by Meg Ripley
"About you. I want to know everything."
She laughed and cuddled a little closer to him, tucking her hands under her cheek.
"There isn't much to tell. I have been here for almost two years and before that I was in the military back home, and before that I was raised by a military man, which basically means I was always in the military."
She laughed again and he smiled. Her heart soared.
"Are you ever homesick?" he asked.
Alexis nodded.
"Sometimes. It's just so different here, but I've only ever had my father, so at least he's here with me."
"What do you miss the most about Earth?"
Alexis let out a long breath of air, looking into the distance as she pondered his question. There were many things that she missed about the comfort of her home planet, but finally she settled on the one thing that pulled at her the most.
"The stars. I always loved looking at the stars. It never gets dark for long enough here to see them."
She looked back into Tyrok's face and saw him smiling at her.
"Watch this," he whispered and rolled onto his back.
Alexis followed his lead, flipping onto her back so that her shoulder touched his. Tyrok reached beside him to the bedside table and closed the cover down over the small nightlight she had placed on the table the week before as if to keep vigil over him. Alexis had drawn the light-blocking curtains and suddenly they were in nearly complete darkness.
She felt Tyrok sit up slightly then heard a sound as if he was blowing out a stream of air. Above her the ceiling shimmered then came to life with dozens of tiny balls of light. They glittered against the darkness, shifting every few moments to create patterns and familiar constellations.
Alexis gasped, but couldn't move. She stared at the stars surrounding her and felt emotion welling in her throat. A few tiny sounds escaped her lips and Tyrok rested back against the pillows.
"You're –" she started, but paused again.
"Yes."
Alexis gave a short laugh.
"I didn't think you were real," she shook her head and tried to come up with the words to make more sense, "I mean, Star Lords. I thought they were just a fairy tale."
"Do you think that I'm just a fairy tale?" he asked and she noticed his voice had dropped lower.
She turned back onto her side to face him at the same moment that he rolled toward her.
"Maybe," she breathed and felt his hand come to her cheek.
His thumb stroked her cheekbone gently, then he ran his fingertips along the curve of her jaw. Using his hand to steady her head, he drew his face closer and touched his lips to hers.
****
Tyrok lifted his lips from hers and stared into her face as if evaluating her reaction. In the shimmer of starlight, she could see his stunning, unworldly eyes and felt like she was falling into them. After a moment, he brought his mouth back to hers. Alexis relaxed into the kiss, complying with the pressure of his mouth to open her lips. He coaxed her tongue forward and stroked it with his, eliciting a small moan from her throat.
Alexis felt Tyrok press his body closer to hers, then loop an arm around her waist so he could lift her up and roll onto his back to bring her down on top of him. She slid against him and felt the roughness of the gauze on his wounds touch the sliver of skin exposed between the hem of her shirt and her waistband.
"Are you ok?" she asked.
Tyrok nodded, lifting his head to capture her mouth in another kiss. When they parted, Alexis pushed back so that she sat on her knees straddling his hips. She tucked her fingers under the end of the bandage and loosened it. Moving slowly, she pulled the layers of the gauze so that they slid out of place. As they unwound from around him the bandages revealed his chiseled body and a scar down the center of his chest from where she cut him.
Tossing the bandages aside, Alexis leaned down and touched a kiss to the scar. Tyrok sighed beneath her and she continued, trailing her lips up his chest and onto his neck. Tyrok's hands came up to cup her hips, his fingertips kneading into her. They moved up so that he could grasp the hem of her shirt and pull it up over her head, dropping it over the edge of the bed.
He rolled them over so that he hovered over her, nudging her thighs apart with his so that he could settle his hips between them. Alexis felt his hand come to the front of her bra and release the clasp. She shifted her weight to allow him to peel the garment away and toss it aside to join her shirt. His mouth dropped to one breast and Alexis gasped, arching against the feeling of his tongue slipping around her hardened nipple.
