“You know, as much as I like you on top …” I shoved my hands up beneath her armpits, propelling her forward while rolling sideways. The movement caused her to lose her balance and collapse on top of me as I rolled, using our combined weight to flip her onto her back and pin her underneath me.
She exhaled and squirmed, but I dropped my weight against her body, keeping her pinned against the floor beneath me. We were both breathing heavily, and as our breath mixed, her eyes locked in on mine. My heart pounded, blood rushing, and the urge to do so much more with her while we were this close filled every part of me.
“You’re right. It’s way more fun with you on top.” She licked her lips as she looked up at me in a way that added even more to the thoughts filling my brain. “You are pretty amazing, David. I’m fast. Like really fast, but you were able to fight me. Easily, I might add. It’s why we need you, need your dragon.”
7
Somehow, by some act of infinite constraint on both of our parts, we managed to get back to the business at hand that wasn’t steamy sex on the floor of the PR room.
“I know we keep dancing around the dragon thing, and obviously I can do it, based on the information in my HUD,” I mentioned as Tulip slide the final bit of her power suit over her lithe form. “But how do I actually, well, do it?” As she reached behind her back, fiddling with something that caused her breasts to push at the material, I finally tore my gaze away and proceeded to dress myself.
She gave me a curious look. “The whole game was about turning into a dragon. So, I sort of figured you’d already know how to do this. I mean, you saw the ability in your menus, right?”
“Yeah, but I, well …” I shook my head. “How do I do that? I mean, I’ve never turned into something else before.”
“You just will it to be.” She tilted her head sideways with a hand on one hip, looking at me as if I was being silly. When I didn’t respond, she gave me a smile. “Look, let me show you.”
She raised both hands and lowered into a deep bow. As she rose back up to her full height, the black hair on her head grew out and changed to a platinum blonde. The fur on her body disappeared and left tanned skin behind. She grew in height as well to be nearly as tall as me, looking up at me with an insanely hot face and puckered red lips.
Her power suit had changed as well. She was now wearing a cocktail dress with a lot of cleavage showing and a skirt so short I doubted its ability to keep her lower bits hidden if she took one step. Her chest swelled out, testing the strength of the fabric. She appeared human or close, more like an anime girl come to life.
“See, I can change with just a thought.” She gave me a wink. “Of course, you’re not a Fertish, or any other species of full shapeshifter. You’re a dragon, so you only have one other form, but still the principles are the same, from what Dr. Eldridge told me.”
I knew I was supposed to reply, but I just couldn’t. Hell, it was a miracle that I even absorbed what she had been saying. For one, she was way too attractive for me to do anything more than stare at her open mouthed. Sure, I’d seen her change into different forms in-game, but it was mostly used as a kind of utility to progress missions, like changing into a Matriarchy guard or something like that. She’d certainly never changed into the unimaginably attractive woman that stood before me.
She stepped closer to me. “Do you like this?” She reached out and trailed a finger down my chest.
With her acute senses, she probably knew exactly what I thought about it. “Umm, it’s interesting. So, your power suit can change with you and even shift into different clothes?” Yeah, I was totally smooth.
“Yes,” she said, drawing out the word as she pushed a pout off her lips. “It shifts via the same mental commands that shift my body. Yours will do the same thing when you transform,” Tulip said, getting even closer to me. “Am I making you nervous?”
I swallowed and tried to maintain eye contact. Everything about her oozed sexuality, even her sultry blue eyes got my heart racing faster.
“No.” I smiled at her. “You don’t make me nervous. In fact, it feels like I’ve known you forever.”
“Yeah, that was the idea.” She squeezed my arm. “Turner and I were programmed into the game so that you would get to know and trust us, well, our in-game versions at least. I know they aren’t quite the same as we are, but I hope it’s helping you adjust.”
“Well, it’s been a big help.” I nodded to her as she licked her lips. “Though that feels a little underhanded.”
