Hotter on the Edge

by Erin Kellison

  "The Fight and Flight. The Sheer Escape. Corso's Getaway?"

  He nudged her again, harder. "You make it sound like I can't abide any humanoid connection."

  "Just none that might get in the way of your freedom."

  As he stared out the portal, brow furrowed, his hand closed on the trailing edge of her veil and he rubbed the silky fabric between his fingertips. The veil was long enough that the idle movement didn't tug at her. She wouldn't have even noticed the link between them—he didn't seem to realize he was reaching for her at all—except she was watching for the gesture.

  Yes, the captain fought with everything he had to keep his eyes on the stars, but some part of him wanted this touch.

  "Space is lonely for a reason." His tone was abrupt, but his grip on her veil remained. "The sheerways get tangled when ships pass too closely. Ships end up lost or shredded. That distance keeps us alive."

  "People aren't sheerships," she said, since it seemed he needed the reminder.

  "I suppose not." He didn't sound convinced.

  They'd been leaning closer into each other, but they both leaned away when Evessa cleared her throat. "Course is set and locked, Captain. I'll be monitoring from the bridge. Summon me if you have need."

  She slipped out of the room, and the door whispered shut behind her. The light off Qv'arratz and the glow of the holo view of their course left Corso's face in shadow as he stared after the departed pilot. For a moment, Benedetta thought he would follow the woman out.

  Instead he murmured a lock command on the door. The double click made her heart catch.

  "What were we talking about?" Her voice sounded a little breathless in her own ears.

  "Something about me not wanting to make connections."

  "I think you said that, not me."

  "You implied I'm a loner, a coward, and possibly a misanthrope."

  "Not a coward anyway."

  He slid closer to her on the seat. She scooted away until the curve of the viewport windows pressed into her back. Of course the deadly cold of space was held at bay, but still somehow the radiation from the reflected sunlight seemed to scorch through the transparent steel. Only a sun's worth of burning hydrogen could explain the heat in her skin; even the qva'avaq could not blaze this hot.

  "Now who's the coward?" His murmur brushed her cheek.

  "I'm not afraid," she protested, which was mostly true. She'd spent a lifetime preparing for this moment, but… "I am just not certain you know what you want from me."

  "I'm not sure either. I'm figuring you out as I go." He braced one hand on the viewport and without any of the rest of him touching her, he leaned in for a kiss.

  It was worse than before. Or better. Anyway, it knocked her spinning thoughts of arousal stages and mating rituals into disarray like an asteroid plowing through the tidy orbits of outer moons.

  His tongue swept hers. No more tentative tangling and retreating, he took her mouth with a marauding power that would do any mercenary proud. She moaned against his lips, and the heat inside her went supernova as the qva'avaq that laced her skin chimed softly.

  One touch from him? Truly? His mouth was the spark that lit her crystal lines.

  She clutched his broad shoulders, as if her grip were the only thing that kept her from tumbling out into space. Still he did not touch her, though his lips drifted from hers to the edge of her jaw and then down the column of her neck, along the wild flare of her pulse—avoiding the a'lurilyo torque—to the hollow at the base of her throat.

  He licked the notch where the qva'avaq pooled, and in answer, the notch between her legs went hypernova.

  She gasped and tipped her head back with a thunk against the viewport. He chuckled, a deep vibration against her throat that echoed all the way down to her core.

  How unfair that he could control her with a flick of his tongue. Time she did the same…

  She raised her head with difficulty against the wicked gravity that seemed to have immobilized her. He seemed equally determined to hold her in place, so she levered her hands between them, inside his shirt.

  He caught his breath, and his sucked-in belly gave her extra room to shimmy her hands higher. The crisp scrape of hair across her palms made her close her eyes. Her fingertips skimmed the beads of his nipples and his hips bucked against her thigh.

  "Etta," he growled into her neck.

  "Yes, Captain?"

  He bit her. Not hard, but enough to make her fingers tighten in surprise.

  He groaned. "Again."

