by Isadora Hart
"I'm not indestructible."
She rapped his rock hard chest with her knuckle, grinning. "I'm not sure I believe that."
"I've never been so stressed as guarding you makes me," he teased, hands moving from her shoulders, dragging along her skin until they cupped the back of her neck, lacing together there. "You're a menace."
She grinned, perfectly happy to have his hands anywhere he put them, resisting the urge to step toward him. She wanted their chests pressed together, their breaths shared as they gave in to the tension between them again.
She didn't, though, because there was no awkwardness yet. This was light and teasing, just talking like normal people would, not needing to regret their actions.
"I try my best. Really, though, I don't want to use the memory card until the last couple of days. I don't want to risk giving the Prince enough time to find an out."
He opened his mouth and then shut it again. "Okay," he settled on. She wanted to tell him everything—knew he was curious about it all—but she couldn't bring herself to risk it. It had been months since they'd found out this information, and they'd been waiting for the perfect moment to use it ever since then. She'd held onto it for so long, just the three of them knowing about it, that she couldn't bring herself to break the silence.
It would be over, soon, and she could tell him. He'd be there when she finally confronted Prince Qugrom, anyway. He'd be in the room. She refused to go in there without him, even if it made her look weak. She needed to know he was beside her to stay strong.
"I think I should get someone in to do the rest of the conference." Her embarrassment flooded her once more, and she pulled away from Vikram completely. "They should send someone out so they can save face. It's not just me, it's the entire foundation."
"Your friend just died and you were put in at the last minute, no one expected you to be perfect. Everyone looks down their nose at you because you're a hot woman, not because you let your emotions get the best of you. If one of those old bastards had gotten angry and thrown false accusations around people would have admired him for how much he cared about his former partner."
Cassie's eyebrows knitted together. "It's not just that I'm a woman. They might like to stare at my boobs, but there are plenty of high-powered women who garner respect. It's just because they don't know me. I haven't earned their respect yet. They think I'm just a little girl." She sighed, finally giving in and grabbing a bottle of scotch from the mini-bar. "There's more to it than men being men."
"It doesn't help."
"I should get someone in," she repeated. "Did you want a drink?"
"Not while I'm on duty."
She felt bad that he could never truly wind down while he was with her, but it wasn't enough to stop her pouring the drink. "I'm going to call Jensen after I've given myself some liquid confidence."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know. I want to."
"Do you? It sounds like this is something that means a lot to you. Do you want to let someone else do it?"
"I want it to work. I want them to make it illegal under Universal Law to be able torture someone."
He gave her a long look, searching her face, and she tried not to crumble under it.
"Okay, okay," she admitted. "Okay. I want to do it myself. I want to prove to everyone that I'm not just someone Archie carried along for the ride and was the brains behind everything. You know, I was the one who found the information on that memory card. I'm the one who made it all happen. Sure, Archie would have been able to do the politics side of it better, but I'm good in the field and I'm the reason it's there in the first place."
"Then you should do it."
"It's so selfish. It's so selfish to want to be recognized for it when someone else could do it better."
"It's natural."
"I should be able to overcome it."
"I think you should give it a shot. I think you could do it."
She resisted the urge to fish for more compliments from him. She wanted to bait him into telling her that she was the best person for the job, and she'd destroy everything in her way. "I thought you were worried about me getting in danger," she said instead. Fishing for how much he cared about her definitely wasn't out of the question.
"You’ve convinced me I’m indestructible," he mocked. "Really, though. I want you to be happy, and I think doing this would make you happy."
Secretly she was certain it would, too. But it was high risk, high reward. She couldn't risk this information going to waste because she was too incompetent to make the best use of it.
She linked her hands together in her lap, giving in and walking over, giving him a peck on the cheek. "I really did nothing to deserve you. I'd have thrown myself out of the window by now if you hadn't been around. Thank you."
He laced their fingers together, running his thumb over her knuckle and smiling at her. She wanted to kiss him but she didn't; she just allowed herself to get lost in the sweetness of the moment. It didn't have to always be sexual between them.
"I'll give Jensen a call tomorrow," she decided. "And get his advice. At the very least I ought to let him know before I do something that big by myself. It’ll reflect poorly on the entire foundation if I get it wrong."
He nodded. "That sounds good."
They stood for a few minutes longer, linked by the hands, a hair's breadth from being in each other's arms. It was complete peace, even though moments ago she'd been reeling from embarrassment and considering throwing the towel in on everything. Vikram brought her back down to the ground. Made her see things more clearly.
Made her feel home.
She squeezed his hand once more before coming to her senses and pulling away. "I'm going to stay up and do some work, but you should get some sleep. If I'm keeping you awake just tell me." She had to figure out exactly what she was going to say to Qugrom. The time where she would confront him was coming up quick, and she needed a script. Archie might have been able to stride in there and know exactly what needed to be done, but she didn't.
