She placed her hand on his arm, feeling a surge of pride emanating from him. “I think that is a good idea. Thank you for explaining how things lie. And how much is resting on this mission.”
“But above all, Gaia. You must come home. No matter what happens, how badly damaged you might be, it is imperative that this mission returns. Because for every one that fails, the chances of us holding the Council together in their support of humans wanes.”
“I understand.” Yes. She understood it all now. And as her eyes locked with Rikka’s, she wondered if he was for her, or against her, now.
Chapter Sixteen – Rikka
“Ready to launch,” he said. He waited, listening for permission to leave Karal.
“Permission to launch,” came back the voice from the tower.
He throttled forward, feeling the engines building up power, and then he released the cruiser, feeling it crouch like a cat about to pounce before it shot off into the air. Next to him, a pale-looking Gaia gripped the arms of her seat as she tried to withstand the g force.
“It didn’t seem so bad when we left Earth,” she said.
“We have a lot more equipment and supplies. The ship is heavier so we need the increased build-up.”
“Right,” she said and then clamped her mouth shut.
He kept his hand on the control stick and his eyes on the instruments. The Karal left their planet many times, but it didn’t mean that any trip wasn’t without its dangers. The atmosphere was still a layer of gas, which would love to rip the cruiser apart. They were a foreign body in the protective layer around the planet, and it would burn them up if he got it wrong.
The cruiser trembled, and then they were flung through the other side and out into the nothingness of space. He let out a pent-up breath. This was it; they were on their way. Going on a mission he wasn’t sure he believed in.
The Karal, particularly the warriors, were very insular. All that mattered was their species and it’s survival. It was how they had been brought up to be. In some ways, it could be blamed on their lack of females. It had given them both a lack of compassion, and an underlying need for their species to survive at all costs.
If they were not hardened, how could they go to another planet and round up females? Rip them away from everything they knew and take them to Karal? There to breed with as they saw fit.
He glanced at Gaia. Rikka could not even begin to think how terrible it would be to have to mate with a woman who was tied down, legs spread apart so they could be raped by an alien. That was what had happened more than once in their past. That was what had happened to his mother.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
He smiled, the colours rushing into his face, scared that she had read his thoughts, happy that she showed him concern, when it should be him asking her if she was OK. This was second nature to him. Going off into space was what he had done all of his adult life. Yet this was only the second time she had been off solid ground.
“Yes. We travel out towards the far star,” he pointed into the distance. The star was a couple of hours away. “And then we enter a wormhole. We have to deploy the beacons to open it.”
“Wow. You can control the beacons from the cruiser?” she asked.
“Yes. Well, only enough to open them and keep them open if we need to.” He checked the readings on the control panel. “They are like living beings, all of them behave differently. Some open and close so regularly it is as if they are breathing. Some open so rarely we cannot use them with any degree of safety.”
“You mean we could get trapped in one if it closed on us?”
“Yes. Although we could escape, but we would be stuck in the middle of nowhere.”
“To me all of space is the middle of nowhere,” she said. “It’s not until you leave your home planet that you realise how vast space is. It’s never-ending.”
He undid his seatbelt and rose from his seat. “It is a straightforward journey to our first wormhole. I will show you the ship while we have some free time.”
“OK.” She followed him as he took her into the kitchen, then the bathroom, and finally the bedroom. “It all seems straightforward,” she said, eyeing the one bed.
“Okil spoke to you,” Rikka said, drawing her attention away from her daydream where he was throwing her on the bed and using his mouth on her…
“Yes,” she said, her voice husky. Clearing her throat, she repeated the word. “Yes.”
“He wants me to override the cruiser’s systems,” Rikka confirmed what Okil had already told her.
“Yes. But he said you would be grounded if you did. I don’t know if I can ask you to do something that might put you in jeopardy when we return.”
“At first I was against it.” He leaned against the doorframe, watching her, wishing he had time to make love to her. Instead, he continued, “It is a wise move. You would be stranded in space if anything happened to me.”
“It won’t. Out of both of us, who is more likely to get into trouble?” she asked.
“We don’t know what lies in front of us. And I think I will be safe when we return. The ruling must have come from the Council.” He shouldn’t share this information with her; he knew it was wrong.
“Then why the secrecy?” she asked.
“Because the Council has to tread carefully. They cannot risk a revolt, and that might happen if others find out the Council have given their permission for you to use the controls in this ship.” He must not say more. She wasn’t from his planet and he didn’t trust her enough to speak to her openly about the ways of his world. As a warrior, his loyalty to the Council was everything.
“Always politics,” she said.
“Yes. One day you will understand what it is like to live on Karal. Our son will be brought up to follow the Council’s rule, as must we all. It is how things have always been.”
“No democracy on Karal, then,” she said.
“No. Is that how Earth is ruled?” he countered.
“Yes, the President is elected,” she confirmed.
“And yet as you said yourself, he lines his own nest.”