  She did and then he was over her, his big body pinning her in a curve to the seat and viewport, and his hands were everywhere, unwrapping her veils to get to the simple white tunic shift underneath. With one hand, he eased down the neckline of her tunic, exposing her shoulder. With his other hand, he reached for the hem, pushing it up her thigh, then trailing his fingers back down the length of her leg.

  As was l'auraly custom, she was barefoot to better experience the flow of life around them. But of course she'd also been taught to keep her skin soft and supple, a blank canvas for her future patron. So the path of his fingers over her arch made her foot twitch in reflex.

  He grabbed her ankle, and the lock of his big hands around her slender bones made her heart catch again. Only her years of training kept her foot arched, her pose at once graceful and yielding.

  He stared into her eyes, so close the shining rim of Qv'arratz gleamed back at her from his dilated pupils.

  "I want you," he said.

  "I feel that."

  "I don't want to want you."

  "I feel that too." She touched his cheek. "I won't take anything you don't give me, Corso. I can't."

  "But what if I—?" He cut himself off to kiss her again, hard, without the teasing heat from before, just the possessive fury of two suns locked in a declining spiral orbit.

  Ah, she needed him to fall into her. She must use everything she had been taught, everything she knew in the depths of the qva'avaq. Feminine power flowed through her. This time, he would not stop. She wouldn't let him.

  With a hand anchored at his nape, she drew herself close against him. His hand slid up her leg from ankle to knee to thigh, setting fire to every nerve and thread of crystal along the path. She writhed, letting the motion ruck her skirt higher, reveling as his big, calloused hand tightened possessively on her hip. The bench under her was warm from their body heat. The parts touching him were much, much hotter.

  "No underthings," he murmured. "I love these backwater planets."

  "The traditional l'auraly keying ceremony undergarment has nine latches, thirteen ties, twenty-one threaded rivets, and two locks," she informed him, her voice husky. Oh, by all the shining stones, she was melting.

  "Good thing this isn't a keying ceremony."

  She drew back just enough to meet his smoldering gaze. The distance seemed to cool the torque around her neck. "It could be."

  "Etta..."

  She kissed him, as hard as he'd kissed her. No, harder yet, at least it felt that way with the crystal crushed between them.

  She slipped the tunic from her shoulders. The fabric slithered down but snagged on her breasts.

  "Benedetta..." Instead of a rejection this time, his groan was pure entreaty. He swept the material away, his hand fisting in the folds as he stared.

  This was not how a l'auralya unveiling should go. If she'd been given in the traditional way, the a'lurilyo would have his payment in one hand. With his empty hand, he would accept the qva'avaq ornamentation while her l'auraly mentor retrieved the payment and bowed out.

  When they were alone, she would undo the many closings on her ceremonial undergown—although she'd heard, in practice, some patrons were unable to wait for the slow revelation to be completed. The garments were made of fine, weak threads for exactly that reason. Once she was naked, she would fit the torque around her a'lurilyo's neck and then…

  Well then, she was just skipping ahead.

  One more wriggle and her ski
rt pleated at her waist, leaving her bare to him, then she stilled under the weight of his hand, letting him look his fill.

  His dark gaze tracked the lines of her qva'avaq, lingering where the crystal traces converged over the peaks of her nipples, down to the mound of her pubis where the silvery shine only emphasized the small dark triangle of hair that beckoned this way.

  "Tangle and shred it, but you are beautiful, down to the bone." He touched the center of her throat and drew his finger down between the open finials of the torque, pausing near the where the necklace had bruised her in the passion of their embrace. "It hurt you."

  "I don't even feel it."

  His hand drifted lower. "Take it off."

  "I can't." But she shifted so the curve of her breast bumped his palm. He drew in a harsh breath and cupped her. His thumb eased a slow circle over her nipple and she arched with a purr.

  "What you do to me," he murmured.

  She smiled. "Nothing much, not yet. So please, continue."

