In a single movement, she opened the last button and ran her hands up his bare chest and pushed the shoulders of his shirt off and loose. He braced himself with one hand, his lips never leaving her skin and shook the shirt off and haphazardly threw it into the dark. His hand free, he placed it on her stomach and ran his fingers under the hem of her shirt. His hand walked its way up until he was cupping her left breast over the cup of her bra. His thumb traced the line of soft skin under the edges of the cup. Her fingers started to work at the band of his pants from his hips to the button at the center of his stomach. He didn’t wait for her to finish and yanked off his pants.
He lifted one leg and then the other and straddled her over the bed. He reached down and started to pull the edge of her shirt up. She stopped her own explorations and lifted herself up on her elbows to allow the hem of her shirt to be pushed up until he exposed her bra, and then lifted her arms up to let her shirt follow his into the dark of the room. She cupped his jaw with her fingers and pressed kisses to his lips while his hands pressed lightly between the bed and her warm skin and worked at the clasp of her bra strap. The thing loosened, and it soon followed the shirts somewhere on the floor. He leaned down on his elbows and pressed his lips down the line of her collarbone. Yeva shivered, and she felt goosebumps rise on her skin.
He stopped at her shudder and stared down at her concerned. “Is this okay?”
“More than okay.” She reached down and undid the clasp of her own pants and wriggled out of them and her underwear at the same time.
She laid bare before him, and she was nervous, but he looked like he was seeing her again for the first time. At first they had been in a state of fevered rush to get at each other, but now he caressed her skin with a concerted gentleness. They were both bounty hunters, and they knew the worth of careful exploration.
He found the bundles of nerves that made her shudder, even the ones that weren’t obvious, and with every shiver or gasp, he would make sure he wasn’t hurting her, that she was still sure that it was what she wanted. His care, his consideration, his gentleness, it all made her heart feel full.
She responded in kind, finding the places on his body and mentally mapping them out. She wanted to know ever crease, wrinkle, and scar and because of the darkness, she allowed herself to see through her fingers, trailing the tips of her nails lightly over his skin.
She finally opened herself to him, and he entered her with ease, her body slick and willing. She was straddling him now and rocked in time with him. He brought her to orgasm in moments, and with stars in her eyes, and her body rigid and shaking from ecstasy, she held onto him like a lifeline. She felt him release himself in his own orgasm, and they collapsed into each other like twin stars going supernova.
Settled on the bed next to each other, she looked over at him as his heavy breathing slowed. He turned and looked back at her. Even in the dark he seemed to glow, and his expression was one of unfathomable compassion. She leaned over and kissed him. He returned it without the feral hunger from before. Now it was just light, and beautiful, and a moment shared between two humans in an embrace. It reminded her of her favorite nebula, the one that she had been parked in front of when she had found this bounty. She loved it.
And then Tobias surprised her, he pulled her into a tight embrace and pulled the blanket over them and buried under the blanket he said in her ear, ever so softly but with every ounce of sincerity, “I hope you’re in my life for a very long time.”
Tobias kissed her over and over, on every inch of her body that he could reach without letting go of her.
8
It took two more attempts at the maze before they were through it. The last wall was the first they had come across. An inscription with the words “Speak your truth” sat above them. There was no way they had gone through the whole maze in two weeks, but here they were back at the beginning. Or their first visit had been at the end. That felt like a better explanation.
“Back here again,” Tobias said. He pushed aside some of the loose vines covering the inscription. On either side of it were tiles with handprints. Handprints from an alien species. The hands had fingers that were far too long to be human.
Tobias pressed a hand to one of the tiles, and Yeva getting a sense of what he was trying to do repeated the action with the other tile. Nothing happened at first. The was a slight shake in the ground, but nothing monumental happened. Tobias glanced at Yeva and then flicked his eyes back and forth between her and the inscription.
“What’s your truth, Yeva?” He asked.
Yeva considered it and thought back to the past two weeks. The biggest truth to come out of this stay here was that she had forced herself into a state of isolation after royally screwing up her friend’s life. She had been so afraid of making connections with people, so afraid, and arrogant of her own effect on people that she had made sure to push people away. She had seen what would become of her if she continued as she had behaved. She had passed up good bounties for fear of creating connections with people, both good and bad.
“My truth… is that I love being around people.”
Tobias smiled. “My truth… is that I love you.”
She didn’t have a single second to digest that before the wall fell inwards, and they were dumped onto the floor in the middle of the maze. At the center, the base of the huge tree rose up, and the vines seemed to glow with and inner light. At the base of the tree, a single root was lifted up and wrapped around it was the artefact.
Yeva and Tobias picked themselves up, and after a quick glance at each other where Yeva was just beginning to realize what he had just said, they began the short trek to where the artefact lay. He was walking a little ahead of her, and she took a short jog so she was walking next to him and grasped his hand. He smiled at her, he wasn’t all that much taller than her, but he seemed large in her eyes. She remembered caressing his scars and marks and that feeling of heat filled her again.
