Cosmic Keeper

by Stella Cassy

  “Why? You brought it up first with your threats to bite and eat me,” she said in the same tone she had used to inquire about the vegetation on Moset. “What would happen to me? Would I be asteroid fodder? You’ve done that to someone, haven’t you? Tell me.”

  I adjusted my clothing and settled my face into the same mask I used with Neswove and many others during numerous negotiations. I folded my hands behind my head. Could she detect my unease? Could others? That would not do.

  “No, I haven’t had to yet, but I’ve seen it done,” I said in a tone that matched hers. “You would freeze unless we were near a warm star, then you would disintegrate.”

  “Freezing would be better. One day I’d come across you again in your missions.” She clasped her hands in front of her and shuddered. “A mummy.”

  “No.” I shook the image from my head.

  “A one woman show, with an unlimited run. Every actor’s dream...” She stared off behind me with a suspiciously wistful look. One I was sure she had used before in her entertainment profession. “I’ve never had one of those.”

  “Lara. I apologized. I will never utter the word in regard to you again.” I did not bother to hide my annoyance. She was deliberately provoking me. I was beginning to know her little ploys too well. I rubbed a hand over my face. “I don’t like to imagine you floating out there.”

  “You were nasty to me out there, yanking on that chain.”

  “That chain is worth more credit than Dashel’s annual salary. I want to be very nice to you now and for many solars and lunars to come.”

  Her gaze went over my shoulder and she gave me a tiny smile. With her back turned to the nutrition station, I moved up behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist. She pressed back against me, the fabric of the suit tight over her ass. Running my fingers along the smooth fabric, I unzipped it slowly, drawing a soft moan from her lips as I kissed her neck. As the fabric fell away from her shoulders, she leaned forward to remove her pants, pressing her ass against my cock, which stirred with anticipation.

  Turning around she trailed her hands up my thighs, smoothing them over my hips and chest to remove the upper part of my uniform. When her delicate fingers traced over my scales, a low rumble escaped my lips and I pulled her to me tightly, my talons digging into her hip bones. With a gasp, she hooked her arms around my neck, and I picked her up in one fluid motion, wrapping her legs around my waist. Kissing her deeply, I took her to the bed and flipped her onto her back, pinning her arms above her head.

  “No more talk of airlocks,” I breathed, deepening the kiss as my cock pressed against her entrance. “No more running from me.”

  She shuddered against me, a throaty moan leaving her lips as bent down, gently tugging a nipple into my mouth as I pushed into her. The nutrition dispenser beeped. “What about ... my food, sir?” Teasing her nipple with my tongue, I thrummed my finger lightly against her apex as I pumped in and out of her slowly. She closed her eyes while my finger flitted back and forth against her clit.

  Her feminine moans and throaty sounds filled my ears. By now, I was beginning to know exactly what she liked and how and when she liked it. Removing my other hand from her wrist, I leaned back and released her arms. She ran her fingers through my hair, along my wingtips. Her teeth grazed my chest and the tip of her tongue flitted around the scales on my chest and sides that sent shivers through me that lasted long after her tongue and teeth were gone.

  With a groan, I thrust my cock as deep as it would go inside her while teasing her sensitive nub with both my thumbs until she was arching into my hands and my cock. That glazed look donned her face. There would be no more talk of airlocks or mummies. No more flashing her little teeth at me.

  11

  Lara

  Kindred Spirit

  Chewing on my lip to control my smile, I walked with Lehar to upper deck of the recreation room to meet Tarion in what Lehar called the captain’s briefing room. It was located behind yet another dark gray indentation in the wall which everyone knew the location of except me. I hadn’t been back since Tarion flew me to the bottom.

  Before we got all the way to the door, I saw a red Drakon, as tall as Lehar, who I recognized easily from the video. He stood looking at the wraparound screens in the circular room. Dashel stood on his left talking with him.

