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“See?” Taraven calls. “Mistake!”
“I’m well aware of that now,” I mutter, catching Frankie’s foot mid-kick and sending her sprawling backwards. She never falters, though, getting right back up. This is that human resilience I’ve heard so much about—the toughness of a species that lives through harsh winters and boiling summers, who practically destroyed their already fragile ecosystem before first contact…
This is a species that, for centuries—for millennia—has fully believed they could survive anything.
It makes me bold.
The next time she spins around me, I finally reach for her hair. I wrap my fingers around a thick garland of copper and brown, yanking hard. She doesn’t expect it, and stumbles back against my chest. I get her in a chokehold a moment later, my hand around her throat.
I’ve just caught sight of Taraven, his magenta eyes wide, when something happens.
Everywhere Frankie and I touch, sensation explodes in my nerves, firing off like the pop of a kinetic weapon. I’ve never felt anything like this—neverin all my life. Frankie’s spine curls against me, her backside settling against my hips, and I huff out a breath at how sensuous she feels rubbing against myjunk, as she calls it.
She scarcely moves. Her breath gets ragged, as does mine.
I apply just enough pressure to her throat to remind her where we are.
“Surrender,” I hiss in her ear, resisting the urge to flick out my tongue and taste her.
Her shoulders flex against me like she’s about to move, but she just nestles closer instead. I can only see her profile from this angle, but her lips part as she stares ahead.
Both of us look at Taraven.
He takes a short, halting step forward.
A chime sounds in the air around us.
The spell is broken, at least for the time being. I fall back and release Frankie, shaking my head as if I’ll be able to clear the fog. I’m finally accepting, though, that I am always going to be warm around the two of them—that I will always feel overheated, out of control.
I don’t know if it will help us, or send us straight to our doom.
“That’ll be a call from the cortex,” Taraven says, his voice rough. He shifts awkwardly, and I can see the clear sign of his arousal under the thin black fabric of his pants. If we had had more time, where would this night have gone? “We might be ahead of schedule.”
“Guess we should go talk to Ravik,” Frankie says. “Um…to be continued?”
I look back to find a mischievous grin on her face, her face flushed.
I did that to her.
I like that.
“To be continued,” I confirm.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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FRANKIE
I’ve only been on maturezephtanbefore tonight, and I have to admit that boarding a juvenile space whale is fairly jarring.
Ravik has been working with this ship, which he’s named Ikaray, for about half the time I’ve been aboard Jaya. He brings us aboard through a hatch on a garden moon on the edge of the Five Houses of the Divine, and I can instantly tell that this is going to be averydifferent ride from Jaya. Ikaray’s corridors are wild and unkempt, the vegetation hanging in long vines from the ceiling while thezephtan’sorgans pump and glow in the walls.
It’s a little spooky, actually—seeing the ugly underbelly of something that you’ve grown used to without knowing exactly how it works. Ravik keeps his hand on the ship’s wall, murmuring under his breath as it grumbles.
“She doesn’t like having us here, does she?” Taraven asks. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“As safe as we can be, given the circumstances,” Ravik mutters.
