Chapter 3

 

She’d never swooned before.

Of course, she’d never been fingerfucked by an alien holy man either, so maybe forgiving her girly moment was fair.

As Lishelle gathered her sensibilities—and her skirts—around her, she realized she was alone on the bench. Where had Tynan gone?

She had to push aside a waterfall of blooming vines to peek out into the nexus.

Then she looked at her own hand, holding back the thick, looping vines. Impossible. The tidy topiary had become a jungle.

But not so jungle-y that she couldn’t see that the nexus was empty except for her and the out-of-control flowers.

The gardeners had said there’d been some strange radiation that affected the plantings earlier. But they’d seemed to think everything was okay now. She snorted in disbelief at that assessment as she shouldered through the lush foliage. It was beautiful, but totally not what they’d been going for, design wise. She’d make a note for the gardeners to come back with their clippers tomorrow and keep an eye on the exposed plants.

She took one step and froze. Had she been exposed to something too?

Now that she thought about it, the shrubbery wasn’t the only thing out of control…

She swiveled slowly on one heel, surveying the empty nexus. And looked up.

The vines had all but covered the skylight, with yellow blossoms like huge, happy suns framed against the darkness. No black hole. The spin of the station had taken it out of view. When she curled her lips inward, the molasses taste of the pollen almost made her choke.

Had she been poisoned too? Was that encounter with Tynan a hallucination or something?

The slick, soft heat lingering between her legs wasn’t just a dream…

She hurried back to her suite, her slippers making no sound on the deck and no footsteps following her.

By the time she locked her door behind her and programmed a message for the garden staff to be delivered in the morning, she’d all but convinced herself that nothing had happened. Busy with wedding prep, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so probably her blood sugar was low. Yeah, and then she’d been mesmerized by the black hole and the crazy flowers and…

Nothing had happened.

She sent another note anyway, to Doctor Boshil, who’d coordinated their post-rescue medical needs. If she had been exposed to whatever had gotten the flowers, it would be stupid to pretend nothing had happened.

Even though nothing had.

Feeling a little queasy with uncertainty, she choked down a bowl of soup and a bigger cup of pixberry tea, since fluids were probably what a doctor would order, even an alien doctor, for radiation poisoning and mysterious pollen—then had to go pee because that was a lot of fluids all at once.

As she hiked up her skirts in the bathroom, she found a handprint of pollen on her crotch.

A very big hand.

The yellow powder was bright on her dark skin, like the flowers against the night.

She stripped off everything and jumped into the sonic shower. Then she used the water version. And when the shower beeped a warning at her that she was not being conservation-minded, she switched back to the sonics. As the last droplets vibrated off her skin, she hazarded a glance down.

No pollen, no handprint. See, nothing had happened.

Cautiously, she slid her hand between her legs.

Oh God and gods, she was still wet inside.

Her personal dat-pad was beeping too when she staggered out of the shower. Wrapping herself in one of the ubiquitous Thorkon robes, she dropped onto the big bed with its ton of pillows and replied to the message.

After only a moment, the doctor appeared. “Lishelle,” she said. “How are you?”

Since Lishelle hadn’t told the doctor why she was calling, she was able to keep the lie going for another moment. “Fine,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m calling so late.”

“It’s afternoon where I am on Azthronos.” Boshil smiled with well-practiced encouragement. “But you didn’t call me because you’re fine.”

Haltingly, Lishelle recounted the alien flowers, the overgrowth, the gardeners’ comments about radiation. She stumbled more when she got to the juicy part. “And I…uh, kissed a guy. A Thorkon guy. We didn’t have sex,” she hastened to add. Fingering didn’t count, did it? “But I felt a little…weird.”

“Then that was a bad kiss,” Boshil said somberly.

Despite her inner freak-out, Lishelle laughed. “No, it was fine.” More than fine; more than a simple kiss too…

“Like you said you were fine before?” The doctor gave her a reproving look. “I’ve explained that you are inoculated again intraspecies infections and accidental pregnancy, but broken hearts are something else entirely.”

Shrugging off the memory of the kiss—and more—Lishelle scoffed. “My heart is for sure fine.”

“Well, I’m querying your personal dat-pad scanner now and it isn’t finding anything amiss. If the growth rate you noticed on the plants was affecting you, we’d see something by now.”

Blossoming lady bits? Lishelle shook her head. “I really do feel fine after talking to you.”

“That’s good. But why don’t you swing through the station clinic tomorrow morning and they’ll run a deeper scan to send to me. And I’ll make a note for the garden staff to send me a sample of the flowers too. Since I’m curious.”

