by Kate Rudolph
He wasted no time. In a haze of speed, his clothes came off, and somehow they ended up on the bed, Lis scrunching back as he advanced on her, intent on taking her in the most primal sense.
She was laid out before him like a banquet, and Ru planned to feast. He took one of her dusky nipples into his mouth, sucking and laving at her until she moaned and squirmed under him. He couldn’t keep his hands off of her, petting her sides and stroking little patterns into her flesh.
One of his hands trailed lower to the juncture of her thighs, gliding over the dark curls of hair. She gasped when his fingers found the tight bud of her sex and he rolled around it, taking his cues from the little sounds and movements that she made.
He lifted his head up from her breast to kiss over her collarbone and scrape his teeth gently against the skin of her neck. The urge to bite down, to mark her as his in the ancient ways rode him, but he held himself back.
Not yet, he told himself. Wait for it.
She tilted her neck to the side, giving him more room to taste, and Ru took advantage, using his lips and tongue to tease her sensitive flesh at the same time his fingers brought her closer and closer to the edge of pleasure. She was so wet beneath him, his fingers were slick. He loved her responses, loved that she didn’t hold back from expressing herself as he loved her.
He slipped a finger inside of her and she moaned out a breathless, “yes,” the ‘s’ sliding across his skin as it dragged out. When he added another finger, her breath hitched. And when he started to move them in and out of her, she moved her hips with him, rolling as he opened her up.
Her fingers dug into his hair and desire surged in Ru, his cock already close to bursting. The heat was a raging inferno between them. “I need you,” he said. “Need to be in you.”
“Yes!” she said. “Now,” and hooked one leg around his hip, bringing them even closer together.
Ru needed no more encouragement. He positioned himself at her entrance and guided the blunt head of his cock inside her, biting back a curse as the delicious friction closed around him. She was so wet, but so tight that he moved slowly, easing himself centimeter by steady centimeter until he was fitted all the way in.
They stayed locked that way for a moment, gazes caught up in one another. Lis lifted her hand and rubbed it against his cheek.
And then he began to move, and it was like nothing Ru had ever felt before. Lis was right there with him, gasping out his name and clinging to him as her hips jerked with his own, his speed increasing as his pleasure ratcheted up, making him into some kind of rutting beast.
He could feel her everywhere, not just on his cock, but pressed against him, her lips finding purchase against his chin, and even in his mind. It wasn’t a psychic connection, but rather one of emotion, the bond solidifying between them with every stroke of him inside of her.
“Can you feel it?” he demanded, his words ragged.
And even though he didn’t explain, he knew that Lis understood, her eyes bright with pleasure and love. “It’s amazing!”
And then she was gasping and crying out, her body shuddering over his as her orgasm swept through her. Ru didn’t give up, pumping into her unrelentingly, taking her again as she began to come down from the first wave of pleasure. She gripped his shoulders tight and Ru had to focus his concentration more than he had ever done before.
When she crested again, he felt himself let go, light behind his eyes exploding as the pleasure made him more animal than man.
And in that moment he pulled her tight and placed his lips against her neck, biting hard enough to mark, to claim.
She was his, completely.
Chapter Seventeen
Ru couldn’t stop himself from draping his arm across Lis’s shoulders as they walked down one of the pathways back to his ship. She turned in toward him, her arm going around his back to pull him close. Some might have called the expression on his face ‘smug,’ but her scent was embedded in his skin and her lips were still swollen from their lovemaking.
He would have gladly stayed with her in that room until the processor ran out of food and the life support system sputtered out. In the end, it was Lis who convinced him they couldn’t live in that small room forever. And when he mentioned Lome, she’d practically jumped at the chance to meet him.
“Should I be jealous that you’re so eager to meet another male so soon after we bonded?” he teased, his fingers playing with the soft locks of her hair. They might have left the room, but he couldn’t stop himself from touching her now that she was truly his.
Lis laughed. “You’ve discovered my ruse!” she confessed facetiously. “I’m collecting a score of Detyen mates. Maybe more, so I have enough for one for every day of the month.”
A warning flash of heat pulsed through him and he could feel a growl starting in the back of his throat at the thought of Lis claiming any other man. But he caged the impulse. Humans joked like this, they spoke things that were not true for the sake of humor. He’d encountered the trait in several species and even among some of the more well-traveled Detyens. He would not take her words as a threat to himself.
Still, his eyes flashed red and he scowled when he spotted an Oscavian male checking Lis out. She could joke all she wanted, but that did not give strange males the right to leer at her.
“You’re going to be possessive, aren’t you?” she asked, her fingers tracing a thin line up and down the edge of his hip.
Ru wanted to take her again, right there in the middle of the hall. He’d never get enough of her, never become tired. “You’re mine now,” he said, his voice rougher than intended. But when she shivered, he was vindicated. “Do you think I’d ever let you go?”
Lis met his gaze, her strange human eyes bright, and said, “I’m not running.”
They made it down the final hallway and to the door to the hangar where his ship sat awaiting maintenance. That would begin the following day, and neither Ru nor Lis would be able to access the ship until it was deemed safe by the engineers. But they could gather any belongings up until it went into the repair dock.
