Collision Course

Chapter Eight

Saying goodbye to Beskidt By wasn’t a hardship. The place reminded Kell too much of what he had left behind on Sayén, what had been lost when PRAXIS used then abandoned his homeworld. He’d never known Sayén before it had been ruined, but he knew it after, as an animal that had devoured itself.

Even Mara, piloting her ship out of the city, looked faintly disgusted by what she saw, the same as when she’d taken a long look at the club’s daylit interior. Long-held beliefs falling away to reveal something raw and new beneath.

“Good to shake off that dump’s grime,” she murmured. She guided the ship above the skyline,

through the columns of greasy smoke and between the soundskiffs blaring pop songs and advertisements. Thick storm clouds formed a roiling, lightning-lashed boundary above them. “It’s time to start looking for a new place to roost.”

“Because of me.” A flat statement of fact that nevertheless cut deep. PRAXIS had ultimately cost him his home, but the 8th Wing had taken Mara’s by forcing her involvement, turning her traitor.

“Because of me.” She glanced over at him sitting beside her, and her eyes were the crystal green of distant oceans.

She didn’t blame him, though she had every right to. This day alone, she had given him unexpected gifts—protection, absolution. All he knew of honor and friendship was from the 8th Wing.

Mara owed him nothing. She was not a fellow soldier adhering to a shared code of conduct. What she gave him came from herself, her own will, her own strength.

He felt a change within his own self. Yet he did not feel diffused. Rather, he’d never been so sharp—she was the stone that honed him into a razor edge.

“Plausible deniability,” said Kell. “Tell everyone you didn’t know I was 8th Wing. That I was working undercover as a pleasure slave, and I forced you to cooperate.” Which wasn’t far from the truth.

“And lose my scavenger rep.” Her mouth quirked.

“Maybe your pride will get knocked down a little,” he acknowledged, “but you’ll come out clean.”

“As clean as anyone can be in the Smoke Quadrant.” She guided the ship through the heavy traffic above Beskidt By.

“You need cover, and I’m giving it to you.”

“And you don’t have to. I’ve got some thinking to do. Maybe after this is over, I’ll have to chart some new paths.”

The idea that she might want to be anything other than a scavenger startled him. She seemed to cling fiercely to the life she had made for herself. Yet it made sense. She was wasted as a scavenger.

He hated to see anything, any one, squandered.

“I feel like I should apologize,” he said, “but I can’t apologize for something I don’t regret.”

“The damn problem,” she answered, turning away to look out the cockpit window, “is that regret’s in short supply for me too.”

A silence that wasn’t exactly comfortable, yet not completely strained, fell between them as Mara flew them out of the boundaries of the city. They both seemed to sense that they had strayed into unknown territory, where delineations of allies and antagonists, partner and lover, blurred. He understood only three things with absolute clarity. The first is that he would find and rescue Lieutenant Jur. Second, he would keep Mara safe. And thirdly, but just as important, he would have her. Nothing else held relevance.

Beskidt By disappeared behind them, giving way to stretches of scrubby plains blotched with signs of habitation. He thought he spotted a few private compounds nestled in the sides of hills and ringed with plasma fences that doubtless incinerated anyone stupid enough to try and breach them.

Smugglers’ lairs. Gods knew what kind of contraband or illegally-gotten merch was being stored down there.

It was a planet populated entirely by criminals. On his homeworld, he had also been a criminal,

doing whatever he needed to stay alive. He had killed, he had stolen. Nothing he was proud of. But he survived, just as Mara survived.

Cool and sleek as Almirian winter, she entered the coordinates for the auction site into the auto pilot. “At the speed we have to travel, we’ll just make the cut-off time.”

He burned with impatience to get to Lieutenant Jur, but revving his engine for the next few hours would accomplish nothing except burning fuel. “Give me as much intel as you’ve got about these auctions.”

“Can’t tell you much. Not my game. I’m a scavenger, not a merch go-between.”

“A woman in charge.”

Her smile was pure, wicked temptation, sending thick heat straight to his groin. “I’m very good at it too.”

Oh, he knew, recalling with blistering lucidity how she looked, how she felt, as she rode him.

