Page 4 of Starfighter’s Salvation

One look at Corvan and my panties were wet. Ridiculous. But he was extremely fucking sexy. I wanted to crawl into his lap and never leave it. Kiss him. Pull that uniform off and explore every muscle. Ride him until I had so many orgasms I couldn’t see straight.

Corvan wasn’t pretty. Priya’s Vesh was pretty, all cheekbones and green eyes. Corvan looked like someone had carved a man out of a mountain and then made him fly rescue missions. Exactly my type, apparently. Not that I had a type. A type required dating. In the game, Corvan had fewer romantic lines than any other companion I had ever seen. He gave casualty updates and told me when the ship was about to explode. Not much else. All business, my man.

Alisha said I’d built the world’s least romantic fantasy man. Alisha was wrong. A man who told you what was happening, stayed calm while everything went to hell, and didn’t expect you to stop working so you could manage his feelings? That was hot. Somewhere in the last few months I had stopped pretending it was only his competence I liked. I liked all of him. Gruff. Bossy. Calculating. Sexy.

He isn’t real. You know he isn’t real. I knew. It didn’t change the fact that I had feelings for him anyway.

I knew the diagnosis the doctors down the hall would give me. Delusional. Psychotic. In love with a man in a video game. Worse, convinced, in my deepest, darkest places, that he was real. Then there was the one thing he said that made my heart race and my entire body melt. Every time he pulled my avatar out of danger, he said the same five words.

I have you. Hold on.

I said some version of that forty times a shift. To strangers. To scared children. To old men who were trying not to cry in front of their wives. No one said it to me. Not until I built a fictional alien with a great ass and a limited vocabulary.

“There he is,” Alisha said, nodding at her screen. “Your extremely large, emotional-support pilot.”

“He is a combat rescue specialist.”

“You made his chest bigger. Did the game offer another upgrade?”

“Yes. Better armor capacity. He’s a tank. I’m a healer. Be stupid not to.”

She snorted and shoved another baby carrot in her mouth. “Of course that’s the only reason.”

Oh, hell no, that wasn’t the only reason. Corvan was huge. His muscles had muscles. And the bigger he got, the wetter my panties. He was more than big enough to shove me against a wall and fuck me into oblivion. Make me forget everything else but him.

That’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to dream about arterial bleeds or crying mothers. The Emergency Department saw the best and the absolute fucking worst of humanity, and sometimes I didn’t want to have to think—or remember—any of it.

Luckily, the mission began before I could muster up a response to Alisha’s laughter. Enemy fire streaked across the canyon. The crashed Velerion troop shuttle lay on its side against the rock, one engine still burning. Location markers for the wounded popped up across my display. Twelve. No. Fifteen.

“That’s new,” I said. “Never had fifteen wounded before.”

“The final mission must scale,” Alisha answered. “You have incoming on the north ridge. I can buy you four minutes before they reach the crash site.” Her fingers flew over her controls, doing whatever it was she did to enemy communications. Four minutes. Not enough time for fifteen wounded. No way.

“I need six minutes,” I told her.

“Then work faster.”

Corvan dropped the rescue ship between two bursts of enemy fire. The rear hatch opened, and my avatar ran. The first casualty had a shoulder wound. Painful. Bloody. Survivable. I marked him delayed, and the second had chest trauma and his blood pressure dropping fast. Immediate. I sealed the wound, moved him to extraction for a drone pickup, and kept going.

“Enemy fighters inbound,” Corvan said. That voice melted my insides. Gravel and calm. Three words on a casualty update, and my hands went steady on the controller the way they went steady over a crashing patient. A string of code spoke, and my body listened. I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or relieved. My exhaustion and slight fever had nothing to do with the heat moving through me. Right?

“Alisha?”

“I see them. Two minutes.”

“I still need four.”

“Well, you only get two.”

I shoved all emotion aside and moved. Fast hands. Clear choices. No time for guilt. One casualty was already lost, and the game tried to trick me into wasting time proving it. I didn’t.

“I’m sorry, honey,” I told the simulated soldier anyway as I moved to the next.

Three walking wounded. I ordered them to carry one stretcher and help each other to the ship. A medic with a broken arm could still hold pressure with the other hand. I used him. Alisha shouted a warning, and the ground jumped under my avatar. Corvan flew the rescue ship sideways between me and the blast, using the ship as a shield. Brilliant.

‘I have you. Hold on.’

My grip tightened on the controller. There they were, the words that made me fall in love with an imaginary alien.