“Well, let’s change that.” She pouted slightly, her lips so succulent and tempting, I had to blink twice to remind myself she was still talking. “I don’t know you as well as I’d like. I know you have hidden depths I cannot even begin to know.”
“Uh, what do you mean?” As I spoke, her eyes roamed over my body before settling back on my face.
“I want you to show me the real you.” The husky tone of her voice mixed with the coy way she met my eyes made the need to adjust myself more urgent, which, let me tell you, was somewhat hard to manage given the tight-fitting nature of my power suit.
I rubbed the back of my head as she shifted back to her normal form. Though the whole anime sexpot thing had been … eye-opening, it was this, the real Tulip, that made me flush even more.
“Uh, Tulip, I really don’t know where you’re going with this. Do you want to know, what, about my family? My schooling? My time in the Marines …?” I didn’t want to jump to conclusions and interrupt her actions as a come on. For all I knew, this was her species’ way of saying hello.
“No, David.” She shook her head, a sexy amused grin on her lips. “While I do want to know all those things, I also want to know you. Like, really know you.” The way those feline eyes were eating me up, the way she licked her lips, a hint of fang peeking out from between them, made me swallow hard. Was she implying what I thought she was implying? No… surely not. We barely knew each other, which was, I thought the point of this conversation.
“Know me?” I asked as she drew closer. “What precisely do you mean by that?”
“Isn’t that how they say it on Earth?” Tulip ran her hand down my chest, a purr building in her throat as she nuzzled my neck, her hot breath warming my skin. “I want to know you biblically,” she whispered, turning her mouth toward my ear until she was practically nipping at my flesh. “That’s how you say it, right?”
As I tried to answer, I felt something on my knee, making me jump in place. A quick glance down showed me her tail had wrapped around my leg stroking up and down the inside of my thigh. If I hadn’t been hard as a rock before, I was close to bursting now.
“Um… That means that, um…” I swallowed as her tongue flicked out, and the sensation on my earlobe was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. “That you want to have sex with me.”
“Good.” Her words were like a kiss that sent shivers running down my spine and only added to my torture. “Because I want that.” Her hand trailed up my body as she pulled my face toward hers. “I want to mate with you.” She looked at me when I didn’t respond immediately, her large iridescent eyes blinking up at me curiously. “Is that not clear?”
“But why?” I asked, looking her up and down searching for some clue as to why she might be interested in me. “I mean, we’re not the same species, and I don’t know you at all.”
“That isn’t a problem for me,” she said, pressing the nozzle on the collar of her pressure suit. As it depressurized and fell away, it left her standing there in her golden bra and panties. “Do you not find me attractive? Is that the problem?” She swept a hand down her perfect body in one slow, sensual motion that drew my eyes from the swell of her breasts, across her trim stomach, over her swaying hips, and down her long legs. “Because the reports indicate that your species should be compatible with mine.” She frowned slightly. “But if my form is not appealing, I can change it into one that is more arousing to you.”
I looked over her form once more, forcing my
self to skip over the junction between her thighs. I didn’t want to get too excited if this ended up being some kind of joke, or worse, something she was doing because someone forced her to do it.
“Wait, are you doing this for the mission?” I asked, taking a deep breath and trying to calm myself even though everything in my lower half was telling me to just say fuck it. Quite literally.
“No.” She shook her head and then shrugged, biting her lip teasingly. “Well, in a way I suppose, but in a lot of other ways, it’s very personal.” She took a step toward me, closing the distance between us and pressing her perfect breasts against my chest, and even through my power armor and her bra, I could feel her hard nipples against me. “Us Fertish are, well, how do I say this. Very touchy.” She grinned up at me, rubbing herself ever so slowly against my front. Her tail trailed higher up my thigh coming dangerously close to my groin. “And very sexual.” She leaned in close to me, and as she did, her hand went toward the nozzle on my neck. “That was one reason I was selected for the mission, but trust me, I want this. A lot.” Her tongue clicked as she said the word and she hit the switch at my neck, causing my own suit to depressurize. “It is how my people get to know others. We mate.”
