Page 42 of I Fell for an Alien Popstar

Just the quiet, dizzying reminder of how much nothing there was out there.

“The bunks are unfortunately full,” she announced with a slight smirk.

She walked in ahead of me, tossing her bag onto the bench as if she had already decided how this was going to go.

“Sira did not account for a guest when she booked the bus for the tour. Every pod is taken. This was the only space with room for a second person, and it just so happens to be my room, which I figured you probably didn’t mind anyway…”

“Sira could not find anything else?”

“She suggested the cargo bay.” Zhari glanced back at me over her shoulder. “I told her that was rude.”

“The cargo bay,” I repeated.

“She was not serious, Vada. Well, mostly.” She let out a laugh.

I stepped inside and let the door close behind me. Above the bed, a panel of fiber-optic stars glittered in slow patterns across the ceiling, casting tiny points of light across the pillows.

I dropped my bag by the door and let my eyes move around the room, taking it in. The bench. The desk. The boots-worth of floor space between the bed and the wall.

Two weeks of this.

Two weeks of falling asleep next to her.

I would have been lying if I’d said I wasn’t frigging excited.

I was still cataloguing the room when she moved around me and came to stand behind me. I suddenly felt her warm breath on my neck.

Her fingers found the strand of hair that had fallen loose against my cheek. She tucked it behind my ear slowly, her fingertips tracing its curve and lingering against the skin just below.

My breath caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat and stayed there.

She leaned in, and her lips brushed the shell of my ear, soft and warm and absolutely on purpose.

“Do you know what this means?” she whispered.

I slowly shook my head.

“We get to snuggle,” she giggled. “Every… single… night.”

Her lips dragged against my skin as she pulled back, just barely. The shiver that went through me started at my ear and didn’t stop until it reached the backs of my knees.

My nipples tightened against my shirt, a slow ache spreading beneath them. That familiar clench between my thighs pulled so deeply that I had to lock my legs to stay still.

And beneath all of that, beneath the pulse hammering in my throat and the flush crawling up my neck, a completely different feeling bloomed.

I wanted to snuggle her so badly.

“Yeah,” I breathed. “I can’t wait.”

Something shifted in Zhari’s face. The playful confidence was still there, but now there was a flicker of confusion, as if she hadn’t expected me to say that.

Which, I wasn’t sure why she hadn’t, considering I’d let her finger me in the shower.

The panel beside the door flickered. My name appeared next to hers in English and Velan:

ZHARI LUMIS / VADA LAMOTH

Side by side, like we were a matched set.