Eight
Half a shift later, Lethe sat on the console beside Ghost, one of her hands set on his shoulder, and she listened as Paloma, the youngest member of the merchant ship’s two-being crew, shared everything that flowed through her mind.
“Someone spread a nasty rumor about us being Rebels. I bet it was our horrible neighbor. He’s a grumpy old male, always complaining about me walking through his lot of land. The Humanoid Alliance warriors believed that rumor and knocked on our domicile’s door in the middle of the rest cycle. Rhea and I ran out through the back door, escaping, but Father and Mother were caught, arrested, and imprisoned.”
If the Humanoid Alliance had believed the parents were Rebels, they would have killed the sisters’ father and mother, not imprisoned them.
Ghost’s soft snort communicated that he also questioned the truth of the story.
Lethe said nothing because, although Paloma was a couple of solar cycles older than she’d been when she’d escaped Mercury Minor, the girl had been sheltered by her older sister. She was agonizingly innocent, might not be cognizant of the real situation.
“Paloma, we talked about this.” Rhea’s head bowed over the handheld she was repairing. The older sister was slowly lowering her guard around them, trusting them more and more. “Starting over means not discussing our past with our new friends.”
“I know. I know. We should be focusing on the future.” The girl rolled our eyes. “We’re now fugitives.” She said that as though it were a great thing to be. “And where do fugitives go? To Carinae E.” She answered her own question. “That’s to be our new home. We’ll wait for Father and Mother there.”
Rhea’s bottom lip quivered.
“Carinae E is a primitive planet but I love primitive.” The girl, unaware of her sister’s distress, ogled Ghost’s bulging biceps. His muscles strained the fabric of his flight suit. “Anything could happen. Rhea doesn’t believe I can handle it.”
“You can’t, not alone.” The eldest sister commented quietly.
“But I can.” Paloma’s eyes glowed. “Oh, I can.”
The girl was stunningly beautiful and a bit besotted with Ghost. Neither of the sisters hid their fascination with him. Rhea peeked at him through lowered lashes when she thought no one was watching her. Paloma openly gazed at the cyborg as though he was her savior.
The sisters didn’t have the emotional baggage Lethe had. They accepted their assistance as though it was natural, didn’t once offer them anything in return.
Ghost must have noticed all of that.
He glanced up from the circuit he was fusing together. Or maybe he was too concerned about the ship’s repairs to notice the females.
There were stress lines around his grimly set lips. Lethe swallowed her sigh. Cyborgs might not need breaks physically but her damaged warrior needed one emotionally.
She patted her legs.
He set the circuit aside and placed his head in her lap. Lethe welcomed the weight, threaded her fingers through his thick black hair, massaged his scalp. A low rumble of happiness came from his chest.
“I know how to use a gun.” Paloma continued to talk. “Rhea taught me how and I’m not bad at it.” Rhea’s lifted eyebrows said otherwise. “I hit the target.”
“Once in a thousand shots,” her sister murmured.
“With practice, I’ll improve. A warrior won’t have to worry about protecting me. I can protect myself.”
Lethe gazed down at Ghost. The girl thought she could protect herself but she had never been on her own. She hadn’t lived through an invasion. Guns were useless against a ship’s missiles.
Ghost burrowed his face between her legs, pressing against her fabric-covered mons. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, his breath warming her.
Lethe’s cheeks heated. She wanted him. She never stopped wanting him. And he was smelling her arousal.
Ghost had asked to be treated like a machine. He was either oblivious of what he was doing or he’d realized his reaction to the sisters had scuttled that plan.
He’d viewed them as a threat, had been one wrong word away from shooting them.
And now, he snuggled against her, his expression blissful.
Lethe stroked his hair. He was no unfeeling weapon of war.
“I would make a good mate for a warrior.” Paloma chattered. “Any type of warrior. Human. Humanoid. Cyborg.”
Ghost lifted his head. “Not ours.” He frowned at the girl.
She frowned back at him. “I don’t know what that means.”
Everyone, including Lethe, looked at him.
Her cyborg didn’t offer an explanation. He returned to his assigned task, repairing the ship’s systems.
Lethe gritted her teeth, frustrated by his lack of answer, missing his touch.