Tyrok's mouth traveled over to give the same attention to the other nipple, then moved onto her belly. The tip of his tongue touched her skin, dragging down toward her hips and dipping into her navel. He kissed down to the waistband of her pants and Alexis felt herself writhing in anticipation of a more intimate touch. She felt his hands come to the front of her pants to unfasten them and he blew a cool stream of air against the skin he had dampened with his tongue. Alexis's breath caught in her throat and she lifted her hips, allowing him to ease her pants down over her hips and off of her.
His fingers hooked around the waistband of her panties and soon the damp scrap of lace joined the rest of her clothing on the floor. Alexis felt suddenly shy as Tyrok's eyes grazed over her appreciatively. He touched his fingertips to the side of her ribs, trailing them down to trace the curve of her waist, over the swell of her hip, and then down her thigh.
Alexis drew in a breath as his touch continued up the inside of her thigh and then delved into her hot, wet core. He swirled his fingertips into the sensitive pearl of flesh at her peak and Alexis cried out, gripping the sheets on either side of her. Tyrok paused to let her relax, then continued his exploration of her body. A moment later, she grabbed onto his wrist, pulling his hand away from her body and closing her eyes.
"Wait," she panted.
"What's wrong?" Tyrok asked, bringing his body forward to kiss her.
"Not yet," she whispered.
Tyrok smiled at her and brought himself down on top of her so that she could feel the weight of his body from her legs up to her shoulders. She reveled in the pressure, bringing her hands to the small of his back to hold him closer. His mouth played across hers and his hips began to rock against hers. She felt the hardness of his erection nudging her and she bit her lip against the delicious sensation.
Alexis slipped her hands between them to release his pants and then paused. She closed her eyes, again trying to come up with the right words.
"When you say that you are a stunning facsimile of a human," she began, awkwardness building in her chest, "does that mean…" she trailed off and Tyrok laughed, leaning down to nip at her earlobe.
"Everything is exactly as you would expect it to be," he whispered into her ear.
Alexis felt a thrill go through her and she continued her efforts to remove his pants.
"I think it was a perfectly valid question," she teased. "You never know what you are going to discover when a strange ship crash lands on your planet."
With those words Tyrok went still against her. She wriggled her hips against him, trying to encourage him to keep up his dizzying movements, but he remained in place.
"Oh, no," he muttered.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
Tyrok pushed back so that he could look at her face.
"Where is my ship? What happened to it?"
Alexis shook her head in confusion.
"It is right where it crashed. What do you mean what happened to it?"
"You healed me, which means that you went back to the ship after you brought me here."
"Yes, but I haven't been back since."
"Oh, no. We need to go there now. Can you show me where it is?"
Tyrok scrambled off the bed and Alexis felt cold, empty, and humiliated still sprawled naked across it. He tossed her clothes onto her stomach, only worsening the feelings. She started to dress and he must have noticed her pained ex
pression because he paused for a moment to touch a kiss to her lips.
"I'm so sorry, but this is something we need to do right now."
"Why?"
"You say that you love the stars so much, well if we don't get to my ship quickly, they might all go out for good."
****
Alexis chased after Tyrok, bursting out of the house while still pulling her shirt on over her head.
"What do you mean the stars will go out?" she asked frantically.
"Where is the ship?" Tyrok asked without answering her question.
"It's on the other side of that hill," she said, pointing in the direction of the hill on the border of the village. "You didn't answer me."
Tyrok started toward the hill, his jaw set with determination.
"You thought that Star Lords were fairy tales so you probably didn't know that our ships are not the same as others."
"What do you mean?"
"My ship carries extraordinary power. It literally has within it the ability to extinguish the actual stars just as quickly as I created the little ones in your bedroom. Without the stars, everything in this universe will die."
"I still don't understand."
