Page 73 of Fighting Gravity
“To go where?”
“Gathea. I will acquire a new ship there. One that is gek. And then I will continue with what I do best.”
“What’s that? Killing valerians?”
“Among other things.”
31: Rhone
I walked with Quinn close in tow, my cock still trembling with the shivers of her orgasm. And even with her two strides behind, I could smell myself on her and it stirred something deep in my core that hadn’t been stirred in ages. Listening to the way she walked, I could tell she was uncomfortable and I wondered if I’d hurt her like I did the first time. Although her words and her pleasured moans suggested otherwise.
Perhaps her discomfort was over the same thing mine was.
She was my prisoner. She was human. And yet I could no longer deny that I wanted her. And she could not deny that she wanted me. Even with blood still dripping slowly down my shoulder, the spark I felt when I drove into her lingered with greater potency.
I was boggled by it. Her ferocity was gripping and her determination was infectious. I never would have expected it from a species that was so frail and underdeveloped, but she was a marvel.
“You’re really going to make me walk around with you all over me, huh?” Quinn said, squirming a little.
When we came to the entrance to the mess hall, I stopped abruptly, not at all bothered by how she collided with my back like she hadn’t been paying attention. Turning, I looked down at her and that vicious little scowl on her face.
“Yes,” I said.
Before she could respond, I turned again and stepped into the mess hall to find most of my crew sitting at the metal tables with their food. It was a relief to smell familiar nourishment onboard again instead of synthesized meals and old, freeze-dried meats.
Veron, Kaar, and Utrek, sat at a table together snacking on freshly steamed kal steaks and I was inclined to have the same. Quinn, however, had an alien pallet that I had yet to understand. Veron had fashioned a diet of boring, vitamin-rich nutripacks for her, but she hadn’t yet eaten real food around me.
“Do you eat meat?” I asked her.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve been known to eat a good steak now and then. But I’m more of a seafood person.” Her eyes skimmed the food on the other plates and she raised her brows. “I have no idea what that is, but it doesn’t look cooked.”
“We sear our meat, but should you need it cooked longer, it can be arranged.”
“What animal is that from?”
“It’s called a kal.”
“Like your ostriches,” Utrek said, straightening in his seat. Quinn’s eyes skimmed toward him, looking him up and down once. “Hello. I’m Utrek.”
Of all my crew members, Utrek was the scrawniest. The runt of the pack. He had no interest in fighting, but he had an interest in pretty much everything else and since Quinn had been on board, he’d been studying humans extensively. I hadn’t thought anything of it until then.
“Ostriches?” Quinn said. “That’s… specific. Not a lot of people eat ostrich on Earth, I’ll be honest. But I heard it’s like beef.”
Utrek narrowed his eyes like he was trying to remember what beef was.
“Is beef something you eat?” I said.
“Sometimes. But I’m not eating an alien meat that isn’t cooked.”
I walked to the plating station, pulling a rare steak out for myself and another for Quinn. But per her request, I stuck hers in a flash cooker. It was considered a travesty to cook kal meat until it was a shriveled, brown slab. Some even considered it inedible, but Quinn had a point. The meat was unfamiliar and cooking any foreign contaminants out of it was safest.
Walking the two plates to the table with the others, I found Quinn sitting at the very end, watching everyone like they were going to jump on her. Meek, however, was not a word to describe her since seeing the way she fought for her life. She was tense and ready and defensive, her eyes moving subtly from one person to the next. When I set the plate in front of her, she glared at it, examining the steak like it was poisonous.
“You guys don’t season your food?”
“It’s been soaked in ope leaves,” Veron said, chewing a big bite between her teeth.
“I won’t ask what that is, but here goes nothing.”
