by Roxie Ray
Gallix organized us into groups. Ronan moved around the clearing, stringing vines between the trees to make a sort of fence. He hung bits of metal from each of them that clattered gently in the breeze. If anyone—or anything—entered the clearing, we’d hear them coming. It was pretty clever, really. I certainly wouldn’t have thought of that.
Pax and Ora returned to gathering fruit. Ora turned out to be a pretty good climber, and with Pax there to catch her if she fell, before long they had a pretty decent pile of fruits ready for us in every shade of the rainbow.
And since Marisa didn’t seem interested in helping…that just left Gallix and me.
“You’re pretty good at taking control, you know.” I bent down to pick up a few sticks that we could use for firewood. “I think if I’d been in your position, I would have been panicking—not organizing people.”
“I’m a soldier. It’s what soldiers do.” Gallix held his arms out for me to dump my sticks into. His shirt was still singed and smoke-stained from the fire on the ship, but it clung to his muscles gorgeously. Especially now that he’d had a chance to work up a sweat. “Besides. You’re doing all right. You’re not panicking now.”
“I’m trying not to.” I looked up at him hopefully. “Tell me we’re going to get off of this giant rock? It would help.”
“We’ll do what we can. Ship’s in pretty bad condition, though… And we still don’t know what’s waiting for you on Lunaria,” he reminded me. “Even if we can get Bessie fixed up, I’m still not too keen on delivering to you to some lord who’s only interested in deflowering you.”
“Why not?” I held my breath while I waited for an answer.
“What do you mean, why not? You signed up to be a mother, Eve. Not a sex slave.” Gallix looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “You sure you didn’t hurt your brain when you hit your pretty head during the crash?”
“Pretty, huh?” Okay. I was obsessing. It didn’t matter whether Gallix liked me or not—not in that way. Obviously. But still, I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind.
Aside from The Vulture, who’d only been interested in my body,
I’d never had anyone like me before. Not like that.
And when someone who looked like Gallix came along…It was hard not to wonder. At least a little bit.
Or a lot.
“Yes, Eve, you’re very pretty.” Gallix chuckled and shook his head. “Can’t believe you have to be told that. Now, come on. Let’s get these back to the clearing. I’ll show you how to make a fire.”
Gallix turned, and after a beat, I followed him.
But it was hard not to stare at his broad, muscular shoulders, tapered waist and…ahem—exceptionally well-shaped backside as he walked away.
8
Gallix
“How is it?” I asked as Eve raised her first bite of gill-beast to her mouth. There was a little anxiousness in my voice, but not because I doubted my abilities as a chef. Cooking meat might not have been my strong suit as a Lunarian, but with a few hot rocks on the open flames on the fire, some salt salvaged from Bessie’s canteen and a fresh, bright yellow gill-beast napped from the waters of the pool at our backs, it wasn’t exactly quantum physics. I’d even made a nice little salad with the more edible of the fruits Ora and Pax had picked for us.
No, what I was anxious about was another round of those little moans I worried—hoped—Eve might make as she ate her dinner from one of the broad leaves we were using as plates.
“Mm.” Eve closed her eyes and sighed contentedly. Her lips moved sensually as she chewed and swallowed. “It’s perfect, Gallix. Even better than breakfast.”
“Ah…good, then.” I gulped, then licked my lips as I watched her suck her fingers clean. “Glad you like it.”
“I still can’t believe you’re eating yours raw, though.” She picked up another chunk of the cooked gill-beast with her fingers, then scooped up some of her fruit salad to go with it. “Will you at least try it cooked?”
She held the food out to me like an offering, and my cock throbbed in my trousers like it was channeling my heartbeat. I eyed it warily—and not just because the idea of eating cooked meat turned my stomach a little.
What did she expect me to do? Eat it out of her hand? As much as the thought of running my tongue across those pretty fingers of hers made my balls ache, I knew I’d have to pass.
