Chapter 11

His eyes glowed like the sky lanterns Amy remembered from her childhood, gleaming golden above her as they lifted into the night. Instead of receding like the lanterns, though, Luc came toward her. The seething heat and potency of his body, the desire in those glittering eyes, preceded him in an invisible wavefront that buffeted her inside. The sky lanterns rose by candle power making them lighter than air, and she knew this drakling would make her fly.

Oh, she wanted to be bold. It wasn’t like she’d had weapons in the sheaths of her explorer costume, after all. But naked was just so…naked. She felt as if all her scars were on fire, burning like a warning of how easy it was to get hurt.

She stared up at him, her tongue thick in her mouth. Partly nervousness, but partly her own lust. Because, fuck, he was gorgeous all over. She’d felt his strength already, seen the flex of muscle in his bare arms, and admired the almost delicate filigree of the scales the flushed amethyst in his skin. To see all of him…

He might be a real alien, but he was all real male too. The thick jut of his erection seemed likely to be, er, very compatible, and the fever of his body and his stare ignited a hot, heavy pulse deep in her core.

With a low sound like a growl, he circled her, still not touching, moving her toward the waterfall. She went willingly, hoping the water would wash away her sudden nerves, put out the fire of her self-consciousness. As the cascade sluiced around her, she moaned in delight. The water was strangely soft, almost satiny, as if it was perfectly pure, but a hint of fragrance, like lightning or the earth after rain, drifted around them.

Luc, however, stiffened as the water hit his back, and she abruptly remembered his wounds. She cursed herself for only thinking of her own.

“Turn around,” she said. “Let me see.”

He crowded close to her, his chest almost bumping her. “I don’t care about that at all.”

“I care.” She rotated around him. “Oh… I want you to blow them up again.”

He chuckled, and under her questing fingers, the tension in his spine eased. “Is it that bad?”

Carefully, she directed a stream of water over his abraded, blistered shoulders. Water pooled, tinged with dust and blood, around their feet before being whisked away. “Just don’t do it again.”

“What?”

“Get hurt.”

He turned to face her. “Say the word and we will stop. Stop the race. Stop…this.”

She stared up at him, her heart skittering. Sometimes hurt was unavoidable if she wanted to reach for her dreams, foolish or dangerous though they might be. “I won’t. Won’t stop. Don’t you stop either.”

His mouth collided with hers.

She clung to him as he dragged her against his chest. Under her clenching fingers, his biceps bulged, and he spun them both under the water then through the fall to the back side of the shower unit. He pinned her to the wall with a knee thrust between her legs, and she squirmed against the heavy muscle of his thigh.

Oh god, she was already wet, and not just from the shower.

She moaned as he ducked his head lower to set his teeth against the side of her neck, nipping at the sensitive skin under her ear. She shuddered and arched back to give him more access even as her legs clamped helplessly around his thigh. “Luc…”

As his mouth moved downward, she choked on her own breath like it was a waterfall, drowning her in sensation. And when his tongue circled her nipple…

Her arms spasmed, clutching him close. The thrill of finding the gem and the panic of almost dying had tuned every nerve ending to its highest sensitivity, as if every part of her knew that this moment—like every moment—could be the very best. Or the very last. She’d never understood the phrase carpe diem. Well, technically she understood it since it wasn’t so hard learning a little bit of Latin since she was learning English anyway, but she’d never got it. She did now. Take a chance, the universe demanded. Luc could probably give her the statistics for what their odds really were, but while taking a chance meant risk, it also meant reward.

And this was her chance to carpe drakling.

With that boldness burning in her, she dove her hand down between their bodies to wrap around his thick, distended flesh. She knew about one-eyed trouser snakes, and some of the coeds in her school had joked about anacondas, much to her initial confusion, but Luc had been packing a dragon in his pants this whole time. She couldn’t hold back a low sound of pleasure, a rapturous moan, really, and his answering groan as he thrust his hips into her grasp told her he was feeling the same way. The hot gust of his breath over her breasts made her shiver, and she stroked him, her fingertips mapping the contour of engorged veins like the arcing trajectories of stars across the sky. He shuddered in response, and their shared pleasure tangled tighter with every breathy sound and caress.

With each passing moment, their touches became more forceful, less controlled, their breaths seething and harsh as they spiraled higher. Rising, spinning out of control, as searing as an erratic sun pulsing toward explosion.

“Show me what you like, what you want.” His voice was taut, almost rough, but the overtones of longing sang in her blood.

She guided his hand between her legs. “You are what I need.”

“So wet,” he whispered. “But hot too. Flood and fire.”