“Oh.” Maybe it was the fact that I felt like I knew her, well, non-biblically, and that she was being so, well, forward, but the next thing I knew I was leaning toward her because I’d wanted this so badly for so long.
“But I do understand that humans are supposed to be rather prudish with a very primitive view of sexuality, so if you’re uncomfortable …” she trailed off, even as she stood on her tippy toes, her mouth so close to mine, I could almost taste her on my tongue. “We can sit down and chat.”
“While I’d like that too, Tulip.” I found myself whispering. “I know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth because the truth is, I’ve often wondered what it would be like to get to know you that way.”
“Good,” she whispered, the purr in her voice vibrating through me as she pressed against me like the missing piece of a puzzle. “But we need to do something first.”
“What’s that?” I asked as she met my eyes, and the hunger in them sent a shiver down my spine in a way I couldn’t rightly comprehend. She really did want me, and from the way she looked at me, she wanted me more than anyone ever had.
“We need to get you properly attired first,” Tulip purred as she jerked my suit off. As it hit the ground, she threw herself at me, wrapping her legs around my waist. She tangled her hands in my hair as we tumbled to the ground, her tail coming to play along the length of my back.
I laughed, grinning as I looked up at her. “If I recall …” As my voice trailed off, my hands went to her waist as I turned, flipping our positions so I was on top of her. “You preferred this way better.” As my cock pressed into the molten heat between her thighs, I suppressed a groan as I stared down at her.
The purr in Tulip’s throat grew in intensity as the blush grew beneath her black fur. “Oh, you remembered.” Her hands stroked down my chest, leaving lines of heat and the faintest sensation of her claws as she brought my lips to hers. “Now, let me give you something else to remember.” Then she thrust herself against me, and the feeling was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.
8
“Guys,” Turner’s voice called over the ship’s intercom system as the emergency lighting flickered to life, filling the chamber with a dim red glow. “We’ve got a problem. Can you come to the bridge?”
That wasn’t the most pleasant way to get woken up, but at least I woke up in the most beautiful company I could have hoped for. Sometime in the middle of our lovemaking, Tulip and I had found our way to one of the empty crew quarters. Turner’s call of alarm woke us both in the not-so-soft crew bed, Tulip curled up against me, our arms wrapped around each other.
She yawned cutely with a hint of fang as I rubbed my eyes. “No rest for heroes, yes?”
I let out a chuckle as I kissed Tulip on the forehead. “I guess not.”
It took us longer than I’m sure Turner wanted to get ourselves out of bed, cleaned up, and dressed. It took us far less time to race across the Orion from the crew quarters to the bridge. Turner was sitting at the engineering station, rubbing his chin as he looked over his screens.
Looking up as we ran in, he glanced up and grinned at us. “Sorry to disturb you, lovebirds.” Tulip and I both blushed a bit at that, making Turner’s grin broaden. “So, the good news is we aren’t going to die from the hyper drives exploding,” Turner said as we found him on the bridge. He stood there with his tablet in his hands and sweat on his brow.
“What’s the bad news, then?” I asked glancing at the control screen closest to me, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
“The Left Hand hit us with tracking paint,” the big man explained, thumbing at his display, that showed a 3D model of the ship with large discolored patches. “Well, it’s not really paint, more like a morphic metal film that bonded with our exterior hull, but that’s not important right now. It’s covered a good portion of the ship and the only way we can get rid of it is to either cloak like the Matriarchy or destroy this ship.” Turner grumbled as he ran a hand roughly through his hair. “At least without stopping at a station or dry dock.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t even know how I didn’t notice it before.”
“They must have done it when they hit us with the vibrational grapples,” Tulip said, her face serious. “That’s usually when it happens.” She sighed. “I should have checked. It’s my fault.” Tulip scratched at a feline ear in irritation, making me want to console her, but before I could, she continued on, “I’m assuming the tracking paint is active?”