By this point they were cresting the hill and Tyrok was staring down at the crashed ship. Alexis followed his gaze and gasped. Ahead of them the ship looked nearly perfect, the warped, twisted mass of metal now a sleek, shimmering ship.
"Thank god it's still here," he muttered. "The creature inside that ship, the one that was controlling me, has been repairing it since the day of the crash. It knows that if it can get the ship operational again, it will have the ability to control the universe."
"But if it could do that on its own, why was it controlling you?"
"I know how to operate the ship and as long as it was controlling me, it was also controlling my capabilities. We have to stop it before it figures out how to operate the ship."
"How are we going to do that?" Alexis asked, struggling to keep up with him as he ran down the side of the hill and pushed toward the ship.
"We have to kill it."
"You don't have any weapons," Alexis said, pointing out that Tyrok had run from the house in only his pants and shoes.
"I don't need weapons. When I said that without the stars everything in the universe would die, that wasn't completely correct. Everything but those creatures. They detest sunlight and will die if exposed to it for more than a few seconds. To them, even the tiniest of stars is just a sun waiting to happen."
Alexis suddenly remembered the tentacle slithering out of the wrecked ship and then recoiling quickly into the darkness.
"How are we going to get it outside?" she asked.
"I'm going to lure it."
"No!" she protested, "It has already had control over you before. I'm not going to let that happen again. I'm going in."
"No, you aren't," he said, trying to pull her back.
"It is my sworn duty as the medic of this mission to protect everyone within the colony, and for the last week and a half now, that includes you."
"You would protect anyone in the colony this way?" he asked uncertainly.
Alexis stood on her toes to kiss him.
"Absolutely not." She took a breath and started for the repair ship door, pausing most of the way there to toss the messenger pad from her wrist back to Tyrok, "If anything happens, call my father. His name is James."
She turned back to the ship and approached the door. Her hand trembled as she rested it on the lever to the door and pushed it open. The door slid toward her a few inches and Alexis leaned forward to check inside. Everything was calm and quiet so she took a step forward. Suddenly she heard a screeching sound from within the ship and felt something thick and strong wrap around her waist. She screamed as the black tentacle dragged her inside. Behind her, Tyrok was shouting her name.
Alexis thrashed against the tentacle, pushing down on it as hard as she could, trying to free herself from its grasp. It dragged her down the main hallway, slamming her against the walls as it slithered across the floor. She managed to catch herself on a metal guide bar on one wall, slowing the tentacle enough that she could hear the faint sound of her father's voice coming into the ship.
A moment later the tentacle yanked her forward again, painfully pulling her away from the bar. It was dragging her toward the emergency control room where she found Tyrok and she felt terror building in her stomach as she thought of what it may have planned for her. Suddenly she saw a flash of movement beside her and heard a screech as the tentacle tightened around her to the point that she couldn't breathe.
Darkness was building around her and she turned her head to see Tyrok digging a large spade into the tentacle. A look of fury on his face, he withdrew the tool and slammed it back down into the creature. Alexis could hear James shouting in the background and just as everything went completely dark, her body slipped from the tentacle's grip and crumpled to the cold metal floor.
****
"Come on, Alexis. Open your eyes."
She heard Tyrok's voice whispering to her as if it was coming through water toward her. It waivered slightly and she felt the soft, soothing touch of his hand brushing her cheek. She wanted to respond to him but it felt like her own voice was out of her reach.
"Listen to me," he whispered again, "Focus on my voice and come back to me."
Alexis fought against the sinking feeling that kept her away from Tyrok and felt the fog lifting. She turned her head slowly from side to side and heard a murmur escape her lips.
"Tyrok," she whispered, finally able to find her voice.
Her eyes fluttered open and Tyrok's beautiful face, worry etched into the gorgeous features, came gradually into focus. He leaned down and kissed her gently. The touch of his lips broke through the fog and she lifted her head to press harder into his kiss. Tyrok tucked his hand beneath her head to support it and deepened the kiss, opening his mouth over hers and dipping his tongue inside.