She smiled at his Earth phrase; he had learned that one from Okil yesterday. “I cannot argue with you there, Rikka.”
“You should never argue with me. I am always right.” His kept his face perfectly straight, watching the emotions race across her face.
“I will remind you of that when I am the one that gets us out of trouble.”
He shook his head. “That will never happen. I am experienced in space travel; you are not. This will be a straightforward journey.” He turned to walk away, but when she spoke he halted.
“Okil told me what he feared. About the other mission.”
Rikka turned back to her. “It may be nothing. We must deal with what is in front of us. And when we return we will have more understanding about what may have befallen the other mission. Until then, we carry on as normal.”
She didn’t argue. But he could tell she was spooked, and he silently berated Okil for telling her information she had no reason to hear. He might have been ordered to override the controls, but that did not make her his equal. Nothing ever would.
Chapter Seventeen – Gaia
The first wormhole had been thrilling. Colours spiralling all around them as they travelled deeper and deeper into space. Only when they burst out the other side did she feel a rush of anxiety; they were a very long way away from anyone else. Out here, anything could happen and they might never be found. Never be heard from again.
“Doesn’t it ever scare you?” she asked him.
“I never think of it,” he replied. “In space you must learn to live day by day.”
But for Gaia that day-by-day living became like a small step towards death with each passing hour. Even on Earth where there was so much decay, she could sense life. Other people, the plants she managed to keep alive: all had an energy she had become accustomed to. When she had landed on Karal, she had felt that life force
magnified. Now it was gone.
All she had to cling to was Rikka. And she found herself turning to him for comfort far more than she ever thought she would. If she had her way, they would never leave the bed. Instead, they would lie in each other’s arms, her head on his chest as she listened to his heartbeat. Or he would be inside her, filling her with his seed. A thing he didn’t object to.
“I cannot tell if it is your touch or your taste, but you are an addiction,” he said, his lips travelling down her spine as she lay face down with her head resting on the pillow.
“Are you complaining, alien?” she teased, shifting her body, opening her thighs for him to slide his fingers between.
“I may if you do not let me fuck you,” he said, and pressed his finger inside her, withdrawing it and then tasting her juices on his tongue.
“Have I ever denied you?” she asked, whimpering when he pushed two fingers inside her and moved them roughly in and out.
“No. Because you are as addicted as I am.” Without waiting for her to answer, he raised her up, so she knelt before him, and spread her knees apart. In one swift movement he entered her, the big head of his cock grazing her inner walls.
“I am. I want you inside me all the time, to feel you come inside me,” she gasped as he rammed his cock into her, up to the hilt.
“That is one thing I can guarantee,” he said. “There is nothing I want more than to come deep inside you. We may have already made a child. But I still want to make love to you.”
The computer had told them she was pregnant two days ago. She hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly. But she had been overwhelmed by the joy on Rikka’s face. And also pleased that he still wanted her in his bed, even though he didn’t need to make love to her anymore.
He lunged into her, and she lowered her head, pressing it to the pillow and letting out a long, low moan as he thrust hard and deep into her sex. His fingers dug into her hips, little jolts of electricity passing through them into her nerve endings as he gripped her. Harder he took her, and she braced herself, knowing how strong he was, and how liable he was to lose control.
It made her arousal kick up a notch, knowing just how much he craved her in the same way she craved him. With every stroke of his cock she thanked the doctor, Darl, for being so good at matching two creatures, so very different, and yet so perfect together.
His breath was coming in gasps now; she knew the signs that he was about to come. She also knew he would make it perfect for her. He enjoyed her coming around his cock, and so he slipped his hand forward, around her thigh and pressed it against her clit.
He was a god with his hands. Rubbing, hard and then soft, his finger pressing against the sensitive nerve endings, and then he eased off to touch her gently. Her brain was constantly thrown off course and, eventually, gave in to the inevitable, and her body exploded.
A chain reaction ensued, his cock swelled, and he pumped his seed into her. Endlessly her orgasm lasted, and Rikka moved his hands, stroking her breasts as they hung beneath her, his fingers tweaking her nipples cruelly, until the exquisiteness of the pain made a second orgasm hit her.
Groaning, he lunged forward, his cock now moving freely, his seed spent. In these moments he would ride her until she begged him to stop, her exhaustion too much after an endless chain of orgasms. His body could not be more perfect, more better designed, to please that of a human female.
“I should go and check the systems,” he said, moving away from her.
Gaia grabbed him and pulled him back to her. “One more minute. It’s not as if anything is going to happen. Nothing has for over ten days. Unless you count going through three wormholes. How many of those things are there?” she asked.
He slumped down beside her. “Thousands. More than we could ever count, really, because they open and close all the time. The Karal have only mapped so many. And only gone so far. There gets to a point where you are travelling too far away.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, stroking his chest and kissing her nipples, nipping them until he squirmed in her arms.