  Standing to Tarion ’s right was her. Carissa. Oh God. She looked so freaking normal. I snuck a peek at Lehar, who was looking at me out of the corner of his eye suspiciously. I turned the wattage down on my smile a bit more.

  “Oh my god, she’s pregnant. You didn’t tell me,” I whispered. I yanked on his arm, bringing us to a stop. “And the shorter Drakon ...” She was young but she had on a black and gray outfit similar to the one I was wearing but better fitting. “You didn’t tell me about the smaller one either. Is she the niece you’re always talking about? Where are her parents? How old is Carissa?”

  The young one was taller me, but smaller by two feet than any of the others on the ship. The sides of her face. neck and hands seemed to be lighter shades of pink and red but most of her face was as pale as Carissa’s.

  “She is Tarion’s daughter, my young cousin,” Lehar said, “and honorary niece.”

  “What happened to her mother? How old is she?”

  “She’s a youngling of fifteen revolutions,” he said.

  A teen? I didn’t know any kids or anyone under eighteen, only in passing. “What did you say her name was? I never expected to actually meet her.”

  “Why did you think that? Her name is Matilda. You will be presented.” He resumed walking. “We’ll discuss it later. They are waiting for us.”

  Well, yeah, I certainly hoped I wasn’t just standing there like his puppy. No leash this time. Some of my excitement deflated. He had better not start acting funny, threatening to flip flop like he did after the meeting with those half-bunny warriors.

  “For me too?” I squeezed his arm.

  “Yes, Carissa has sent me a direct message about you.”

  I walked faster, almost overtaking Lehar. He shot me a look and pulled me back to his side. Jesus, would he get over his hang-ups? A flash of irritation at his haughty, ridiculous rules shot through me. He only seemed to care about his rules when someone was around.

  When we got to the doorway, Dashel made eye contact with me and smiled. “Hello. Our commander has finally arrived,” he said.

  He had never said my name. Did he know it? As long as he didn’t refer to me as the S word, I was okay with him.

  They greeted each other, grabbing their forearms briefly before smiling at each other.

  The teen wedged herself between them. “Uncle!” She ran up to Lehar and threw her arms around him while she stared at me. Her eyes were rounder than Tarion ’s and Lehar’s, with only a hint of an oval shape. She looked almost human with those clothes on. She didn’t have a tail. I hadn’t seen any Drakons her color, but I hadn’t seen many females.

  Lehar’s face broke out into a smile wider than I knew his lips were capable of. His eyes went from oval to round in a second. Both his arms went around the young Drakon girl.

  “Did you bring me something?” she asked.

  Lehar reached inside his uniform pocket and pulled out some kind of glittery stone attached to strands of copper and black wires.

  “A gimboble from…” Her red and pink wings fluttered behind her. She looked up at the ceiling. Her little round ears stuck out from her head then flattened again. “From Xyetri?”

  “Exactly.” Lehar hugged the girl again. “She knows her wares and planets, yes?” He nodded at Tarion and Carissa, who looked on with smiles. Tarion still looked mean when he was smiling but much more approachable until he caught me looking at him. His smile flatlined.

  Lehar was affectionate. I didn’t know why that was surprising. He touched me a lot for someone he had known for such a short time, but I hadn’t realized until that moment it was always in private, not out in the open and casual.

 
I crossed my arms over my chest. I didn’t care about all of that. Somehow, Carissa was going to help me get back where I belonged.

  “I thought it might be the black and silver ones I’m missing from my collection,” Matilda said. “You were on Nish.”

  Carissa looked directly at me with a calm little smile. “She has the collector’s knack, like all Drakon. Like Lehar and his shells.”

  “Shells,” I said softly and glanced at Lehar. What shells?

  “Yes,” she said. “They’re beautiful.”

  Lehar asked. “And why would your other gifts be from Nish, niece?”

  “I recognized your ship’s description on the channels over there,” the girl said.

  “I am sure they were not talking about me,” Lehar said. “Yes, I was there, but I did not see anything appropriate for a youngling.”