He reached out, grasped her wrist and placed her palm on his shoulder. Her heart lightened. He must miss her touch also.
“I could be yours.” Paloma huffed. “You don’t know that.”
“Paloma,” Rhea cautioned, glancing pointedly at Lethe.
Ghost didn’t deny the girl’s claim and Lethe’s lifting spirits sank once again. Paloma was a better female for him, for any male. She knew that.
“I might not know a lot about cyborgs but I learn quickly.” Paloma stuck her nose in the air. “I’ve already learned how to find drinkable sources of liquid on an arid planet.”
“Because I told you how,” Rhea contributed, her voice barely audible.
“You think you know everything but you don’t.” Paloma sniffed. “I know things too.”
She listed all of the things she knew. Almost everything on that list was learned from databases, not experience.
Lethe had studied survival training yet she’d barely lived through the Humanoid Alliance invasion. Theory and the real universe were often two different things.
She hoped the girl would never find that out.
Ghost worked on the systems. One by one, they went back online, the air in the ship cooling, the lights brightening.
Pride bloomed in Lethe’s chest. She’d never met any being who could match his skills with systems.
“Repaired.” He straightened.
The sisters voiced their gratitude. Ghost looked at Lethe.
“You did well.” She smiled. “Thank you.”
He stood a bit taller. “Leave now.” He lifted her off the console, lowered her until her booted feet touched the floor.
“You can stay longer.” Paloma stepped forward. “We can thank you properly.”
Ghost pushed Lethe behind him, removing that barrier between him and the girl. Lethe gazed at his back, hurt and confused by his treatment.
Did he want to be thanked properly, whatever that meant?
“Rhea can talk to Captain Lethe and I can talk to you.” The girl worshipped Ghost with her eyes. “In private. Without anyone listening, offering their unwanted opinions.” She wrinkled her nose at her sister.
Rhea pressed her lips together, saying nothing.
“We can be free.” Paloma’s small breasts were almost free of her flight suit, the garment unfastened to mid-torso.
That near-nudity had been justified when they entered the ship. The temperature had been sickeningly hot. But now that the systems were working, cool air blasted them.
The girl’s nipples were taut, pressing against the fabric.
Lethe curled her fingers into tight fists, sucking back her jealousy. The girl was young, innocent, more intent on escaping her sister’s watchful gaze than seducing Ghost. She likely didn’t realize her state of undress.
“We can do what we want.” The girl walked toward the cyborg. “There will be no older sisters or humans thinking they’re our owners controlling us.”
Ghost’s hands blurred. One moment, his guns were in his pockets. The next moment, the weapons were pointed at the girl’s head.
“Blast it, Ghost.” Lethe rushed around his big body. “Put the guns down.” She tugged on his arms. “You’re not shooting anyone.”
His grunt said he disagreed.
“You’re making him act like this.” The girl had no idea how close she was to being killed. “You’re controlling him like Rhea controls me.”
No one controlled Ghost. “Paloma, back away from him, slowly.”
“It isn’t fair.” The girl didn’t move. “He’s a being, not a robot.”
“Paloma, for once in your lifespan, be quiet.” Rhea pulled her backward.
“Of course you would take her side.” The girl’s bottom lip curled. “You treat me the same way. You don’t own me, Rhea, and, Ghost might have come with the warship but Captain Lethe doesn’t own him either.”
Ghost growled, his eyes blazing with emotion.
“Easy.” Lethe petted his neck, trying to calm him. “You’re right, Paloma. I don’t own Ghost.” She dropped the last semblance of that act. “And I understand your struggle with your sister.”
“You can’t,” she muttered.
“I said similar things to my father, my mother, my siblings, their mates, many solar cycles ago.” Lethe touched Ghost as she talked. “I told them I was a grown female. They couldn’t make decisions for me, couldn’t tell me what to do.”
Her big cyborg became still. He was listening to her.
“I was meant for different things, better things. My father yelled. My mother looked at me with disappointment. My siblings argued. I yelled that they didn’t understand and I left.”
“And now you’re a captain of a huge ship,” Paloma said smugly. “You showed them.”
“No, I didn’t show them.” She gazed up at Ghost, not hiding the pain she felt. “Because the Humanoid Alliance invaded that rest cycle. My father, my mother, my siblings, everyone I loved was dead before the sun rose. I never spoke—” Her voice broke.
