Page 48 of Crash Landing
I shook my head, licking the taste of him off my lips. “It’s better than a simulation,” I admitted. “That’s all I can say.”
Our mouths met again and when they did, Saleuk dropped his hands to my waist and hoisted me off the ground. My legs flew around his hips like it was second nature and immediately, I felt the hard press of his concealed cock prodding my center. I couldn’t help myself. I rocked against it, loving the way his muscles went taut when I did. I did it again and listened to that sweet, tortured groan deep in his throat.
“I’m sorry,” I said against his mouth. “I can’t help it. I love what I’m doing to you. That’s awful, I’m sorry.”
He coiled his fingers in my hair, pulling my head back from the kiss.
“It’s not awful. You feel so good, al’fira. I’ve been wanting to touch you for days.”
Like I weighed nothing, he walked us both back inside and sat me down on the edge of the table. He kept kissing me, claiming my mouth like kissing was second nature to him. His big hands gripped my ass, pulling me against his firm groin and I gasped when it slid over the bud of my clit.
I wanted him inside me. It was a feral need that consumed my entire being, but I was still terrified. I was physically a virgin and I knew Saleuk wasn’t small. He wasn’t even human. I was out of my mind knowing how real it all was. I didn’t have the disconnection of virtual reality to lessen the experience. I didn’t have a digital wall between us. I had him. All of him, in the flesh and completely real.
“Saleuk,” I said on an exhale, arching into him as his hand slid under the fabric of my tank top to cup my breast. “I wasn’t lying when I said I was scared.”
He drew back to look at me, thumb grazing my pert nipple and making me shiver.
“Scared of me?”
I hated that he even asked that question.
“No. Of this. All of it. You’re the most real thing I’ve ever known. I have no idea what I’m doing here.”
He pressed his forehead to mine, taking a deep breath.
“You’re trembling, Sam.”
I nodded, so turned on I could cry and yet embarrassed by it. “I don’t, um… I’ve never.”
“I know. You told me.”
“No, I mean, I’ve never had anyone. People don’t choose me. I’m a joke.”
The last words came out in a humorless laugh just as my eyes started to sting with unshed tears.
“Stop,” Saleuk whispered, brushing his thumb across my cheek. “You are not a joke. Not to me.”
I shook my head, not wanting to think of the real reasons we should be scared. They were too logical and logic wasn’t in my dictionary that night. I wanted so badly to prove that I wanted him. That I needed him. But my brain kept getting in the way and telling me we weren’t compatible. That I wasn’t enough. That hewould come to his senses and see how worthless I was.
With one last slow kiss, Saleuk lifted me off the table and then pulled me into the softest most consuming embrace I’d ever felt in my life. I felt invincible wrapped in his strong, alien arms. I pressed my head to his chest and listened to the rhythm of his dual heartbeats, wanting to sink into him and never leave.
“It sounds so strange,” I whispered against him. “I can’t believe they’re both beating.”
I felt his lips press against the top of my head and I melted.
“They are now,” he said.
I drew back a little, craning my neck to look up at him. “Can I sleep with you again tonight?”
Brushing a few wet strands of clinging hair from my forehead, he said, “You can stop asking.”
19: Sam
A flash of light pierced my eyelids and with it, the static tingle of electricity danced in the air. Seconds later, an earth-shattering bang shook the bed beneath me and suddenly I wasn’t laying down. I was hanging on for dear life as the freighter rocked to the side. Tremors threw me off balance as people around me screamed and clutched to whatever they could. Crates of combustible syfer crystals and bodies were thrown about in the quake. I could see people falling to the floor. I could see blood. I could see fire.
The freighter was being attacked and outside there was nothing but space. A body in space would freeze. Get crushed. Die in seconds.
Reality gripped me by the throat and squeezed, making it hard to breathe. Someone was shouting orders, but they were muffled behind explosions and bursting pipes. Innifer was there. My best friend and I were going to die on a big ship in the middle of a great big vacuum. Our names would be forgotten. Our lives would be meaningless. I was going to die without doing a single important thing and no one would even know it because I was nothing. No one. Because I was unimportant.