  “I told you to stay off the channels, Matilda,” Tarion said in a brusque tone with an indulgent slant of his lips. He couldn’t be that bad.

  “Sorry. Uncle Lehar, is the human your mate?” Her question was so matter of fact, as if the Hielsrane Drakon had women at their sides all the time. She gazed at me, her round eyes framed with those gorgeous lashes that her uncle and dad had. In comparison, Carissa and I had none at all.

  Mate. Carissa had married him.

  I willed myself not to blush or react at all, but I felt the burn of it in my face and neck. The males might not notice but Carissa probably would. How much could they know about women?

  Lehar darted a glance from me to the girl. His right wing ruffled my butt. He didn’t say a word.

  “Mattie, aren’t you on your way to see the hatchlings?” Carissa looked like she was trying not to smile. The teen darted down the hall with a look over her shoulder straight at me and a mischievous smile. There was something about the teen that made me grin, made me want to tag along. Dashel angled away, speaking to someone on the black square attached to his waist.

  We watched her go and I had to smile after her. I was looking forward to talking to her. What was it like for a teen Hielsrane? When she was out of sight, Tarion and Carissa angled my way. Tarion looked at me the way the other male aliens did except longer, like he was sizing me up. No welcome there or much curiosity. What was his problem with me?

  I stepped closer to Lehar. Why did I do that?. I felt like a teen, like Matilda, and Carissa was so calm. She stared at me the longest. She had to be as anxious as I was to talk in private but couldn’t show it in front of them. Her acting skills might be as good as mine or better. I might be able to get her a part in my next movie if I ever got another one after my director blacklisted me for disappearing. How else had she survived long enough to be about to give birth?

  “This is Lara. She joined me on Nish.” He glanced at me, then back at his cousin. “Tarion, Commander of Hielsrane and his mate, Carissa Maeberry.”

  “From Nish?” Tarion looked from Lehar to me, then to my neck. “I cannot wait to see what else you procured.”

  Carissa smiled, but there was no movement in Tarion’s face.

  “Lehar, let us strategize for our upcoming meeting with Coovoo.” Tarion broke off his scrutiny and turned to Lehar.

  “You will stay with Carissa?” Lehar asked.

  “Okay,” I said, as if I was going to tag along with him and his unfriendly cousin when Carissa and I had a lot of planning and strategizing to do. Anything I wanted to know about this planet, Carissa could tell me, but I doubted we would have much time to talk. I wanted to know everything about where she was living and when she had been abducted. From home, like I had been? She didn’t sound like she was from the West Coast. How long did it take to pick up their cadence and drop most of mine?

  Tarion gave me one last penetrating glance, then exchanged a look with Carissa. His mouth softened for a second, then he strode up the hall with Lehar and Dashel, talking on his device, and trotted to keep up with them.

  They had to know we were going to discuss escaping.

  I shook my head and laughed. My eyes burned a little while Carissa looked at me with a serene smile. Did pregnancy hormones make her so serene in this crazy situation? Maybe Tarion’s ship had other humans Lehar hadn’t bothered to mention.

  I didn’t know if she was going shake hands or offer me some alien tea with a half hug or some air kisses some of the people in my circle loved. She couldn’t possibly feel like I did. Tarion seemed as arrogant, if not more, than Lehar had when he first brought me on his ship.

  I hugged her. She didn’t pull away, patting my back. I released her before she thought I was as crazy as I felt. I didn’t hug people, especially not strangers. Thing was, she didn’t feel like a stranger. She was another human being and a woman, an automatic member of my inner circle while I was in this situation. Heck, we could be friends for life no matter where she lived on the planet, even if she lived in Australia or Antarctica.

  “I’m so happy to see you, meet you,” I said, finally. My cheeks were going to get premature wrinkles from smiling so hard. If Lehar hadn’t helped me escape, I never would have met her.

