by Presley Hall
I try not to smile. “I will,” I say gravely. “I promise that.”
We spend the next day gathering everything we can think of that we might need.
First aid is paramount, since we won’t have most of the services of the med bay available to us once we shut down the artificial intelligence. We also make sure we have weapons available, as well as food and water.
I go over the controls in the cockpit with Harper, trying to give her a crash course in flying. And that night we lie in bed after sex, her wrapped in my arms as we both catch our breath, and I try to savor the moment.
I don’t know how many nights like this we’ll have left, although I hope it’s a lifetime. And I can’t think of how to find the words to tell her how I feel, despite how little time I might have left to say it. So instead of speaking at all, I hold her close to me, memorizing the sensation of her soft, warm body curled against me, and breathe in the scent of her as her hair brushes my face.
We’re lying like that, on the edge of sleep, when the AI glitches again.
Although I knew it was probably coming, I can’t help the sinking feeling in my stomach as the ship goes dark and the gravity in the room fails. I hold on to Harper tightly, waiting for the gravity to return, and I hear her whisper softly in the dark.
“Goodbye, Molly.”
Her voice is sad, almost heartbroken, and it makes something clench deep in my chest to hear it. I’ve never loved her more than in that moment, knowing that she’s capable of so much tenderness. I adore the warrior side of my Irisa, but I love the softer side too.
And I’ve never been more grateful that she’s the one who is meant to be my mate.
“We have to be ready to go,” I tell Harper softly in the darkness. “The moment the power comes back on. We don’t have a second to waste.”
She nods, and I cling to her in mid-air as we wait.
The minute the gravity returns and we fall back onto the bed, we scramble up. We yank on our clothes as the lights come on, and I feel the ship tilt and drift, changing course as the AI redirects us once again.
“Run!” I shout at Harper. We burst out of the door and into the hallway, turning sharply to the right.
“Intruders detected. Intruders detected,” the AI blares out, its voice now deep and angry.
As we feared, it’s an antagonistic version of the program again. But this time, we’re ready for it. Yesterday, Harper and I plotted a course, braced open the doors, and laid out the weapons we might need. Now, as we run down the hallway toward the room where the main console is, we’re ready for it. We need to go deep into the ship, back to where Harper fell, but I have faith that we’ll make it.
And if we don’t… it won’t be because we didn’t do everything we could to get there.
I can hear beeping, and I know the AI will send out robots again, if there are any left. But for now, we just run. We grab weapons as we go, racing for our lives as I keep a sharp lookout, my head on a swivel as we make our way deeper and deeper into the ship.
We skid to a stop as we reach the control room, walking carefully along the skyway ledge toward the central tower where we found the console.
“Let me go down,” I tell Harper. “If you fall again… I can’t risk you! Let me do it.”
But my stubborn mate shakes her head.
“No,” she tells me firmly. “I’m smaller and more agile than you are. And Molly repeated the pattern to me a dozen times. I know it by heart. If I follow it correctly, the AI won’t be able to fight it off as quickly as it did last time, and we can actually shut it down. But it has to be in the right order.” She leans up on her tiptoes and grabs my face, pulling my mouth down to hers as she kisses me, hard and fast. “I’ll be careful, Malav. I promise. Just make sure nothing else gets to me. Whatever the AI sends, kill it. And I’ll shut it down.”
I press my forehead against hers. I love you, Harper. The words are on the tip of my tongue, trying to escape, but I can’t say it yet. Not here—but what if there’s never another chance?
I can’t believe that. I won’t.
And I don’t have time to say anything else, because Harper is pulling away from me, gingerly climbing down toward the panel of switches.
As if the AI knows what we’re doing, I hear a buzzing noise and then a series of beeps, and I see two robots, then three, then five come through the doorway, blasters aimed at me. I duck and swivel, shooting at them as Harper scurries down as quickly as she can.
“Just focus on them!” she shouts. “I’ve got this!”
