by Elsa Jade
“There was no one to save us,” she said. “We were on our own.”
His heart sank, but he nodded. “We have to stop the race.” It was one thing to risk humiliation for himself, a drakling with no treasure of his own. But he wouldn’t risk her life.
“Are the riches real?”
He hesitated. “As far as I can tell. The pre-race signing bonus in my account spent like actual credits.”
She let out a sharp breath. “And the adventure is definitely real.” Her jaw shifted to one side. “What’s the next line of the queen’s poem? What’s the next clue?”
“Amy—”
She swung around to sit on the arm of his chair. Bracing one hand on his thigh, she stared down at him implacably. “Do you want to stop?”
He’d have nothing to show his brothers except his weakness. His standing professionally might be undermined as well.
And she’d be on the first trans-dimensional tranference back to her closed world.
Slowly, he shook his head. “I do not want to stop. I want to win.”
Her smile returned, not the giddy silliness of before, but a determination as fierce as any ancient drakling queen. “Then we keep going.”
He reached up to wrap his fingers in the silky strands of her black hair. “When did you become so bold?”
“Faking it,” she confessed.
“Are you faking it when I touch you and your pulse races?”
Her breath hitched, and he was close enough to see her pupils dilate, a soft, slow, subtle explosion of black over black. “No,” she whispered. “That’s the most real of all.”
Easing one arm around her waist, he slid her off the arm of his chair and into his lap. With boneless grace, she sprawled across his thighs, one hand centered in the middle of his naked chest. She reached around him to snag the Heart’s Flame off the console where he’d left it making their escape from the planet.
She held it up between them, the gem flashing with firelight. “Will it all be worth the risk?”
He didn’t even look at the stone, his gaze fixed on her pensive expression. “It already is.”
He rose to his feet, easily lifting her and the fake Heart’s Flame that had almost gotten them killed. She looped her arm behind his neck and held tight as he strode down the short corridor to the bedroom.
When he twisted his shoulders to guide her legs through the doorway, she kicked a little. “Keep going.”
His stomach tightened. “Do you not want—?”
“I want,” she said in a husky voice. “After a bath. I’m sweaty and dusty, and you’re covered in blood and acid.”
“Oh, that.”
“Also, I’ve been dying to try that waterfall.”
“I turned it on the first night I got the ship,” he admitted. “But it seemed…wrong to use it by myself.”
“As an infamous interstellar explorer, I feel qualified to lead you into temptation.” She wriggled against him until he let her down to the deck. Taking a step back, she eyed him through her short lashes, her fingers toying with the closures of her long tunic. “Is there…anything I should know about alien sex?”
“I don’t know about other aliens.” He took the gemstone from her hand and tossed it toward the bed. “Sex with me, though…”
The golden flush over her wide cheeks delighted him. As did the speed of her fingers unsealing the tunic. He forced himself to lean back in the doorway, arms clenched over his chest to stop himself from grabbing her. She wasn’t some automated sexbot or virtual pleasure performer or even one of his attempted yet ineffectual relationships. She was a closed-worlder, young, innocent…
Pausing with her fists clenched in the lapels of the tunic, holding it closed, she stared up at him, her lower lip caught between her teeth almost as tightly as her fists on the fabric.
The vulnerability in her gaze stabbed him, burned him, scarred him. “If you don’t want this—”
“I do want,” she whispered. “So much more than I can say, in English, in Mandarin, in whatever language a universal translator comes up with. But…what if I’m not enough? Not what you wanted?”
He forced himself not to move, not to howl at the thought of other people who had made her doubt herself.
“You came from so far away, and you’ve kept the pace, side by side with me, every step,” he reminded her. “You ask if you’re what I want? You are what I’ve dreamed of. Now show me.”
Hands and breaths shaking, she let the tunic slide from her shoulders into a pool of fabric at her feet and stood before him only in the leggings and arm coverings that had protected her from the worst of their day’s adventure.
Nothing would keep her from the beast inside him.
He hissed out a breath and straightened. Fumbling over his shoulder, he clicked the light control panel to set the mood before he stalked slowly across the small room.
The faceted fixture above the bed began to rotate, throwing sparkles across the walls, the red bed, and their bodies, as if they’d fallen into the heart of the Heart’s Flame.
She tilted her head. “A disco ball in a spaceship. How weird.”
“It’s a disco pyramid.”
“You have disco?” Her eyes widened. “In space?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” He stopped with the toes of his boots nudged up against hers. “I want to see you, all of you. May I remove these?”
“Please. And yours.”
Torturing himself, he kept his hands off her gleaming skin as he unbound her from the arm and leg coverings. She wasn’t a treasure he’d stolen—she was a gift he was unwrapping, a gift she’d given him. When he knelt in front of her to unfasten her boots, she balanced herself with one hand on his shoulder, and when he straightened again, her fingertips skipped downward to land on his bare chest. His heart thudded strongly under her palm, as if he was freeing it too from some strictures he hadn’t even realized were constraining him.
He stripped out of his own clothes so fast he suspected he’d be hard pressed to find his boots later. But every quivering sense in his drakling soul was attuned to her, the way her fingers traced up his arms and over his shoulders then up high to cup his jaw.
