Alyssa

Tyr should have looked helpless or small or powerless, considering everything that conspired against him today, but he didn’t. He just looked more determined. I adore that about him. The strength inside him that fuels his every decision. I don’t think he could turn it off if he tried.

I wander back to the tunnel to collect him after four hours of sleep — definitely enough to have healed his head injury, according to the helpful AI in my ear — and see the group of Merrel are already there, crowded around him as his golden eyes blink open and land on me.

His lips part slowly. “What is this?”

I kneel beside the makeshift wicker bed the Merrel hauled him onto and rest my hand on his arm. “Legs,” I say. “Brand new legs. They won’t snap after a fight, and they won’t unstrap so easily to be stolen.”

The Merrel take a step back and examine their handiwork with glimmering eyes of excitement. The legs are shiny and new, tinged slightly mint green and alternated with polished silver. Two sturdy studs at the knee complete the look.

“This is metal from…”-

He trails off, so I finish for him. “Yeah, that’s part of the hull of Eclipse,” I say, nervous now that he doesn’t look super pleased. “The … saboteur, whoever it is, they didn’t leave all of your ship’s parts down here. There are huge bits missing, so they patched some of it up with spare parts. So I figured we could use some of the body of the ship and repurpose them. They did a great job. Thank you,” I address the group of Merrel.

I’ve gotten to know their sharpest and most respected young engineer, Harrison, over the last few hours. He nods his little head at me and smiles. “Was fun,” he says. “Never made a leg before. Never made an arm before.” He glances at the tunnel’s ceiling. “Have made two legs now, but still no arm.”

I have really enjoyed my time with the Merrel community so far. I like their way of speaking, their little focused movements, and their attention to detail. The legs look amazing.

But I was fairly sure that Tyr might not be too happy about our decision. To remove a chunk of his ship and strap it to his body? It can’t really be undone. The metal is scrap if he doesn’t want it as a prosthetic.

“Will they … do they have any AI implants?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say proudly. “They have something in the joints, though. Springy. I don’t know the words. But you can run faster. How cool is that?” There is a short silence.

“It is cool,” he says, running his palm over them and then looking up at me while I breathe a literal sigh of relief. “Cool is good, yes?”

I laugh. “Yeah, cool is good.”

“Didn’t seem to enjoy the chill much, what a strange choice for human slang,” he mutters. I laugh some more. “How is the Eclipse? Is she salvageable?”

“Yes!” I say quickly. “Yes, definitely. It’s just integrity, or something, that’s missing.” I curse myself inwardly for knowing literally nothing about anything. “Like, structural stuff. And a few other things. Dammit. I’m sorry. I don’t know. It’s just not quite finished.”

He swings his legs over the wicker bed, staring at them, and tests his metal feet on the floor before putting his weight on them. I rest my hand on his arm to let him know I’m here, though we both know that I would be absolutely no help if he were to fall.

Luckily, he doesn’t. He takes a few steps with a frown, and then turns and walks confidently the other way. “This works,” he says.

“And you don’t mind that we repurposed your ship?” I make sure. “I thought you’d either kinda like it or totally hate it.”

He smirks. “I was unsure. But if there was no chance to build her back up to be identical to before, this is fine with me. The Eclipse was my home. I spent my youth flying her. Fighting with her is second nature to me, even now. I made and broke friendships inside those walls. I mourned my parents, received promotions, saved lives and ended them too. That ship meant everything to me.”

I chew my lip. “I’m so sorry, Tyr.”

“But now I know. There are more important things than a spacecraft.” He looks down at me, and his gaze bores through me. “Much more important. I should have known that all along, but … I think I was waiting to be shown it.”

I swing my hand forward before I can think it through and thread my fingers through his. “I’m glad you’re happy,” I say, and I mean it more than anything.

He takes my hand and presses it against the firm ridges of his abs and I feel a desperate need course through me. “What are you doing?” I laugh.

“This was the start of something last night,” he explains. “I was hoping to find a pattern.”