They stopped, and Tobias cupped her chin with his hands and kissed her deeply. There were no more words between them, just a feeling in the pit of her stomach that Yeva didn’t know how to acknowledge. Then, hand-in-hand, they kept walking forwards until they were standing right in front of the artefact.
The artefact looked just like the picture Yeva had seen on the bounty information except that it glowed. It was a gaudy necklace, a showpiece, worthless in the scheme of things except for its sentimental value. None of the gems or crystals on it on it were individually worth anything. A long time ago when humankind was stuck on a resource deficient planet, they might have been worth something, but these days anyone could synthesize pure crystals and other precious materials from scrap metal.
“Why does this person want this thing anyway?” Yeva commented to herself.
Tobias shrugged. “It didn’t say. But to put that kind of price on something like this, it must be worth it to whoever wants it.”
“We should get out of here before this thing resets on us,” Yeva said after a moment of silence as they stared at the artefact. So much had gone into getting the thing, and now it seemed so insignificant to what had happened between them.
***
As they prepped the ship for a suicide jump, Yeva couldn’t shake the feeling of unease about Tobias declaring his love for her. She liked him, a lot. Yeva wouldn’t have gotten so intimate with him if she didn’t. But did she love him?
No, not with two weeks of knowing him. She was glad he was confident of how he felt, but she wasn’t so sure. She didn’t want to lead him on if she didn’t think she would feel the same. Yeva took a seat in the pilots seat and started the hyperdrive engine. Tobias took a seat in the copilot’s seat and watched her make calculations. He didn’t offer any help, and Yeva didn’t ask for it. Any pilot worth his or her salt knew how to do a suicide jump. It was a necessity in any emergency situation, a quick way to get off a planet. The only problem was the catastrophic burnout of the ship’s core. The core was the most expensive part of
the ship, and it was unlikely that anyone would have two on hand for situations like this. Yeva was lucky, and Tobias less so, that his ship had been able to give up it’s core to this effort.
She did a mental countdown in her head, and when it felt right, she yanked the lever. The Black Feather shook horribly as the hyperspace window opened up in the atmosphere, and the ship catapulted up through it. The G-forces pressed them into their seats, and the feeling of being compressed only lasted for a few minutes. The hyperspace window ejected the ship just outside the planet’s gravity well. The console started to scream about a dozen alarms all indicating the failure of the core. Yeva started shut down proceedings to let the engine cool. They would be a floating satellite until they could replace the core.
“Good job, have you done that before?” Tobias asked.
Yeva leaned back in her chair and sighed heavily. “Fortunately no, I just know my ship.” She checked one of the engine gauges and did another quick mental calculation. “Engine should be cool enough to replace the core in about an hour.”
The curvature of the planet Veritas filled the cockpit window and Yeva tried to content herself with the view.
“I don’t need an answer...” Tobias said suddenly. “I think I can be okay with an unrequited love.”
Yeva looked over at him and felt her heart clench. “I do like you, a lot.”
“I was always the type to have my heart on my sleeve. It was bad when I fed into my anger.”
“You’re not angry anymore?” She asked out of curiosity, glancing at him while she tapped a couple calculations into the console.
“Not as much as I used to be. If I had told that wall my truth the first day we were in there, I would have said, I am not defined by my anger, and I much prefer it that way. But two weeks of working through the maze with you, seeing how you work, getting close to you… I see something in you that I...love. Honestly.”
Yeva’s heart pounded ,and she felt the heat rising all over her.
“Like I said, I don’t need an answer. I’d like one, but if you aren’t certain or don’t feel the same. It’s okay. I’ll survive.” He laughed, but there was a sadness behind it.
“After two weeks? How can you be so certain? Are you sure it’s not infatuation?”
“Infatuation? Maybe. Love is just hormones after all.” He shrugged. “There’s something different about this though. I can’t explain it. But if you let me, I will fight for it. If not, then when we turn this bounty in, I hope you’ll at least consider being my friend.”
“Of course,” Yeva said without hesitation. “Friendship I can do, you’re smart, funny, you have the same interests, and you aren’t a slacker of a bounty hunter.”
“Thanks,” he laughed.
She smiled at him. “Plus, having a friend and companion means that I can take on large bounties.”
“True for me too.”
While the ship was cooling, Yeva called back her probes and uploaded all the data her passive scanners had gathered into the planetary database. There was a small credit reward for anyone submitting regular passive and active data on solar systems far and wide. She would have to figure out how much of what they had learned on Veritas would translate well into the database, and until then, she occupied herself with the next phase of this bounty.
Yeva pulled up the claim file on her armband screen and scrolled through the information. The two of them had gone through a lot of nonsense to get to this point. The bounty originator’s information was “hidden until verified receipt of item is received.” Hidden identity was a generally rare classification for people setting bounties unless there was something less than great about them. They would have to hit up the nearest guild hall and request a verification receipt and after verification was given that they did in fact have the item from the bounty. They could then send a photo and verified receipt to the originator who would provide a drop off location. The verification receipt would have a code for the originator to scan that would deposit the credits into their accounts in the percentages that they requested when delivery of the item was made.