“You do that to me,” she murmured. “I’ve never been this close this fast…”

“What if it’s just the effect of the impure aquari crystal? You cut your finger, and I got a dose too.”

“Then we’re both fucked up.” She kissed the point of his shoulder, in between the abrasions. “And this far out, there’s nobody to tell us no.”

“Fucked,” he sighed. “I like that.”

So did she, very much so. She wriggled on his knee, still pinning her up against the shower wall. “You said we’re physically compatible, and I told you I want this, so open my little world already, drakling. Show me stars. All of them.”

He lifted her through the steam—God, he was so strong—his steps never faltering despite the shin-deep water that had built up around them. With his elbow, he bumped the shower controls, and a soundless blast of air whisked most of the water from their bodies before he strode into the bedroom, holding her tight against his chest, as if she was as precious as the Heart’s Flame.

Through the disco pyramid lights, he launched them toward the round bed. For a moment, they were both airborne, but even before she could gasp, he had spun her around and they rolled through the covers. He lifted her hips to his, crouching over her, his wide shoulders drenched in the red sparkles that turned the shadows of his skin to flame.

She arched back, showing him everything, giving him everything, and asking for everything in return. Always before she’d hesitated with lovers, uncertain how much she could ask for, how much she could really show. Now, she demanded. Maybe it was the universal translator in her head, or maybe it was Luc, but she finally had the words, some with her tongue, some with all the fingertips that she still had, some she hadn’t even thought to voice but somehow he knew and responded. Touch me. Lick me. Love me just like this.

“I want to douse myself in your flood,” he whispered, his cadence like a poem, “but I think you will burn me forever.”

She spread her thighs and framed one hand over her mound, letting the gap where her ring finger would’ve been rest above her throbbing clit. “Here,” she said, her pulse singing back to him. “This is where I want you.”

As he centered himself above her and descended with exquisite, agonizing totality into her core, she kept her eyes wide, wanting to experience every second with every one of her senses. The muscle in his jaw flexed, hard and crystal-sharp, but he held himself suspended above her with a lightness as if he had wings. The slow, slick glide of his shaft shot more sparks along her nerves than the disco pyramid lights. With each stroke, the glow within her stoked brighter until she thought she would burst into flames.

She braced her hands on the unyielding bulk of his pecs, and the fierce thud of his heartbeat under her palms echoed the euphoria bubbling in her blood. When they rocked together, she anchored her heels behind his ass to grind him on the tender bud at her center.

“Faster,” she whispered. “Harder. I want to feel this until the end of the race.”

At her words, he groaned and slammed against her. The cascade of sensation radiating from her clit made her arch back with a gasp of pleasure. Only then did she realize how much he’d been holding back. His body crashed down on hers, all his hot weight and bunched muscles thrusting her across the red bed, rocket fuel to her desire. She pushed back with all her might, showing him she could take what he had to give and give it back in triplicate. With her inner muscles, she clenched down hard on his cock, a hidden erotic bite that made him groan, his jade eyes rolling back and brightening to a gold that rivaled the bewitching pyramid lights for dazzling brilliance.

“Again,” he rasped. “Do that again and again. And again until forever, even if it slays me.”

She laughed a little desperately then gasped as he pounded into her with renewed vigor, his cock swelling another impossible degree, arching upward to find her secret, untouched depths. “Right there. Luc, right there.” Her voice trembled with need. “Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”

She didn’t want it to end, like the legend of a queen and her lover outlasting the centuries. But though her spirit was willing, her clit was mortal. Her aching core grasped at him with every stroke until his chest slicked with sweat. He was a machine, unwavering, like one of those high-end scientific calculators she’d gotten to try to fake her way through math, the numbers adding up to infinity, or like the metronome she desperately tried to play along with during her ill-fated violin years. The relentless pounding became a blissful agony as she clutched at the orgasm hovering out of her reach.

“Luc,” she said in a breathless whimper. “It’s too much.”

“Nothing’s too much for you if you want it,” he growled back, his gaze fixed on her fiercely. “Take it. Take me.”

Stiff-arming the bed to hold himself above her, he reached down between them and, without a moment’s fumble, flicked her like an ignition switch. She cried out as she went off.

The climax ripped through her from clit outward, all her defenses crumbling and sensation billowing up behind in a stormcloud of ecstasy. She clutched at him, his powerful body her only point of awareness as she trembled in the throes of her rapture.

As if from a distance, she felt him thrusting into her, finding his own release with a guttural shout. The hum still quivering through her aching, swollen flesh crescendoed again, and this time she screamed as a second orgasm chased his through her body.