I run the backs of my fingers up to his chest, feeling the muscles of his pecs, and then around to feel the back of his neck. His gaze stays on me, unbroken. “Are you trying to say, Mr. Alien General, that you want to…”

“Fuck you,” he finishes for me, and the corner of his lips turns up. “I learned that word. It works better than any part of the Firosan language. And no, I don’t want to.” He picks me up, spins me around and sets me on the wicker stretcher he slept on. “Alyssa. I need to.”

Our lips crash together and he feels harder than rock pressed against me. He is so huge, it makes me throb to think about him inside me, stretching me, again. The fact that Tyr is alive makes it unfair to be any other man. I love it.

I feel like I love him, but I have only known him for a day. Everything about him is incredible. Inside and out. I even love his perfectly-crafted prosthetic legs. Somehow the beauty of juxtaposition on his body makes him seem completely whole.

The warmth of his skin on mine makes me feel safer than I think I ever have, even though I am in more danger now than I have ever been. But nothing about this situation makes sense. Except Tyr.

“Come with me,” I say quietly. “To find the cure. Can you?”

He brushes my nose with his in a way that is so unexpectedly sweet. “I can fly you there. I wouldn’t trust anyone else.”

I smile, trying to ignore the tears of gratitude pricking at my eyes. “We have to get off this stupid moon.”

“We will figure something out. If they fix the communication center of the ship I will ask for a working ride back to Paxia.” He flinches for a moment. “Only if Eclipse doesn’t fly. We will find out.”

“Yeah,” I say, feeling bad for him. I’ve never had something like a ship mean so much to me, but it must be painful for him to lose something important. I hope he won’t lose it completely, but I didn’t understand much of the Merrel babbling.

“We will help your mother,” he tells me, running his thumb under my eye. I hadn’t even noticed the escaping tear. I smile, embarrassed. “I can promise you that I will try my hardest. And when a Mahdfel warrior tries his hardest, things get done.”

“She is barely fifty. She should have fifty more years of life, Tyr. This isn’t fair. Love doesn’t kill you — love is supposed to make you stronger.”

My words cause him to furrow his brow. “Love? I thought it was a Suhlik spore virus.”

“Yes. She secretly visited my father who fought in the war. An active warzone on Earth. Can you believe the balls on that woman? She just wanted to see the father of her child for what she hoped wasn’t the last time.” I sigh. “They loved each other so much. But she returned home the next day with a small cold. Then a big cold. Then what seemed like the flu, then pneumonia … the doctors kept diagnosing her with all sorts of different things, but they were wrong. It was the Suhlik’s spores. So very rare. By the time people figured it out, the war was over. All traces of the aliens were gone.”

He squeezes my hand as I blow out a breath. “I promise,” he says again.

“She is amazing,” I say quietly.

“I know.”

I frown. “You know?”

He kisses my cheek, my lips, and then parts them with my tongue. “She made you,” he murmurs against my mouth. “Anyone important to you, Alyssa, is someone worth going to the ends of the universe for.” He pulls back and looks carefully at me, as if memorizing my features. “Does she look just like you?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Well, people say we look similar but we don’t think we do. She has long red hair and paper white skin.” I hold out my own caramel-colored arm. “But we do have the same nose.”

He kisses my nose. “Thank her for me.”

I smile. “We don’t really have the same personality, either. My father was calm and collected and thoughtful. She was feisty and confrontational and fiercely loyal.” I shrug. “I’m just more like my dad.” He nods, encouraging me to keep talking. “He loved her so much. He called her his Irish Spitfire. Strongest woman I have ever met. One mistake took her down.”

While I look at the floor, he rubs his hands up and down my arms. It’s a little strange, but actually it does make me feel better.

“A spitfire,” he repeats. “Does this mean a strong woman?”

I laugh. “No. It’s actually a plane on Earth. It’s small and tough. Like my mom.” I nudge him. “My dad flew planes sometimes, like you.”

