Chapter 5

 

Amy clutched the overflowing shopping bags to her chest as she diverged from Luc in the ship’s corridor. He continued toward the cockpit to take them off Primaera while she went to the bedroom—their shared bedroom, still so awkward—to change into her new costume.

Her new persona.

She was an explorer in a new galaxy, hunting a priceless treasure. Well, not exactly priceless since she very much hoped to be paid. Her heart pounded almost harder than when she’d found herself naked on what she’d thought was a mere stage set.

It was real. Everything was real. And she was centerstage.

The moon-brandy spun slowly in her belly, and her overloaded brain, which seemed to be spinning in opposition, struggled to right itself. Letting out a steadying breath, she tucked some of the bags into the recessed cubbyholes next to the bordello bed. She unpacked the remaining bag as she toed off her too-big boots. The floor started to thrum under her bare soles, and she moved faster, dressing in her new outfit from top to bottom. She didn’t want to miss their exit into space.

When she joined Luc in the cockpit, he was speaking to someone about their launch window.

“This is the Blissed,” he was saying. “Repeating my request for a twenty-second launch window.”

“As you were previously informed, the window is seven seconds,” came the snippy reply. “Primaera is a busy port and we can’t be giving special privileges to every underpowered pleasure cruiser in the galaxy.”

“Underpowered…” Luc’s jaw clenched. “Council standard for a port of this size is fifteen seconds.” His tone was implacable. “If you need me to bring the council in to remind you of the math—”

“All right, all right,” the controller complained. “No need to quote the rule book at me. If you can’t get it up in less than ten seconds—”

Amy sat down hard as the ship leaped into the air. Her squeak of surprise was lost in a louder squawk from the Blissed’s computer and the planetary controller.

“Unadvised acceleration and excessive launch angle detected,” the computer honked. “If you are experiencing a sky-rage incident, please refer to transgalactic traffic codes—”

“Veer off,” the controller barked. “You can’t—”

“Just did,” Luc said pointedly. “Blissed out.”

Amy nestled back in the copilot seat, captivated by the subtle change of the sky from royal blue to deepest purple to a velvety black speckled with stars. For all the beauty onscreen in front of her, she found her gaze drifting, as if in freefall, to the man beside her. “So much for the rules.” She couldn’t hold back a giggle. “Not road rage, but I guess you’re a sky-rager.”

Luc’s grip on the controls eased as he slanted a glance at her, his lips curving to reveal a white flash of teeth. “This race is bringing out the worst in me,” he admitted, his tone pitched softly as if it were a confession. “I just wanted an easy launch since I’m still learning the ship.”

She shrugged. “You did follow their rules,” she pointed out. “Just with your own flare.”

He snorted. “If by flare you mean an unnecessary expenditure of energy.” He shook his head. “Not by the numbers, not very efficient.”

“But kind of fun, right?” She peered at him.

After a second, he nodded. “Yeah, kind of fun.” His gaze sharpened on her. “Kind of like your new clothes.”

She ran her hands a little self-consciously down the front of the costume. “Oh, this old thing?” She let out a little laugh. He’d pointed out possible clothes in the shop’s virtual display room, but he hadn’t seen her try anything on. Now, under his intense stare, the outfit felt a little more revealing than it had seemed in the shop. The high, asymmetrical collar, fitted bodice, and knee-length split skirt had reminded her a bit of a decorative cheongsam from home. But the sleek textile flexed whichever way she moved, like the highest end athletic gear. The arm- and leg-warmers she’d added looked like fashion accessories, but the shop’s computerized assistant had informed her that the wraps were both weather- and abrasion-resistant, like lightweight armor. She’d chosen a rich, dark red, and for no extra fee, she’d gotten delicate traceries in shining threads of pure black.

“You chose a dragon motif.” His lashes dropped halfway, hiding the glitter in his jade eyes.

