t know who else she would have meant,” she said, not looking up. “Do you?”
He turned his head, looking at her.
She could almost feel the indecision on him.
It came through his skin, like a low vibration through her fingers as she continued to stroke his skin. She felt other things too. She wished she could feel him well enough to have the slightest idea what any of those feelings really meant.
All she was left with was some distant intensity of feeling, buried behind that more cloying indecision.
All of it felt wrapped in something like anger, that might not have been anger at all.
She was still trying to think her way past those glimmers of emotion when he slid closer to her again on the bench. That time, he wrapped his arms around her, wrapping his tail around her waist and hip, pressing his leg against hers. He held her tightly, startling her enough that she flinched, looking up at him.
“Trazen––”
“Do you really love me?” he said, his eyes on hers.
His mouth firmed while she watched him look at her.
Sighing a bit, maybe in defeat that time, too, she nodded. “Yes.”
“What about Laksri?” he said, his voice softer. “Does he know that?”
She leaned into his side, nodding. “He does now.”
That indecision on him worsened, growing intense enough that she winced.
She found herself looking up at him again, firming her jaw.
“Trazen,” she said, a little at a loss when she couldn’t read his expression again. “Relax. Just relax, please. We don’t have to talk about this now. I just didn’t want you to leave the way you did, not after everything. You told me to choose, so I did. But you don’t have to do anything different with that information right now. Definitely not right this very second. Especially after everything I just told you.”
She met his gaze at the end, and saw him watching her.
Something in his eyes looked different again, but again, she had no idea what it meant.
“Trazen––” she began.
He cut her off before she could get any farther.
“What if I want to?” he said. “What if I want to do something about it right now?”
She looked up at him, narrowing her eyes. “Like what?”
Leaning down, he kissed her, pulling her tighter against his chest.
When she softened against his mouth and body, he wrapped his arms further around her back, pulling her into his lap. She slid up against him, feeling enveloped in his arms and chest, his coiling tail, when he kissed her again, wrapping his arm around her waist.
She let out a low sound when he started working his way down her throat with his lips and tongue, wrapping the jointed fingers of one hand into her long hair.
Something about kissing like this, without the venom, without anything there to lower her defenses, made her feel so insanely vulnerable, she clung to him.
She’d told him she loved him.
She’d never said that to anyone in her life, not like that. She’d never said it to anyone at all who she wasn’t related to, by blood.
When he finally paused, she had one of her legs wrapped around his waist, and she was massaging his chest. He was stoking her bare skin past where the shorts ended, pulling on her leg to bring her deeper into his lap.
He let out a low, rumbling purr as he kissed her neck again, nipping her lightly with his teeth before he raised his head, meeting her gaze.
When he spoke that time, his voice was gruff.
“I want to sting you now,” he said.
Feeling a little dazed, still fighting that feeling of almost unbearable vulnerability, she nodded, caressing his neck and feeling the vibration in his chest when he let out another low growl.
“Yes,” she said.
“You remember what I said?” he said, kissing her cheek as he tugged her closer against him. “On the ramp, Jet. What I said I wanted the next time I stung you?”
Shivering a little, she nodded again. “Yes,” she said.
“It’s at least a few hours’ flight, Jet.”
His fingers tightened on her.
She felt the question there, even as her hand began exploring the smooth skin under his shirt. He let out a low growl when she didn’t stop touching him, but the question she’d felt there lingered.
“I understand,” she told him, somewhat belatedly. “Are you asking if I want you, Trazen? You already know I do.”
“Tell me you love me again,” he said, his voice a heavier growl.
“I love––”
Before she could get it out, he’d already stung her.
He let out a low gasp as he did it, his whole body going tense.
She gripped his arms, feeling her jaw clench the longer the venom let go. He’d barely finished with the first one when he stung her again.
And again.
He was kissing her by the time he stung her the fourth time, and then she was in his lap for real, trying to think past the flood of information that reached her through his skin, pretty much the instant his venom hit her bloodstream.
I love you, he told her.
Emotion bloomed out of him, a tangible force in her hands and chest.
It ripped through whatever remaining walls lived there between them, causing her breath to catch, her fingers to tighten on his arms, then his shoulders. She kissed his face even as his features transformed in front of her, growing so expressive she almost couldn’t recognize the person she’d met in the restaurant that first day, the muscular Nirreth with the sad-looking woman clinging to his arm.
Jet hadn’t seen it then, but the woman had been holding onto him for dear life that day, like a life raft in the middle of a violent sea.
Sometimes, maybe needing someone wasn’t such a terrible thing.
I love you, he thought at her again. I think I’ve always loved you, Jet… always…
He stung her again while she caressed his face.
…and again when her hand slid inside his pants, exploring him openly as he gasped, gripping her rear in one hand. She pulled at
him with her mind, tugging on him through the venom, asking him, telling him how badly she wanted him.
He stung her again as he let out a denser groan, from deep inside his chest. Then he was yanking at her clothes, rolling her to her back.
I’ve wanted you, she told him. For so long.
Jet, he managed. Jet… don’t. I’m not going to last long as it is…
She hesitated at his words, feeling him react, feeling that intensity rise in him, but it felt important to tell him. It felt important to use actual words, even if they were in her mind. It felt important to tell him all of it, to tell him the truth.
Even before, she confessed, softer. Even before you saved me on Astet, I wanted you, Trazen. Laksri hated it. He knew, and he hated it. And I was jealous. I got so jealous. I don’t know why I lied about that. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I got jealous at that party, with your friend. I got jealous the first time I saw you––
Jet, he groaned. Stop. Stop.
He bit her shoulder, his fingers sliding inside of her, and she let out a weak gasp.
He groaned louder when she arched up against him, her hand grasping his tail. He growled in her ear, showing her images in his mind of what he wanted, what he’d fantasized about doing to her, for months and months…
Both of them were naked now, and she felt the focus on him.
She felt a kind of disbelieving want, even as he showed her how badly he needed her not to talk about Laksri, how he’d been messing with her at the party, how he’d wanted more than anything to drag her into the trees, sting her and––
He cut off the images, the thoughts.
She felt his embarrassment, mixed with a kind of unapologetic want, mixed with a focus that turned her on even more.
She had her hand wrapped around his sex when he met her gaze. She watched him react, his eyes closing, his jaw firming as he raised himself up on his arms. There was so much flowing between them now with the venom, she could barely make out his features, could barely make sense of what they were doing.
She felt him asking her then… no demanding, telling her what he wanted…
She laughed.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped.
She laughed again.
Then she was pulling on him, positioning herself under him.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 95