Like the sweetest torture, too good to be endured. It had been just last night, yet too long ago. He wanted inside her, not just physically, but in every way, and that want grew ever stronger the closer they came to completing the mission. To her, their time together had a finite beginning and end. She would slip away from him, elusive, likely to disavow anything to do with him, both to anyone who asked and to herself.

A dark, primitive need uncoiled within him. On his homeworld, there had been no law or no magistrates to conduct the mating rite. When a Sayén man claimed his mate, he dug his teeth into the back of her neck, actually breaking the skin and drawing blood. The man staking his claim would rub ash into the wound, resulting in an indelible marking on his mate. It was savage and coarse, something he’d gladly left behind. Only now did he understand and feel its purpose.

He needed to mark Mara, claim her, so that she could never fully distance herself from him. She would know, in the depths of space and night, he had been inside her, had made her his own. The need was primal, and he yielded to it without a struggle. Mara was his.

His cock hardened, pressing tight against the fly of his pants, but he forced himself to stay exactly where he was instead of pouncing on her. He had hours to formulate a plan for the rescue, but now, in this brief window of time, he wanted only Mara. To brand her however he could.

“You’re good at being in charge?” He eyed her up and down, a deliberate provocation. “Prove it.”

She naturally rose to his goading, even as she sent him a look that said she knew exactly what he was doing. “The flyboy wants substantiation? That, I can provide.” After locking the autopilot, she rose from the captain’s seat.

Kell watched with hooded eyes as she slipped between him and the control panel. A change came over her, so subtly that he felt more than saw it. A freeing of herself, the deliberate choice to be as physical and unrestrained as she wanted. This was different from what had happened between them at the lodging in Beskidt By. Then, she had succumbed to the desire between them. Now, her choice to go wild was deliberate. His arousal burned hotter.

She bent down, placed her hands on his knees and pressed them apart, giving her more room and giving him an incredible view of the soft shadows between her breasts. Her nipples beaded against her blouse, tight points beneath the silk. She leaned close, keeping her mouth a bare inch from his own.

“This feels like proof.” She reached out and cupped him through the front of his pants. “And this.” Her whispered words were punctuated by the movement of her hand, grasping his shaft and running up its length.

He thought he might lose his mind when she unfastened his pants and took his cock into her hand.

Her slim fingers wrapped around him, stroking him, bare flesh to bare flesh. She caressed him as if he was more than a means to pleasure. As if he truly meant something to her.

Then she sank down to kneel between his legs. Kell’s breath ripped out of him as he stared down at her. The sight of her grasping his cock as she licked her lips made him fight for reserves of discipline—otherwise, this would be over far too soon.

“This,” she murmured.

“Yes.”

She lowered her head. Ran her tongue around the ridge of his cock. Around and around. And then she took him into her mouth, as much as she could fit. What she could not get into her mouth, she grasped with her hand, so that no part of him went unattended.

He lost the ability to form rational thought. Words, impressions, spun through his mind and body as Mara sucked him. Hot. Wet. Ruthless. Clever. Perfect.

The ship continued on its course, and he saw through slitted eyes the land passing beneath them.

The distant landscape rolled away, and no one below had any idea what went on in the ship flying overhead.

This was about her control, but he couldn’t stop himself from threading his fingers into her creamy hair, both guiding and being guided as she moved. Her eyes met his for a moment before closing in satisfaction. To give him pleasure gave her pleasure, aroused her.

When her free hand came up to stroke her nipple through her blouse, he groaned.

It was good. Too good.

“Stop, me luna. Before I— fuck, yes.”

She sucked at him harder, moving faster. His hand dropped from her head, and he grasped the edges of his seat, his grip steel-tight, as his hips surged.

He came with a harsh groan. On and on it went, his orgasm streaming from him in bolts stronger than the lightning above. His climax felt drawn from every part of his body. She swallowed him, her cheeks flushed, her eyes closed, as if wanting to know only the taste of him.

Wrung dry, he collapsed back against his seat, panting.

“See? Command comes naturally to me.” Though her words were a taunt, her expression was tender. She had selflessly given him ecstasy—something a casual fuck would never do.

“Sometimes it’s better to let someone else take control.”