She bit her lower lip. “Is that…a problem? Since my last name means dragon, I thought…”

He reached across the small space between their seats and took her hand. “You look like the fiercest, most infamous interstellar explorer ever.” He turned her hand over to expose her inner wrist. “And I see you added a weapon sheath.”

She flushed. “I know said you wouldn’t give me a blaster because of the rules about closed worlds. But the sheaths were free.” She kicked her leg up to rest her foot on the dashboard in front of them. “See? The leg warmers have them too.”

He shifted his hand from her wrist to her shin where the fitted wrappings outlined her leg. His touch drifted upward, past her knee, to linger at the edge of the empty sheath. Which just so happened to be right below where the bare skin of her thigh started.

There was no reason for her pulse to jump the way it did. She knew he wasn’t interested in her that way. He was gay. He was an alien. And she’d made his life much harder by accidentally stealing his real teammate away.

And still, her nerve endings shimmered like the stars outside their window.

But wishing on all the stars in this galaxy wouldn’t change what he was, any more than some new clothes could change who she was. With a stifled sigh, she flexed her foot on the dashboard, showing him her boots. “The woman back at the shop had flat soles, but she was much taller than me. So I got a bit of a lift.” She’d take the scant extra inch and be grateful. “Still practical. And at least they fit.”

After a semi-longish silence, he cleared his throat. “It all fits you…very well. You look the part now.”

Another flush of heat—pride, this time—burned through her. Had anyone ever said she was living up to their expectations? Even if the words, never mind the whole premise of hunting for an imaginary treasure, was just a made-for-TV lie. She wanted to leap up into his lap and hug him for at least pretending that she really was a valuable teammate.

But hugging and squeezing probably wasn’t something an infamous interstellar explorer would do.

Instead, she put both feet firmly back on the floor and pointed at the map projected on one of the smaller screens. “Is that where we’re going next?”

Luc reached across the dashboard, his shoulder brushing hers in the tight space. “You watched the pre-race footage already?”

She nodded. “I heard about our quest, the Firestorm Queen’s Prism.”

“When the assistant producer from the Octiron Entertainment Company first approached me after I mentioned the hypothetical value of such an artifact, I wasn’t interested in his proposal.” His jade eyes narrowed. “Draklings are often portrayed as wild, unruly beasts, distracted by anything shiny, and I didn’t want to feed into that bias by flying around the Paragon Galaxy hunting for a fictional queen’s imaginary lost crown.”

“You’re not like that at all,” Amy said. Although maybe if she was shinier, he’d put his hand on her again…

Not her type, she reminded herself firmly. Teammates only. Right.

His jaw cranked to one side. “Thank you. Unfortunately, many draklings are like that.”

“Your brothers,” she guessed.

He nodded. “I figured they’d finally shut up about me being an accountant and not an interplanetary mercenary or an explosives specialist or a mood-altering-beverage salesman—like them—if I won the Great Space Race. Spectacle and exploits, anything bigger and brighter than life, that’s what impresses them. Doesn’t matter if the diadem isn’t real. To them, it’s the adventure that counts. As if I wasn’t better at counting than all twelve of them put together.” He huffed out an annoyed breath.

“You shouldn’t listen to them at all,” she said hotly. “Don’t let them judge you.”

He shot her a glance that she thought might be gratitude. “Unfortunately, I’m returning home for a mating ceremony. In addition to wanton roaring, games of daring, and ritual pyrotechnics, there will be a lot of judging.”

Families were the same across the universe, apparently. “One of your brothers is getting married?”

“All,” he said grimly. “All my brothers are getting married.”

She sat back in her chair. “All twelve? At once?”

“Except me.”

She studied his expression. The strong, angular lines of his cheekbones and jaw were tensed, the rich hue of his skin faintly blanched over the bones with his agitation. “Are you… Do you want to be married too?” Maybe the universe didn’t have marriage equality yet.

His hesitation answered before he did. “Draklings don’t do well alone, but as an unlucky thirteenth, I have resigned myself not to mate.”

