Page 52 of Cloverleaf Station

“You,” Deysan snarled, fighting the urge to cough. “You son of a … I should have found you and killed you once I was out of that … cryo tank, I should have … beaten your head in—”

“With a sonic wrench, yes, yes, I know, I’ve heard all your little threats before. Yawn. Dull. What’s it going to be, D? Do you want to come back and rest up so that you can sit in a tiny cell for the rest of your life, or do you want to go out a free man … and die like one too?”

“I—I—” If you get back, there’s always the chance you’ll be able to escape. You can bribe your next jailers, bribe Ganian officials, bribe whoever you need to! He wanted to go back … but he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth. Everything was starting to hurt, and all he could seem to do was cough and cough. More blood splattered the inside of his helmet, now flecked with bits of flesh.

“Welp, I’m gonna take that as a final ‘the hell with you,’ then,” Elenus said with glee. “It was awful knowing you, have fun out there, and if you need anything, well … get fucked.” He ended the transmission.

Deysan groped for the broadcast button, clawing at it, but his limbs had become terribly weak. No, no, I don’t want this! I don’t want to die like this! Take me back! TAKE ME BACK! He wanted to scream, to cry, to beg …

But it was too late. He couldn’t move, he could only slump to the floor of the ship—this ship that wasn’t the Catalina, this ship that couldn’t save him on its own—and slowly, painfully, and irrevocably meet his end.

Three and a half minutes later, he did.

And no one missed him.

Chapter twenty-two

If he had been in Cloverleaf Station with anyone else at that point, Kieron might have lost his mind.

What did you do when there was … well, nothing left to do? When there was nothing to drive you forward, no goal to be met, nothing to anticipate or prepare for? Certainly, he had to get ready to travel to Trakta and return Zak to Xilinn and the others, but that wasn’t going to be possible for several more months. The research that he was monitoring for other scientists was all proceeding okay, and there was no work to do on his probes, or changes he could make to the search algorithm, or anything he needed to do for his oldest friend any longer.

Kieron had never thought beyond that for himself. He had no personal goals, no dreams, no expectations for the future. He was adrift in space, with no war to wage any longer. It was painful, reminding him of how he had felt after he’d been rescued from the mess that was Hadrian’s Colony and sent off to school with no friends, no family, very little of the common Alliance language under his command, and years behind when it came to education that didn’t revolve around survival and tactics. He’d fallen into a depression that had eaten up the better part of a standard year before finally getting help for it; meeting Zakari shortly thereafter had revived his interest in life.

Who was going to revive him now?

Well, Elenus was, and he’d taken on that role very literally. Kieron had more sex in the first week after Deysan’s death than he’d had the rest of his life combined, and while it tapered off a little after that, their intimacy was still a constant. Elenus was … buoyant, energized, as lively as a child without the weight of his former partner’s crimes hanging over them any longer. He was the perfect match for Catie, who could equal him for exuberance, and the perfect foil for Kieron, who was naturally inclined toward being more pensive and introverted.

It was hard to be introverted when someone had four of their fingers and the tip of their thumb inside of you.

“You feel so good,” Elenus purred as he stroked Kieron’s entrance, not adding any more but not going easy on him either. “You’re so perfect for me, look at you. Not even I could make a better man, and you know I’ve tried. It’s the sort of thing I would do, isn’t it? I thought I could create the perfect partner for myself.”

He pressed all four fingers deep, sliding his thumb along the rim of Kieron’s stretched hole. “I tried to. I tried fun and flirty, I tried calm and collected. I tried to make intellectuals and adventurers and even geniuses like me, and they all made me so …” He curled his fingers, and Kieron gasped. “Bored. So predictable. Not you, though.”

Elenus leaned down and kissed the inside of Kieron’s knee. “Fuck, you’re better than I could have ever imagined. Better every single day, and it’s awful, I want to be with you all the time, and even when I am, it’s not enough. I want to be inside you, and I never want to leave.”

He rubbed the tips of his fingers over Kieron’s prostate, and Kieron shut his eyes against the onslaught of sensation. He couldn’t make himself be silent, but he didn’t have to watch Elenus devour him with his eyes, either, cataloguing Kieron’s response to every sensation.

“So sweet and so shy,” Elenus murmured, and Kieron wanted to kick him to shut him up … but he didn’t, because that would require moving, and he just didn’t have it in him right now. Not when everything felt so good, so much.

Elenus pulled his hand out, and that got Kieron’s eyes open and his ire up, ready to snap at Elenus to fucking get back in there, when he suddenly spread Kieron’s knees apart, lifted his hips, and thrust his cock inside of him hard and fast.

It didn’t hurt. Not even a twinge, not after four fingers and the fact that they’d been fucking almost every day for a month. It felt like a permanent space had been carved out inside of his body for Elenus, hewed through dedication and gentle, continuous attention. Kieron had never felt like this for anyone before; he’d never even imagined he could.

It was going to hurt so bad to have to say goodbye when this was all over.

Just the thought made his eyes water. To keep Elenus from seeing it, he wrapped his lover’s arms up tight with his own and drew him down, forcing their bodies flat against the mattress and changing the angle inside of him to something less acute but no less enjoyable for it.

“Are you eager?” Elenus asked with a smile in his voice. “Want me to get on with it already?”

“You know I do,” Kieron replied, and if his voice was a little gravelly, well, that couldn’t be helped. He wasn’t a liar; he couldn’t hide the truth. He could only stop himself from expressing it in the first place. “You always take so damn long to get started.” He clenched down around Elenus’s cock and was rewarded with a hiss from his lover. “Move.” Kieron began to shift himself beneath Elenus, searching for a feeling that would leave him in control rather than so far out of it he didn’t know that he’d ever find his way back to what was once second nature. “Please, move, I need you.”

“I know.” Elenus kissed him, barely a brush of lips between breaths, but it made Kieron’s skin tingle like he’d been jolted with electricity. “I know what you need, sweetheart.” He began to move faster, his motions smooth and hard, and it was just right—just this side of too much, perfect. Elenus knew how to make it perfect.

He’s fucking ruined me. I hate him, I hate him, I … But Kieron couldn’t lie to himself, either, so he kept his eyes closed and urged Elenus on until he was fucking Kieron hard enough to drive him up the bed, hard enough that neither of them lasted as long as they usually did.

Elenus came first, which was unusual, but it seemed like the orgasm had been ripped out of him, leaving him breathless and sweating and, when Kieron looked up, slightly wild around the eyes. He slid down and out, and Kieron did kick him this time, but then—

Four fingers and the tip of his thumb filled Kieron again, pressing deeper, larger than anything he’d had before, and he couldn’t take it all, he was still too tight, too tense, but it felt amazing, and there was his lover’s mouth swallowing him down, slick and tight and sucking him so good, and he couldn’t … he couldn’t …