Twelve
They could have died this planet rotation.
Lethe followed the vein on Ghost’s neck with her tongue, tasting metal and aroused male. Her A Class Warship, her solar cycles of training, even the warrior she was touching couldn’t have stopped the Humanoid Alliance from blowing up their ship.
They were saved by others, by strangers, cyborgs neither of them had ever met. Ghost didn’t have to say it. She knew his brethren had put their own lifespans at risk to save the two of them.
That they would do so gave her hope. When faced with disaster, with possible death, her cyborg might not leave her. He might stand by her side.
She explored his collarbone, nibbling along it with her lips. His muscles were flexed tight against her. His cock was hard. His fists were clenched.
He wanted her.
She laved the hollow between his pecs with the flat of her tongue and he shuddered. During the previous encounters, he’d taken her. Now, she would take him.
She licked over his cascading abs, the wetness making his gray skin shine like metal. “Show me forever, Ghost.” She gazed into his eyes. Flashes of energy illuminated his irises. “Make me believe.”
“Mine.” His low rumble tightened her nipples.
She rubbed along his body, lowering to her knees before him. The floor tiles were cool against her skin. He was hot all over. She navigated the vee at his hips, kissing and caressing teasingly close to his erection.
The sound in his chest grew louder. He shifted in his seat.
Lethe intentionally skipped his cock, moved to his thighs, worshipping every muscle. His fingers opened and closed, opened and closed around nothing.
Her dominant male wanted to take control.
She wanted that also. Since she had fourteen solar cycles, she’d made all of the decisions. Some were good. Some were disastrous.
During their encounters, she enjoyed giving that task to him.
“Guide me, cyborg.” She murmured against his knee.
He lunged to his feet, knocking her backward, and stood before her, huge and hulking, his massive body blocking some of the light, casting a shadow over her.
“Mine.” He sank his fingers into her hair and pulled her to him. Tinges of pain shot over her scalp, reaffirming he had her. She wasn’t alone. He would never let her go.
As soon as that thought sped through her brain, she mentally twitched. He would never let her go. That blasted male was making her believe in forever.
She lowered her gaze, not wanting him to see that realization in her eyes. A bead of pre-cum had formed on the tip of his cock. She swept her tongue over her bottom lip. What would he taste like?
“Lick.” He ordered.
She extended her tongue, flicked it over his cock head. He jerked, his grip on her hair tightening.
“Mmm…” She hummed, his essence bubbling in her mouth. “You’re delicious.”
Lethe polished his flesh, poked into his slit, looking for more pre-cum. His jaw jutted, her primitive male’s patience tested. She skimmed his rim, tapping her tongue against him. He bobbed with each slap.
“Suck.” His tone didn’t allow any disobedience.
She pushed her lips over his tip, taking him deeper and deeper into her mouth. He watched her, his eyes turbulent, the light show within his irises revealing his need.
He was thick and long, too long for her to handle. His tip touched the back of her throat. She gazed at him and wrapped her fingers around his exposed remaining shaft.
“Mine.” The pride in his voice made her glow.
She sucked. He groaned, all of his muscles flexing. She released and he relaxed. Then she sucked again. He groaned louder, his body becoming rock-hard all over.
This male was hers. She drew back, dragging her lips over his cock. He pushed his hips forward, not wanting that retreat.
She advanced once more. Too slowly, she assumed, for Ghost’s liking. He tugged on her hair. She resisted, liking the pain. He cupped her scalp and drove his cock into her mouth.
His balls smacked her chin. Ghost grunted with satisfaction.
He held her to him, thrusting and pulling back, thrusting and pulling back, fucking her face with a fierce intensity yet also with a cyborg’s precision, never going deeper than he should, his tip beating a gentle tempo against her throat.
Lethe clasped his hips and held on, accepting all that he gave her, submitting to his ravishment. He was using her for his sexual satisfaction yet this was more. She saw that in his gaze. She felt it in his touch. The connection between them strengthened, the passion, the caring.
That last word felt too weak for what she experienced. She’d never trusted a being as she trusted Ghost. She desired him, wanted to please him.
Lethe cradled his shaft with her tongue. Her lips pulsed to his rhythm.
“Mine.” He bellowed his special name for her with each surge forward.
And in this moment, her body, her mind, her soul was his. She belonged with him as she had never belonged anywhere else.
When she was young, she thought she had been seeking a place. She hadn’t belonged on Mercury Minor. She believed she would fit in somewhere else, on a different planet, a different world.
She realized now she was seeking a being.
Not any being.
Ghost.
His pace quickened. He clenched his jaw. Veins lifted in his arms, legs. His balls hugged his shaft. Her cyborg was close to coming.
Part of her wanted to delay his release. The longer he held back, the longer they’d remain physically linked, and she liked that. Very much.
