by Roxie Ray
Two left. And if I knew anything about how space bikers thought – which was to say, slowly – this fight was practically already over.
The pair of Xehrulians charged into the stall side by side without hesitation.
And immediately got stuck.
The massive muscles in their arms and shoulders bulged and flexed against the steel sides of the stall, actually managing to slightly dent them. They strained and groaned and pushed against each other, but it was no use – they wouldn't budge. Their eyes rolled and their faces contorted comically, making them irresistible targets.
I stepped forward and swiftly punched each one out in turn... first Morgo, then Hragha. Their bodies slumped together and I gingerly made my way over them and out of the stall, wincing at the unpleasant feel of their skin against mine. They were probably riddled with diseases and microscopic vermin.
Still, I had prevailed, and hopefully, they had gotten the message that it was unwise to trifle with me.
“That was one hell of a display,” Korkos said. “Four of 'em, and you walk away without a scratch. Impressive.”
“Actually,” I said mildly, gingerly touching an area of my ribs with my index finger, “I believe one of them got a solid punch in. I'd like to go to the infirmary at once, please.”
“Hey, sure, whatever you say,” Korkos agreed quickly, leading me out of the shower room. “We'll grab your clothes an' get you there in a jiffy, no problem at all.”
I nodded, following him. It was time to pay a visit to Paige.
12
Paige
“So I found some pretty interesting things packed along with the shipment of medical supplies. Mini-transmitters. A few packages of high-quality rax. Couple bottles of Xehrulian ale. Some holo-porn. A few hundred rulas. Oh, and these,” I added, gesturing toward a short pile of wicked-looking knives that were small enough to be easily concealed. “I'm betting once they've found their way into the right hands – or rather, the wrong ones – I'll be seeing a lot more stabbing injuries come through here, so thanks for that.”
Surge flashed me that devilish grin, the one that made it impossible for me to stay mad at him. Korkos had dropped him off a few minutes earlier, saying he'd been involved in a fight in the showers. From the look of him, though, there wasn't a mark on him.
Not that I wasn't tempted to examine him thoroughly – to slide my hands over every inch of that sculpted body of his – just to be on the safe side.
“I imagine that was quite a shock for you,” he admitted. “But you've been hanging with the Sives long enough to know how this works. I need to keep them happy and well-paid, which makes bringing these items in a necessity. Arranging to have them included with the clinical supplies seemed like the best way, especially with you working here.”
“Still, it would have been nice if you'd told me in advance,” I pointed out. “What if Lozar had been here when I opened it? How would I have explained that?”
“From what I've heard, Lozar is so high on blood and rax all the time that he wouldn't notice if you smuggled in an entire star cruiser.”
“Yeah, that's probably true,” I sighed. “I just... wish you'd keep me in the loop a little more, that's all. When you spring things on me like this, it makes me feel like maybe you don't trust me.”
“It is because I place so much trust in your cleverness and resourcefulness that I felt confident you would handle the situation if needed. You wouldn't have been chosen as my contact if you weren't capable of thinking your way out of emergencies when required to do so.”
“I guess I can appreciate that.” I tried to keep the uncertainty out of my voice. The idea that he thought so highly of me was an appealing one, and I was tempted to cling to it. “To tell the truth, I'm glad you found a reason to come here today. Examining those dead prisoners is creepy work. And having you around makes me feel...”
What? Calmer? Safer? Or something more? How much was I prepared to tell him about how he made me feel, when my own emotions didn't even fully make sense to me?
All I knew for sure was that whenever I was near him, I didn't feel like I was in control of myself. Everything inside me insisted that I needed to be closer to him, to touch him, to find new reasons to press my lips and body against his.
“...better,” I finished.
“I enjoy your company as well. It has made this mission... easier than most. In some ways, at least,” Surge added, scowling with frustration at the scrap of paper where I'd recorded the details of the most recent deaths and birth dates. “If only I could make any sense of these damnable star signs, or their significance to Karaak. But I'm not an astronomer or a scholar. I’m just a killer.”
I put my hand on his shoulder, feeling the rock-hard muscles beneath his prison uniform. “Hey, that's not true. There's a lot more to you than just taking lives. I mean, look at your current mission... if you succeed, it'll mean the people trapped in here won't be subjected to Karaak's torture and abuse anymore. You'll be a hero for helping them. And I'll bet all that other stuff you've done before made things better for a lot of people, too.”
He gave me a tight smile that didn't reach his eyes. “It's kind of you to say such things.”
“I wouldn't say them if I didn't mean them. You have the strength and intelligence to actually do important things. Not like me. I'm just one more weak human slave, stuck out here in space.”
“Now you are the one who's selling themselves short,” he said with a smirk. “Not many people in your position would be willing or able to rise to the challenges I've presented to you. On your own world, you must have commanded great respect as a healer.”
I snorted derisively. “Hardly. Coming from the lower sector like I did, I was never able to rise above the rank of nurse, no matter how hard I worked or studied.”