“Oh, Luc,” she breathed. “I can’t believe…”
He stilled. “I can show you the Intergalactic Dating Agency manuals that show our species are reasonably compatible.”
She brushed her thumb over his lower lip. “I know that already. I just can’t believe I’ve come so far, to be here, with you.”
“Come a little farther,” he cajoled as he took a step backward toward the bathroom. “With me.”
Her delighted giggle danced over his skin like the disco lights made tangible. Since the pyramid was shining into the bathing area, he didn’t bother with more lights, just palmed the controls for the shower. Instead of the quick, efficient blast of the cleansing sonics, a cascade of hydrogen and oxygen—refreshingly combined as water—poured into the large unit. Before he’d learned that the Blissed was a reclaimed honeymoon cruiser, he’d been baffled by the excessive cleaning room. But as Amy joined him, he finally understood the need for the ship’s augmented water-reclamation system. Watching her glide toward him through the red sparkles and the mist of the waterfall…he might never want to leave.
If he wasn’t careful, he might never want her to leave.
Chapter 11
His eyes glowed like the sky lanterns Amy remembered from her childhood, gleaming golden above her as they lifted into the night. Instead of receding like the lanterns, though, Luc came toward her. The seething heat and potency of his body, the desire in those glittering eyes, preceded him in an invisible wavefront that buffeted her inside. The sky lanterns rose by candle power making them lighter than air, and she knew this drakling would make her fly.
Oh, she wanted to be bold. It wasn’t like she’d had weapons in the sheaths of her explorer costume, after all. But naked was just so…naked. She felt as if all her scars were on fire, burning like a warning of
how easy it was to get hurt.
She stared up at him, her tongue thick in her mouth. Partly nervousness, but partly her own lust. Because, fuck, he was gorgeous all over. She’d felt his strength already, seen the flex of muscle in his bare arms, and admired the almost delicate filigree of the scales the flushed amethyst in his skin. To see all of him…
He might be a real alien, but he was all real male too. The thick jut of his erection seemed likely to be, er, very compatible, and the fever of his body and his stare ignited a hot, heavy pulse deep in her core.
With a low sound like a growl, he circled her, still not touching, moving her toward the waterfall. She went willingly, hoping the water would wash away her sudden nerves, put out the fire of her self-consciousness. As the cascade sluiced around her, she moaned in delight. The water was strangely soft, almost satiny, as if it was perfectly pure, but a hint of fragrance, like lightning or the earth after rain, drifted around them.
Luc, however, stiffened as the water hit his back, and she abruptly remembered his wounds. She cursed herself for only thinking of her own.
“Turn around,” she said. “Let me see.”
He crowded close to her, his chest almost bumping her. “I don’t care about that at all.”
“I care.” She rotated around him. “Oh… I want you to blow them up again.”
He chuckled, and under her questing fingers, the tension in his spine eased. “Is it that bad?”
Carefully, she directed a stream of water over his abraded, blistered shoulders. Water pooled, tinged with dust and blood, around their feet before being whisked away. “Just don’t do it again.”
“What?”
“Get hurt.”
He turned to face her. “Say the word and we will stop. Stop the race. Stop…this.”
She stared up at him, her heart skittering. Sometimes hurt was unavoidable if she wanted to reach for her dreams, foolish or dangerous though they might be. “I won’t. Won’t stop. Don’t you stop either.”
His mouth collided with hers.
She clung to him as he dragged her against his chest. Under her clenching fingers, his biceps bulged, and he spun them both under the water then through the fall to the back side of the shower unit. He pinned her to the wall with a knee thrust between her legs, and she squirmed against the heavy muscle of his thigh.
Oh god, she was already wet, and not just from the shower.
She moaned as he ducked his head lower to set his teeth against the side of her neck, nipping at the sensitive skin under her ear. She shuddered and arched back to give him more access even as her legs clamped helplessly around his thigh. “Luc…”
As his mouth moved downward, she choked on her own breath like it was a waterfall, drowning her in sensation. And when his tongue circled her nipple…
Her arms spasmed, clutching him close. The thrill of finding the gem and the panic of almost dying had tuned every nerve ending to its highest sensitivity, as if every part of her knew that this moment—like every moment—could be the very best. Or the very last. She’d never understood the phrase carpe diem. Well, technically she understood it since it wasn’t so hard learning a little bit of Latin since she was learning English anyway, but she’d never got it. She did now. Take a chance, the universe demanded. Luc could probably give her the statistics for what their odds really were, but while taking a chance meant risk, it also meant reward.
And this was her chance to carpe drakling.
With that boldness burning in her, she dove her hand down between their bodies to wrap around his thick, distended flesh. She knew about one-eyed trouser snakes, and some of the coeds in her school had joked about anacondas, much to her initial confusion, but Luc had been packing a dragon in his pants this whole time. She couldn’t hold back a low sound of pleasure, a rapturous moan, really, and his answering groan as he thrust his hips into her grasp told her he was feeling the same way. The hot gust of his breath over her breasts made her shiver, and she stroked him, her fingertips mapping the contour of engorged veins like the arcing trajectories of stars across the sky. He shuddered in response, and their shared pleasure tangled tighter with every breathy sound and caress.