But another part of her wanted to push him, to show him he wasn’t truly in control, not of this, his satisfaction. She was his master.
Lethe released her death grip on his hips and closed her fingers around his balls. His eyes widened. She squeezed.
He howled, thrusting forward. His nanocybotics-infused cum hit the back of her throat. She swallowed and her smugness was blasted to pieces by the most exquisite pleasure.
Lethe shrieked around his cock, the sound muffled by his flesh, her response drawing more cum from his shuddering form. A second, third, fourth wave of bliss swept over her.
She shook. He held her to him, not allowing her to escape him. She writhed, twisted, fighting him, knowing he wouldn’t let go, not now. Her gaze met his. Perhaps not ever.
Dazed by her multiple orgasms, she licked him clean, every drop adding to her happiness. The fizzing in her mouth, arms, fingertips, would lessen but wouldn’t entirely vanish. She would keep that part of him forever.
“You kept your side of the deal.” She smiled up at him.
“Forever?”
She nodded. She had seen forever in his eyes.
He lifted her high against his chest, the power in his physique exciting her. “Look like you?” His gaze sizzled with heat.
Had forever looked like her?
She gulped air. The male didn’t speak often but every time he did, he wrapped himself a little tighter around her heart. “You know who I saw.” Her voice was husky with emotion.
She had seen him, only him.
Ghost grunted. He claimed her captain’s chair for his own once again and set her on his lap. Her ass was perched on one thigh. Her legs were draped over the other.
“I kept my side of the deal also.” She still felt him inside her mouth, her lips stretched tight around him, his cum dancing on her tongue.
He cupped her chin. His head lowered. She stared at him with shock and wonder.
Ghost covered her lips with his, plunged his tongue between her parted teeth.
Stars. She wiggled closer, pressing her body against his. Her savage male was tasting himself.
He sucked on her tongue as she had sucked on his cock. She pulsed with wanting, again, still, always.
“You make me believe,” she whispered against Ghost’s lips.
Those lips curled upward.
* * *
The next planet rotation, Lethe was seated on Ghost’s lap yet again. They were both naked except for the big black boots on their feet. She had found him a pair in a storage chamber after she’d woken.
“You don’t have to wear them all the time.” She knew he preferred to be completely nude.
He grunted. He didn’t remove them.
She smiled. He must like them. “We look like a team.” She swung her legs, her feet dangling above the floor tiles.
“Are a—”
Ghost’s body stiffened.
Lethe straightened. “What is it?” She looked at the main viewscreen, saw nothing to warrant his alarm. The image was of open space. They neared Deneb 9 but the planet couldn’t yet be spotted.
“Cyborgs rebel.” He tapped on the control panel embedded in the console. “Code.” A seemingly never-ending number scrolled across the viewscreen. “Broadcast or blow up.” He activated it on their system.
“As the captain, I authorize that broadcast.” She slanted her gaze at him. Broadcast or blow up didn’t give them much of a choice but she remained in charge. She made that decision.
His eyes glowed.
He was a domineering cyborg. She shook her head. “We should inform the commander.”
“K models. Two.” He leaned back in their chair. “Informed.”
The commander’s two males would have informed her. “Captain Rhea—”
“Merchant ship. Cyborgs not attack.” Ghost eased that concern.
She couldn’t contact the Rebel Headquarters about the code. It might fall into the hands of the spy. “Where do they need our warship?”
“They?”
“The cyborgs. How are we helping them to escape from the Humanoid Alliance?” The commander said the Rebels had an alliance with the cyborgs.
Even if they hadn’t one. Lethe looked down at Ghost’s large hands. These were his brethren and some of them had risked their lifespans to save him, to save her.
She would do the same to help them.
“Not mission.” Ghost rested his chin on the top of her head. “Earth Minor. Mission.”
“We have a warship.” She pointed out. “They need our help.”
“Have warship how?”
How had they obtained the warship? He had killed every being on board. “Oh.” The other cyborgs would do the same thing. “The armada that passed us will soon belong to the cyborgs, won’t it?”
They would control all of those gorgeous ships, the most current vessels in the Humanoid Alliance fleet.
Ghost grunted.
“Then we can help the Rebels.” Lethe decided.
“No.” He insisted on denying her any role in the rebellion. “No cyborgs. Small fight.”
“There will be fewer warriors for the Rebels to fight on the ground.” Cyborgs were used for that part of the invasion. She had escaped Mercury Minor before they’d been employed. “The Humanoid Alliance will still have ships in the air. They’re bombing Deneb 9 as we speak.”
He didn’t say anything.
“The Humanoid Alliance won’t win the war without the cyborgs. They’ll know that and they won’t be gracious losers. They will bomb the planet to dust before they retreat, purely to be vindictive.” She thought of the beings on that planet, the girls with fourteen solar cycles of living, on their own, with no beverage, no way of leaving the planet. “We have to help the locals, Ghost.”