“Mine.” Ghost rumbled.
Lethe blinked back tears.
He grunted, hooked one of his arms around her, his forearm sliding under her ass and he hefted her upward, balanced her over his shoulder.
She yelped and grabbed fistfuls of his flight suit. “Ghost.”
“Leave now.” His guns remained in his hands.
They had to depart before he decided to use them. “We’ll escort you for a planet rotation.” She informed the sisters. “Ensure your systems are working.”
The two females were stopping at a non-Humanoid Alliance-controlled planet to replenish supplies. It wasn’t on the course to Earth Minor, the destination she and Ghost had set, but a two-planet-rotation delay wouldn’t make a difference in their plans.
“Thank you.” Rhea told her. “For everything.” She hugged her sister.
Paloma stiffened but allowed the embrace.
Ghost carried Lethe through the merchant ship, heading for the exit.
“What happened to pretending you’re a machine?” She muttered against his back. “Would a machine lug around its handler?”
“Handler safe.” He slapped her ass, his hand as hard as the gun he held, and she jerked, surprised, aroused, needy. “Programming.”
“Oh.” She thought about his answer. “Is that why you keep me safe—it’s in your programming?”
“Mine.” He stalked through the merchant ship’s outer door. “Still.” He released her, put his guns in his pockets, and secured the door. Lethe wobbled. He strapped his arm across her legs, preventing her from falling.
“Both Rhea and Paloma like you.” She had to address that situation. “They want to be yours.”
“Not Mine.” He closed the warship’s door, locked it.
The docking connectors disengaged. The two ships drifted slowly apart.
“You’re free now. You can choose to be with them. You don’t have to stay with me.” If he was going to leave her, it would be less painful if he did that now, before she became attached to him.
Before she became more attached to him. He already owned a slice of her heart.
When they parted ways, she would miss him.
Ghost rubbed her over him, the action, the friction exciting Lethe, making the conversation they had to have even more difficult.
“I’m not a good being.” She had to tell him what she’d done. He wouldn’t remain with her then. She realized that. But she had to be honest with him. “You heard what I did to my family. I made them believe I didn’t love them and then they died.”
They would never know how much she cared, how much she loved them even now, a lifetime after their deaths.
Ghost breathed deeply and his nose wrinkled with disgust.
She cringed. “That’s not the worst of it.” She had to tell him everything. “I fucked a male, a stranger, for a container of water. I fucked another male, another stranger, to earn a seat on his ship, a seat reserved for a mother and her baby. I fucked—”
“No.” He set her on her booted feet. “Too much.”
“It is too much.” Her heart sank. “No male could accept the things I’ve done.” She was a fool to dream a relationship with him was possible. “I’m a horrible being.”
“Smell bad.” Ghost yanked on his flight suit again and again, shredding the garment into strips. “On me.” He shuddered. Gray skin rippled over hard muscle. “All over.”
She stared at him, confused. “What smell?”
“Females.” He picked her up once more, slid her up and down him. “Smell wrong. Sound wrong.” He tilted his head to one side and then the other, wincing as though it pained him. “Not ours. Not Mine.”
He brushed her body over his, covering himself with her scent.
Lethe fought her arousal, forcing herself to focus on his words. “They smell wrong and I smell right?”
He grunted.
That was a ‘yes.’
Cyborgs had enhanced senses. She’d read that in a database. And her male was even more primitive, more beastlike than the models she’d studied. It was logical that he would be sensitive to scents.
“You could find another female who smelled right.” Then he’d want her too.
“Mine always.” He nuzzled his face into her hair.
“You don’t know that.” And she couldn’t trust in that.
“Know.” His lips curled upward, his expression blissful. “Cyborg. One female.”
“Cyborgs only have one female?” Some species mated for life. Were cyborgs one of them?
He nodded, his hair falling over his eyes.
She pushed the strands back. “And I’m your one female?” Lethe found that hard to believe. She was no one’s female.
His head dipped again.
She was his female, this gorgeous warrior’s one compatible mate. “You’re stuck with me, whether you like me or not.” Another female might view that as a bad thing. Lethe saw it as a miracle. “I’m the only female you can fuck.”
“Breed.” Ghost gripped her chest covering.