“Damn it, woman, you are insatiable.” He turned her onto her back and positioned his body between her thighs and she knew he would soon be hard and ready for her once more.
“And you wouldn’t want me to be any different,” she said, her hand sliding down between their bodies to wrap around his cock.
“No. I wouldn’t. But I have to go.” He kissed her mouth and then rolled out of bed. “We have another wormhole to navigate in an hour. I have left it late enough to do system checks.”
“I’ll come watch,” she said, grabbing her clothes and quickly putting them on. When she had boarded the cruiser, she had been surprised to find the Karal had furnished her with a selection of clothes. Mainly pants and T-shirts, but there was one feminine outfit, a dress, one that flattered her figure in all the right places.
Rikka had told her it was a gift from Okil and Tikki. “To wear when we discover the new Earth,” he told her. As the days wore on, she began to believe that was never going to happen, but every couple of days she took it out and held it against her body, swinging around to watch the fabric float around her knees. It was the most beautiful dress she had ever owned.
As she shrugged on her overalls, she couldn’t stop herself from hoping that the day she would be able to put that dress on was close. Because she was beginning to go stir-crazy.
“How much longer to the wormhole?” she asked as they flew on, the space around them particularly empty. It was one thing she had struggled with: the vast areas with nothing but pinpricks of light in the distance, reinforcing their isolation.
“Another thirty minutes,” he said, stretching.
“And the planet we are aiming for is how much farther?” she asked.
He grinned at her question. “Do you think our child will ask the same questions repeated over and over again?” he asked.
“I expect so. He’s bound to pick up all of his mom’s bad habits,” she said, settling down into her seat.
“Do you want to go through the system checks?” he asked. “It will give you something to preoccupy you.”
“No. I told you I don’t want to touch the systems at all. I know you reprogrammed them, but I’m still not comfortable using anything that might get you into trouble.”
“That happened the moment I overrode the system.”
“Well, if I don’t use anything, maybe they will think it’s a glitch and you won’t get into trouble.”
“If that makes you happy. Then we will do it your way.”
He sat down and began to check through the systems. Gaia sat and watched him. She might not actually do the checks, but she had learned so much by watching him, she was confident she could carry them out alone if she needed to.
It wasn’t as though he hadn’t encouraged her to use any of the cruiser’s controls; however, the ship recorded all the procedures carried out. Gaia hoped that by not touching the controls, the Hier Council might overlook Rikka overriding the systems. Unless they really had given the order for Rikka to do it, but she didn’t want to take any risks. There was so much hidden from her, so much that went unsaid between the Karal, that she wanted to be cautious, unless a situation arose which forced her to take the controls.
And so far, her new ability to command the cruiser had seemed unimportant. The mission had been verging on boring. Apart from the sex, of course.
Chapter Eighteen – Rikka
Everything appeared to be functioning correctly. He checked the final adjustments, ready for entry into the wormhole, and then settled down into his seat, his hand on the control stick, and his thoughts on Gaia.
Shifting his position, he tried to push her out of his mind, but it was impossible when she sat so close to him. The scent of her skin, the warmth of her body, everything about her stimulated his senses. When he closed his eyes he could hear her voice in his head, the way she whimpered when she was about to come, the feel of her warm sex as it cont
racted around his cock.
Damn it! He needed to get a grip.
The beacons looked in place; he checked the readings one last time and looked across to Gaia, giving her a reassuring smile. She placed her hand on his, and smiled, making him feel as if he were basking in the warmth and light of the two suns that were the centre of Karal’s solar system.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly.
“Yes,” he said abruptly. “Why wouldn’t I be?” Could she read his thoughts?
“Your colours…” she said. “They were so bright, so vivid. I wondered if there was something wrong with the wormhole.”
“No.” He drew in a deep breath, taking back control of his senses. Each wormhole they entered had the potential to be deadly. Only by keeping his attention on the readings on his control screen, and the view through the windows, could he make sure they exited safely. “Are you ready? We enter the wormhole in two minutes.”
“As I’ll ever be. None of this seems natural to me. I will be glad when we find our planet.”
“One more wormhole after this one,” he said, “And then we will find out if the journey has been worthwhile.”
“Even if we don’t find the planet, it has been worthwhile to me. I was worried we might not get on. That the journey would be impossible. But I have enjoyed getting to know you, Rikka.”
And I have enjoyed falling in love with you, Gaia. That thought struck him squarely between the eyes. A shocking admission, even to himself. He had never thought himself capable of love. For his child, yes, of course. But for a female from Earth? One who was so different to him? No, that was unexpected.
His admission gave himself other concerns too. Did she love him? If she ever found out, would she use his love to gain power over him? Suddenly, for Rikka, he saw how dangerous this could be, and he shut his feelings away, and swore he would gain control of his emotions, and his colours, so she would never be able to read his thoughts.
Found: BBW Alien Lottery Romance (Warriors of Karal Book 2) Page 7