Chapter 10

When Vaughn emerged from the bathing room in a small white towel—maybe there were miniature Earthers he didn’t know about that would fit these towels?—Dejo froze at the jumbling sensations that poured through him.

It wasn’t the IDA data driving him mad.

He stalked toward her, slowly, his muscles taut with need. The need to seize her like the raptor he’d descended from. The need to give her a chance to escape, as he’d never been given a chance.

Mostly just the need to be near her.

She tilted her head to look up at him. Her eyes were bright. “Once again, this is wrong.”

“As a data specialist, I have done the math, and two wrongs make a right.”

She snorted. “I can’t imagine how you got this far in life with reasoning like that.”

“I have a very fast spaceship.” They were toe-to-toe, close enough that he thought with enough patience he could count each droplet of water glimmering like stars on her skin. Or he could just drink them, one at a time.

He reached up to wrap his fingers around her arms. For all his strength, which had hauled her up in a deadlift from the data core, his hands shook. “And despite that, I have the data from IDA outposts around the universe telling me that for all the possible combinations and permutations of life forces, only the very fewest will mean anything to me or touch me in any way.”

Her lashes fluttered, water droplets trembling even though she stood perfectly still in his grasp. “And…I mean something to you?”

“The encryption on why, exactly, is beyond even my currently enhanced comprehension. That’s what the IDA has been trying to unlock.”

Her lips curved. “The algorithms of love?”

“For science,” he murmured, and he lowered his head.

He’d had a first kiss with her, a hard kiss, a soft kiss. How many were there? An infinity?

Best get started.

He skimmed his hands restlessly up her arms, feeling a strength in proportion to his own, or maybe more. Even after learning that extraterrestrial forces opposed her, she soldiered on. But when he framed her cheeks in his palms, the wet tickle of her chin-length hair against his knuckles was soft and charming to him.

Though not as soft as her lips. She yielded under him, her breath whispering over his lips, rousing something fierce and wild in him like the storms on Enion. The IDA data gave him thousands of words from hundreds of worlds for the myriad sensations coursing through him.

But it all pinpointed to one place: the Earther female in his arms. When he turned her toward the bed, the skimpy towels slipped out from between their bodies. She strained against him, not to escape, but to get closer, her arms wrapping behind his neck to deepen the kiss.

He growled against her lips as her tongue played over his, teasing. When she threaded her fingers up into his hair, his crest rippled, shooting pleasure down his spine.

“I touched an eagle once,” she whispered. “My father was between deployments and took Rayna and me on a hike up in the mountains. We found a young bird, injured, and took it to the Audubon Society rehabilitators. My dad made a donation and they called us later to let us know they’d returned it to the wild. I’ll never forget the feel of it. Its heart was pounding so hard, but there was so much power in that body.”

He tilted his head back into her hands, thrusting his hips toward hers. “You know what else is pounding so hard?”

She slanted him a wicked smile. “No idea. I’d try to guess, but you got all the dating and mating notions in your head and…other places.”

With a bump of his hips, he urged her in reverse toward the bed. When the backs of her knees hit the mattress, she tumbled, sprawling on the white sheets. This bed was not as lush as his nest—it had only two pillows instead of dozens—but against the pure white, her skin was a beautiful deep glow and her storm cloud eyes beckoned him.

“A moment,” he murmured.

He reached for the small table at the side of the bed where he’d left his port-link and deployed the three drones. As they circled, Vaughn propped herself on one elbow.

She eyed the tiny robots with misgiving as they moved into equidistant positions around the bed. “I should tell you I have a thing against dirty pics.”

“Not dirty.” He flicked through the port-link and made his selection. The drones buzzed, almost an approving sound. Or maybe that was his blood churning eagerly through his veins.

With a flourish of his hand, he launched the program.

The illusion field cascaded across the bed, and Vaughn gasped, delight widening her eyes and her smile.