“No.” She slapped his hands. “Don’t tear my uniform.”
He lowered her booted feet to the floor. She stripped, which was difficult to do as he crowded against her, not giving her any space.
That was how much he wanted her. Her. His one female.
It was a physical bond. He’d said nothing about caring, about love. But it was more than she’d ever had.
She’d take it, cherish it.
Lethe slipped her feet into her boots. Ghost didn’t wait for her to fasten them. He boosted her high in the air, positioned her pussy hole above his tip, and drove her downward, impaling her on his hard cock with one fluid movement.
Lethe screamed, the shocking sensation of going from empty to overwhelmingly full in one heartbeat stimulating, as sexy as all space. Her boots fell, clunking on the floor. She wrapped her legs around him.
He grunted his satisfaction, held her in place while she writhed, dancing against him.
“You’re a brute,” she said as soon as she caught her breath.
“No males.” Ghost held her gaze, his face like stone. “Mine.” He had listened to her confession yet he wanted to fuck her anyway.
Because he had no choice, Lethe rationalized. She was his one.
“No other males,” she agreed. “I’ll only fuck you and you’ll only fuck me. Deal?”
“Breed.” He lifted her until only his cock head was inside her. “Deal.”
He dropped her.
She yelped, her pussy lips gliding along his shaft, stretched around his thickness.
He lifted her, dropped her, lifted her, dropped her. She wasn’t a small female but he showed no signs of exertion. No sweat beaded on his brow. His breathing remained level.
He was a savage being, her cyborg. Lethe dragged her fingernails along his arms, leaving red tracks on his gray skin, marking him as hers.
He snarled, his top lip curling, revealing perfect white teeth, and he fucked her faster, harder, taking her the way she needed to be taken, erasing thoughts of those other males, those other dissatisfying fucks.
Her feminine folds smacked against his base. Her breasts slapped against his chest. He was hard all over, skin over metal, organic and machine, male to his manufactured core.
She licked his neck, savoring his unique taste, and her big strong warrior trembled, that reaction turning her on. With him, she wasn’t a disposable female. She was his, his one, his only. They had a future.
That should have decreased her desperation.
It didn’t. It made her even more frantic to have him, to fill her pussy with his cum. She skimmed her teeth along his neck.
“Mine,” he shouted. “Mine.” He humped her with a mind-numbing ferocity, squeezing her ass, his grip on her bruising, erotic, right.
Civilized was fake. Restrained and polite couldn’t be trusted. During the invasion, she’d seen how easily those fragile façades could be stripped from beings, leaving their primal souls exposed.
As Ghost’s true self was exposed in this moment, his passion, his brutality, his protectiveness, his need revealed. She saw all of him and he was glorious, a male to treasure, a male to align with, courageous and strong.
“Mine.” She joined her call with his, their voices echoing in the warship’s corridors. Her inner walls closed around his shaft. Her juices slicked the fall.
He drove her down on him again and again. His eyes blazed with energy. His jaw was defined. His nostrils flared.
Lethe clung to his broad shoulders, panting, her body throbbing with desire. Sweat ran in streams of warmth down her spine, between her ass cheeks. The scent of sex hung heavily in the air. The sound of their fucking punctuated their verbal claiming.
That was what it was—a claiming. He owned her and she owned him. That was their deal...for however long it lasted.
“Ghost.” The yearning became too acute. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t last.
“Mine.” He slammed her down on his cock, shaking her beleaguered form, and she shattered, decimated like a domicile during a missile attack.
She arched her back and wailed her release, pieces of her flying in all different directions. He howled a reply. Hard spurts of cum hit her, the pleasure pounding her to dust.
He came and came and came, the ecstasy never-ending. Lethe held onto him, calling his name until her voice faded, twisting and turning in his arms, a wild thing fighting for her survival, determined to endure.
He had stripped her bare. She was as exposed as he was, naked in her passion. She quivered. He shook but he didn’t collapse, didn’t fall to his knees, and he never let her go.
“Strong,” she mumbled against his bare chest.
Her cyborg would have survived the invasion. She closed her eyes. If he had been with her, he might have protected her.
He might have stayed with her, not abandoned her as the others had.
Because he needed her. She was his only female, his one.
Lethe smiled.