They chatted awhile longer—Boshil had an interest in exotic Earther foods besides coffee—and then disconnected. Lishelle settled down for sleep, feeling better with the doctor’s clean bill of health. Not to mention the lingering satisfaction of her orgasm.

When she fell asleep, she didn’t dream.

The next morning, she chose a mid-thigh day robe in the geometric Thorkon styling. With pants. Her Thorkon gowns were rich and lovely, but maybe she needed pants today.

After breakfasting in her suite, with her heart pounding only a little, she deliberately walked to the nexus where she’d…had her encounter last night.

Nothing. The gardeners must’ve been through already since the topiary were neatly back in their geometric cuts. No wild profusion of vines and flowers. She peeked up at the skylight, but the black hole wasn’t visible at this degree of the station’s spin.

An inkling of her earlier disquiet returned. Had she dreamed the whole thing?

She put her hand on her stomach, over the alien butterflies churning there. A little lower, and she’d have her hand over the pollen-powdered handprint…

It hadn’t been a dream. She might’ve been abducted by aliens, but she wasn’t crazy. Stalking over to the bench where she’d sprawled, she stared down. Nothing, of course; it wasn’t like she was a robot that could see lingering body heat.

So. Much. Body heat…

About to spin away, she caught a glimpse of bright color from the corner of her eye.

Half buried in the mulch of one planter, a single yellow petal shone at her, the crimson veins at its center shockingly vivid.

Relief and a strange thrill poured through her. Tynan was real, and on this station somewhere. She wasn’t going crazy.

Other than the part where she let an alien holy man caress her until she screamed.

With renewed confidence, she strode off to the med clinic. Doctor Boshil thought she was fine, so she was gonna go with that. The technician who greeted her and helped her into the full-body scanner was kind and thorough and sent the results to Boshil while Lishelle watched.

“It’s night at her clinic,” the tech said. “Do you want me to wake her?”

“No. It’s all good. I can wait.”

The tech patted her shoulder. “The scanner shows no signs of excess radiation exposure or histamine response to the flower sample the gardeners dropped off earlier. Come back anytime if you feel off.”

Lishelle nodded and marched away, the low heels of her boots clomping with renewed sureness. From now on, pants and boots, yeah.

When she arrived at the bridal suite, Rayna and Trixie were already there, playing with the mishkeet. Lishelle watched for a moment, feeling a bit squeamish again, this time because of all those hairy orange legs and red eyeballs. But when the young creature gamboled up to her with a stuffed toy larf in its mouth, purring hard, she had to smile.

“Throw it,” Trixie urged. “We’re practicing hunting.”

Since she was all for killing larfs, Lishelle gently tugged the toy away from the mishkeet and gave a toss. The mishkeet darted after, six legs scrambling with more enthusiasm than grace. It pounced, growling, and shook the toy ferociously.

“Good Tuffy,” Trixie crooned. The mishkeet stalked back to her, its tail flagging in triumph. It jumped into her lap and curled up with another deep purr.

Lishelle raised one eyebrow. “You sure you want to train Tuffy to bring dead larfs right to you?”

Trixie laughed. “Rayna already said that! But she’s so cute when she kills.”

“I assume you mean Tuffy and not our future duchess.” Lishelle fussed with some sample arrangements of party-favors based on a vintage Thorkon table game called countip. The little tiles clicked against each other like a disapproving spinster’s tongue.

“I’ve never killed anything,” Rayna said. “At least Trixie can say she’s hunted her own venison.”

“Tuffy is a little small for that.” Trixie hugged the mishkeet. “But I’m glad I knew enough to use a blaster.” Her grip on the little animal tightened, squeezing out a sleepy mew of protest which she quieted with a softer touch. “My 4-H rifle club would’ve been so proud of me.”

“My 4-H had swine,” Lishelle said. “So I did my science project on the evils of factory farming.”

Trixie choked. “I bet that went over big.”

“Big as a force-fed hog.” She turned as the suite door parted. “Oh sure, they bring the cake right when I say that.”

“Alien cake doesn’t have calories,” Trixie informed her.

As the baker’s assistants arranged the confectionary samples, Rayna said, “You two haven’t really talked about what you’d like to do after this wedding madness. You’re helping me out so much, I want to make sure I’m not using and abusing you, Black Hole Bridezilla style.”

Lishelle smirked. “Uh-oh, you’re getting all magnanimous on us. Let them eat cake.” She waved her fork with a queenly elbow-elbow, wrist-wrist-wrist wave.

“I’m going to do Nor,” Trixie said, snagging a plate for herself.

