Joston
I can see what a difficult time I’m going to have with my new life mate, courtesy of her flight controller pal Ozker. I’m not sure whether the next time I see him I’m going to thank him for saving our lives or wring his neck for saying I’m mated to Niya.
Niya’s nearly impossible to reason with. Can’t she see that there’s nothing we can do right now with seven huge troopers ready to blast us all into atomic particles and no place to escape to?
I tell her this as I drive away from the airfield.
“We’re escaping right now,” Niya says. “Why couldn’t we have taken Chlo and Lasson with us?”
“Niya, getting Chlo and Lasson to your house isn’t going to help them. We have to get them off this frightening world you live on.”
“Don’t blame me for it!” she says. “I didn’t invent Engra.”
I speed toward her house. Since I’ve already been there once, I know just how to get there without any directions. One of my many piloting skills. Once I’ve been somewhere, I know how to get there without any maps.
Even though the palace grounds and the airfield were lit up, the rest of Engra is pitch-black. Everyone’s probably playing it safe, acting like they don’t know what’s happening, like they’re not part of the rebellion. Like they’d never be part of the rebellion. Even though they probably all want to be.
“Pull over,” Niya says when we’re a couple of blocks away from her place.
I do, and we both look at each other and simultaneously say, “Aeryen.”
“I left him on the Marinax,” Niya says.
“I figured,” I say.
She reaches out for my hand, and I take it in mine. “It’s okay, Niya, really. Draybirge will take care of him. And Nik and Aymee will be there soon too.”
“But, Joston,” Niya says, “I may never get him back. I may be stuck here on Engra while he’s stuck on the Marinax.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” I say.
“No!” she says.
“Oh,” I say. “I forgot. We were all going to go live in the lousy Triangulum together.”
“Joston!” Niya says. “This is no time for sarcasm. My kid is on the Marinax, I’m stuck here, and the only other being who can really take care of him properly—Chlo, who, by the way, is my dearest friend—is about to be executed.”
“I know,” I say. “I know. But we’ll fix it. Things are never as bad as they look.”
“Why did Ozker have to go and say you were my life mate?”
“Well,” I say, “now that you mention it, maybe they are as bad as they look.”
“Is everything a joke to you?” Niya says. Her eyes have turned deep, dark violet, as if I needed any help discerning just how pissed off she is. And afraid.
“Jokes make dangerous situations seem . . . less dangerous,” I say. Often they do. But maybe not tonight.
“Joston, I want to go home,” Niya says. “I want to go home, turn back the clock to yesterday, take back everything I’ve done, and—”
“You have a time travel device?” I say. “Hell, Niya, why didn’t you say so? This makes everything so much easier.”
“I told you to stop joking!” Niya says, and I sense she means it this time. She actually meant it the last time too. I just ignored her.
“How would that help Lasson?” I say. “He still would have been at the palace and they obviously think he’s somehow responsible for the rebellion.”
“But—”
“And if you would be able to take back everything you’ve done, we wouldn’t be able to rescue him now. Think of that.”
“Joston, I want to go home,” Niya says again. “I’m unbearably tired.”
I’m unbearably something else entirely, but with the mess we’re in, I feel this is a poor time to mention it, so I don’t. Instead, I drive us back to her house, go into the kitchen with her, where we each drink about a gallon of water, then throw myself on her couch while she goes into her bedroom.
I lie here for a few minutes, wondering how the fuck I’m ever going to get to sleep, which I need, since I do my best planning while I’m asleep. And we need a gigantic plan if we’re going to get Lasson and Chlo out of this mess.
But it’s not just that my conscious mind won’t shut off. Nothing will shut off.
Which is why, when my new life mate, dressed only in something that looks like a sheer scarf wrapped around her fabulous curves, comes out to her living room and sits down on the couch beside me, I don’t waste any time.
I sit up and kiss her on her neck, then her earlobe, which I bite. Then my mouth is on hers and our tongues are warring with each other, seeing who has the stronger passion. I’m hoping to lose this fight.
“Joston,” she says when she comes up for air. “I came out here to talk.”
“Talk all you want,” I say as I rip the scarf off her. It disintegrates in my hands. This is not what someone who wants to talk would be wearing. Or not wearing.
“Joston,” she says as she climbs onto my lap, but I immediately flip her over. I need to feel her under me.
I part the folds of her sex with one hand, supporting myself on the other arm.
“You don’t feel like someone who wants to talk,” I say. She’s sopping wet.
“You’re talking,” she says, and I notice that she’s right. I slip my cock into her and she clenches me tight inside her.
“I’m going to fuck you all night,” I say.
Slick sweat’s already covering both of us. “That’s what we do on Choryn on the night we consummate our match.”
“Joston,” she says, “you realize Ozker made that up, don’t you?”
“Do I?” I say as I burrow farther into her.
She puts her arms around my neck and I fold my arms under her waist, pulling her to me, pulling myself as far into her as I can.
“I need you,” I say into her ear, and then, caught up in this moment of runaway passion, I say the one thing I’ve never said to anyone: “I love you.”
Niya
“I love you,” Joston says as our movements take me past anything my body, my soul, has ever experienced.
“Don’t stop,” I say.
Do I mean he shouldn’t stop loving me or that he shouldn’t stop making love to me? I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t want to care.
“Never,” Joston says. “Niya, I’ll never stop.”
Then he takes his arms out from around my waist, braces himself, lifts up his torso, and looks down at me, his keen yellow eyes almost translucent in the dark.
“Don’t ask me to stop,” he says, “because I won’t. It’s impossible.”
“What are you talking about?” I say. I need to know if this is just sex talk or if this is real. I can’t tell.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Joston says as he lowers himself again.
Beads of perspiration drip from his neck and chest onto my chest and in an instant we’re simply fucking, giving and taking without thought or design, our need for each other reaching new levels of desperation every moment.
Just when I think I can’t stand it anymore and that I’m about to come, Joston changes something and I have to fight to regain that place, those sensations.
“Don’t you dare stop,” I say. “Ever. Ever. Ever.”
Joston
“Never,” I say as I feel Niya starting to flutter beneath me. As much as I want tonight to go on forever, I find myself losing control this time, falling into the dark violet depths of Niya’s eyes, of her soul.
“Yes,” she says so quietly I almost don’t hear her. Our hips pick up into a wild tempo, both of us needing this release, each of us urging the other on.
“Yes,” she says. “Joston.”
Then her entire being trembles into a forceful shudder and I hear a voice that sounds just like my own as it grunts out its burst of desire. The two of us quake together, as though we planned this, and our mouths find each other and say the wordless words that every lover knows.
When we’re spent, Niya falls asleep, resting on my shoulder. I hold her close. If we really were life mates we could hold on to each other every night, I think. But we’re not. It’s a story made up by Niya’s friend in the control room—Ozker, who may have saved our lives.
In the morning we must save two more lives: Chlo’s and Lasson’s.
But right now, I’ll hold Niya close and let my sleeping mind work out how to accomplish the impossible.
My mind’s never failed me yet, and I don’t expect it to now.