The hangar doors slid closed behind them and the lights flicked on in rows. A handful of other ships sat in the huge hangar awaiting their timeslots. These were all small vehicles built for crews of half a dozen or fewer people, just like Ru’s ship. Anything larger than that remained in a stationary dock outside the space station. There simply wasn’t enough room for them to park inside.
“It seems kind of quiet.” Lis observed.
From what he could see, they were the only two people in the hangar. It was early morning according to station time, but this was a hangar. There was always crew hanging around their ships. “I agree,” he said.
But there wasn’t anything out of place, except for the silence. The moved forward cautiously by unspoken agreement. Lis’s fingers brushed against his own before she grabbed his hand and held it tight. This was a human sign of affection, one he liked very much, even if it meant one of his hands could not grab for weapons.
They walked slowly down the center aisle, keeping their ears open for any of the noises that should have been there. But Ru could only hear the sound of their breathing and his heart beating erratically, blood pumping in his ears. Something was wrong, and his instincts screamed at him to take Lis and run for safety. But there was no clear danger.
The lights cut off, plunging the room into pitch darkness.
“What—” Lis started to say.
Ru squeezed her hand, cutting her off. “Quiet.”
They were no longer alone.
It wasn’t anything he heard, not at first. But the inside of his ear itched and suddenly the air felt almost damp, despite the stringently regulated environmental conditions in the hangar. Ru crouched down, pulling Lis with him as he shuffled them behind a freestanding locker case near the ship.
Nearly a minute went by as they crouched in silence with nothing but the darkness and a nagging feeling yelling at him that they were in danger.
The longer they waited, the more he expected Lis to protest. He’d made it clear that they were safe on Honora Station. Why would she believe otherwise now?
But Lis pulled her hand out of his grasp and he could hear her repositioning herself so that she knelt on one knee. She wouldn’t be able to stand as quickly, but it made her more stable, more ready to defend herself from attack. The quiet pop of a button being undone told him that she’d carried her blaster and had taken it in hand, ready for a fight.
There was chatter near the entrance. It was too dark to see them, but his darkened vision made hearing easier. He didn’t understand the words, but he recognized the shapes of those sounds enough to know it was Polan.
When Lis stiffened beside him, he knew that she’d come to the same conclusion. She sucked in a deep breath, and started moving her lips up and down, silently saying words he could not understand. When she began to repeat herself, he realized that she was silently counting, trying to keep herself calm.
“I can hear three of out there.” It was less than a whisper, the barest hint of air bursting from his lips. “It’s probably a crew of seven.” That was how Polan attack crews worked on their own planet, and he doubted they’d deviate from the training now.
Though Polans never pursued, so any data he had was next to useless.
Lis echoed his thoughts. “I thought they wouldn’t follow us.” If they had been more than a hand span apart, he wouldn’t have been able to hear her. As it was, his ears strained.
Guilt was a jagged iceberg in Ru’s guts. They had no reason to follow Lis; she’d been on their planet by accident and all of the destruction that she’d done had been because of him. If he hadn’t completed his mission, they would have been left to roam freely out of Polan airspace.
He glanced over at the amorphous shadow of his ship. One of the laser blasts must have tagged it with a tracker. That they hadn’t blown them out of empty space told him that the Polans wanted him alive. And with each second that ticked by, the Polans got closer to discovering them.
A surge of protectiveness roiled to life within him. “They only want me,” he said. “I can get you out.” It didn’t matter if they took him, so long as she was safe.
The movement of her head drew his gaze and in the dim light, she was made of little more than the alluring curve of her nose and the sweep of hair on her brow. “You stupid man,” she said, voice full of something that sounded a lot like love. “I didn’t claim you just to give you up at the first sign of trouble.”
Ru’s heart scarcely beat. She’d chosen him. He’d claimed her. They were one, and yet he expected at any moment to wake and find this a soul-crushing dream. Even with the enemy at their heels. “You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
In the dark he could feel her smile, “You can kidnap me anytime.” She leaned in and kissed him, her hand a hot presence on the back of his neck.
She pulled back and Ru set fresh senses on the hangar. They were getting out of here and then he was going to deliver on the promise of the kiss that she’d just given him. He’d like to see a hostile alien try to stop him.
There were only two realistic ways out of the hangar: through the door the Polans had come in through, and through the entrance to the mech bay across the room. Ships could enter through the air lock when docking from open space, but Ru didn’t even consider some frantic ploy to get them out that way. It was too high up and they’d be dead in minutes if they tried.
He tugged on Lis until her body was flush up next to his own. “Mech bay door,” he breathed. “Don’t fire until they start shooting.”
It was across a wide expanse of open garage, but if they kept it low and slow, they could make it. He only hoped that no Polans waited in ambush on the other side of the door. He grabbed a heavy wrench off the nearest tool bench and breathed deeply.
Then they were moving, crouched as low as possible and saying prayers to their gods and ancestors that nothing unseen tripped them up in the dark. A trill of voices behind him let him know that the Polans knew they were on the move. They’d trusted that the lack of light would hinder Ru and Lis at least as much as it did them. The Polans were wrong.