I have to trust her. In battle, I have to believe that each of the men I fight with knows their job, knows their enemy—that they will get through the fight on their own. We have each other’s backs, but we can’t fight each other’s battles. And this is the same. I have to trust that when it’s over, Harper and I will both make it through. I can’t watch her and fight at the same time.
And I’ve fought worse. I take down the robots until they stop coming, and I hear the frantic noises of the AI behind me, the lights dimming and flickering as it tries to fight off Harper’s efforts to shut it down.
But Molly told her the truth. And Harper memorized the pattern as well as she told me that she did.
Just as I send the last robot flying off of the skyway, I hear the dull whir of something shutting down, and then Harper’s voice calls up to me.
“I did it, Malav! It’s off! The ship is under our control!”
21
Harper
My heart pounds as I flip the switches, my pulse beating in my throat so fast that I feel as if I might choke on it.
I’m barely hanging onto the ledge, and if the AI starts to try to shake me off like it did before, I have no idea if I’ll be able to stop myself from falling just like last time. But I don’t stop flipping the switches, whispering the order that Molly drilled into me as I hit each one, ignoring every screech and flicker of the program as I methodically shut it down.
When the lights dim and I hear the sound of it shutting down, I feel my pulse slow just a little. I gasp with relief, leaning my head against the cool metal of the console as I call out to Malav that we did it, that the AI is shut down.
The ship is ours now.
“Grab my hand!” Malav calls out. “I’ve got you.”
I reach out, feeling nauseated as I grip his hand and let go of the ledge. For a moment I’m swinging in blackness, and I remember the terrifying feeling of falling into the void, the floor rushing up to meet me. Cold terror grips me, and for a moment, I think I’m going to throw up. But then the narrow skyway is under my feet, hard and solid, and Malav’s arms are around me.
“My love,” he whispers. “My iqha.”
Before I can say anything, he bends down and kisses me fiercely, his hands hard on my waist as he pulls me against him. I can feel the depth of emotion in him, the burning need, and my own body answers to it. I wrap my arms around his neck, pressing myself against him as my lips part, his tongue plunging into my mouth as he kisses me like he can never get enough of me.
He kisses me again and again, and I want to stay here forever in his arms, the pleasure of his touch radiating through me.
But this thing isn’t over yet.
“We’ve got to get up to the cockpit,” Malav says, regretfully pulling away from me. “We need to make sure the course is set for Kalix.”
We make our way back up, still in a hurry, but without the fear that came before. There are no robots chasing us now, no AI trying to kill us. The ship is in our hands, and although that’s frightening in its own way, it’s at least in our control.
Once in the cockpit, Malav deftly changes our course back to Kalix, and to my relief, he tells me that we should have plenty of fuel to make it there. Now it’s a matter of being able to land the ship together. Every time I think about it, my stomach clenches with fear—I’ve never even liked being a passenger in an airplane, much less tried to help pilot a spacecraft.
But I have to d
o it.
There’s been many times in my life where I’ve been faced with things that are hard, or that I wasn’t sure I could do, but that I had to figure out anyway. This is just another of those things, I tell myself. I have no choice but to do it, so I will. And I have not only myself to think about now, but Malav.
And I have him here to help me. I’m not alone anymore.
It will take us four days to get to Kalix. Over the next few, our entire focus is on piloting the ship. Malav teaches me everything he can about the controls, about how to fly it, about everything that can go wrong.
I’m determined to learn it—more than I ever have been about anything. It’s not just my life that’s at stake; Malav’s life is in my hands too.
I think back to that first night after the fight in the arena, when Malav desperately needed me to give him the antidote. I’d never done that either. I’d never prepared a shot or given anyone an injection. But Malav’s life depended on it.
And back then, he was just an acquaintance, someone I barely knew. Just a man in need of my help.
Now he’s my Irisa. My mate… my love. He’s everything to me.