Lishelle and Rayna waited, but that seemed to be the extent of her wants and needs. Of course, Lishelle admitted, the reformed bad boy spaceship captain was probably entirely enough.

Lucky little Trixie.

Rayna turned her warm brown eyes to Lishelle. “How about you? No blasters or hogs, I guess.”

She couldn’t really mention her sudden interest in Thorkon religion. “I’m not sure exactly.”

“Still reading,” Trixie said. “You read too much.”

Lishelle tsked at her. “Reading saved me more than once. And it was a huge chunk of my job as a bioethicist.”

Trixie’s hazel eyes widened. “That’s what you did?”

Lishelle gave her some serious side eye. “What? You think someone like me couldn’t be a bioethicist?” As if she hadn’t heard that a thousand times in her life.

“I didn’t know anybody was really a bioethicist,” Trixie said apologetically.

Smoothing one hand over her hair, Lishelle said, “Well. Now you know one.”

“Neat. So…what did you do? Besides read.”

“A lot of bioethicists work in the medical field, helping set organ transplant policy, pain management, end-of-life care. I wasn’t so hands-on. I served on a think tank in Washington DC.”

Rayna tucked her chin. “What the heck were you doing in Sunset Falls?”

“I’d just finished negotiating a bad divorce. I wanted to get away from everything for a bit before I put myself out there and started dating again.”

They all stared at each other, incredulous.

“Get away from everything?” Trixie muttered.

Rayna shook her head. “How far out there, exactly?”

Lishelle snickered. “Yeah, a little too far from everything, huh? Like, how many lightyears?”

The other two laughed, and she was glad the second sampling of cake—which was awful—distracted them.

Everything she’d wanted back then—leaving her hometown, getting a prestigious job and a husband, making something of herself—had already been crumbling before Blackworm abducted her in Sunset Falls. So what did she want now?

“A glass of milk,” she muttered.

On their third sampling—a chocolate buttercream which was actually pretty close considering that the Thorkon baker had been genteelly horrified at their explanation of cow milking—Lishelle sat back casually, as if she were reviewing the checklist on her dat-pad. “So, I met the officiant for your wedding after I left you guys last night.”

Rayna mumbled around her mouth full of cake. “Hmmm. I’m not sure who that is.”

Trixie tsked at her. “You haven’t met the cleric who’s going to bless your vows? That’s like the most important part.”

Rayna shook her head. “I already have the most important part: Raz.”

“True, true,” Trixie said.

Lishelle swallowed her own mouth full of cake. Nope, it wasn’t cake, it was a lump in her throat, but it tasted of sweetness and bittersweetness and wistfulness and happiness for her friend. “Yeah, what you say to each other matters more than anything other people promise.”

Rayna smiled at her. “Exactly. I guess that’s why I haven’t been paying as much attention to the details as I should, when it seems like what’s happening now was always meant to be.”

Lishelle remembered those feelings from the early days of her own marriage. Right up until she’d caught him cheating and he’d told her if she’d worked half as hard at their relationship as she did at the rest of her obligations, he wouldn’t’ve had to take his love elsewhere. And she’d screamed at him that his love was the one thing in her life she shouldn’t have to work for, shouldn’t have to prove.

She’d been wrong, though. Like one of the Thorkon topiaries, a marriage needed tending. Of course, he’d been the one to dump crap all over it, and everybody knew chicken shit was too hot for compost and would burn even the toughest plantings.

But she wasn’t going to tell Rayna any of that. “You and the duke are perfect together,” she said instead. And she meant it.

Not that perfection was always enough, or lasted, but might as well start there.

“Did you like the priest?” Rayna asked. “The dowager said she’d take care of that part since she has all the social connections.”

“He seemed…nice,” Lishelle hedged. When they both shot her suspicious stares at her hesitation, she added quickly to cover her fumble, “Maybe…he seemed a little young for a priest?”

“Not a priest. Thorkon religious people are more like clerics,” Trixie said. “Nor told me about their theory of the Lightlands—that’s their version of the afterlife or heaven—because of Blackworm…” She looked down at her cake.

Rayna patted her hand. Trixie had been the only one of them to face Blackworm in person. He’d believed if he explained his nefarious plans, he’d gain her consent to be sent into black hole in search of love. All because he’d thought a desperate little Earther girl had signed up for the Intergalactic Dating Agency to find a mate. His delusion that the Thorkon gods lived on the other end of a warm hole and were holding his dead consort hostage was like something out of a mythological tale, except Trixie had almost died because of it.