She squirmed a little bit at the “mating” part. That wasn’t necessarily the same thing as marriage at all…

Maybe it was just this silly honeymoon ship with its boudoir bed that kept making her think inappropriate thoughts about her teammate.

Also, the fact that the word “mate” kept coming up.

“Draklings love the legend of the Firestorm Queen. Thousands of years ago, she made her twelve royal lovers gather gems for her diadem before she would choose from the best of them, so the story is often retold at mating ceremonies with a lot of laughing.”

Laughing, fireworks, and storytelling. Drakling weddings actually sounded…kind of fun. Although he probably wouldn’t appreciate hearing that. “Which one did she choose?”

Luc snorted. “None of the lovers. She kept all of the gems for herself and mated the poor-born blacksmith who forged the base of her crown.”

Amy clasped her hands together in delight. “Good for her.”

“According to the story anyway. They lived a long and happy life but no one knows what happened to the crown. The legend says their mating was so forceful, the diadem exploded and scattered the gems across the universe, which became the stars we see today.”

He half closed his eyes and recited:

“The queen summoned her lover, wings of fire spread,

And the blacksmith rose above her golden bed.

The prism of stones who sought to possess her,

Gone, sundering the stars at the first fierce caress.”

Listening to his deep, resonant voice, a shiver she couldn’t quite squelch trembled along Amy’s limbs. What an orgasm that must’ve been, incendiary and everlasting…

She cleared her throat. “So our quest is to find the gems?”

“Not for real,” he pointed out. “Since it was just a legend. But the race challenges are always specially geared for the teams. The Octiron Corp pulls beings from all over spacetime—some willing, some…not so much—to be contestants in the Great Space Race. Since I’m a drakling, I guess the producers decided the mythical diadem would be an amusing hunt.”

“I bet your brothers will think it’s great too.” She tried to imagine twelve guys, all even bigger than their “runt” youngest sibling.

“Only if we win,” he cautioned.

Channeling her inner infamous interstellar explorer, she said confidently, “We’ll win.”

After a moment, he nodded then gestured at the map. “We start looking for the first gem here, on the planet Am-syx in the Yestrian Republic.” He showed the blinking avatar of the Blissed slipping along a parabolic arc from the Central Alliance Sector toward an adjacent sector. “The legend says the first gem in the queen’s diadem was uniquely beautiful.” His voice dropped back into that sexy lower register. “A stone from an ocean of fire, marking the tide of flowing desire, arising from the bed of the sea in facets of copper and red. That’s another line from the Epic of the Firestorm Queen.”

“Lovely,” Amy murmured. She’d been terrible at math and not much better in literature.

“And a very poetic description of a rare geologic formation in the Yestrian crystal mines.” He zoomed into the screen which showed what looked like a giant termite in heavy armor holding a shining blue stone. “The Yestria live in hives, fight off intruders, and extract some of the most valuable aquari crystals in the galaxy. I think the first gem is here.”

She peered at the screen. “But it’s blue. Not copper and red.”

“That’s what makes the queen’s gem unique. Only one in a million aquari crystals is red.” His fingers tapped impatiently over the screen. “Anyway, it won’t be real. It’s a metaphor for the race.”

She was starting to get a little confused about what was real. The race was real. Except it was a “reality” show, which meant it wasn’t really real. The prizes were real, but the legend behind the prize wasn’t. Or it was a real legend, but not real life. Aliens were real. Luc was real. Her hopeless attraction to him was real, but since nothing could come of it, it might as well be fake. Good thing she was used to feeling utterly lost all the time or she might be getting a tad angry by now.

She scanned the data scrolling underneath the images. “It says here the hives don’t play nicely with others.”

“I’m sure it’s all played for drama and laughs,” he said with a small frown. “Octiron wouldn’t have the teams doing anything genuinely dangerous or illegal.”

“What about your blaster?”

His frown deepened. “For show. Everything’s for the show.”