I won’t let him die. I won’t let our future be lost. That’s all that matters now—that we make it safely to Kalix. Everything that comes after that—we’ll figure it out.
All thoughts of going back to Earth are behind me now. Revenge seems pointless. What happened can’t be changed. And I wouldn’t want to change it now, not even if I could. Because regardless of how terrible it was to be abducted by the Orkun, regardless of the fear and pain, it brought me to Malav. It showed me a love I never knew existed. It brought me to a future I could never have imagined.
I run through the simulations doggedly, over and over, bending myself to it with a focus that I haven’t had since graduate school—hell, maybe not even then. That wasn’t life and death, but this is. It’s the biggest test of my life.
But if there’s one thing I’ve always been good at, it’s passing tests.
Malav is the one who has to stop me, finally, after another of countless simulations. I’m ready to go again, gearing up to run through all the steps, when he spins my chair around and pulls me out of it, lifting me into his arms.
He kisses me before I can protest, his hands sliding down to my waist and pulling me against him as his lips move over mine. And it dawns on me then: if these are our last hours, I don’t want to spend them running through a simulation over and over.
If I don’t know how to do my part in our landing by now, I’m not going to. And I want these last few hours before we reach Kalix to be with Malav, soaking up every last moment we have together, celebrating the love that we’ve found in each other.
We’ve fallen into bed almost every night for the last three days too exhausted from worry and stress and practice to do anything except sleep. And I want the memory of his hands and body and lips on mine to be fresh in my mind, if the worst happens tomorrow.
So I let him pick me up and carry me to our quarters.
His strong arms wrap around me as I bury my face in his neck, breathing in the sweet almond scent of his skin and the salt of his sweat.
The smell of it makes my blood speed up in my veins immediately. It reminds me of every moment between him pinning me up against the wall of the ship as we left Monri and now, every kiss and touch and fight, every moment spent trying to escape the inevitability of the chemistry between us, and the wondrous, blinding pleasure of when we finally gave in.
The door slides shut behind us as we enter our quarters, and he lays me down on the bed as he undoes his loincloth with the flick of a finger.
Every inch of his body is on full display, and my hungry gaze devours it all. He’s half-hard already, his cock thickening as he looks at me lying here. Then he crawls onto the bed and leans over me, reaching out to brush my hair away from my face.
I think he’s going to kiss me, but what he does next is unexpected. As he reaches down to undo the knot that holds my shirt together, he kisses my forehead gently, then the bridge of my nose, then the tip of it. As he unwinds the fabric of my shirt, leaving my breasts bare to the cool air, he kisses each cheekbone, the hollow below, and then the tip of my nose again, before his hand slides against my jaw and holds my face still as he kisses my lips at last, his mouth brushing softly over my mine.
It’s not a kiss of passion or possession, but a kiss of soft, sweet desire.
It’s the way a man in love kisses, or at least how I always imagined one would. His lips brush over mine again and again, softly, and even when my lips part in a soft gasp of pleasure, his tongue doesn’t thrust into my mouth as I expect it to.
Instead, he slides his hands down over my arms, moving down my body as he kisses along my collarbone, his tongue flicking out to taste the hollow of it. He moves lower, cupping my breasts delicately in his hands as he gently kisses the curve of each one.
His tongue drags slowly over my hard nipples until I gasp and tangle my fingers in his hair, my body beginning to squirm under his infinitely gentle touch.
Malav keeps going, those same gentle kisses feathering over my ribcage and stomach, down to my abdomen, until I’m nearly panting with pent-up desire. My skin feels like it’s on fire by the time he reaches the waist of my pants and begins to drag them down over my hips.
He kisses my hipbones and the inside of my thighs, his fingers dragging delicately over every part of me before he spreads my legs wider apart and runs one finger down the center of me. A throaty groan rumbles in his chest as he feels how very wet I am.