He’d walk blindfolded through the boiling hells for his mate. What was one dark hangar?
They cleared the ships and got into the open space before their salvation, and Ru began to hope that they could sneak out without violence. And then Lis tripped.
She righted herself immediately, but the sound reverberated through the open air and the Polans turned on them with a harsh cry.
“Run!” he yelled, no longer caring for stealth. Speed was their only saving grace now.
She sprinted ahead of him and Ru followed a hairsbreadth behind as blaster shots echoed around them. Lis made it to the door, but instead of trying to open it, she turned her back to the wall and began firing, covering the rest of his escape.
He heard a cry and thought one of the Polans must have been hit. He made it to the door and threw it open with a yank.
And in the split second between wakefulness and darkness, he spied the ambush he’d feared. He didn’t even feel the blaster hit him before he fell to the ground, and the last thing he heard was Lis’s scream.
Chapter Eighteen
Ru!
Lis rose from the darkness, his name on her lips. Black closed in on her, and it took her a moment to realize that the lights were out and she was still sitting in the hangar that she and Ru had tried to escape.
She looked around, trying to make out the shape of her mate in the darkness, hoping that her unconsciousness had saved them rather than doomed him. But the hangar was empty, the sound of her breathing echoing in the barren room. They’d taken Ru and left her alone.
No!
She wanted to scream, but rage lodged in her throat, keeping her silent. They were supposed to be safe! They’d made it off Polai, she’d shot down the satellite. And in Ru’s arms, Lis had finally started to believe that this could be a new beginning rather than some too short interlude in the massive pile of suck her life had become.
Fuck that.
She sucked in one ragged breath and then another, heart racing but the beat even. Adrenaline coursed through her veins.
The Polans had Ru. But he was hers and there was no way in hell they were going to keep him.
Lis pushed herself up from the floor, her palms cool against the dark tiles beneath her fingers. Though she was alone and the Polans and Ru were gone, she didn’t think that she’d been out for long. The scent of danger and laser blasts still hung in the air. She could almost taste the sparks of electricity still floating around her.
The door to the mech bay lay open next to her and the room beyond it shone with pale light. Lis listened for a moment before charging in, but both her ears and eyes were in agreement. There was no one there.
Where are you, Ruwen?
An awareness she didn’t quite understand pulsed deep within her, a spark so fragile that Lis scarce breathed, afraid to blow it out. But that little nugget told her that Ru was alive. Maybe not well, but alive and within reach. All she had to do was find him.
Determination powered the long steps Lis took out of the hangar and back to the hallways of Honora Station. At first she didn’t know where to go, but turning a corner, she realized that the marketplace where she’d met the two humans from Seoul Station was close.
She didn’t let herself doubt. Ru had been taken and she was going to get him back, whatever that took. She’d steal a damn spaceship if she had to. But when she burst into the marketplace and sprinted to where Sung Mi and Bitna had been sitting, she found the space occupied by unfamiliar aliens.
Lis eyed the bright pink women for a moment before turning away without a word.
“Lis Jaynx?”
She heard her name and turned with a snarl to find Sung Mi standing near her, a foaming drink in her hand. Sung Mi nodded to the women behind Lis, but said nothing to them.
“I need your help.
” Lis was breathing hard, the words and demands clambering to get out. But Sung Mi seemed to understand that the matter was urgent.
She handed her drink over to one of the pink aliens and placed a hand on Lis’s shoulder. “Let’s go someplace more private.”
Every step took an eternity, but Lis knew Sung Mi was right. She didn’t need anyone interfering and getting Ru hurt. Not today, not ever. There were too many people in the marketplace, and every time Lis brushed up against one, nails raked against her skin. Her nerve endings felt exposed and they wouldn’t settle down until she had Ru back.
Bitna met them near a small alcove with a door that closed when Sung Mi swiped her station card to rent it out for a short time. Ru had mentioned that there were hundreds of these soundproof workstations across Honora available to anyone who could spare the credits.
The two Korean women sat opposite her and waited for Lis to speak.
“Do you remember how I asked you about Detyens the other day?” she said. She wanted to plow into her demands but that would only lead to more questions she didn’t have time to answer.
Neither of the women was stupid and Bitna confirmed that they’d guessed why she’d been so interested. “So you are enmeshed with a Detyen? I’m sorry, but I don’t know of any way to lengthen his—”
“That’s not it,” Lis cut in. “My… Ru’s been taken by a group of aliens called Polans. We escaped from their planet a few weeks ago and they’re not happy with him. I need your help to get him back.”
Sung Mi furrowed her brow. “How long ago did this happen? Have you gone to station security? Or perhaps you could appeal to representatives of the Galactic Council. We’re just freighters, how could we help?”
Station security? Yeah, cause cops never made problems ten times worse. “He’s still here; if he’s not on the station then he’s still close enough to save. It hasn’t even been an hour. I’m sure. I can feel him.” She placed a hand on her heart where the certainty had lodged, a reminder and a hope.