“No fighting.”
She turned to look at him. His jaw was set. His lips were flat. He wouldn’t allow them to enter the battle against the Humanoid Alliance.
That was okay. She preferred to rescue beings. “We have this big empty ship. We could fill it with beings, save lives.”
His body immediately tensed. Her cyborg didn’t like being around others. “Not safe.”
He was right. It wouldn’t be safe for those beings. One of them would touch her and he’d rip their arms off. Then the others would panic and he’d kill them all.
Lethe considered the situation. “We’ll lock them in the chambers until we land on the next inhabitable planet.”
“Shot down before land on Deneb 9.”
“No one will shoot us down before we land.” She tried to sound certain about that and failed. They could be shot down. That was a possibility. “The Humanoid Alliance will think we’re one of their warships.” Battles were chaotic. They wouldn’t keep track of all their vessels.
“Rebels?” He lifted one of his eyebrows.
The rebels were a bigger concern. They would think the warship belonged to the Humanoid Alliance also and would target them. “You’ll find somewhere safe for us to land.”
His lips twisted but he didn’t reject that solution.
That gave Lethe hope. “Once the Rebels see me, they’ll know I’m one of them.” There were no female captains in the Humanoid Alliance forces. “We can do this.”
“No.”
He was being unreasonable. She gazed at him. “Ghost—”
“No risk.” He slapped his right palm on the console, his flesh ringing against the metal. “Must protect.”
“Someone risked his lifespan for me.” That captain had used her body in return for his favor but he had risked everything to save her. “If it was me on that planet—”
He moved his hand to the control panel. Her image appeared on the main viewscreeen.
“That could be me in that merchant ship, Ghost.” Her voice filled the bridge. “Wouldn’t you want someone to save me?”
Blast it. “I might have used that same argument previously,” she admitted.
He replayed the footage.
“Okay. Okay. I did use that same argument.” And her stubborn cyborg wouldn’t allow her to utilize it again. “Ghost—”
“No.” He shook his head, his shaggy hair falling over one of his eyes.
She reached up, pushed it back.
He froze, his gaze fixing on her face.
She had all of his attention and that was a heady feeling. “I need to do this.” Lethe softened her voice. “I told you about that mother with her baby. She wanted that last spot on the ship, the spot I took. Every rest cycle, I see her eyes, the pleading in them and then the disappointment. Maybe if we save as many beings as we can, that guilt will disappear.”
He looked away from her.
Silence stretched.
“Know guilt,” he admitted.
The images of a vast array humans and humanoids, ranging from newborn to ancient, flashed quickly on the main viewscreen.
They were all female and all appallingly appeared to be dead.
“Ours. Failed. See always.”
There were so many of them. Lethe’s heart clenched. When the new images were all finally shown, the first image reappeared, an endless loop of pain, a reminder of the lifespans he had lost, the beings he felt responsible for not saving, his failures.
Cyborgs didn’t sleep. When Ghost referred to ‘always,’ he didn’t mean he saw them during his rest cycle. He meant he always saw them.
That would drive any human insane.
It had broken her cyborg.
“Ghost.” She petted his neck, not knowing what to say, how to comfort him.
He stopped the images. His gaze returned to hers. “You die, Mine. I kill until I die.”
If she died during this rescue attempt, he would start killing and he wouldn’t stop until someone stopped him. Lethe trembled. Manufactured for battle, he was difficult to kill. An entire warship had tried to end his life and had failed.
He was warning her that the carnage would be even greater.
She lifted her hands to her cyborg’s handsome face. “I won’t die.” She could protect herself and wouldn’t allow him to fail in his task. “We have an A Class Warship. I’m a great captain. It will take mere moments to fill the chambers with survivors. And then we’ll leave.”
“No.” He remained obstinate about this. “Allowed risk once. Not again.”
He had allowed her to risk her lifespan once? Lethe decided to ignore that and focus on the true issue. “This will be the last time.”
Ghost looked at her with disbelief.
“If you agree to this, I will part ways with the Rebels. I will go with you to Earth Minor and leave the fighting behind me.” It was never about the fighting for her. She wanted to save beings.
“No battles? No rescues?”
She grimaced. Not responding to a distress call would be difficult for her but she would do that. For him. “No more battles. No more rescues.”
He gazed at her.
She gazed back.
Moments passed.
“One hundred beings,” he relented. “Touch you. Kill all.”
“Deal!” She wrapped her arms around her male, hugging him.
The ship could hold more than one hundred beings and she would have to make the no-touching rule understood but one hundred was better than none.
And it was more than one, the one life that had been saved solar cycles ago—hers. Lethe’s debt to the universe would be paid. “Thank you.” She bounced against him.
Ghost grunted.