“Have you?”
I think again about our campouts and how Jorusk’s scent reminds me of a campfire. “We were happy once when life was about our family, tradition, doing good for others, and we were all together. It seems unfair to spend so much of life in misery. But I think there needs to be a balance. I don’t want a utopia. I want to be where I’m needed.”
Jorusk takes my hand and draws it to his lips. “You are. More than you know.”
16: Jorusk
I don’t care to ever get up again. I’m certain I’ve died and gone to Magmium. My Inferno wouldn’t let me sleep all night.
Beautiful Brynna shifts on my chest. I adjust the blanket over her bare body to cover her shoulders, sweep loose strands of her dark hair from her face, then look up at the morning sunlight, wondering where to go from here.
There is a war going on up there between my kind and Talhuskins.Another between us and Denarso. Mindor have learned to trust us. But I wonder when the Nebs will return to our ships to steal what little we have left.
I hope they stay away because we are so hindered and broken.But my fear is that they will see it as an opportunity to take what they want with little resistance.
Brynna’s hand slides down my side. “Are you okay?”
I look down to see my Inferno slowly pulsing through my body. “As much as I can be.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“Home. The wars. You. And how I wish we could bond the way we were meant to. But our ritual lands are destroyed. We have fled to space among the Amphirans. We are losing everything because of selfish species that keep getting away with murder. But we are all stretched too thin because of the empire, and I don’t know that there’s a safe place in the galaxy that I can take you where we can have a life together without always looking over our shoulders.”
Her hand slides around my side, and she pulls us closer together. “I am with you. We will find a way through this.”
Brynna peeks up at me with her dark eyes in a way that says she isn’t okay. She forces a smile. “It’s just something DIA said that makes me worry for you.”
DIA is a chatty spirit, and I’m starting to feel a bit left out. But Cinuska would just say that that’s how females are. “What did she say?”
Her wristband beeps frantically. Brynna looks down at it. Her brows knit. “I… That your kind is the key to winning the war with the empire.”
She rubs her face and covers her eyes. “I’m just worried what that means. So I’ve been working on something that happened to me recently to see if there’s something I can do to change things.”
I watch her closely, fearing that what she’s going to say will involve us being apart.
“I had a Neb jack into my power grid, shut everything down but essentials, and steal just a handful of medicinal plants. But it’s how he did it that still boggles my mind. I had no sign of him entering my space or moving toward my ship. He was already out there, waiting.
“Somehow, he got to my ship without registering any thruster heat or movement. He invaded like a shadow and slipped out the same way. I logged all the sensor feedback that I did get. I snagged only a small spot on the hull with some residue that matches your creosotine poison. And I have one camera feed blip that shows him standing in my dark ship.”
“That doesn’t sound like normal Neb behavior.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Brynna sits up and straddles my hips. She’s still naked beneath the blankets, and the sudden closeness of her, the heat of her delicate opening so close to me, has my cock straining against my shorts and tied off race suit.
I brace her hips and breathe out as I try to regain control.
“A work contact of mine, Zariah, is raising a Neb with her mate, Elix. They found him on a refugee planet.” Brynna unties the arms of my suit from my waist as she looks off at the other cliffs.
“I know them.”
“Oh, good. Well, she and I have been talking. We’re thinking there are more out there, refugees, maybe rebels. The Nebs as we know them would wreck engines, kill everyone in their way, and take everything, leaving only a husk of a ship in their wake.”
She leans forward and kisses my chest above my arrestor. “If we can find a way to talk to the outliers…”
Brynna catches my tail, runs her tongue down the length, and dips the tip into the supple heat of her mouth. “Maybe we could design a new attack plan.”
“Uh huh. Sure.” My heart slams against my ribs as it tries to catch up with the surge of rabid desire that courses through me. The beeping on my wristband alerts me that we’re missing the knowledge game. But I don’t give a damn. I have everything I want right here.
Her fingers are soft and adept as they slip inside my uniform and my fireproof shorts and shimmy them down while her teeth nip at my abs, travel lower, lower, until I’m a raging mess from anticipation.