“Yes, I've heard that life can be immensely difficult on Earth for those who are born into the lower sectors.” Surge's voice was tinged with sympathy. I'd never heard his tone sound so soft and caring since we'd met... he was halting, uncertain, as though he'd never shown this level of genuine concern for anyone before and wasn't quite sure how to now. “Did you have a family to rely on, at least?”
“Not really. My mom died while having me, and my dad left when I was a little kid... just went out one day saying he had 'an errand to run,' and never came back.”
Surge's lip curled into a snarl. “He knowingly abandoned his child? What kind of monster would do something like that?”
I shrugged. “I guess I should be angry about it, but I'm not. It happens a lot where I come from. Some people in the lower sectors can't handle being parents. They're already working multiple jobs just to get by, there's not enough food or money to go around, they can't take the pressure or the shame of not being able to provide for their kids, so one day they just... leave.
“When I was growing up, a lot of us kids were left to fend for ourselves. The neighbors helped out where they could, but they had their own families, their own problems. So we scavenged what we could to survive, and watched each other's backs as much as possible, until we were all old enough to get real jobs and support ourselves. It was a rough life, but looking back, I suppose I still had it better than some others.”
“So we were both left alone as children,” he mused, stroking his chin. I admired his impressive jawline, the fierce intelligence gleaming in his eyes like a knife in the moonlight.
“Yeah, I guess we were.” I realized that my hand was still on his shoulder, kneading it tenderly. I wanted to close the distance between us, to kiss him and ride this wave of passion wherever it would take us. And from the look in his eyes, he felt the same.
How long would we keep playing games? How long could both of us ignore our desire for each other in the name of the “mission?”
I didn't know, but the tension was threatening to tear me apart.
“What made you decide to become a healer?” he asked, as though trying to break the spell hanging in the air between us
.
“Growing up, whenever one of my friends hurt themselves – usually scrounging around junk yards and scrap piles for supplies – I had a knack for dressing their wounds so they wouldn't get infected. I liked being able to take their pain away, and the way that they looked at me afterward... the relief and gratitude I saw in their faces, you know? It made me feel like I kind of had a family after all, even if we weren't really related.
“I figured it'd be nice to spend the rest of my life seeing that same expression on the faces of my patients, especially the ones from the upper classes. I had this idea that I could make them look at me with something other than pity or scorn, like they had when I was a kid. That if I made them feel better, they'd really notice me.”
Surge tilted his head, curious. “And did it work?”
“Hardly. Half of them treated me like a slave who should have been grateful for the chance to treat them, and the other half didn't even notice me at all, like I was just another piece of furniture in the doctor's office.”
“Did the physicians, at least, show you the respect you deserved?”
I chuckled bitterly. “Yeah, sure. When they weren't chasing me around the examining table, trying to cop a feel.”
Surge's expression darkened again, and I could feel him tensing up, bristling. I couldn't help but notice how protective he'd become toward me, and I found it incredibly sweet. I resisted the urge to tell him, though – I didn't want him to think I was making fun of him, or risk him stopping.
Instead, I looked down at the page I'd given him with the notes about the dead inmates' birth dates. “You know, it's funny, all this stuff. When I was a child, I used to look up into the night sky, memorizing the constellations and wondering about what was up in space. But now that I'm actually out here, all the stars and their formations are so different from what I'm used to.”
“I must admit,” he replied, “I did the same thing when I was young. Except that I was wondering about my parents... where they were, what had happened to them. I always assumed that they were brave warriors of Valkred who had been killed by enemies of the empire. When I got older, I made many inquiries, but never got any satisfying answers.”
He paused, and then said, “Sometimes, I wonder if my superiors were truly ignorant of my parents' identities and their fates, or if they simply chose to withhold that information from me. To keep me restless and angry, keep me on edge so I would be a better killer for them.”
His words hit my heart like a series of arrows. Ever since I'd been brought to Karcerikus, I'd felt sorry for myself – I'd seen myself as a victim of circumstance, my whole life stolen out from under me and shaped by uncaring elements that were far beyond my control. There were many times when I'd wished I had been born on another planet, so everything around me wouldn't seem so alien and I might have had a chance at a life among the stars as a free person instead of a slave.
But here was Surge, who had been born out here – and who still seemed to have suffered a lot of the same things I had. A life of loneliness, without parents or any real family. A life of doing whatever it took to survive in an uncaring universe. A life of blindly serving his empire and risking his neck based on the decisions of people high above him, who sent him into darkness and danger without a thought for how it might affect him.
It was funny, in a way. I'd spent most of my life on Earth, yet I had never found anyone I felt I could relate to on a real level... and now that I finally had, he was a space vampire, an intergalactic spy from a planet on the other side of the cosmos.
It wasn't the direction I'd seen my life going in when I lived on my homeworld. Yet in many ways, it was so much better. Even though I'd only known Surge for a couple of days, somehow, I couldn't imagine my life without his strong, comforting, protective presence. I felt like I'd known him for years.