She touched the empty sheath at her wrist. When they’d confronted the smuggler, Luc hadn’t held the blaster as if it was for show. But maybe she was just being confused again about what was real and what wasn’t. “I guess we’ll see how well the token of passage works.”

“It won’t be easy,” he cautioned. “After all, the race is only interesting to the viewers if the challenges are real.” He winced. “Well, not really real, of course.”

She was sort of relieved she wasn’t the only one getting confused. Definitely made her feel less alone out here.

Luc tweaked at the screen for another moment before pushing back in his seat. “Our course is locked in. Shall we add some of your preferred foodstuffs to the galley?” Before she could answer, her stomach gurgled with enthusiasm, and he chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

They squeezed together down the short corridor to the small galley kitchen, where he showed her the controls for the food bank.

“It has all the basics in chemical nutrients, I’ve found. But it keeps trying to mix everything into an aphrodisiac.” He rolled his eyes. “When the Octiron producers upgraded the ship, they must’ve forgotten to change that part of the honeymoon programming. So if you try anything too exotic, it’ll serve up to something you probably won’t recognize.”

“I could never get anything that tasted like real Sichuan after my family moved from home,” she said. “I’m used to making do with knockoff imitations.”

He fiddled with the controller. “Then I’m a perfect teammate for you.”

She bumped his arm sharply with her elbow. “You’re not an imitation. You’re a real live drakling.” The lingering boldness of the waning brandy gave her rebuke more snap that she intended, so she added, “Unless I’m dreaming this whole thing.”

He nudged her shoulder back. “You’re not dreaming, and there’s the coffee to wake you up.” He pointed out the selection to her. “It’s simple chemistry, really. I’m not sure why so many beings have become enamored with it.” He grimaced. “Or why it affects draklings so strangely.”

“I need more than caffeine though.” She cast her eye down the list; nothing that she recognized. Not even chow mein or pizza. “I think all of this is going to affect me strangely.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he reached past her to point at a few selections. “These are some drakling favorites. If you choose the less spicy option, you might enjoy them too.”

“Oh, I like spicy.” She cued the options he’d noted into a favorites list under her name, as he’d shown her.

He pulled back a little. “Are the translators working correctly? When I say spicy, I mean very hot on the tongue.”

She put one hand on her hip, striking a pose with her leg-warmered leg thrust through the slitted skirt. “I hereby issue a Great Space Race side challenge: who likes spicy food more.”

Pulling himself upright, he stared down his nose at her, one eye narrowed. “Ah, innocent closed-worlder? You would question a drakling on matters of burning?”

She almost gulped out an apology, but then she caught the glint of humor in that mock glare. “I dare you to burn me.”

The words came out of her mouth a little more sultry than she’d intended, as if the last of the brandy was evaporating on her tongue in curls of smoke. They were just teasing each other—like good teammates—but she was teasing herself if she thought there’d be more.

How many adventures did one fake explorer need anyway?

“I accept your challenge.” Luc loomed closer, and she gazed up, almost as hypnotized by the quirk of his sensual lips as by his sonorous voice. “You set the menu and I’ll be right back.”

He strode out of the galley, his shoulders nearly brushing the doorway on either side. She took a breath as a cooler draught of air whispered in to fill the void he’d left.

Alien. Apparently gay. Accountant. Her teammate.

The silent reminders to herself didn’t cool the simmering in her blood. Bad idea, that brandy.

With one ear cocked for his return, she fumbled through the rest of her meal planning—including the coffee—and selected several drakling dishes for their dinner. Or was it breakfast? Brunch? She had no idea what time it was. Did it even matter when she was so far from everything she knew?

For a second, her knees wavered. She was so very, very far from home now. And the likelihood of returning—of anyone ever finding out what happened to her—was as murky as the rules of this Great Space Race.

But if anyone could get her home, surely it would be a rule-following accountant who needed a win as badly as she did.