They shared a last look before he nodded, standing up and stretching. "Yeah, okay. Don't stay up too late."
"I won't."
She sat down with her back to the bed so she wouldn't be distracted by watching him, and opened her laptop, this time grabbing an energy drink rather than whiskey from the fridge.
It was time to rely on the same method she always had for solving her problems: to work them away.
18.
VIKRAM
Vikram laid in bed and watched Cassie's fingers run rapidly over the keyboard. He'd been going in and out of sleep all night, and every time he woke up he watched Cassie, wishing she'd come to bed and get some sleep. The conference would be starting early the next morning, and if she slept now she'd only get three hours, minimum.
It wasn't enough to function on with all the stress she was under.
"Cassie," he said softly, propping himself up on his elbows.
She jumped and looked over her shoulder. "Sorry, did I wake you up?"
"No. Are you coming to bed soon?"
"In a bit. I just have a few more things to look up. You know, Prince Qugrom has been quoted seven times in the past year saying he’s a strict non-interventionist, and he'll never interfere in another planet's interests, and that's why the IU should stop interfering?" She drummed her fingers on the back of her chair. "He's a real piece of shit, you know? He—"
"Cassie," he interrupted. "Come to bed."
"Just—"
"You're exhausted."
"Just—"
He stood up. "Just nothing. You need to sleep or you're going to fall asleep in the conference and I can't see you coming back from that one."
She scowled at him. "That's a low blow."
He stood behind her chair and peered over her shoulder at a collection of scribbles and arrows in her notebook. It was a mess. "Please come to bed."
"I'm working," she stressed again, looking up at him with big
eyes. He could already see the bags starting to form under them.
He was half-asleep and tired out. He'd never been able to handle less than eight hours. He leaned forward and closed her laptop lid, then shut her notebook.
"Hey," she protested, pushing his hands away. "What are you doing? Did you manage to sneak a bottle of vodka back there while I was working or something?"
He pulled her chair out from under the table and picked her up out of her, carrying her bridal style to the bed and putting her down on it.
"Are you high?" she repeated, no longer struggling, but in his bed with pinched eyebrows.
He climbed in next to her and switched off the lights, wrapping a secure arm around her waist. "I'm tired, and so are you."
"You don’t know—"
"Yes I do. I can see it. I know how a human body works. Just go to sleep, Cassie. Just for the few hours we have left before work starts again."
She relaxed against him, and automatically entwined her legs with his. Her hand splayed against his chest. "Now I feel like I'd rather stay awake and get to experience this for a few hours," she murmured.
His hand was on her lower back, and he drew circles into it with his fingertips. "That's not going to make me let you go."
He couldn't see her at all in the pitch black of the room, but he felt when she looked up because her breath fanned against his lips. She was so tiny, but in bed they could always be face to face. His cock stirred in his pants, and he hated that what had been an honest attempt to get her to sleep had turned into this.
He was like a teenager around her.
"Do you think we'll ever see each other again when this conference is over?" she asked, fingers halting on his chest. He could imagine her wide, inquisitive eyes even though he couldn't see them. He knew, even though he'd been doubting whether their relationship was just physical to her, from the tone of her voice the thought of never seeing him again was driving her insane.
He pulled her closer to him. "I want to see you again," he admitted. "When the stress isn't there anymore. When I can just love you without having to be scared of losing my job."
"Love?" she squeaked.
His cheeks heated in the dark. "Love in the physical sense," he corrected, lips dragging against her cheek, fingers biting into her hips. "Unless you want to call what we did in the ship fucking. I'm a romantic."
Her fingers worked a taunting path from his chest, around his throat, and up to his hair, until they were laced through his black curls. "Maybe I need another demonstration in order to categorize it." Her voice was just a whisper now, deeper and headier, enough to make his cock fully hard in his pajama pants.
He shouldn't have let it get this far. He should have shut it down the moment he felt her breath on her lips and wanted to roll her underneath him and claim her. "I'd be a traitor to my own beliefs," he teased. "All this was supposed to be getting you to go to sleep. You're corrupting me."
She gave a fake gasp. "Corruption is more fun."
She felt out his mouth with her hand, the pad of her thumb running against his bottom lip. She followed it soon after with her mouth, not bothering with a slow tease, but crushing her lips against his aggressively, giving him no room to resist.
He didn't want to.
He finally gave in and rolled them over, feeling her small body beneath him as she spread her legs for him to lay on top of her. Her arms looped around his neck and she anchored him to her. "I want to touch you this time." Her words were a statement, but her tone was a beg.
She had started it, she had kissed him first, but he was still in control. He could have still held her hands above her head and denied everything.
But today he wanted to feel her desperate hands on him.
He held her wrists above her head for a moment, though. Just enough time for her to whine, to dig her heels into his lower back and force their pelvises together, so she could grind against his hard-on. "Don't you dare," she pleaded. "I need to touch you."