And looking into his deep green eyes, I sensed that he felt the same about me. Or was that just wishful thinking on my part?
Only one way to find out, I decided.
I put my other hand on the side of his face, stroking it gently and closing the space between us until our noses were inches apart. The air around us seemed to pulse and radiate.
“We should not do this,” he murmured. “No matter how much we want to.”
From his tone, it sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than me.
“We have to,” I countered.
“No – my mission... my duty to Valkred... I cannot allow myself to be distracted, to indulge in romantic notions that might jeopardize my assignment...”
“Stop,” I said firmly. “Maybe this mission will succeed and everything will turn out all right. Or maybe it won't, and we'll both end up dead, or worse. We have no way of knowing for sure, except to trust in each other and do our best. But the one thing we do know is that we both feel the same way: We want this. We need to know how it'll feel to give in and act on these urges. And we have to act on that, now, while we still have a chance. The longer we wait – the more tension we allow to build up between us – the more we really will be distracted. And besides, we've both had our share of loneliness in our lives. We both deserve more. So let's do it, Surge. Let's share this at least once, while we can.”
He stared at me longingly, the space between us growing heavier with lust. I could tell he wanted to bridge that gap, but it was as though something had turned him to stone.
“Aren't you going to tell me I should call you Hakkas?” I teased.
He shook his head solemnly. “No. As it happens, I... quite enjoy the way my real name sounds when you say it.”
Then suddenly we were kissing, holding onto each other so tightly that I almost couldn't breathe. His rough, powerful hands were restlessly sliding over my neck, back, and buttocks, as though he couldn't decide which part of me he wanted to explore first. Finally, he settled on my hair, his fingers running through it and pressing the back of my head so he could kiss me even more deeply.
I loved feeling the raw strength of his perfectly chiseled body against mine. I'd never felt so completely embraced in my life – by someone who I knew would fight for me and protect me to his last breath, no matter what. And he'd promised to take me away from this hellish prison, to a beautiful faraway place... a land of night and mystery, of castles and warriors and freedom, where I would finally live in comfort and not have to be alone anymore.
Nothing in the world – in any of the worlds in the galaxy – could possibly have been sexier than that.
Surge planted a series of kisses down the side of my neck, his fangs gently teasing my skin. For a brief moment, I thought he might bite me, drink my blood... maybe there was a part of me that even wanted him to. I wanted to be his on every level. For all I knew, I might die in the coming days. I had nothing to lose.
But instead, he held back, undoing the fasteners on the front of my prison jumpsuit and sliding it off my shoulders so he could caress my skin with his lips. The tip of his tongue left a vague tingling sensation, pins and needles dancing across my exposed flesh. I wondered if that was brought on by a chemical in his saliva, a built-in form of anesthetic so those he drank from wouldn't fight or struggle, the way mosquitos numbed the skin before puncturing it and consuming blood.
Then his mouth lowered to my right nipple, and when he playfully pinched it between his sharp teeth, all of my thoughts were blown away like dandelion fluff in a summer breeze – replaced with nothing but pure golden ecstasy.
He unfastened the rest of my coveralls, and I shucked them off, kicking them away into a corner of the exam room along with my boots. Then I was standing before him, naked, loving the way his emerald eyes traveled the length of my body.
Surge lifted me in his arms as though I were weightless, placing me on the examining table and spreading my legs apart.
His hunger for me was so strong that I could feel it coming off him, like waves of intense heat.
He positioned himself between my knees, lightly stroking my inner thighs and the lip
s of my pussy until I was so lightheaded, I thought I might faint. I was so wet for him that I could feel the droplets traveling down my skin like raindrops on a car's windshield.
Then he lowered his head and began to kiss my clit, slowly and sensually, tracing rings around it with his tongue. My fingernails sank into the thin mattress of the exam table, and I arched my neck, gasping sharply. I never knew I could experience this level of intense pleasure. It was almost more than I could bear.
As he licked me, he slid one of his cool fingers inside of me, finding my G-spot and pressing on it. I could hear my own pulse in my ears like a tsunami. Unstoppable, a relentless force of nature that threatened to rush in and topple everything inside me in seconds. The pressure inside me was building steadily, until it seemed like I'd explode.
I gripped the back of his head fiercely, holding his mouth against me, feeling like I might die if he stopped. But after a few more strokes of his tongue, he withdrew, swiftly undoing the latches at the crotch of his uniform. His long, pale, beautiful cock emerged immediately, like an animal that had been caged for far too long.
It extended toward me, throbbing and quivering, a thin purple ridge ringing the tip. The ridge expanded and contracted, and I imagined how it would feel inside me.
As it turned out, I didn't have to rely on my imagination for very long.
He moved forward until he was directly over me, his cold breath tickling my nose as his eyes burned into mine. Then, with a sudden thrust, he was in me – his shaft plunging inside me up to the hilt, drawing a hoarse cry of pleasure from deep in my throat. I grabbed the pillow from under my head and bit into it so the sound wouldn't travel into the next room and wake Lozar from his drugged stupor.