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I chuckle because I’m godsdamn certain my freedom will be “permanent.”
I balance our plates and mugs on a tray and follow behind her as she leads us outside to the terrace.
“We can sit side by side at the table,” I say, “facing the view of the garden. No one can see in, but we can see out. It's extremely private up here. They can't hear us talk, or even if our voices drifted out, they wouldn’t know it's us.” Faint sounds of birds and children’s laughter can be heard in the distance. The sun is setting, and I order the bots to light a variety of candles around us.
“This is lovely,” she sighs. “It feels as if we are not in the middle of a space station but instead on maybe the planet Salo.”
I seat us both at the table with our plates and our ale, eager to have my first meal post-prison with this sexy, beautiful, charming female. She sits down next to me, and I can’t keep my eyes off her cleavage, tiny waist and thick thighs. I imagine spreading those meaty thighs and licking the slick heat therein.
I offer to cut her meatstick into tiny pieces, but she manages to eat it with delicate bites. It’s easy to forget the energy bands as we eat because both of us enjoy the closeness. I blow out the flame on her fire ale for her and I find myself wishing that I could be the male who always banks her flames.
She giggles and takes a sip. “Oh my gosh. This is my new favorite. I just want to warn you I'm going to need a lot of this.”
I chug my entire tankard of ale, smack my lips and let out a loud fire belch. She laughs heartily and I drag her back and forth with me to the food dispenser to get more and more ale. Eventually I'm drunk and she's a little bit tipsy.
And that's when I end up telling her everything about myself. The stars blink overhead, as do the lights of the distant high rises that surround the garden. I pull her tiny form onto my lap and wrap my arms around her. She rests her soft cheek against my bare red chest and listens to my stories.
“Even when I was young, I always got in trouble, I couldn’t seem to sit still. It was hard for me to focus because I was busy telling jokes and making others laugh. It wasn’t that I didn’t like learning, I just like doing and being busy better than sitting and reading books. I can get all kinds of shit done by jumping into a social situation, figuring it out fast and figuring out what needs to be done. I joined the military for a while and learned lots of good skills there, but eventually I was demoted for disrespect and not following orders. Afterwards, my skills were in high demand and because I don’t consider stealing from rich beings to be a bad thing, I became a thief.”
“You’re still a thief right now? You’re going to meet up with your crew and start that up again?”
I can’t help myself; I bend down and kiss the top of her head and keep talking, “No, that life is all over. I made a good living as one of the best thieves in the four sectors, but it’s time to get out. My cousin Idun Grindstone has been trying to recruit me. I’d been thinking it was time to turn legit and leave my old team behind, not turning anyone in and leaving at the top of my game. I’ve repatriated enough artifacts to last a lifetime. That was when everything went to shit.”
“Uh oh, what happened?”
“I was at a birthday party for a celebrity, held on a luxury space liner with lots of other beings. At that same time, my long-time rival, a male who ran an opposing criminal network, was killed in plain daylight on Creeka Minor. Someone ran up to his vehicle as it was parked and his window was down and shot and killed him. Despite the fact that there were eyewitnesses placing me on the luxury space liner, or the fact that they never found the blaster or exact weapon that killed my rival, nor could they place any weapon with me, I was arrested and charged with my rival’s murder. They did have supposedly two different eyewitnesses who said they saw me kill my rival, whatever, it wasn’t me. If I’d actually wanted him dead, I wouldn’t be so stupid as to do it in broad daylight.” My words start to slur. “I…it would have been done already years ago. I often wonder if my teammates knew I was trying to get out and thought I would turn on them? I just wanted out and free. How could they not know that?” I shout. “We were friends. I thought they were my friends…”
She sits up in my arms.
I stop talking and meet her bright gaze.
“Do you know what you need?” she remarks. “You need a pet.”
A cleaning bot hums as it goes by, tidying the terrace. “Well,” I sigh, “I have a lot of cleaning bots. I've never been able to have a pet because I've never stayed in one place long enough.” And then everything starts spinning.
“Bed,” she announces. “Time for you to pass out. Up. Let’s go.”
It’s fuzzy, but I can see her standing and helping me. I say a lot of things as we go, I’m not sure what. And then I’m swaying down the hall, leaning far too heavily on my loyal female.
We stop and each take a turn using the restroom.
Then I fall into the bed.
The sounds of the prison are gone—the seven lockdown alarms prior to lights out, the other prisoners shouting and yelling obscenities, the pounding of fists and feet.
It’s so very quiet.
Aliyah holds me in her arms and I close my eyes and fall into the deepest sleep of my life.
6
Aliyah
The next morning I awake in Kryel’s arms, happy to be cuffed to him.
His massive muscles hold me tight. He lightly snores, hints of smoke wafting from his nostrils and somehow, I find it adorable. The black horns that burst from his forehead, the fangs that peek past his full lips and the barbed tail that rests on my hip are all sexy as hell. Maybe because I remember exactly what a drunk Kyrel said to me last night, even if he won’t—that his time with me on the terrace was the best night of his life and I was the sexiest female he’d ever met.
My lips twitch.