Turner nodded. “Yes, it’s transmitting.”
“Does that mean they know where we are?” I asked, moving to the control screen and bringing up a scan of the area around our ship.
“Not while we’re in hyperspace,” Tulip explained, confirming what I saw on the scans, “but the second we drop out of it, they’ll know exactly where we are.”
“Okay, folks, let’s start brainstorming,” I said, rubbing my chin in thought as I mused over the problem. I somehow doubted my little targeting trick would work again. “We need options.”
“The Left Hand probably needs extensive repairs on her ship. She’ll likely have a loaner for now, something much faster than this ship,” Turner grumbled. “She’ll want to catch us and peel the flesh from our bones herself.”
“Is the tracking paint only on the ship?” I asked, peering at the tablet in his hand as an idea formed in my mind.
Turner pointed at the model of the ship, finger tracing the discolored regions on one side before spinning it to the other with a gesture. “Yep, as you can see, it’s all over the back third of the ship, but that’s it.”
Tulip put a hand on my shoulder, this time I think to soothe herself than me. “Where’re you going with this?”
“Well, I think we could use this to our advantage,” I said with a smile. “If we can make a stop somewhere, get off the ship, and then send it somewhere else, they’ll follow the ship and not us.”
“Until they catch the ship and find it’s empty,” Turner countered. “It won’t take them long to backtrack.”
“Not if the ship keeps jumping,” I parried. “There has to be a way to set it to keep making jumps on autopilot, right?” I looked to Tulip. If anyone knew how to set it up, it would be her.
Tulip’s eyes lit up. “That’s clever. I could set up a program where the ship just keeps hyper jumping. They’ll have a hard time tracking down each system it stops at. Plus, we’ll have the Matriarchy scattered throughout the galaxy playing cat and mouse with our ghost ship. I freaking love it.”
“Until the fuel runs out, anyway,” Turner said with a shrug.
He had a point, but it might not be a deal breaker. Looking to the demo man, I arched an eyebrow. “How long will it last?”
“With constant jumps like you�
�re talking about, I’d say we’d be lucky to get a week out of her.” He consulted his tablet. “More or less anyway. Do you need exact numbers?”
“No.” I waved off his comment as I puzzled over the new information. “Okay, so that would give us a week to get a new ship from wherever we stop, maybe more.” I smiled. “That seems like plenty of time.”
Tulip raised a hand to get our attention. “There is another option, one that doesn’t essentially scuttle our ship at all.”
I glanced at her and nodded. “I’m all ears. The more options we have on the table, the better choice we can make in the end.”
Tulip smiled thankfully and nodded. “How about we steal the very tech they’re using against us?” Now, that had me intrigued. “The Resistance has been trying to obtain the Matriarchy’s cloaking technology for months now. The intelligence reports they sent out even detail which solar systems have facilities involved either in the research of the systems or shipyards where they are installed. We’ve never been able to successfully pull off an infiltration or assault to get either a cloaking device or schematics before, but we didn’t have a dragon on our side then.”
“Steal the cloaking tech,” Turner said, much of his enthusiasm returning. “That’s just the kind of crazy I like to hear.”
“Plus, if we had their tech, I bet we could reverse engineer it, and either find a way to stop theirs from working or adjust our sensors to cut through it.” Tulip looked to the ceiling. “We could save countless lives, take away a huge advantage the Matriarchy has, and deliver the first major victory the Resistance has had in a long time.”
“I love when you talk like that.” Turner grinned. “You’d inspire a legion of men.”
“Or catwomen.” Tulip smirked.
The two of them kept talking about a cat army while I focused on the proposed mission. This was the kind of thing that could change the tides of the war. This cloaking tech wasn’t in the game, but I had already seen how the Matriarchy used it to get the jump on us. I could only imagine what kind of damage we could do if we could appear out of thin air and attack, and what we could protect if we could defeat their cloaks before they struck.
Star Conqueror: An Epic Space Adventure Page 7