I moan at the touch, lifting my hips, begging him for more. I want to feel his fingers sink into me, want him to spread me apart, to drive me over the edge with lips and tongue.
But he’s not done teasing me. Not done tasting me.
And even as I want to scream with frustration, I’ve never been more aroused in my life. My entire body is alive with sensation, my skin hot with it, and I feel myself grow wetter still as he trails his fingers over my outer folds, his tongue gently tracing my clit until the insides of my thighs are slick with my own desire.
“Gods, I love how you taste,” he groans as he slides his tongue over me again, and I shudder at both his touch and the words,.
“Please, Malav,” I whimper, my hips twitching under him as he flicks his tongue against me once more. “Please…”
He looks up at me, his eyes nearly black, wicked and dark with desire. “What do you want?”
“Please make me come,” I gasp, and then I throw my head back as he gives me exactly what I need.
His mouth presses against me as he begins to move his tongue in the ways he knows I like. Two fingers tease me as he swirls his tongue around my clit, sucking it into his mouth as he thrusts his fingers into me, moving them slowly as my hips arch upward against his face.
“Fuck!” I gasp. I’m clawing at the sheets, my eyes closed and head thrown back as he devours me.
I’ve never known pleasure like this, so intense that I can barely think. I couldn’t form words if I had to, and I feel my muscles begin to tremble as he plays me like a finely tuned instrument, every touch and lick and caress driving me toward the edge.
It hits me like a wave, crashing over me, drowning me in pleasure as he keeps going. His soft, warm tongue caresses me over and over as his fingers move inside of me in the perfect rhythm.
The first orgasm blends into the second as he keeps going, and then I grasp his horns without thinking, tugging him upward.
His eyes are black as he moves up my body, a delicious groan spilling from him as I tighten my grip.
I stare at him, realizing suddenly what caused that response. I let go… and then trail my fingers over the curve of his horns and watch with amazement as he shudders, his eyes closing as he moans again.
“Does that feel good?” I whisper, staring up at him.
“Yes,” he grunts, and I feel his cock pulsing between my thighs, rock hard against me. The swollen tip of
him slides between my lips, on the verge of entering me. “It’s… very intimate,” he manages, gasping again as I run my fingers over his horns once more.
He reaches down to slide himself inside of me, but I put a hand on his chest.
“Not yet,” I whisper, and he opens his eyes, looking down at me with a desperate need.
“Harper,” he groans, but I push him over onto his back and straddle him so that he’s caught between my thighs, unable to enter me.
I lean forward and kiss him, threading my fingers through his hair as my lips brush over his with the same exquisite gentleness that he kissed me with earlier.
“This could be our last night together,” I murmur, stroking his face. “I want to remember it.”
He reaches up then, capturing my face between his hands. “So do I.”
Emotion rises up in my throat, a hard lump that makes it difficult to speak, and for a moment I think that tears will spring to my eyes. I feel him shift beneath me, the hard length of him trapped between our bodies, but in this moment, it’s no longer about sheer physical need.
I want him inside of me, as close to me as I can have him.
But first, I want to touch every part of him that I can.
I kiss his lips, his cheek, his jaw, sliding my mouth down his neck over the spot that always makes him gasp with pleasure. I suck softly at the flesh there, leaving a mark, my teeth scraping over his skin until he groans and his hips jerk beneath me, his cock throbbing against my sensitive flesh.
Hunger wells inside me as I kiss his chest, my tongue flicking over one nipple and then the other. My fingers slide over the smooth, muscular expanse of his broad chest and stomach, over his rippling abdomen.
I skim my fingertips over his hipbones, slide my palms over his thighs, my hair sweeping over his rigid length as I kiss the insides of his thighs, until I can hear him pleading for me to touch him just as I did a few minutes ago.
Finally, I give in.
I grasp his cock, slick with my desire and his, and fix my gaze on his as I lean forward and slowly slide my tongue up the length, flicking softly against the tip at the very end.