  She let out an open mouth laugh and caught both my hands. We swung our arms as if we were best friends who hadn’t seen each other in years, now that the awkward reunion was out of the way.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of my own kind, too,” she said with her odd little inflections similar to Tarion and Lehar. That was a weird way to phrase it, too, but hanging around aliens exclusively had to have an effect on more than your language.

  “I have so many questions for you. I’ll try not to overwhelm you with them,” I said. I needed to warm up to the main one: how were we going to get ourselves back home?

  “We’ll be here for days,” she said. She went to the vending machine and brought back two hydration packs. “Which part of Earth are you from?”

  “I’m an L.A. girl, an actress. The movies.” Her expression didn’t change. “Lara Abernathy.” Nothing.

  “My mother.” She bowed her head, tapping her fingers against her hydration pack. “She used to talk about movies and plays.”

  Maybe she had that transference thing going on, too. Something strange was definitely going on with me too. I’d had sex with an alien of my own free will and liked it. A lot. “You will acclimate,” Lehar had said. Was that what it was? I was getting used to being off planet. Off planet? Jesus, I was talking like him. No wonder Carissa sounded strange. She was hugely pregnant and had been with top dog Hielsrane for at least seven months.

  His cousin had knocked her up. She looked like she could go into labor at any moment and was happy about it. How was I going to work around all that?

  I pressed my fingers into my flat stomach. I hadn’t thought about pregnancy.

  She didn’t have a collar on like me, like a pampered pet. Like my neighbor’s weird looking Komondor who had scared the bejesus out of me and my gardener the first time I saw him. What was that weird looking mutt doing? I was going to buy him an entire case of treats when I got back.

  “Lehar will hardly tell me anything about you,” I said.

  “Lara, you can ask me anything, but we must go and relax in a rehydration pool.” She caught my hand. “Have you tried them?”

  “No. I’ve never noticed them. Where are they?” How could she care about any of those things when we were two women stuck in space among aliens? Aliens.

  “There’s a rehydration pool on all four levels of our ship, but there should be at least one on every other here. Computer, locate the nearest rehydration tub.”

  “Rehydration cubicle 003 is located on level three in section 3330.”

  I patted my big ponytail, which had a respectable amount of curl and sheen after too many trial-and-error sessions with the rehydrates in Lehar’s room. I didn’t want to mess that up for a few more days.

  We went past the briefing room, all the way to end of the hall, which appeared to be a dead end. As we neared the end, I noticed that the black floor-to-ceiling four-foot wide
bands on each side were hallways. I had noticed them throughout the ship, but I thought they were part of the wall design. The floor was black too. The further we walked down the dim hallway, the brighter the lights got. At the end of the space was a rectangular pool made of the same transparent material as my shower wall and filled with pale green liquid.

  “Good, no one is around.” She slid open a door on the left wall. The room had the same holes in the walls, ceiling, and floor as the shower in my room. She took off all her clothes and left them in a pile on the floor and I did too. Faint scars, old, covered her arms and back.

  The internet-sized number of questions threatening to burst out of my mouth and my embarrassment at being completely naked evaporated. Who did that to her? Tarion?

  At the pool, I waited for her to step up and hoist herself in while I stood behind her in case she toppled over. She went into an immediate doggy paddle in what appeared to be close to five feet of water.

  I stepped down into the cool liquid, which was a warmer temperature than my lukewarm showers. The liquid was twice as heavy as water too. I sank to the bottom and stood. The liquid reached up to my neck.

  She dipped her whole head and came up, then swiped a hand across her face. As if she had read my mind, she said, “I got those marks before I met Tarion.”

  “Oh, okay.” I blew out a breath. “What is in this green water?” I wished it was at least blue or clear.

  “Some special water from their planet filled with what’s supposed to be regenerative minerals according to our healer. It’s completely sterile and helps keep Drakon skin supple, and it does wonders for mine too. The baby settles down as soon as I step into one. I might spend the rest of my pregnancy in one of these, hells, give birth.”

  I dipped my face but not my head. A strand that had come loose at the back floated near my ear. I wrung it out and tucked it back up in my ponytail.