  He growled, low in his throat, and she felt the echo in her throat. Even with the stars blazing behind her while the Asphodel rolled through black space, she'd never felt more primitive than this moment, more alive in her own skin than when his brushed roughly against her as he stripped out of his vest and shirt.

  He made an untidy pillow of their clothing and her veils, and eased her down on the bench. With the curve of the viewport over her, she stared up at him. Framed by his beloved stars behind him, he was a breathtaking sight, and her head spun with a touch of vertigo.

  "Ah, princess. You move me."

  "Hard to believe when you are so much bigger."

  "In space, it just takes a nudge."

  She had suspected he'd be more amenable to her in the dubious comfort of the Asphodel. Here, in his private space—his private space in space—he could let down his guard. Enough to fuck her, anyway.

  She crooked one knee to give him a place to balance his weight while he lowered his head to her breast. She streaked her fingers through his uneven locks and gave herself up to his mouth.

  Such fire! L'auraly texts revealed all, and the exercises she'd mastered had brought her intense satisfaction by herself in her bed, but the addition of these chaotic elements—his hands, his mouth, his breath, the scratch of his stubble where she least expected it—redoubled the pleasure. The soft give of her flesh to the hard press of him, the yielding that took as fiercely as it gave, had never been so meaningful to her. Silly tears prickled in her eyes when he shucked his trousers.

  He paused. "Etta?"

  She shook her head and clasped him closer. "Now."

  "No." His big body burned against hers. "There's more. You should know this."

  "I know, I know," she moaned. "But I don't think I'll make it."

  "You will. I'll make you."

  "Ah, my captain, with his orders."

  "Do as I say then, and open yourself for me. I will make your crystal sing."

  She obeyed, widening the stretch of her legs. As if echoing her tears, her inner flesh moistened and ached with wanting. But he made her wait while he kissed a constellation across her skin. The unwritten lines between sparkled across her nerve endings, brighter than the qva'avaq. His head dropped lower yet, and his dark hair scratched her sensitive inner thighs. She cried out as his tongue laved her. Deep in her core, galaxies unfurled.

  He kissed his way up over her delta. "Sweeter than berries. Who needs those thrice-tangled crystals?"

  "Corso..."

  But he lowered his head again and then his fingers were doing things, wonderful things, things she'd charted in her notebooks and now couldn't remember the names of. She could barely remember her own name.

  This was not covered in the l'auraly texts, this feeling of coming undone. The qva'avaq murmured along her nerves, whispering secrets from the l'auralya crystal embedded in her skin to the a'lurilyo crystal around her neck. This was more than simple sex. She stiffened, as if she could hold herself together within the hard circle of his arm clenched under her buttocks and his finger inside her, finding the secret places of her pleasure.

  "Let it go," he murmured. "You want it. I want it."

  She sobbed at the cool rush of his breath over her fiery skin, and when he plunged his tongue into her again, she came apart in his arms.

  Chapter Eight

  Corso centered himself over Benedetta's quivering flesh where the silvery whorls of the qva'avaq charted the path of her deepest pleasure. He paused to stare down into her heavy-lidded eyes. "They say l'auraly are untouched until they are given to a companion. Virgins." He stumbled over the outdated word.

  She blinked. "Technically, perhaps. But after this, I would say, in all practical ways, no. I am most definitely touched."

  A surge of satisfaction swept through him. His raging erection was in no way diminished, and yet the pleased glow within him was almost post-coital in its power.

  But in its backwash, a disturbing thought occurred; had he lessened her value by touching her? The mercenary shouldn't sample his own wares.

  That thought was upended with violent negation. He was not a slaver and she was not merchandise, even though such a financial transaction at least had a certain clarity. No, like the intricate, honed facets of her keying crystal sealed in its protective barrier, this situation seemed pretty and innocuous…and had hidden teeth.

  Benedetta settled her hands over his hips with a sigh. "Let go," she whispered, repeating his words back to him. "I want it. You want it." Her fingers sank into his haunches with irresistible strength.