“That’s how you made yourself look like the least-prepared hiker ever.” She glanced around at the illusion. “Although if you got lost in this place, seems like the worst that would happen is a sneezing fit. Sure are a lot of flowers.”

“Don’t you like it?” He admired the tumbling purple waterfalls, almost as lush as the overflowing urns of blossoms. “The drones retrieved this information from the success story holograms in the IDA’s main hall. This is where one of those couples chose to celebrate their union.” The illusion shimmered and reformed as an ice castle. “Here’s another.” Another shimmer presented them with the vast shining arc of a planetary ring viewed from a satellite orbiting at an elliptical angle.

Vaughn craned her neck to observe the changes. “It’s all pretty,” she agreed. Then her attention arrowed back to him. “But what does it feel like? That’s what matters to me.”

He didn’t have the cybernetic implants to consciously summon the IDA data he’d absorbed, so he couldn’t count all the different ways their bodies might be compatible, but as he gazed down at her hungrily, he knew all the ways channeled down to just one desire—him for her—and its echo reflected in her eyes, their passion reflecting back on itself like two mirrors facing to infinitum.

Her gaze raked over his body, and at the volcanic heat in her eyes, the mirror in his imagination melted to slag then exploded in helixing spirals of sparks rising through his skin. He took a deep breath, anchoring his discipline. And maybe flexing his muscles for her, a bit. The iol-mark burned on his chest, but for the first time, the wings carved into his skin didn’t feel like a taunt, a cruel reminder of what he’d lost and what he would never become after his descent.

Now, with Vaughn, he thought he just might fly.

After he fell.

He stalked her across the white sheets like the raptor she saw in him and wrapped his fingers around her ankle, stretching her toward him. She extended her leg, and he felt the strength in her body. She wasn’t giving in to him because he hunted her; she was luring him as well.

As her knee splayed to one side, revealing the core of her, he rumbled low in his throat, a sound of deep pleasure and the promise of satisfaction. Her lashes dropped halfway over her eyes, her gaze sultry and challenging.

He rose up to his knees before her, his chest expanding on another breath, his crest erected in a mating display.

“Your eyes are going gold,” she murmured. “Beautiful.”

His planet had never particularly valued that semi-precious element, and most of the universe had moved on to synthetic jewels more rare and expensive to signify prestige. But the wonder in her voice made him swell even more, all over.

She reached up to stroke one hand down his belly, ruffling the pleasure nest of downy feathers between his legs. “That is going to feel so fucking amazing. I confess, I wondered…” Her cheeks darkened with a rush of blood.

“If we would be compatible?”

“Oh, I knew that part. The medical computer on the Onoffon said so, but how we would fit together…” She smiled. “We call it a cock.”

He tilted his head. “A kind of bird. How very fitting.”

“Yes,” she purred as she angled her other knee wider. “I think it will.”

“In my language, we call it”—he cupped his hand beneath himself—“the third wing.”

She gave him a wicked grin. “Then I’ll expect you to take me higher.”

He swooped down on her, to take that sharp smile in a fierce kiss. He tasted the warrior in her, and rather than making him want to escape, he wanted it for himself. And since she seemed willing to give…

Guided by instinct, the same that had urged him to take to the sky as a hatchling and driven him to escape to the stars after his descent, he sought freedom in her body. Her hands caressed him, tracing the contours of muscle and the hard jut of his third wing, but he did not feel held down. His pulse soared, and his blood flashed with the lightning of sensation.

He kissed his way across her body, pinning a thousand data points of desire with nips of his teeth and linking them all with the spiraling stroke of his tongue. She writhed underneath him, her breaths coming faster, keening between her parted lips like a rising wind warning of a coming tempest.

He wanted her storm, craved the maelstrom that would give him flight again.

Her heartbeat raged through the tender inner flesh of her wrists and pounded against his tongue when he suckled the slender column of her throat. She arched her neck up toward him, her spine bowing to follow, and he splayed his hand at the small of her back, delighting in the flex of muscle.

