The guards tried to stop me from entering the pool. One look at Jorusk in just his shorts, all rippling muscle and powerful, hot veins of angry light, was all it took to crave a private moment with him.
Jorusk carries me out of the pool and sets me down in the steamy haze. I can’t quite tell who all is around us, but many other racers arrive to peer in at the pool.
Within seconds, Jorusk is dry like he never touched the water.
“Is the pool open?” a woman asks.
“Yes, it’s a little hotter than normal,” Mike, the mechanic, warns.
She eagerly runs in, sets her things down, and kicks off her shoes. More racers enter in swimsuits.
A staff member hands me a towel.
“Thanks.”
Jorusk replaces the arrestor over his chest and returns to his usual red hue. The moment the arrestor lights up and gives him a green indicator, the squads of security return to the complex.
Jorusk puts his race suit and boots on while I dry my suit until I’m no longer dripping, then step back into my boots.
“Sorry that got cut short.” Jorusk hoists me up by the hips and loops my legs around his hot body. He carries me along the path back to the complex and through the planetarium atrium to the simulation rooms.
Outside a room with a metal badge above the door resembling a pair of wings, Jorusk sets me down again. The doors slide open, and he leads me inside by the hand.
He studies a digital chart of the dark cliffs of the rectangular tower, some twenty stories high. It reaches up and down, below the moon’s surface, with rock formations throughout its interior, and a transparent ceiling with a view of the stars.
“Hello, Jorusk. You are the first visitor. You may have first pick of any nesting site you like,” the computer says, displaying a schematic with a neatly arranged grid of private corners built into the rock. “Ohni wishes for all species to feel welcome, as long as they play by the rules. No nest kicking, no playing chicken with other fliers, and no pecking or scratching at the rock.”
“Understood.” Jorusk removes his bands and hangs them on a hook on the wall, then taps the screen.
“Location: Starview Nest One, claimed for… Jorusk. Drathious.”
The map highlights his chosen spot.
“Hang on,” he says, unfolding his wings. Jorusk wraps his arms around me, flaps his wings hard, and rises off the floor before diving over the edge.
My stomach greets my throat, strangling my cry of disorientation as we glide down, among the lower nesting sites in the darker corners of the wing room. Then he circles us upward, higher and higher, catching synthetically infused warm jets of air that levitate us toward the stars. Every movement of his wings sends a hot wave through his body and into mine.
The wind dries my hair and my race suit. Jorusk’s gentle way of flying is soothing. He flaps rapidly as we reach the top cliff inside the tower. Jorusk sets his boots down.
“How was that for a trial run?” he asks.
“A bit of a stomach drop at first,” I admit, looking around the rocky cavern from the highest spire. “But this is amazing.”
Jorusk eases me down, and I put my feet on solid ground again. The stars overhead fill the room with a soft milky glow.
He walks to a large, round divot in the rock and looks at it. “Good site. Big. I’ll be right back. I think I saw nest material below.”
Then he just walks to the edge, tilts forward, and drops into a dive. Watching him makes my heart stall for a beat. His dark wings open with his delighted yell, and it makes me laugh. It’s clear that, of all the places at this complex, he’s going to be happiest here.
He rustles around below, at another slot in the rock, grabs an armful of something, then flies back up to me.
“Figured you’d want blankets. They are softer. But traditional material is usually damp moss because it’s soft and can take the heat. They didn’t have any. Just twigs and rocks. Depends on which Talhuskin clan it is, but that’s what they like. So blankets it is.”
He crawls into the bowl in the rock and stuffs the bottom with rumpled cloth, then lays several more blankets over it. “Come on. We’ve got a great view tonight.”
Jorusk gets up on his knees and offers me a hand. I take it and let him help me down, into the nest. “If this is how you normally sleep, how do you not end up in a bowl of water when it rains?”
A grin decorates his face. His red eyes brighten. He brings his wings together behind him, forming a dome, then grabs me and guides me beneath him. “The males’ job is to protect the female and the nest.”