Before she could say another word, he had her up against the control panel. This time, he knelt between her legs, his hands on her thighs. Her calves pressed against his shoulders as her feet braced on the chair behind him. The look on her face was one of shock and fierce arousal. And gratitude. She did not expect him to return the favor.

“Beginning to see the wisdom in that,” she gasped.

He hiked up her skirt, then growled when he noticed that she wore no panties. All he saw was her bare skin, her slick, swollen pussy. Gods, she was beautiful. He had to taste her, brand her with his body by giving her the most intense pleasure possible, as she had done for him.

At the first touch of his tongue to her folds, they both moaned. He teased her at first, tracing her, playing lightly along her sensitive flesh, circling her entrance. She writhed beneath him like living energy, gasping wordless demands. He knew what she wanted, and he wanted to give it to her. His strokes deepened as he licked her.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since forever. The moment I saw you.”

Spice and sweetness. Nothing more delicious. He swirled around her clit. She thrashed at the sensation, yet held him closer. Two of his fingers plunged into her, and he felt her clinging heat pulling on him.

His lips fastened on the bud of her clit, and he sucked as he worked his fingers in and out. Coiling tension vibrated through her body, her thighs on either side of him.

“Kell…yes…gods…” She came with a scream, flinging her arms out, pushing up from the control panel. Her taste flooded his mouth, the primal fire of her essence. He needed to give her this—

pleasure that was hers alone, that showed she meant more to him than simple physical gratification, that even when they parted ways, he would never be apart from her.

He would not relent. Not until he licked and sucked her through two more climaxes, his fingers deep within her. Rather than diminishing, her releases built atop one another, lasting longer each time, her cries filling the cockpit and the whole ship with sounds of pleasure.

Sprawled and gasping, she barely had strength to open her eyes and gaze down at him kneeling before her. “We’re both very good at being in charge.”

“A good commander knows when to quit, but an even better commander knows when to hold firm.”

She shifted and her eyes widened when she saw that his cock had hardened again, standing up thick and ready for more of her. Pleasuring her, marking her, had done that to him.

“Flattering.”

Relaxed as she was, she didn’t protest as he sat her in the captain’s chair long enough for him to strip. They both fumbled with her clothing, and by the time they’d removed everything but her gauntlets, he was tight with need. When those, too, fell to the cockpit floor and she was entirely naked, he gathered her sleekness up in his arms and carried her the short distance to the galley.

“The bed might feel slighted,” she noted when he sat her on the galley table.

“Too far.” Even the few yards away to her quarters seemed an insurmountable distance when he needed inside her so badly.

He positioned her at the edge of the table, her legs surrounding him as he stood. Instead of thrusting into her, he found himself slowing, giving himself time to touch her. And he did. He ran his hands over her, relearning the shape and feel of her, the textures of her satiny skin. She sighed and purred beneath his touch, her own hands roaming over his body. Everywhere she touched became bright with awareness and need. He plucked at her dusky nipples and she arched into his hands with a cry.

Within moments, they both shook. Their eyes met and held. Her gaze went straight through him,

sharp as an energy blade, but the wound felt good and he would not look away. She knew who he was and what he’d done, and, in exchange, had given him secret, guarded parts of herself. They saw each other at that moment, removed from their demarcated roles of 8th Wing pilot and scavenger. Street brawler and outcast princess. Kell and Mara. Themselves alone.

Emotion shone in her gaze. Yet she did not turn away. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his taut shoulders, her legs around his waist, and held him tightly.

“Be inside me now,” she said, her words soft and hot against his mouth.

He slid into her. Deliberate, slow, feeling every silken inch of her take every thick inch of him until he was fully within her, hips cradling hips. Their gasps of pleasure mingled. For a few heartbeats, neither moved. They stared into each other’s eyes. Intimacy wove between them. Stillness could not last, not when she felt so good and her cheeks flushed and her lids lowered and he had to move now or else explode. He dragged his hips back, nearly pulling out entirely, before sinking back into her. Again and again. Her eyes closed, her head tipped back.

“Kell.” Her movements matched his, sleek and hungry.

His intent to take this slow burned away. He could not stop himself, his pace increasing, until the sounds of flesh meeting flesh joined with her gasps and his groans.

