by Jamie Hawke
“And Navani’s got locator sight,” Lamb explained. “She’s able to spot targets through walls, but also able to pinpoint locations of people.
“It’s why I was chosen for this mission,” Navani added. “Although, I didn’t know I’d be going up against Goros.”
“But this…Hadrian? He seemed fine to me.”
“Like Lamb, he is no more, not in his entirety,” she explained. “What you saw was his essence, his soul, almost, lingering behind to guide us.”
“So his ghost.” I turned to see the form of Lamb. “And you…you’re like a strange A.I. ghost.”
“No,” Lamb said, then turned to Navani. “He’s not getting it.”
“Does he need to?” she countered.
Lamb faded, with a shake of her head.
Navani and I looked out at the breadth of clear space around us—no enemy ships within sight.
“We did it,” she said, as if only now realizing it. “We escaped.”
Navani turned with a wide smile, excitement dancing like water across the blue of her eyes. Only, she paused, looking unsure whether she should give me a high five or go for another kiss.
I grinned. “Nice work, hotshot. We’re in the clear?”
“As far as I know, they don’t have a super who can create gates like that, so yes, we’re safe. For now. We’re also much closer to our target.”
“Then, maybe we could, I don’t know…take a walk?” I gestured to the door.
“You know,” she said, giving me a wink, “Lamb can hear us everywhere.”
“It’s not about that,” I protested. “It’s more like…the act of taking a walk. Like a date.”
Her right eyebrow arched, but then she smiled. “Okay, yeah.”
She led the way, and I followed. When we reached the hallway, she turned to me and held out her hand. I chuckled, but wrapped my arm in it.
“We might as well be as friendly as we can,” she said. “I mean, we shouldn’t hold back, right?”
“I agree. This doesn’t have to be awkward.”
We walked for a bit, silence returning and making it totally awkward. We turned and she led me up to a higher level of the ship, walking up the stairs in a way that made it impossible not to stare at her ass. Yes, it was covered in her armor, but it was tight, and my imagination worked its magic.
At the top, she said, “You go first next time.”
I grinned. Our little attempt at flirtation? There was certainly something I could say back here, but dammit, her beauty made me feel like an idiot. She cocked her head and I realized I was staring, so turned to look around and froze in awe.
We were surrounded by a viewing deck, the stars around us unlike anything back home. The planet we’d just left was a fluorescent green when viewed from out here. Other galaxies were within sight, ones I had never been able to see from Earth, some flowing like fire, others mixtures of orange and purple.
Staring out at it all, I had to wonder if my brother was okay, what was going on back home with him and the whole bank situation.
“My brother, he was able to see you?” I asked.
“I don’t have a cloaking power or anything like that,” she said. “Wait…your brother?”
“He was there, at the bank.” I turned to her, surprised. “You didn’t know?”
“We’ve been tracking you,” she admitted. “With your military records and all that. At least, my team was—I believe Xin has a mission for him, but it wasn’t my responsibility to take him with us.”
“So he’s been taken through this portal thing too?”
“Or will be soon, yes. I’m not sure.” She stared into my eyes. “You’re worried about him?”
“Of course I am. He’s my little bro. And, that whole incident at the bank.”
She grinned. “Relax, we were fast. The nature of portals like that, they’re more like stargates, they kind of slow down time as you’re traveling through them. Of course, he might’ve seen, depending on his superpowers.”
I laughed. “He doesn’t have superpowers.”
“You don’t know,” she countered. “He’s also the son of Apollo. I believe Xin has sensed something great in him.”
Those words hit me hard. My little brother, a superhero? He’d always been so…mundane. But at least he was safe.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “The man attacking…Eclypse, what was he doing there?”
“My guess? Trying to draw you out.”
“But he didn’t attack me. It was like—”
“I know,” she interrupted. “But maybe he knew your brother was there, too. Maybe he wanted you to be in danger so your brother would reveal himself. Honestly? I don’t know for sure, but I’m glad we stopped him.”
She took my arm again, standing at my side. Then, slowly, she leaned her head against my shoulder.
“Tell me about yourself,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Surprise me.”
“Well,” I wracked my brain, trying to think about what might impress her. “I was in the Marines back home.”
“Yes, I know that part. But… why? Why did you join? Why did you leave?”
I frowned. “I joined to see space, I guess?” With a laugh, I put my hand on her forearm, the one clutching my arm. “Guess that part is happening now, much more than I’d ever anticipated. And maybe… to meet girls.”
“Both accomplished,” she said, giving me a grin as she lifted her head to look into my eyes. “You’re going to see more of space than you could’ve imagined. You’re going to have more fun with—not girls—but women, than you can probably handle.”
“I can handle myself,” I said, giving her a glance.
“We’ll see,” she replied, but looked away. I had kind of thought that would be my cue, my chance to make a move. Apparently, she wasn’t having it. I tried thinking back to past relationships, how I’d made moves and what had worked, but nothing was coming to mind. It had always happened naturally, meeting at a bar, dancing, strolling out into the night and catching the smile of a beautiful lady.