I wanted her. That much was pretty apparent to everyone by now. And now that we were stranded here for who even knew how long…
I shook my head and held up a hand. “I’ll pass. Cooking it ruins the flavor.”
And if I start letting you feed me, it’s just going to be a gateway for my idiot brain to start aching to feast from you in other ways, too, I decided not to add.
“Your loss.” Eve shrugged and ate the handful of gill-beast instead. Another moan followed shortly.
Moons help me. If I couldn’t even be around her while she was eating, how in nine hells was I going to be able to survive the next few days here? If she’d been just some other female—any other female—I would have just made a move. I’d done it before. Wasn’t even hard. A few charming words, a forward suggestion…it wasn’t like it took much.
But those had been different females. Different species. Not other Lunarians, of course, but there were females of other races in the galaxies that were more than happy to find a strong, handsome Lunarian male between their legs and in their bed.
Eve was different, though. To couple with a human, capable of taking my seed into her womb and making a cub out of it, could prove disastrous once we made it off Edon. If we made it off Edon. Eve was a virgin as well. Inexperienced. Given her smallness and my, er…size, it could be painful for her.
But I wouldn’t make it painful, my sex-crazed brain couldn’t help but chime in. The worst thing about it was that I knew it was true.
Given the chance to lay with Eve, I’d make her wet. Soaked. I’d kiss her nice and gentle, then good and hard. And when she gasped against my shoulder, teeth sinking into my flesh in desperate ecstasy…
“So what did you find on your adventure with Ronan earlier?” she asked, stirring me from my decidedly inappropriate thoughts.
“What?” I blinked, then cleared my throat. Moons. How long had I been fantasizing for? “Oh. Right. Yeah. Well…it’s good news, for starters. There are other ships just beyond here. We’re apparently not the first to have crash-landed on this planet. And Pax is a handy mechanic. If he’s able to salvage enough parts to piece together something that’s safe to fly, we can be out of here. It’ll just take time.”
“Is that the bad news?” Eve asked. “Earlier, you said there was bad news, too.”
“Er…yeah.” I frowned. Did I even tell her? I wasn’t sure I wanted to. The bad news was…kind of concerning. I supposed most bad news was. But she’d find out sooner or later, and I didn’t want her to feel like whatever we had to face in the coming days was being sprung on her. Especially since I didn’t know how this was going to play out myself. “It’s about the, ah…the passengers of the other ships.”
“There were survivors?” Eve’s pretty hazel eyes grew wide. “Did you meet them? Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
“Because I wouldn’t call them…survivors, exactly.” I grimaced. “We found a few bodies in the wreckage. Skeletons, mostly. Probably killed on impact. But… aw, blood, Eve. You sure you want to hear this?”
“Tell me.” She looked so sure of herself.
I hoped that wouldn’t change once the truth was out of my mouth.
“A lot of the ships didn’t have any bodies in them at all. Could mean survivors, sure. Other beings, various species, living here on Edon. It’s a big planet. Lot of ground to cover. Livable, too. But…”
“Just say it, Gallix.”
“We don’t know what all is out here in this jungle. Or beyond it, either.” I nodded to Ronan, who was sitting on the other side of the fire with his blaster and sword laid out and ready for a fight.
“They could’ve been eaten by something. Could’ve drowned, or been attacked, or just…swallowed up by the ground beneath their feet.”
“Pax doesn’t look worried.” Eve turned and nodded to my lovesick cousin, who was sitting near the water with his arm around Ora’s thin shoulders. They were both laughing over something. Moons only knew what.
“Well, Pax was always a little soft-headed. Soft-hearted, too. His father, the bumbling menace, is responsible for the former. But I suppose the latter is probably just in our genes.”