Alexis welcomed the kiss, looping her arm around his neck to give herself leverage so she could crush her body against his. He groaned into her mouth and pulled her up further. She complied with his strength, allowing him to lead her so that she knelt in the middle of the bed, him mirroring her position in front of her so that their bodies touched from their knees to their chests.
Not breaking their kiss, Alexis smoothed her hands down over Tyrok's shoulders. She reveled in the feeling of his warm skin and strong, hard muscles beneath her palms. He returned her touch, slipping his hands beneath her shirt and pulling it up, taking his mouth from hers only long enough to remove it and toss it aside. She hadn't put her bra back on before they returned to the ship and when she tucked back into his arms her nipples grazed his chest.
Alexis whimpered at the sensation that shot through her stomach and into the apex of her thighs. Seeming to take her sound as an invitation, Tyrok steadied himself with his hands on her hips and ducked his head down to capture one of her hard peaks between his teeth. He bit just hard enough to create a tiny, pleasurable shock of pain, then followed the bite with the soothing coil of his tongue around her nipple.
Her hand came to the back of his head to hold him in place, but Tyrok seemed to have other plans. He pulled his mouth away from her breast, moved it to the other one to flick his tongue quickly across that nipple, and then touched it to her stomach. Alexis arched back to offer him better access to her skin and closed her eyes to savor the delicious feeling of him kissing and licking his way slowly toward the button on the front of her pants.
By the time the tip of his tongue slipped beneath her waistband to tease the curve of her hipbone, Alexis was panting and gripping his shoulders for stability. Tyrok straightened back up on his knees and pulled her closer. She felt the pressure of his erection pushing into her belly and bit her lip, her hips making tiny, involuntary movements against his. He kissed her deeply, drawing her bottom lip into his mouth and sucking on it softly. Finally, he brought his mouth to her e
ar.
"Now?" he whispered and Alexis remembered how she had stopped him the last time they were in her bed together.
Unable to speak over her labored breath, Alexis nodded. Tyrok wrapped an arm around her hips and swept her off her knees, lowering her down onto her back on the mattress. He stretched his body along hers and she parted her thighs, drawing her knees up beside his hips so he could settle closer against her. Slowing their pace, he rocked his hips against hers and kissed her languidly. She tilted her face up to him to offer her mouth completely and felt his hand slip between them again to release the button on her pants and draw the zipper down.
A moment later she was naked before him again, but this time her shyness was overshadowed by her intense desire for him. Sitting back on his knees, Tyrok unfastened his own pants and pushed them off so that they finally had nothing between them. Still moving slowly, he slid back on the bed so he could lower his mouth between her legs.
Alexis cried out as his tongue swept across her, focusing in on the taut, swollen spot he had teased with his fingers before. He paused briefly as if to let her calm down, then continued, using just the tip of his tongue to trace circles through her folds and coax her toward the edge. His hands went beneath her hips, filling with her flesh as he tilted her pelvis up against his mouth. She writhed on the bed, mewling sounds tumbling from between her lips as he continued his blissful torment.
His masterful licks had brought her right to the edge and when his tongue delved inside her, the sensations crashed together in a dizzying, all-consuming climax. She was still riding the waves of tremors that rippled through her body when he moved up and the hard, thick length of his shaft replaced his tongue. He entered her in one smooth movement and her hips lifted to meet him.
Tyrok groaned as he filled her and began moving his hips in long, deep strokes. Alexis gasped at the feeling of him gliding against her and lifted her head to catch his mouth in a kiss. His pace quickened and his thrusts became more urgent. Each hard, intense stroke brought a cry from her lips and Alexis parted her thighs further to accept more of the sensation. Deep, animal grunts poured from his throat as he drove himself into her again and again, his eyes staring into hers. As she gazed at him she realized that what she thought were shimmering blue streaks were actually shooting stars suspended across the honey-colored background.