“Well, anyway, they can answer their religious calling at any age, male or female, noble or commoner.” Trixie shrugged, as if sloughing the bad memories. “I think they don’t get too picky since having so many gods is a lot of upkeep. In a Thorkon wedding, there might be several officiants, each one representing gods important to the bride and groom and their families, but one will always be the Avatar of the Tynan, God of Beloveds—”

Lishelle stiffened. “Who?”

“The God of Beloveds,” Trixie repeated.

“Tynan,” Lishelle said flatly.

Plenty of cultures took the names of their religious figures, she reminded herself. Look at all the Jesuses and Marys on Earth. Or maybe Tynan had been called something else and taken on the avatar’s name when he became a holy man.

“So the story goes,” Trixie continued, “Tynan was a Thorkon warlord with a hundred wanna-be brides vying for his attention.”

“How lord-like,” Lishelle muttered. She knew all about what happened to males who attracted too much feminine attention. She wasn’t even sure it was worth blaming them; their dicks just weren’t capable of handling too much handling.

Trixie clicked her tongue. “But he would not have a one of them unless they could prove their true love.”

Suddenly, Lishelle was annoyed on the would-be brides’ behalf. “Let me guess. He made them duel to the death.”

Rayna practically snorted buttercream out her nose.

Trixie rolled her eyes. “No. There were three invocations…”

Almost against her will, Lishelle leaned forward. “Aaaaaaand?”

Trixie shrugged. “I dunno. I didn’t finish that chapter since I already found my beloved.”

Sitting back with a huff, Lishelle dropped that line of inquiry while they finished their cake. If she wanted to learn more about Thorkon religiosity, she knew who she could ask.

After the taste testing where they all agreed the third buttercream was the winner, they went to try on their dresses for the final fitting.

“We should’ve done this before cake,” Trixie complained as she twirled in front of the mirror in the bridal suite.

Lishelle eyed the blonde’s petite frame. “Cake is the best part of a wedding, so I’d rather know that the dress will still fit after I indulge.”

Rayna shook her head. “The vows, the cake—you guys, the most important part of a wedding is the wedding night.”

They hooted at her, and Trixie pointed out, “We already know you’re not a virgin.”

“Touched for the very first time.” Rayna smirked. Over more hooting, she said, “No seriously. Check this out.” She fiddled with her dat-pad…and the rich lavender of her gown faded to a pure crystalline white.

They oohed appreciatively.

“And the very bestest part,” she informed them. “It’s keyed to Raz’s biosignature. Once it goes to white, when he touches it, the extra ruffles ‘n’ shit fall off, and then, every place he puts his mouth…turns transparent!”

They cheered.

“In space, your wedding night never ends,” Trixie intoned.

By the time they were done in the bridal suite, they’d giggled themselves pretty silly, and Lishelle practically floated back to her own rooms in a haze of buttercream and camaraderie.

But when her slippers abruptly stopped without her conscious choice, she realized she was on the verge of the nexus and her heart was beating faster.

Warily, she peeped out of the corridor. The topiaries were their usual well-groomed selves, framing the benches— A large shape in a Thorkon robe moved out from behind the shrub.

Her heart slammed once more against her ribs before she recognized the estate staff uniform.

The gardener glanced over his shoulder. “Evening, Lady Lishelle.”

She murmured some reply, not bothering to correct him about the lady part. She was still glancing surreptitiously around the nexus. But there were no more lush vines, nowhere to hide even a larf, much less a big Thorkon male.

“I thought I better check one last time before heading back to Azthronos,” he was saying, gesturing with his dat-pad sensor. “Odd thing, weren’t it, all those flowers?”

She nodded. Right, like the flowers had been the odd part… “Do you know what they were?”

“Never seen their like. The bush is evergreen with little white flowers in the autumn time, nothing like those vines and yellow pretties. Must’ve been something dormant in the dirt got all excited by the strange starlight.” He gave her a little bow. “It’ll be perfect for the wedding, my lady.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said automatically. And it was.

Even if she did sort of miss the wild blooming.

She said her goodnights to the gardener and marched onward. But she ended up passing her door and continuing onward. She was too keyed up to sleep. A stiff drink would take care of that.

Eventually, once the station was a fully functional resort, there would be several eating establishments, large and small, as well as drinking areas, in addition to room service and the stocked kitchenettes in the suites, all serviced out of the same commissary. But for the wedding, only the main kitchen and the individual rooms’ food units were operational.

And the bar, of course. They all agreed that needed to be ready to serve.

One drink, that was all she needed. Maybe she’d even find a date for the wedding.