“You’re related?” Eve leaned forward with interest. “I thought your hair looked a little similar, but the way you talk is so different…”
“Through Pax’s mother, yeah. She got partnered up with a rutting, thick-skulled lord as soon as she was old enough to go into heat. Me, though, if my dad hadn’t been such a big, brave war hero, I doubt he would’ve been allowed to mate with my mother, but thanks to his great deeds of heroism for beloved Lunaria…” A little pang shot through my heart as I thought of my father. The chance to mate with my mother was about the only thing his heroics had gotten him, save for killed dead in action. “I grew up in a little village pretty far away from the rest of Lunarian society. We don’t talk fancy like Pax and Ronan out there.”
“I like the way you talk.” Eve smiled and turned her face away from me as a little pink rose to her cheeks. “It reminds me of Earth a little. Not that there’s much to miss, but…”
“It’s normal to be homesick, you know.” I stared up at the darkness overhead. We were so far away from the rest of civilization, even the stars looked dim from here. “After all, you’re an awful long way from home.”
“It was never much of a home for me.” Eve pushed the rest of her food around her leaf with her fingers idly but didn’t move to eat any more of it. “I thought that maybe, if this opportunity on Lunaria went okay…maybe I could make a new life for myself there. Being a mother didn’t sound so bad, especially not if there was plenty of food to eat and a safe place to sleep at night in exchange…”
“Food to eat here,” I pointed out. She looked so sad, it was second nature for me to want to lighten her mood a little. “Safe place to sleep too, for that matter.”
“Assuming that whatever monsters ate the other people who’ve crashed here don’t gobble us up in the night,” Eve said with a sigh.
“We don’t know that there are monsters. Though…yeah, sure. That’s a possibility.” I smiled at her and patted my blaster. “Don’t worry, though. Anything tries to gobble you up, they’ll have to chew their way through me first. And I’m pretty tough meat.”
“Sure you are.” Eve returned my smile, but hers was a sorrowful one. “Tell me honestly, Gallix…do you really think you’ll be able to get us to Lunaria?”
“I do,” I said—though that was a thought that relied on a lot of faith. And it came with caveats too, unfortunately. “But depending on how long it takes…”
“Who knows what’ll be waiting for us when we finally get there,” Eve finished for me. “If there’s even a Lunaria left to get to by that point. Or an Earth.”
We finished our meals in silence. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Pax disappear with Ora, hand in hand, into the burned wreckage of poor Bessie’s hull. They’d obviously already made up their minds about returning to Lunaria. Even if we were able to leave tomorrow, Ora’s contract would already be more than a year old by the time we were able to take her back.
As would Eve’s—which she’d probably already figured out for herself.
Marisa seemed to be of a similar mind. She’d eaten her dinner away from the rest of us, but once she was finished, I watched her try to cozy up to Ronan.
I didn’t know who I felt worse for—Ronan as Marisa wrapped her arms around his neck and tried to kiss him, or Marisa as he gave her a look of abject horror and rose to go patrol our perimeter again. Alone.
As Marisa marched off into the darkness, little hands curled into furious fists, I realized something exciting. Something terrible.
Now, Eve and I were alone.
“Where are you going?” Eve asked as I placed my leaf-plate to the side and rose.
“It’s a nice night, and I’m tired of smelling like burned-out electronics and smoke.” I tugged my shirt off as I made my way to the edge of the pool, then dropped it behind me as I shifted my fingers to my belt.
“But the showers—”
“Inside the ship? They’re destroyed.” The electrical fire that had engulfed Bessie shortly after we crashed had ruined everything save for a few things in the canteen. “Besides, those showers weren’t exactly…ideal for a mixed-sex crew anyway.”
“I noticed. But…” Eve looked longingly at the pool, and I smiled as I kicked off my boots.
“You should come in too. Wash the day off of you.” I let my gaze slide across her slender limbs and wide hips, lit by the firelight, and tried not to imagine what she’d look like with that torn, bloodstained little nightgown of hers abandoned on the grass. I dipped my hand into the water, then straightened and tugged off my pants. “Water’s nice…”
“Oh.” I glanced over my shoulder at Eve, whose eyes were wider now than I’d ever seen them. Good. I’d always been told I had a nice backside. All the better to see it with, I supposed. “But, um…you’re naked.”