When Luc returned, she had the meal spread on the small galley table. The setup was like a date night—bistro-sized seating, a low-wattage sconce emitting a soft glow. The twitter of anticipation in her belly.

That was just hunger, she told herself.

Although there was more than one kind of hunger…

He had a package in his palm, and she took a hasty step back to gesture at the table. “Sorry, not much room left.”

“This cruiser seems designed to throw its newly bonded passengers into constant contact.”

“That is what a honeymoon is for.” To make room for him, she sank into one of the seats.

He took a large goblet from the food processor—the last of the items she’d programmed—and set it between them before taking the seat across from her. Their knees bumped beneath the table.

“Sorry again,” she said again.

“You will be especially so when I win our spicy challenge with my secret ingredient.” He unwrapped the package and thumped it on the table next to the goblet.

She peered at the etched glass container. Golden beads filled the interior almost to the top. “What is it?”

“From my homeworld. It’s called kyapa-sho.”

She tilted her head. “The translator isn’t giving me anything here.”

“It’s an old drakling phrase that means ‘the ice that becomes fire in the heart’. It’s also a play on words that means delicious calamity.” He popped back the lid and held the container out to her. “Draklings eat it with almost every meal. Race contestants can’t bring anything to the galaxy with them, but I found a purveyor here in Paragon. My translator says you might call it a peppercorn.”

She took a whiff of the contents. “Oh, it reminds me of la doubanjiang, but we have it as a sort of pepper paste for meat or rice and noodles. How do you serve it?”

He took the container back from her and spilled some of the beads into his palm. He pinched the golden spheres between his fingers and sprinkled a tiny amount of the shimmering powder over the first dish. “Oddly enough, though kyapa-sho is powerfully spicy, it also has the unique chemical property of increasing the freezing point of pure water, which some say is why it tastes cold at first. We’ll start light.”

She reached over and stuck her fingertip into the center of his hand with the rest of the beads. He lifted one eyebrow when she smooshed the peppercorns into dust. Then she stuck her finger in her mouth.

His other eyebrow jacked higher. “I should’ve expected such bravado from a famous interstellar explorer.”

The cooling sensation on her tongue might’ve emboldened her to actually lick his palm, but a slow fire ignited on her lips and was quickly spreading to her eyes. “Infamous.” She took a slow breath, and the air whistled through her empty sinuses, scorched clear.

He grinned. “Tasty.”

Did he mean she was tasty? Of course not. “Now I understand why dragons breathe fire.”

His grin faltered. “Runts like me don’t always inherit the full range of drakling abilities.”

She winced. “I was just joking. I didn’t know drakling really do breathe fire.”

He looked down at his hand and upended the powder over the rest of the dishes, dusting his palm lightly. “No need to apologize. Of course you didn’t know.”

Because she was a closed-worlder who wasn’t good for anything. She wanted to kick herself with her inch-high new boots for ruining their rapport. “Immigrant Chinese girls are supposed to excel at math and music, avoid white boys with yellow fever, and support our families. But when my father died, I left school, and my mom moved back to China since it was obvious I wasn’t going to be any help to her.” The memory of the single airplane ticket was a ghostly chill no peppercorn could counteract. “Plus, I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose my job at the thrift store.” She looked down at their plates. “And…now I’m babbling. Sorry one last time.”

He reached over the table—not hard, since it was so small—and took her clenched hand. “We are obviously terrible failures, both of us.”

She tried to summon up a little sniffle of objection, but he was right.

Still, he went on, “Which means, since the hard-luck cases are always the most exciting, we are destined to win the Great Space Race.”

She peeked up at him. “You really think so?”

“Really.” He released her hand and picked up a small cube of something that looked like a cross between tofu and a flaky pastry. It gleamed with the golden pepper. “Now quit trying to make me feel bad for you so I forget your dare. It’s time to burn you up.”

As she stared into his bright jade eyes, Amy wondered, if she let him, what would arise from the ashes.