The arc of her body thrust the small, hard peaks of her breasts within perfect reach, and he lowered his head to taste. The points swelled against his tongue, the flesh puckering with her need, and she cried out softly as she clutched at his shoulders, her hips pumping against his thigh. She was sweet and luscious, but the power in her body as she twisted under him warned him she would never be submissive. Like the Enion winds, she might flow blissfully, lifting him high, but always she would demand his honor and respect.

For all her strength, she was too small, her bone density too low to ever be a harpy, but he knew she would have faced those pitiless hivres who had imprisoned him, just as she would relentlessly hunt for her sister. Her instinct for righteousness had a purity that spanned worlds, challenging the cynicism that had kept him ever on the move and always alone.

And like the winds he’d almost forgotten, she called to his deepest soul.

He was everything she’d never dreamed she’d wanted in a lover. As if he anticipated every breath in her body, he teased gasps from her that filled her with needy swirls of sensation and then sucked the air right out of her with kisses that seemed to pull from the depths of her being.

She’d only ever wanted pleasure, but he gave her ecstasy.

With clever fingers, he lightly pinched her nipples into long, stiff beacons of aching lust, while his tongue plundered her mouth then traced a torturous path all the way down her body to her navel where he lingered for a long moment.

“Is this the pathway to your heart?” He’d marked a hot, wet spiral of kisses across her skin, and his whispered question raised goosebumps where his mouth had been.

She looked at him uncertainly, the feathers in his hair bristling and wild. “My heart?”

“This is where a hivre’s heart lies.” He splayed his long fingers across her belly. “Out of the way of flight muscles when we are young. And then mostly forgotten after our descent.”

Hearing the tinge of bitterness and sorrow in his voice, and remembering the awful past he’d shared with her, she smoothed one hand over the feathers on his head while she struggled to find the words to soothe him. “I don’t know all the bodies in all the galaxies, but I know this is right, right now.”

With dawn, they’d make their way to his ship, see if they could discover her sister’s fate. What would happen to her next…she didn’t know. There was only this moment, out of step with the universe’s turnings. She’d made enough mistakes lately and lost enough to not let this chance go.

Dejo dragged up her body, the glide of his silky skin raising invisible sparks along her nerves. He held himself suspended over her, staring down with those wide-set raptor eyes. She’d never felt so small and singled out, so wanted.

She skimmed her hands down his flanks and he shuddered, the yellow rings around his irises widening, an echo of the projection of the planetary rings, which had cycled up again, arcing gorgeously over the bed.

They might be in a cheap motel room, but she could pretend whatever she wanted. Pretend she was flying through space, not grounded on a small planet in the middle of nowhere without even a crappy car.

The projection blurred to the vision of a cloud paradise, billowing vapors in a muted rainbow. If only it were real…

He was real, for the moment. That would be enough for her.

The pressing weight of his body held her down even as the rush of her blood threatened to run away with her. He nestled between her thighs, the bulge of his cock hard and hot against her throbbing clit. Like the rest of him, his erection was big and silky.

His expression was fierce as he stared down at her, a contrast to the flowers that suddenly bloomed behind him. “I won’t hurt you, Vaughn. My immunizations are up to date, and even if our two species were capable of breeding, iomales like me are sterilized after we descend, for they want no more of us.”

She wrapped her fingers around his cock, burying her knuckles in the downy fluff at the base. “I want more of you. Right now.”

He thrust his hips forward with a groan. “Show me,” he rasped. “Show me what you like.”

He wasn’t human—she knew that—but the pleasure he took from the showing reminded her he wasn’t even like any man she’d ever known. Not just the unexpected litheness of his cock but the way he adjusted himself to find the pressure and fiction that made her gasp.

“There?” he whispered as he eased into her, driving deep. “Like this?”

She could only whimper and squirm, and maybe it was the universal translator or the IDA database or the analytical skills of a data recovery specialist, but he seemed to know exactly what she was saying.

He stroked into her with pulsing bouts of accelerating intensity, as if he intended to slingshot them around the sun into some other dimension of pleasure.