“I fly ships,” he says. “Does he fly ships?”

“There were some ships too,” I tell him. “During the war he had to do a lot of things. You’d have liked him.”

He nods rapidly. “It seems that way.” He looks away like he wants to say something, so I prod him encouragingly until he looks back at me. “The Suhlik wars have taken a lot from us. My parents. My legs.” He looks down at them.

“What exactly happened?”

“An explosion,” he says simply. “I left my ship, stupidly, and I explored a distress signal. It was fake, and I lost my legs for my trouble.” I bite my lip, but he shakes his head. “I should have investigated remotely. I am lucky I lost only my legs.”

We hold each other for a while longer. I feel so serene, like I am floating in the eye of a storm. Watching it happen. Tyr is so solid and grounding beneath my fingers, and he is looking only at me.

“You are wrong, by the way,” he says after a while, pressing his lips to the steady pulse in my wrist, and then my neck.

“About what?” I ask.

“If you were a form of air travel, you would be a small and powerful one.”

He is so sincere and serious that I burst out laughing. He doesn’t seem to mind; he seems fairly pleased, in fact, that he got any positive reaction from me.

“That’s a compliment on Earth, is it?” he asks, smiling with me. “It’s a strange one.”

I don’t feel like correcting him, so I kiss him instead. His body responds immediately, and fluidly. His cock is thick, hard as rock, and pressed against my own crotch. I nip at his lower lip and draw a low groan from his throat.

He knows what I like now, and he’s eager to show it.

He pushes down the waistband of my jeans and I fumble with his at the same time until the only thing separating his velvety smooth hardness from my soaked and waiting entrance is empty air, and heat, and eager anticipation.

“I could hold you forever,” he mumbles in between kissing my hair and my neck. “I could sink inside you and stay there forever.”

“But how would we eat?” I tease. “How would we go to work?” I gasp. “We’d probably stop hearing from all our friends...”

He shuts me up with a passionate, lengthy kiss, and presses his cock against me at the same time. My words are reduced to muted moans as he probes inside me handsfree, moving his hips and exploring me with the tip of his cock.

I hook my leg around his waist and on his next playful hip roll he enters me instead of teasing me, and the sudden sensation of pushing inside my tightness makes him inhale sharply and then groan. Then he can’t help himself. He starts to pound me, instantly, like a piston. It’s as if he is suddenly possessed by urgency, desperation, need. Like he is nothing but primal desire and like all he wants is me.

And all I want is him.

There is nothing else in this moment. He pounds me to the hilt and I bite his neck and gasp and grind hard against him. We come together with a tsunami-like wave of rolling pleasure. My climax explodes from my core outward, while at the same time he growls as he fills me up from the outside in.

In this moment, with him, I feel I am more whole than I have ever been. We breathe together, the only sound for a few minutes in the silent, sweet-smelling earthy tunnels.

“I don’t want to meet my genetic match on Paxia,” I finally dare to say. “I don’t want to.”

To my surprise, he laughs softly and kisses me again. He says nothing.

I would have thought he’d take this whole thing a little more seriously … but maybe he doesn’t want to. Maybe he doesn’t feel the way I feel. Maybe a man like Tyr — a celebrated warrior and general and pilot — has alien women lining up around the solar system for him. And I’m just some silly human woman, like he keeps pointing out. Insignificant.

I pull away and look at him, wondering how to word all the thoughts inside me in this moment and wondering if there’s any point in trying, but then Harrison the Merrel engineer jogs into the tunnel, breathing fast.

We both turn to face him and I notice with relief that the expression on his face is one of joy, not fear.

“Comms system fully operational,” he says, raising his paws. “Messages for General Tyr.”

I look back at Tyr, simultaneously relieved and sad that our alone time is over for now. We have things to discuss, and he doesn’t seem ready to do that. Maybe he never will be.

“Let’s go,” I say, and turn my head to lead the way, allowing my long hair to fall in front of my face so he can’t see the disappointment on my face.