She was so tight, so flawless. Liquid and flame. It had never been this good, not with anyone but her.

He reached between them, finding her clit with the pads of his fingers, then stroking, rubbing.

Her legs clasped him as she bowed up to scream her release. Control shattered. His climax tore through him, a fiery annihilation that scoured him from the inside out. At the moment of his release, he bit her neck. Mine.

Her quick yelp of pained shock turned to a moan of pleasure.

They stayed like that for a long while, even as his legs, boneless after release, demanded he lie down. He refused to heed them. All he wanted was to savor this moment as he and Mara twined together, shuddering, sweat-dampened, complete.

He felt demolished. And rebuilt.

The ship sped on.

Mara stood in the UV stall, cleansing light streaming over her body. She’d been in here longer than she needed to be, but she wanted time alone. Everything felt sensitive, tender. Not merely her body, but her heart. She’d thought her heart had grown protective calluses over the years, yet they seemed to have disappeared, worn away by Kell.

Gods, simply thinking his name made her tremble. He hadn’t just fucked her, he had made love to her. The look in his eyes as he made her come, as he released into her—no one had looked at her like that, not a soul. She never experienced any of this before. It made everything she’d done prior to meeting him resemble empty, crude movement, basic and thoughtless as single-celled organisms dividing.

Making love with Kell wasn’t about division, but union. She rested her head against the wall as light poured over her. In a short span of time, everything had changed, including what she knew about Mara Skiren. After her banishment from Argenti, and the harrowing months that had followed, she’d created one goal—to need and answer to only herself.

He had changed all that. Direct and ruthless, yet somehow respectful of who she was. And that devastated her most of all. She could have shouldered him aside, or used him for mere physical gratification, if he had attempted to defeat or change her. Instead, he accepted. Even seemed to… cherish her. No one had ever done that, not even Mara, herself.

Gently, her fingers probed the tender spot on her neck where he’d bitten her. It might leave a mark—she discovered she wanted that. If only there was a way to ensure it stayed.

She stepped from the UV stall and slowly began to dress. Instead of her flashy Beskidt By clothing, she opted for her typical uniform: tank top, cargo pants, boots. It felt more genuine, and just now she hadn’t the heart for pretending.

As she dressed, she tried to beat down the flutter of hope rising in her chest. No future existed for her and Kell. When the mission was over, they would part ways, as they had to. An ace 8th Wing pilot and a scavenger could not be together. He had his fight against PRAXIS, she wanted only to be left in peace as she sold black market merch across the galaxy. They were two comets briefly crossing paths, flaring brightly, never to meet again.

Well, she couldn’t hide in her quarters. Straightening her shoulders, she walked out into the galley. Kell leaned against the table—she would always remember it as the site of their intense lovemaking—wearing only his pants. Her breath caught at the sight of him, but, even more stunning was the way he looked at her, as if nothing else existed, not the ship, not the planet, the quadrant nor the galaxy.

A woman could get very used to being looked at that way. A woman could—but she could not.

She didn’t know what to say to him. So she chose something mundane and meaningless.

“Cleaning stall is all yours.”

Wordlessly he rose and moved toward the hygiene chamber. But he stopped directly beside her.

He put a fingertip to her chin and raised it, then bent to kiss her. A gentle kiss, laden with tenderness, soft but confident.

Her heart fractured, almost to breaking.

He ended the kiss, and continued on toward the hygiene chamber. The UV stall hummed as he started it up. She pictured him nude, gilded in light, and forced herself to step into the cockpit and check to make sure they were headed in the right direction. They were.

If only there was autopilot for my heart.

She returned to the galley. It was impossible to sit at the table. To busy herself and keep her mind and body occupied, she ran the Arcadia through several diagnostic protocols. Unsurprisingly, given the amount of attention she lavished on it, the ship ran perfectly. Which left her with far too much time to think about things—about Kell—that she shouldn’t.

He emerged a few minutes later, clean and, thankfully, completely dressed, down to his boots and that horrible long, thin scarf wrapped around his neck. She would yield to temptation if even a single fastener on his clothing or lace on his boot was undone.

They stared at each other for a long, fraught moment. All she wanted to do was cross the small space of the galley and wrap her arms around him, feel his solidness, his warmth.

Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest, leaning against the wall. “There’s something you should know.”

He tensed slightly. “Tell me.”

“No one is permitted to bring weapons into the auction.”

He released a breath, easing. “That, I can handle.”

She couldn’t resist asking, “What did you think I was going to say?”

“That you were mated to someone.”

“I couldn’t mate anybody.” But, gods, within the hour, she had started to entertain thoughts that frightened her with their seriousness. Her hand strayed to her other wrist, feeling for the band that wasn’t, and never would be, there. Finding her wrist empty, her fingers reached up to trace over the already fading bite mark.

Following her gesture, his eyes flared. “Mara—”

“Time to plan the rescue,” she said, overlapping him.

He allowed her a brief reprieve. “Already on top of it. I figured that no one could be armed at the auction. They’ll likely confiscate all weapons and keep them in a guarded chamber.”

“Which will leave us unarmed, as well. Making for a difficult rescue.” Impossible, actually.

“I’ve got a plan.” He said this with confident authority. He went to his duffle and began pulling out items, which he set on the galley table. Then he outlined for her what he intended to do, their respective roles and how the rescue of the lieutenant and her ship would be effected. As he spoke, her admiration for him grew. Gods curse it.

“Quite an ingenious operation you have planned for us,” she murmured. “Provided it succeeds.”

“It will. I have faith in us both.”

Damn him. He kept demolishing her defenses.

“Mara.” His voice gleaming and dark, his eyes the same. He was fierce, burning, and she could no more turn away from him than she could escape the fatal gravity of a sun.

“Be ready,” he said. “Because, when this is over, I’m not letting you go.”

Her heart squeezed tightly. “You’re assuming we will still be alive when this is over.”

“We’ll make it.” Again, that unshakable, quiet confidence.

“Not everything is going to survive this mission.” She gestured to the space between them. “This won’t.”

His expression darkened. “Nothing is certain.”

“Some things are.” She turned away, unable to look at him. “8th Wing and scavenger scum don’t mix.”

His boots pounded the metal floor. Large and strong, his hands covered her shoulders and turned her around to face him. Anger tightened his features. “Neither of us fit into shiny little boxes.”

“So tell me,” she fired back, “what’s the flight plan, Commander? You fly missions for 8th Wing while I wait at the base, weaving plasma pistol cozies and hoping you make it back alive? Or maybe you keep the Arcadia clean while I do scavenging runs? Or, how about this,” she pressed on, relentless, “we live for brief windows when we can meet up, maybe on some resort planet for a few solar days, fuck like crazy before it’s time to go, time for goodbyes, never knowing when we’d get another chance to see each other.” Her mouth firmed. “All of those scenarios are punishment.”

Frustration hardened his jaw. “You’d rather have emptiness. The ache, here.” He dug his fist into the center of his chest.

She felt that ache now. “I already see it, see what I become. Thinking about how much time we have left together, or worrying that you’ll find some nice 8th Wing medical officer and send me a Dear Jane comm.”

“Join 8th Wing.”

Longing flared within her, but she crushed it as ruthlessly as she had once crushed hope of returning home. “They’d laugh me out of the station. Or throw me in the brig.”

“You keep seeing things that aren’t going to happen.”

“And you don’t know they won’t.” She twisted away from him. “Just—can’t we have this?

There’s so little time. And then…when the mission is over…if we’re still alive…we just…” She hated that she couldn’t even complete the sentence, let alone the thought.

Yet he knew where she was heading. “We walk away,” he finished, hollow. “No.”

“We have to.”

For a long while, he said nothing. Then, “You continue to surprise me, Mara Skiren.”

“Surprise?”

“I made my judgment early. Scavenger. Then I learned. You were so much more than that. But never, until now, did I think you were a coward.”

She couldn’t speak, not even when he sat at the table and began to work on assembling the necessary components to the rescue mission. He worked silently as she stood nearby, frozen with hurt.

After several moments, she went to the cockpit and sat, staring out the window. It had always been her place of refuge, where she had complete control, complete safety. She felt none of that now.

For the first time in many solar years, tears welled in her eyes, and she let them fall noiselessly down her cheeks as the world passed by below.