  He could no more withstand her than the Asphodel could deny the commands keyed into the nav that brought the ship from the cold, empty quiet of space into the violence of a fiery descent. And he was every bit as vulnerable in this fated course.

  He sank downward, pulled into the circle of her arms, and nestled the seeking apex of his erection into her warmth. She was so tight around him, and her eyes closed as she adjusted to his presence, but the slick damp eased his way.

  When he was fully immersed, he kissed her brow until her eyes opened. In the viewport behind her, the roll of the Asphodel brought the planet in sight again and the light bounced in her citrine eyes. The sight pierced him. She was doing this to save her planet, and he… Never mind that she was the born and bred whore, he was the one taking advantage of her.

  Her inner muscles clasped around him, an intimate, invisible warning. "Where are you going, Captain?"

  Slowly, he withdrew.

  Maybe he had some intent of retroactive honor, but the hot, wet suck of her delta sabotaged him, and with a groan he plunged back in. She arched up, welcoming the intrusion of his body with a gasp. She skimmed her silvery hands up his chest and circled his nipples. He bucked at the erotic tingle, and she laughed.

  At that low, husky sound of delight, he lost it. He stroked her inside and out, using every trick he knew and a few he made up on the spot, watching her unique reactions, responding to her sighs and tightening muscles. Maybe she'd been bred and trained to be the perfect lover, but he was her first lover, and he'd be tangled and shredded before he let her ever forget this moment.

  "Now," she whispered at last, and the crystal sighed with her in erotic counterpoint. "Oh please, now."

  He buried himself within her and held his breath until the epic shudder ripped through her and caught him, like a wild trip across dangerously tangled sheerways toward a destination unknown but far, far, far away from where they'd started.

  A strangled shout tore from him, taking the last of his strength, and he collapsed across her.

  It was a long time before he caught his breath. Longer still before he wanted to rise. He kept his weight on his arms so he didn't crush her completely, but he knew he was too heavy and he still didn't want to move.

  He wanted to keep her right where she was.

  That realization, more than anything, pushed him up. His head swam with the warm fragrance of her skin when he took a breath, but she t
ouched his jaw and ran her thumb across his lower lip.

  "Hush," she said. "Whatever it is, just hush."

  For the first time in a long time, he was willing to take someone else's orders.

  After they set their clothing to rights, he led her to his room. He didn't miss his days commanding a squadron, but he had a twinge of nostalgia for the full-size shower. At least the Asphodel's captain's quarters offered a private, if cramped, bathing cylinder.

  He dialed in the settings and gestured Benedetta inside. "It's not much, princess."

  She kissed him, a long, lingering kiss. "This is all I need." She slipped inside without looking back.

  He freshened up himself with a rough swipe of medical wipes. His ribs were still sore—the bone knit accelerators never worked as fast as advertised—but the bruises across his back had faded to pale reflections of Benedetta's yellow-green eyes.

  Shred it, but even as he erased the planet-side fragrance of her from his skin, replaced with the wipes' sharp chemical tang, the feel of her lingered. In his fingertips, on his tongue, around his cock.

  He needed a mind wipe.

  He changed into clean clothes and kicked aside the rest—never mind that they'd been cleaned on Qv'arratz and the same hint of fresh, open air clung to them as surrounded Benedetta herself. The fresh black vest smelled of…nothing. Exactly the way it should.

  He swore again softly as the shower cylinder cycled off.

  Benedetta emerged, naked. He took a sharp breath. And that perfume teased him yet again. Tangle and shred it, did she carry a secret vial of her essence just to tempt him?

  She stood pliant under his restless gaze. "Are you going to show me the rest?"

  He shifted. "You saw it all."

  She smiled. "Not you. Your ship."

  "There's not much more. She's not that big."

  "It's not always about size." Her smile widened. "Although sometimes it is."

  To his surprise, his face heated.

  But as the Asphodel worked her way through the recon pattern, he gave Benedetta—once again wrapped in her veils—a tour. The last time he'd done one, it had been some general or other, strutting through the halls of his flagship without a glance to left or right.