The lights overhead seemed to throb with her exhausted heartbeat. When Luc collapsed over her, the lights dimmed. He wasn’t just blocking them; the lurid sparkles had faded as their frantic breaths slowed.

She closed her eyes as she traced lazy spirals over the small of his back. “The lights are timed to our fucking?”

He nodded into the crook of her neck. “Inspiration for the honeymooners.”

“So the computer was watching us?”

“Maybe a few galaxies too.”

Her eyes flew open and she eeped in alarm.

His arms clamped around her when she would’ve jerked upright. “I’m joking. I scanned for recording equipment in this room when I took possession of the ship. There’s actually nothing aboard except the cockpit comm.”

That seemed weird for a show like theirs. But she was too spent to think about it. Also, she was glad that hadn’t been broadcast around the universe. Not just because having sex with Luc was private, but because it was…perfect.

Her idle hands on his back stilled. Perfect? That sure was putting a lot of pressure on a guy she barely knew and a situation she barely understood. But here she was petting him, practically hugging him, in return for the best orgasm—orgasms—of her life.

“Luc…” Unsure what she wanted to say to him, she trailed off.

He rolled to one side, taking her with him, and she caught her breath again at the strength and gentleness in him as they nestled together, the light above them flickering like a low, romantic fireplace. How had some drakling woman not snapped him up? But he was going off to his brothers’ weddings soon, where likely there’d be a lot of prowling predatory females in the mating mood… She scowled.

He brushed a lock of damp hair off her temple. “What is that ferocious look for?” A furrowed line appeared between his brows. “Did I not please you?”

“No!” She pushed herself up onto one elbow and splayed her hand on his chest. “I mean yes. You made me come twice.”

His mouth twisted to one side. “How many times should it have been?”

“Once!”

The quirk of his lips turned decidedly satisfied. “My math skills must have failed me.”

She collapsed back beside him. “Good. It was…very good.”

He curled his arm behind her shoulders and tucked her close again. “I’m sorry I almost killed you.”

Tilting her head up, she studied the tension in his jaw. “Did I scream that loud?”

He angled his gaze down to her. “The collapsing tunnel. Blasting the mites.”

“Thanks for saving me.”

“I wouldn’t have had to if I hadn’t brought you here.”

“The race brought us here.” She put her finger over his lower lip when he drew a breath to argue. “The risks are real. We didn’t know that before, but now we do. And we have the first of the queen’s gems. So don’t even think of giving up.”

He nipped at her fingertip. “Next gem, you stay on the ship.”

“Not a chance.”

“I won’t risk you,” he growled. “Any mistake—”

“It was a mistake that brought me here in the first place,” she reminded him. That truth struck her hard. All her life, she’d been afraid of making mistakes, of not measuring up and doing—being—what people expected. And yet she’d kept failing anyway. This time… “Luc.” She rested her hand on his shoulder, the texture of his scales massaging her palm as he moved restlessly. “There might be dangers…okay, okay, there’ve already been dangers, but I’m not going to let my fear of fucking up again stand in the way of something good.”

He let out a breath that deflated his wide chest, rocking her even closer to him. “Something good like fucking me?”

She kissed the pulse point under his jaw. “Exactly like that.”

“You’re saying being here, with me, in this bed, was a mistake.”

“My best one yet.”

He grunted.

She angled over him to land on his chest and he oofed out another breath. Bracing her elbows on the points of his shoulders and cradling her chin in her cupped palms, she stared down at him thoughtfully. “I think Team Prism is destined to be a Great Space Race favorite.” She rotated her fist to point her knuckles at him. “Teammates to the end, yeah?”

Bumping his knuckles against hers, he half closed his eyes, veiling the gold with shades of deep jade. “Since we have the team part mastered”—he enclosed her fist with his long fingers—“maybe we should run through the mating part one more time.” He flipped her underneath him.

The disco pyramid lights above them sparkled with renewed life, and she gasped as his erection thickened again. “Anything to win.”

He stroked his fingertip delicately over the throbbing bud of her sensitized clit while he sheathed himself in the hot, slick melding of their carnal climax. Dipping his head to slant his mouth hard over hers, he swallowed her moan.

“Ah,” he murmured. “I’ve found another of the queen’s gems right here. Lucky me.”

Lucky her. As his clever fingers urged her into a fractural fractal spiral of pleasure, she thought hazily that she’d blown her mind with the existence of aliens and spaceships and she was risking her life on this crazy race, but she suspected the real danger wasn’t to her mind or her fully exposed body.

If she wasn’t careful, she might make the mistake of venturing her heart.