Oh, thank god she watched at least that much sci-fi.

With each bump of the bed against the side table, the tablet rattled and the illusions flickered faster. She closed her eyes as the exotic images—half Earth, half alien—whirled together. Clutching at the clenched bulk of his shoulders, she wrapped her legs tight behind him, pumping and easing in time with his thrusts to guide him toward her release. And he attuned himself with each new plunge, his cock finding secret places deep within that she’d never believed existed.

His breaths quickened, sharper and harsher, and she realized he was so close. And refusing himself. He might be a scavenger, but he wouldn’t take this, not without giving first.

The glimpse into him, past the interstellar thief, broke through the defenses she hadn’t realized she’d put up, her very own distressors and lethal lasers. In the end, those ramparts hadn’t kept her or those she loved out of harm's way, had they?

She locked her gaze on Dejo’s, refusing to look away from that alien stare.

When the orgasm seized her from within, the starfield behind him burst into the most cliché fireworks ever.

She laughed out loud, clenching around him, and he came with a heaving crow of triumph.

Her whole body rang with delight, her pulse spiraling upward and her pleasure bursting again in response to his, like multi-break fireworks exploding in ever more impressive sequences of fractal bliss.

She kissed him hard as their bodies shuddered together, breathing into him and gasping his breath back.

The illusion around them faded slowly to the billowing clouds again, serene and drifting, as their quivering eased. Through half-closed eyes, she watched the suggestion of shapes build and collapse while she combed her fingers through his feathered hair.

With a murmur, he rolled to his side, taking her with him, still intimately joined, and tucked her head against his shoulder.

“I like the fireworks best.” His soft words ruffled her hair.

“I suppose every sentient species in the universe has a version of things that go boom,” she mused.

“Mostly. A fascination with controlled explosions is considered a precursor to spacefaring capabilities for most corporeal beings.” He snorted under his breath. “Of course, that fascination comes with its own problems.”

“Don’t they all.” She snuggled her cheek against the hard bulk of his muscle. From where she rested, the wings of his raised tattoo spread darkly across his chest. When she idly traced her fingertip over the flare, he shivered. Not in a good way this time.

“I’m sorry.” She pulled her hand back. “You told me you didn’t choose that marking.”

“The brand of a cloud-whore.” But he took her hand and flattened her palm on his chest between the wings. “No, I didn’t choose it at the time. But your touch…makes it mine.”

She swallowed hard against a knot in her throat. Hadn’t she always wanted that—to stride through the world making sure it continued to spin the right way? But somehow with him, she finally realized how vainglorious that was. How could she even know what was right when she hadn’t known aliens existed, that he existed? What were the chances of anything working out right—with or without her—in the vast expanse of the universe spinning at speed she still couldn’t even imagine?

“I was wrong to judge your scavenging,” she said softly. “I didn’t understand it, and I just assumed…well, a lot. But I had no right to think I knew fucking anything at all.”

His hand, which had been tracing idle spirals over her shoulder, stopped. He curled her closer to him and kissed the top of her head. “Not fucking all, just me. That’s enough.”

“Aw, how romantic.” She nestled her face into the crook of his neck, hoping he wouldn’t notice the dampness of her prickling eyes. “You must’ve gotten that from your vast intergalactic dating experience.”

But she suspected his unspoken forgiveness was less about him being an alien and more about what he’d been through himself. He’d had to escape his homeworld and make his own way through the universe. Her limited, earthbound judgment wasn’t anything compared to that.

Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a cosmic criminal, but from now on she’d keep a more open mind. She’d been so blinded by her bullheaded quest for systemic justice that she hadn’t heard Rayna’s quieter cry of loneliness. And look what had happened. She’d never again let her high and mighty principles eclipse her compassion.

It had taken a view of the entire universe to make her realize the importance of what she had right in front of her. Of course, if she had Blackworm’s face in reach, she’d still take a shot at that.

With visions of vengeance still dancing in her head, she fell asleep.