Being pulled through a portal and told you’re responsible for trying to impregnate a bunch of ladies who have less than a one-percent chance of getting pregnant? Not exactly a proper mood setter. And honestly, right now she wasn’t helping. Maybe Lamb was right, that this was harder on Navani than I realized.
For a long time, we stood there, her arm in mine, staring out at the stars. Then I turned to her and said, “Beautiful.”
“Aren’t they,” she said, dreamily.
“You,” I corrected her. “You’re beautiful. Stunning. As weird as all this could be, I’m looking at you and thinking I’m the luckiest guy alive, and that if this journey is with you—”
She held a finger to my lips, a pained expression crossing over her, and then she turned away.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Don’t. Not like this.” She took her arm from mine, then walked off a couple of steps. “You can’t say things like that to me and make this work.”
“I’m really not following.”
“Do you honestly think I’ll be able to stand by while you fuck other women if you’ve convinced me to fall for you first? Do you really believe all of this, a date, your compliments, your beautiful fucking face, won’t make me fall for you if we go down this road?”
“You’re the one who brought me here. I’m just trying to figure it out as I go.”
“Well, try this on for size. Be nice, be comforting, but… I think we should wait to, you know, do the deed until we have at least one of my sisters involved. That way it’ll be easier on all of us.”
Damn, I wanted her at that moment more than I’d ever wanted anyone in my whole life. She was not only turning me down but saying we had to wait until we had another woman to join the bed?
“If—” I started, trying to think of a way to make it happen now, but she held up a hand, walking off. “Sorry, it has to be this way.”
I sig
hed, turned back to the view, and said, “Lamb? I don’t suppose this suit could help me out here.”
“You mean you want me to jack you off?” Lamb said, appearing in the glass in front of me. She shook her head, slowly. “Sorry, Big D, we need to save your seed,” she smirked, “for when it matters.”
“Fucking hell,” I said, feeling like my dick was going to explode, it was pumped so full of blood. “And… big what?”
“You know, you’re strong, your name is Drew.”
“Andrew actually,” I corrected her. “But Drew works, sure. Not so certain about ‘Big D.’”
She shrugged, vanishing and leaving me to stare out at the stars by myself, a raging hard-on reminding me that I had a very strange mission to accomplish here, and they weren’t letting me do it.
When she was halfway down the stairs, she paused, turned back to me, and put on a sneaky grin that didn’t fit her at all.
“What?” I asked.
“There,” she said, pointing to a bright star. “We’re almost to our destination.”
“Oh, wonderful,” I replied, although I was kind of excited to see who this sister would be. Part of me felt let down, however. I’d expected her to say ‘fuck it, let’s give it a go.’ Not yet, apparently.
Knowing it would be soon, if we could get this sister on the same page or if I could seduce her, I followed her down to get suited up and ready to go.
5
At the ship’s door, I looked around, then glanced down at my outfit of Marine-style battle armor and said, “Lamb, should I be wearing this?”
“He really is new, isn’t he?” Lamb said, and a moment later I was wearing pants and a shirt with a jacket. It wasn’t so different from the clothes I wore back home in my off time, and the jacket felt like nice leather. I shook my head, amazed at how they did that.
“Stay close,” Navani said to me. “I don’t think we’ll find trouble here, but in case we do, I need to know you’re nearby so I can save your ass.”
“Or maybe I’ll save yours.”
“You can do whatever you want to my ass,” she said, “but…Oh, never mind. That was bad.”
“I like the meaning, but the delivery, yeah.” I grinned, but she’d already moved on, given up. At least she was trying, I thought, trying to figure out how I could up my game here, too. We needed to be comfortable when the moment came. Not rigid, like we were at that moment.
She opened the ramp, and we descended into the landing dock of a city with buildings that resembled rolling hills, only they seemed to be made out of glass and minerals. Some sparkled in the afternoon light, others just shone brightly.
Navani waved a hand over her face, and her eyes appeared like anyone else’s. “Okay, ready.”
“Hold up,” I said. “What?”
She cocked her head, then said, “Oh, the eyes? It’s a disguise.”
“I get that, but why not all the time?”
“When they’re blue, I have my true sight. My powers. Why would I opt to have that off?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t like how my blue eyes look?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but thinking about it, there was something weirdly sexy about them. All of this, and the cute dress she was wearing—while not half as revealing as the purple and gray skin-tight armor she wore aboard the ship—made me think of her more like any other woman back home, aside from the purple in her hair.
And as I was about to answer, to pay her a compliment, she turned and walked off.
“Not keeping up,” she said over her shoulder, so I jogged over.
“Okay, my intel showed two of them here. The first one is this way.” She turned at one of the glass dunes, leading me along a path lined with short, orange shrubs.
“How’s that work?” I asked.
“My sight? I have to have something of the person’s or have been in recent physical contact with them. In this case, we had some of their belongings in an evidence box from when they were last arrested.”
“You said they were superheroes.”
“Heroes get arrested too,” she said, “if they step out of line. But also, no, I don’t know if I said that. The sisters are all descended from a very powerful superhero, but that doesn’t mean we’re all heroes.”