"Touch me how?" He nibbled at her neck, kissing down to her collar bone and sucking on the skin hard enough that it would leave a mark just below the collar of her blouse. "I can get everything I want from you right now."
"I want to kiss you."
He kissed her mouth. "I can take that."
"I want to kiss you everywhere. I want to kiss your cock. I want to ride you." She squirmed again. "Please, Vikram."
He couldn't resist that, and the moment he released her hands she'd flipped them over, straddling his hips. It was still pitch black, but she got his pajama bottoms down in an instant, wrapping her hand around his cock and beginning to stroke him quickly.
When she licked from base to tip, he groaned, hips thrusting upward. His hands laced through her hair. He wasn't going to let her tease him like he'd teased her. He was too selfish. He guided her mouth to the head of his cock and forced it down. There was no licking the tip, or slow strokes with her hand. He pushed his cock into the heat of her mouth.
She never pushed back. She let him thrust into her mouth, moaning against his shaft and working her hand on the part of him she couldn't take.
He was close just from this, and he wished more than anything he could see her. He wanted to see her mouth stretched wide to its limit, her eyes dark and intense as she took as much of him as she could.
He threw his head back and thrust deeper than he'd meant to, lost in the moment of knowing she looked just as good as she felt right now, but he couldn't see it.
She took it all, though, gagging just a little but immediately going back for more.
He didn't want to spill in her mouth, he wanted to fuck her. He wanted to turn her over, push her into the bed and let out all the lust that had rapidly taken over from logic. It was like being in a rage—she was his sole focus, his only desire as her soft body surrounded him.
He released her hair, mourned her loss when she released his cock from her mouth.
"I want to fuck you," he insisted, feeling for her to switch their positions.
Cassie was having none of it, though. She lowered herself onto his cock, instead. Her ass on his stomach, she rode him reverse cowgirl, grinding against his cock agonizingly slowly. She moaned loudly as she did, though, and that was enough for him to endure her ministrations.
He fisted his hands into the sheets to stop himself gripping her hips and fucking up into her as fast as he could, because every time she finally sat completely down and buried him completely inside her, she quivered just a little. Let out a long groan so satisfied he wondered if she came every time.
He'd force himself to live through that because it turned him on like nothing he'd ever felt before.
She started to bounce faster, bracing her hands on his thighs as she rode him harder and harder. If he could have seen anything he would have slapped her ass.
Before long, he just couldn't take it anymore.
He could hear that she was close, knew that she was pleasuring herself on top of him, and needed to be the one to claim her. He felt for her hips and then stopped her moving altogether, pushing himself up until she was forced onto all-fours.
Then he took control.
Here he had access to everything. He fucked her as fast as his hips would let him and she mewled, pushing backwards. He gave her a quick spank. Not too hard.
"Fuck," she groaned, gasping as he immediately followed it with reaching around to rub her clit. "Oh, more."
She only lasted a few more minutes, all spent with incoherent pleads of, "More," and "So close," leaving her lips.
It took everything for Vikram to hold on until she was coming on his cock. When tight heat clamped down around him, he finally let go, nails biting into her hips as he cried her name, euphoria consuming him for just a moment.
They took a few minutes to recover. Vikram pulled out and leaned back against the headboard, Cassie followed suit, using him as her headboard. He wrapped his arm around her, face buried in her hair. She smelled like vanilla and sweat and he wante
d to keep her there forever.
She checked the time on her watch and it lit up the room, revealing ravaged bedsheets and the second bed that she should have been sleeping on.
And the time. Just two and a half hours until they had to get up, now.
"My plan to get you to sleep backfired," he muttered, not managing to smother a yawn.
"I think this is going to be the best sleep I've ever had."
"Maybe if our alarm wasn't going off so soon."
She snuggled against him, and he laid them down, wrapping his arm possessively around her waist and his legs through hers. His hand was splayed over her stomach, and he knew she should have really asked her if she was on some kind of birth control. He just assumed she was, or that she would have mentioned it if she wasn't.
With all the years he'd spent longing for a family, he couldn't even find it in himself to be frightened by the slim possibility of having a baby with Cassie, even if he'd only known her a week.
He was already risking his entire career being in bed with her now, why not commit to having a house full of kids, too?
"I can't wait until the conference is over and you can love me like that every night," she muttered, voice heavy with sleep now.
"Loving, not fucking, then? That's your decision?"
"Definitely. I want to be loved by you for the rest of my life."
He held her close and tried not to be overwhelmed by a statement like that. There was no teasing in her voice, no fire. It was all genuine.
And he wanted it, too.
She fell asleep within minutes, and this time he was the one kept awake by the nagging thought that he had no idea what to do to.
It was his job or Cassie. That was what it would boil down to eventually, if she was serious about wanting more than just a quick fuck every now and then.
He wasn't ready to make that choice.
19.
CASSIE
The first thing Cassie felt when she woke up was the solid piece of man wrapped around her: Vikram's hard chest against her cheek, his large hands around her waist. It was bliss.