“I am,” I said with a smirk. “No use in bathing with my kit on.”
“So…should I…?” Eve gripped the strap of her nightgown uncertainly, and my smirk turned into a full-on grin.
“You do what you like.” I turned and got ready to dive. “I’m going in.”
9
Eve
Growing up in Sector Five, I’d never had a chance to see art. Not real art, anyway. But before her death, my mother had told me about it. Oil paintings. Marble sculptures. Watercolors. Sacred pictographs done by indigenous tribes in remote caves that had weathered thousands of years before the sectors had blown them up and vanished them away.
Up until that point, the only art I’d ever seen were the pictures my mother had traced in the dirt for me between work shifts.
But the view of Gallix’s ass I got as he dove into the water—round, firm and perfectly shaped… As far as I was concerned, that was the closest thing to art I was ever going to get.
As big as he was, I expected a splash when he hit the water. But he dove in so elegantly, the pool barely even rippled.
Smooth.
I held my breath and stared at the water’s surface for what felt like an eternity waiting for Gallix to resurface. After several long moments, I started to worry.
Maybe the pool hadn’t been deep enough for diving into. Or—now there was a dark thought—could Lunarians even swim?
“You coming in or not?” Gallix finally came up out of the water near the center of the pool. He tossed his hair to the side to get it out of his face and grinned.
“You scared me you…you jerk!” I stooped to grab a rock and threw it at him. It plunked uselessly into the pool several feet short.
“Wasn’t trying to.” Gallix waved his hand across the pond’s surface, splashing an arc of water toward me. “Water’s nice. You should come for a swim.”
“I don’t know…” Admittedly, a swim sounded pretty nice. But the night was getting pretty cold already, especially far away from the fire like this. I imagined the water was even colder. “How warm is it?”
“Like summer sunshine.” Gallix swam a little closer, then cocked his head to beckon me in. “You’ll like it. Unless…you’re scared?”
“I’m not scared.” The grass was cool and dewy beneath my feet as I stepped forward. I knew Gallix was baiting me…
But was it really baiting if he was just encouraging me to do something I wanted anyway?
A swim in the dark on an alien planet with an alien man. Compared to life on Sector Five—compared to any life on Earth—this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance.
And since we were stranded here…
&nb
sp; I sat down at the edge of the pool and put my feet in the water. Gallix was right. It was so warm that it was hard not to plunge my whole body in all at once.
“You sure you’re not scared?” Gallix asked, wading a little closer.
“Not scared,” I assured him. “I, um, I just can’t swim.”
“Aw.” Gallix laughed, then swam up to the edge of the pool. “Well, why didn’t you say so? The water’s deep. Here, slip in and I’ll catch you.”
He held his arms out to me, and I gave him a tentative look.
“You’re naked, Gallix,” I reminded him. Not that I was exactly opposed to that, but…
“Well, I wasn’t about to swim in my trousers.” He waved me toward him. “I’ll behave. Promise. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“Not scared,” I repeated.
“Then come in and prove it,” he challenged me.
I rolled my eyes, bit my lip…
Then let my body slip from the bank into the water.
I let out a small scream as I splashed into the pool. It was deep. Deeper than I’d thought. My feet kicked towards the bottom as my head slipped under, but there was no bottom to be found. Not one that I could reach, at least.
I forced my eyes open just in time to see a big, strong pair of Lunarian arms reaching toward me. Gallix pulled me against him and I clung to him like I was drowning.
In a way, I kind of was.
“Why didn’t you jump to me?” Gallix demanded as my face broke the surface again. I gasped for breath, wrapping my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.
“Why didn’t you catch me?”
“Because you didn’t jump, vringna!”
“I’m not a vuh-rin-nya. You’re a vuh-rin-nya!” I blinked the water from my eyes and tightened my arms around his neck. “You didn’t tell me to jump!”
“Didn’t think it was necessary,” Gallix said with a laugh. “What did I tell you about worrying me?”