With each passing moment, their touches became more forceful, less controlled, their breaths seething and harsh as they spiraled higher. Rising, spinning out of control, as searing as an erratic sun pulsing toward explosion.
“Show me what you like, what you want.” His voice was taut, almost rough, but the overtones of longing sang in her blood.
She guided his hand between her legs. “You are what I need.”
“So wet,” he whispered. “But hot too. Flood and fire.”
“You do that to me,” she murmured. “I’ve never been this close this fast…”
“What if it’s just the effect of the impure aquari crystal? You cut your finger, and I got a dose too.”
“Then we’re both fucked up.” She kissed the point of his shoulder, in between the abrasions. “And this far out, there’s nobody to tell us no.”
“Fucked,” he sighed. “I like that.”
So did she, very much so. She wriggled on his knee, still pinning her up against the shower wall. “You said we’re physically compatible, and I told you I want this, so open my little world already, drakling. Show me stars. All of them.”
He lifted her through the steam—God, he was so strong—his steps never faltering despite the shin-deep water that had built up around them. With his elbow, he bumped the shower controls, and a soundless blast of air whisked most of the water from their bodies before he strode into the bedroom, holding her tight against his chest, as if she was as precious as the Heart’s Flame.
Through the disco pyramid lights, he launched them toward the round bed. For a moment, they were both airborne, but even before she could gasp, he had spun her around and they rolled through the covers. He lifted her hips to his, crouching over her, his wide shoulders drenched in the red sparkles that turned the shadows of his skin to flame.
She arched back, showing him everything, giving him everything, and asking for everything in return. Always before she’d hesitated with lovers, uncertain how much she could ask for, how much she could really show. Now, she demanded. Maybe it was the universal translator in her head, or maybe it was Luc, but she finally had the words, some with her tongue, some with all the fingertips that she still had, some she hadn’t even thought to voice but somehow he knew and responded. Touch me. Lick me. Love me just like this.
“I want to douse myself in your flood,” he whispered, his cadence like a poem, “but I think you will burn me forever.”
She spread her thighs and framed one hand over her mound, letting the gap where her ring finger would’ve been rest above her throbbing clit. “Here,” she said, her pulse singing back to him. “This is where I want you.”
As he centered himself above her and descended with exquisite, agonizing totality into her core, she kept her eyes wide, wanting to experience every second with every one of her senses. The muscle in his jaw flexed, hard and crystal-sharp, but he held himself suspended above her with a lightness as if he had wings. The slow, slick glide of his shaft shot more sparks along her nerves than the disco pyramid lights. With each stroke, the glow within her stoked brighter until she thought she would burst into flames.
She braced her hands on the unyielding bulk of his pecs, and the fierce thud of his heartbeat under her palms echoed the euphoria bubbling in her blood. When they rocked together, she anchored her heels behind his ass to grind him on the tender bud at her center.
“Faster,” she whispered. “Harder. I want to feel this until the end of the race.”
At her words, he groaned and slammed against her. The cascade of sensation radiating from her clit made her arch back with a gasp of pleasure. Only then did she realize how much he’d been holding back. His body crashed down on hers, all his hot weight and bunched muscles thrusting her across the red bed, rocket fuel to her desire. She pushed back with all
her might, showing him she could take what he had to give and give it back in triplicate. With her inner muscles, she clenched down hard on his cock, a hidden erotic bite that made him groan, his jade eyes rolling back and brightening to a gold that rivaled the bewitching pyramid lights for dazzling brilliance.
“Again,” he rasped. “Do that again and again. And again until forever, even if it slays me.”
She laughed a little desperately then gasped as he pounded into her with renewed vigor, his cock swelling another impossible degree, arching upward to find her secret, untouched depths. “Right there. Luc, right there.” Her voice trembled with need. “Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”
She didn’t want it to end, like the legend of a queen and her lover outlasting the centuries. But though her spirit was willing, her clit was mortal. Her aching core grasped at him with every stroke until his chest slicked with sweat. He was a machine, unwavering, like one of those high-end scientific calculators she’d gotten to try to fake her way through math, the numbers adding up to infinity, or like the metronome she desperately tried to play along with during her ill-fated violin years. The relentless pounding became a blissful agony as she clutched at the orgasm hovering out of her reach.
“Luc,” she said in a breathless whimper. “It’s too much.”
“Nothing’s too much for you if you want it,” he growled back, his gaze fixed on her fiercely. “Take it. Take me.”
Stiff-arming the bed to hold himself above her, he reached down between them and, without a moment’s fumble, flicked her like an ignition switch. She cried out as she went off.
The climax ripped through her from clit outward, all her defenses crumbling and sensation billowing up behind in a stormcloud of ecstasy. She clutched at him, his powerful body her only point of awareness as she trembled in the throes of her rapture.
As if from a distance, she felt him thrusting into her, finding his own release with a guttural shout. The hum still quivering through her aching, swollen flesh crescendoed again, and this time she screamed as a second orgasm chased his through her body.