She didn’t need to think about this stuff, but it helped to process something she was already familiar with than to think about the other things that nagged at her. Specifically the man scrolling through vids on the GalaxNet. He was looking at videos of the news generation of Deva-class ships.
“I’m sorry about your ship,” Yeva said. Breaking the relatively comfortable silence that had taken over.
“Sometimes in order for one door to open another has to close first.” He smiled up at her.
“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes.”
Tobias shrugged and grinned. “Doesn’t matter to me, I’m a bounty hunter, I do what I want.”
“I don’t think that’s right either.” Yeva laughed.
A timer on her armband went off, and she beckoned Tobias to follow her. “Help me put this core in.”
Together they yanked the small core out, it was blackened and the glasteel casing was cracked all the way through. As the particles began to decay without the shielding it would quickly become toxic, so Yeva had to throw it and the gloves she used to carry it into the airlock on the side of the ship and jettison them into space. Tobias put the new core in while she held onto the old one and then opened the interior airlock door to throw everything in. He closed the airlock and she pressed the quick release button. The ship rocked from the sudden decompression from the airlock, and Yeva fell into Tobias. He held on to her until she regained her footing, and she shyly thanked him before slipping into the cockpit to begin diagnostics and calibration for the new core.
Tobias joined her in the cockpit and wordlessly began mapping out the route for the nearest guild hall.
It would take most of the day to get to the nearest hall, so Yeva did what she had to on the ship’s computer and then went back into the kitchenette area to prepare food. Tobias followed after her a few minutes later and sat at the table watching her work. “Route is set whenever we are ready to head out.”
“Great,” Yeva said.
“Are you alright? Did I do something?”
“What? No. No, I’m fine. I’m just tired,” she said while looking down at the plates and mugs in front of her. She had just lied. The Veritas had worn off. He hadn’t done anything, but she felt like something was wrong. The fear of creating connections with people had reared its ugly head again. The excursion into the temple darkness had done more than show her faults, it had brought every fear to the surface, and now she was dealing with them one by one. And right now she was afraid of letting Tobias know just how much she cared. She may not love him yet, but she liked him so much that she wanted to keep learning more about him. She was afraid that his quick admission to how he felt about her would just as quickly be rescinded.
“Yeva.” Tobias was suddenly next to her. He turned her around and cupped her chin in his hands forcing her to look up at him. “What’s the matter?”
How did he know? What was she doing wrong that she was giving away her feelings. She couldn’t stop the tears from falling down her cheeks. Instead of speaking, she just wrapped her arms around him and hugged him. He held onto her, letting her release all the emotions she was holding onto. She had loved getting to know him over the past couple weeks. She’d had more fun on this bounty mission than she had on many others and having him there was a bright spot she never thought she’d see. Having that companionship was intoxicating, and she was so scared that now that they were off the planet that it would fall away. She mourned for what she assumed would happen when they dropped off the artefact and when they each had their money. She would probably never see him again.
He set up the bed for her and told her to rest, and he went into the cockpit to start the ship on its course for the nearest guild hall in the Vet system. When the ship fell into hyperspace, he crawled into the bed next to her and held onto her while she tried to let herself sleep. Instead of sleep, however, they talked.
Tobias finally got her, with a bit of prying, to tell him what was going on in her head so she spilled her guts and finally let herself be emotionally vulnerable in front of him. He didn’t laugh at her, or mock her, or do anything terrible. He just listened, and when the moment was right, reassured her that everything was going to be okay.
He kissed her with every reassurance until the tears on her face dried up and she was nestled so deeply into him that it felt like he was her whole world for the briefest of moments. She didn’t want it to end.
9
The grisly old woman poked a finger at her screen, looked between the two them, back at the screen and then down at the artefact. She placed her thumbprint on the screen and it beeped happily.
“Confirmed,” she said and handed Yeva a small data chip that held the verified receipt. There was a bounty claim kiosk just outside the guild hall, and as soon as the old woman handed the receipt to Yeva, she and Tobias ran to the kiosk to submit the chip and photo of the artefact.
It could take minutes or even days for a receipt to reach the claimant. Yeva had placed the artefact in one of the boxes she got her malva in. It would hopefully look innocuous enough to not draw attention to itself. Bounty hunting was a much less dangerous craft compared to the early days, but it was still possible for less that law-abiding people to get wind of easy theft opportunities. Both Yeva and Tobias didn’t have to put a lot of thought into keeping their find on the low-down. By the time they got back to Yeva’s ship, there was already a message waiting for them about a dropoff location. There was still no name attached to the claim, and that was starting to worry Yeva. There was nothing inherently shady about the artefact, both of them had looked it over, but it was just as it appeared to be, a handful of large crystals held together with molded gold. Simple.
A Bounty of Love (Love Between the Stars Book 1) Page 6