Several men and women exited one of the buildings through a door that rose, and I was able to catch a glimpse inside. There seemed to be a whole city down there. But the door we stopped at was different. The entire dome was glass with a bright red light shining through it, several women standing about in various states of revealing clothing.
“Don’t tell me,” I whispered. “You’re stopping by here to buy me a lap dance?”
She frowned. “This is where she should be.” With a quick return of her blue vision, she glanced around, one hand in her pocket holding something, and then nodded. “In there.”
We entered, and Navani pointed out the person we’d come for. She wasn’t at all what I was expecting. When you talk about superheroes, you think good, maybe even godly. The woman I was looking at had on the shortest mini-skirt you could think of, a blouse that was unbuttoned enough to show she had cute little perky breasts and no bra, and nipples that were visibly hard. Her forehead had lined tattoos, and what looked like tiny horns were barely hidden under her straight, black hair. As she drew closer, I saw they weren’t tattoos at all, as they glowed slightly.
She glanced my way as she passed, then at Navani, and frowned. When she sat down at a bar next to a man, she whispered something in his ear, then reached down, unzipped his pants, and started jacking him off! She was clearly doing it in a way that was meant not to be seen by the bartender, but didn’t care if others saw. There she was, this woman we were going to try to seduce, and she had some dude’s cock in her hand, stroking it.
I blinked, trying to erase the image from my mind, and turned away. “What the fuck?”
“At least we know she’ll be on the easier side,” Navani said with a chuckle, still watching.
When I turned again to look, the woman was glaring at us.
“Maybe we should go,” I whispered in Navani’s ear.
“You know the mission, how important it is.”
“Listen,” I leaned in, the strict Marine in me coming out, “she has another man’s cock in her hand. Right now. I can fucking see it. You think I’m going to fuck her after this?”
She turned to me, blue eyes going bright, and grabbed me by the wrist, pulling me toward the back and then close. “Listen—”
“Hey, you two,” a large man said, stepping around the bar. “Not in the hall, how many times do I have to tell people? In there.”
He gestured to a curtained-off room, and only then did I notice the sounds of flesh slapping flesh, the muted moans. No way was I going into one of those sex booths, I thought, but Navani was already pulling me back. She pushed aside the curtain and then pulled me through so that we were both in a blacklight-lit room. I guess they had the lights so you’d know there weren’t any fluids around, that they were super clean or whatever, but the whole concept made me feel even more sleazy.
“This is how you’re going to do it?” I asked, gesturing to the mattress on the raised platform. “A sex capsule?”
She slapped me. The woman slapped me!
“Listen, Drew. I’m going to say this right now, one time, and then it’s going to be out of my system. You aren’t going to complain about shit, because me and you, we’ll have an understanding. Clear?”
I rubbed my cheek. “Crystal.”
“Good. I don’t give two shits if she’s rubbing his cock on your face while you fuck her. She’s one of the sisters, which means she’s as likely as the rest of us to be the one you impregnate. She could be the mother of the only super capable of standing up to the enemy, do you comprehend this?”
“Yes, but…for the record, I’m not letting anyone rub someone else’s cock anywhere near me. Not happening.”
“It was an example,” she
said with a roll of her eyes. “Point is, don’t be a bitch.”
I remembered what Lamb had said about this not being easy on any of us, and nodded. “Agreed. I’ll suck it up.”
With a disgusted expression, she motioned around the room and said, “Bad word choice, considering where we are.”
I laughed. “Okay, fine. How do you want to do this? You go talk to her, or I slip her some money, and we go from there?”
“Fuck,” Navani said as she pulled the curtain slightly aside. “It’s not like I expected this. But… her records said she has issues. Maybe we do just offer her money to come with us if she’s doing all this for credit anyway.”
“Shouldn’t she want to be part of it though, if she’s a superhero and all?”
“Not all supers are heroes, and just because she’s got the DNA, doesn’t mean she’s inherited our mom’s way of thinking.” She pulled back from the curtain and pointed.
“What?”
She stepped away from the curtain, bit her lip, and knelt. With a quick movement, she was leaning, in, bobbing her head up and down as she mumbled, “She’s coming, just go along with it.”
Those blue eyes looked up at me. I imagined my dick in her mouth, wishing it was actually happening, but for the moment simply nodded, grabbed her by the hair, and moaned. The curtain opened, and I pretended not to notice as my fingers clenched in her hair, maybe getting too much into it. When she grabbed my ass and squeezed, it fucking hurt. And…yes, it felt damn good.
A rush of adrenaline and hormones shot through me. If we’d been really into this, I would have lifted her up right then and there, pinned her to the wall, and showed her how a Marine sets his flag. Every muscle in my body wanted it, clenching and unclenching, warm, tingling sensations taking over. When I saw it in my mind’s eye, the image I created of her titties bouncing as she rode my dick, it was almost real. Every ounce of me wanted her, and as my breathing intensified, so did a strength I’d never known I had, like I could climb Mount Everest in a sprint and then jump off the fucking top, wings spread wide for the sky to take me.
Only, I didn’t have wings, and Navani, unfortunately, wasn’t really fucking me or even giving me head.