Page 41 of Starfighter’s Salvation

His heart hammered beneath my cheek.

I stared at the countdown clock on the opposite wall.

Two hours, twenty-eight minutes until launch. I'd had two orgasms in less than twenty minutes.

“That was fast,” I said.

His chest moved beneath me with a quiet laugh. “Is that your professional assessment?”

“Preliminary findings.”

His hand moved slowly down my back. The possessive urgency was gone from the touch. What remained was gentler and, for that reason, far more dangerous.

I started to sit up.

His arm tightened. “Stay.”

One word. I looked at his face. The desire was still there, but so was the uncertainty he hid from everyone else. Corvan could cross galaxies, walk into battle, and place his body between mine and any threat. Asking me to remain in his arms unsettled him.

I understood that kind of doubt. “For how long?” I wanted him to say something romantic and dramatic, like forever.

His thumb traced my spine. “Until the mission call.”

Not forever. No declaration of love. Not yet.

But he had finally claimed me. He had stopped running. He'd sworn that he would burn worlds for me.

If that wasn't love, I didn't know what would be. For the next two hours and twenty-eight minutes, he was choosing to hold me when he could have left me and found some excuse, some chore, something to check on the ship, and walked away. Instead, he wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head.

I lowered my head to his chest and melted into him. I hadn't said I loved him either. But the cold hard truth was that whether I loved him or not, I didn't want to be anywhere else.

11

Corvan, the Ferros Trench, Xenon

* * *

I woke my mate an hour before the mission call came. We dressed quietly and were ready when the rest of the crew joined us. We didn't discuss anything that had happened between us, but as far as I was concerned, everything had changed.

She was mine now. I warned her what that would mean and she'd chosen me anyway. She sat next to me in the co-pilot's seat as we launched with the darkness of Velerion's night below us. The moon base's bay doors opened on black space, and I took the Salvation up through it, her new name still freshly painted on the hull.

I flew us into the Gate with Gina silent beside me. The instant the tunnel swallowed us, the familiar vibration climbed through the frame—the same tremor that had rattled the med berth the night I carried her across from Earth. Different crossing. Same woman. Same pull at the back of my neck, the mark aimed at her the way it always was, the pull even stronger now.

The run to Xenon gave us a few hours to rest. “Go lay down in the med bay and sleep. There is nothing to do until the we reach the rim, and I know you are tired.”

She argued because she was Gina. Then she stopped, because she was also smart, and she made her way to the back of the ship. Our private communication channel went quiet except for her breathing. I tried to ignore the soft sound as I tracked our power reserves, and range, and reviewed the survey scans I had memorized the night before—every number a thing to analyze. Discovered I was obsessed with her with an intensity even I had underestimated. My entire being was focused on the soft, steady rhythm of her sleeping. Somewhere in the second hour her breaths went long and even. I set the watch alarm, let the autopilot fly the empty dark, and tried not to think about the trap we all suspected was waiting for us when we reached the trench.

I dozed off in my seat, the light touch of Gina's hand on my shoulder waking me before the ship's timer did. Xenon filled the display canopy, rust-red and enormous, its single sun cutting hard across a world of old scars. I brought the Salvation down toward the largest of them, a massive trench connected to our target and keyed the medbay.

“We'll be at the Rim in ten,” I warned everyone on mission comms and looked at the female standing next to me with a carefully blank expression on her face. “Strap in tight.”

"Okay." She took a deep breath and sat in the copilot's seat, next to me, where she belonged. I didn't relax until I heard her harness snap home. “Let’s go get our people.”

The fighters who'd been sent as escort flew ahead and scanned the trench. They got nothing on their sensors. However, nothing fired on them either.

"All clear, Salvation. Nothing on sensors and no visual. See you on the other side. Good luck."

I thanked the pilots and looked at Gina. "Here we go."