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He was looking at her with a broad smile. “Why do you sound surprised?”
Miya shook her head with a smile of her own. The overconfident alien had no idea how close they had been to disintegrating. Someone trusted her piloting skills too much… She loved it. Therak was the best passenger ever: strapped in, not complaining, not puking, not screaming, not questioning her actions... At least thus far.
But what now?
She brought forth the view from the external cameras. The orange-yellow planet could be seen behind them, remaining further and further away.
“Farewell, Xera. And good riddance.”
When Miya looked away from the holoscreen, she found Therak’s gaze still on her. His smile was gone, though, and his eyes were beginning to darken.
“What is it, Therak?”
“Can you engage the autopilot now?”
“Um... Let’s check the energy levels first… Whoa, we’re actually doing quite well! We just might make it halfway to Alfatar Station.”
“You’ll engage the autopilot?”
She followed his movements as he unbuckled his seat belts. Despite the yellow and black blood all over his body and the healing wounds, he seemed to be free of serious aches and pains.
Which couldn’t be said about her throbbing feet. Now that she wasn’t entirely focused on piloting in a sandstorm, the bite wounds stung too bad to ignore.
“Yup, the autopilot is coming on. Just give me a minute to run some final diagnostics.”
“You’ve got five,” he said with a tone that brokered no argument. “Then I’m taking your clothes off.”
Forget the diagnostics. Miya should engage the autopilot before she lost control of the holowheel. Sure, Therak didn’t mean it in the I-will-take-your-clothes-off-and-ravage-you sense; he had always hated that jumpsuit, and now it was even worse with the fabric all gooey and stinky. But heat bloomed in her core at his words nonetheless.
By the time she got her pulse under control and dared look over her shoulder, Therak was already chewing the last piece of an energy bar and cleaning himself with supplies from the medkit out back.
Miya drank in the sight of him rubbing a medical wipe over the hard plains of his chest. Scrubbing those firm pecs. Moving the wipe downward to his washboard abs to get them clean and shimmery again. Taking another wipe to continue washing south of his tapered waist. And further down toward his hard-as-steel, deliciously thick and sinfully long–
Engage autopilot, engage autopilot!
Miya sank into her seat with a relieved exhale. She had switched from manual to autopilot right on time. Another second of ogling her passenger, and she would have lost control of the shuttle and gotten drool on the console.
She was so into Therak it was embarrassing. Now that they were finally safe, she was supposed to ask him how he felt about her and to confess her feelings too, but where to start? ‘By the way, Therak, wanna be my boyfriend?’ sounded so ordinary after everything they had been through. Then there was that one time where he had told her he didn't do relationships–
“Your five minutes are up.”
She jumped in her seat. She hadn’t heard Therak move, and he was right behind her already.
“Give it to me, Miya.”
“Uhhh…” She watched him kneel beside her seat, dark eyes locked with hers. She forgot how to breathe, let alone speak.
“Your foot. I need to clean the bite wound.”
“Oh. Right.” She only now noticed he had the medkit in one hand. “Thank you.”
She unbuckled her belts and turned the seat until she could place her dirty foot in his open palm. Well, he’d volunteered, who was she to say no?
As Therak worked on the bite marks she couldn’t bear to look at, his fingers gentle and confident in their movements, Miya felt all warm and fuzzy inside. He was so tender, so mindful of every touch in an attempt to not cause her unnecessary pain. He dressed her wounded toe with those big hands of his as carefully as if she were fine china. Fragile. Delicate. Precious.
And she was precious to him, wasn’t she? As Miya, not as a pilot he needed. He had come to rescue her from the monsters. He had saved her life so many times she had lost count. But what did that mean for them now that they were off Xera?
“What happens now, Therak?”
