Elite Starfighter, Game 3 by Grace Goodwin
9
Lily
I could get usedto this. Soft bed. Even softer sheets. Darius wrapped around me, his arm tucked snuggly around my waist, his chest at my back. I’d never felt so safe, so languid. I didn’t want to move. Ever.
“How is your leg feeling?” Darius kissed the back of my head but didn’t move otherwise.
My leg. I’d completely forgotten.
Timid at first, then with growing confidence when I didn’t want to cry with pain, I moved my leg. The muscles felt sore, like I’d done a few too many squats the day before, but otherwise I felt great. The deep agony I’d suffered buried under that rock was gone. A memory.
Not one I wished to dwell on, let alone repeat, now that my leg was healed. “The doctor was right. The pain is gone. I guess the bone must be healed.”
Darius moved his hand from my waist to my thigh and explored the thin bandage that still covered the surgical site, lightly massaging the muscle. I melted. Like, puddle of hot wax melted.
“That feels good.”
“Does it?” He continued to run his hot hand up and down my thigh, massaging and squeezing the muscle, making sure I was well. When I sighed and rolled onto my back to face him, I discovered the room was too dark to make out his expression.
“What time is it?” I asked. How was a woman supposed to figure out what time of day it was in outer space? Worse, on a ship in outer space. No sunrise. No sunset. No birds singing or insects making noise. No cars or honking horns. Our room was dark and silent except for a gentle hum that seemed to be coming from the very walls, the floor itself. I assumed that had to be from something mechanical on the ship. Engines? Water pumps? I had no idea.
“Time?”
Darius spoke loudly, and the ship answered. “Ship time zero nine zero seven.”
“Is that morning?”
He smiled at me. “Yes, bonded one. Are you hungry? Do you want to go eat something?”
“Later.” I lifted my hand to his face and searched for what I wanted. His lips. “Right now I want you to kiss me.”
His hand froze in place on my leg. “I’ll want more than a kiss.”
“So do I.” I wanted him. Touching me. Inside me. Hot skin all over mine. I wanted to breathe him in and taste him and feel alive. Feel something other than fear and pain and weakness. I didn’t want to think about broken bones or battle or explosions.
When I tangled my fingers in the hair at the back of his neck and pulled him toward me in the dark, he didn’t resist. The clash of our lips, our tongues, was a frenzied claiming.
Moments later Darius had pressed my back to the bed. He tore his lips from mine and kissed my cheek. My neck. Lower. When he reached my hard nipples, my back arched off the bed. So sensitive. So alive.
He moved lower, the lightest graze of his lips over my clit, a gentle kiss before he moved to my injured leg. “Light, level four.”
The room brightened, and I closed my eyes in protest. “Hey!”
“I need to see for myself.”
Brilliant. I was naked, bared to the room, fighting the urge to cover myself, and Darius leaned close to inspect the bandaged area of my thigh.
Ready to tell him to leave it, the words caught in my throat when he leaned down and kissed the center of the bandage. “What are you doing?”
“Taking care of you.”
Closing my eyes, I turned my head away. It hurt to watch him as he placed kiss after kiss over the suddenly hypersensitive area. Other than the staff nurses at my various boarding schools, who spent half of their time bandaging a skinned knee and the other half chastising a young lady for being a tomboy, I couldn’t remember anyone ever taking care of me but me.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I reached for him. “Darius.”
“Impatient, are we?” He grinned up at me, then moved so that his chin was poised above my wet core. “Can I kiss you here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Tease.”
His gaze locked to mine, and he slid two fingers inside me, the desire in his eyes holding me prisoner. “Is this what you want?”
“More.”
With a grin I could only describe as male satisfaction, he lowered his mouth to me and sucked the sensitive bits into his mouth, played me with his tongue, and fucked me with his fingers until I was begging. “Please.”
“Come for me.”
“You’re. So—”
His fingers went deep. Twisted and rubbed a sensitive place I didn't even know I had. I cried out as an orgasm ripped through me.
“Bossy!”
He didn’t stop, moving and tasting until I was spent before kissing his way up my body. I reached for him as he settled between my thighs and his hard cock sank into my wet heat with an agonizing slowness that made the sensitive inner muscles spasm again.
I gripped his shoulders. My hips rose to take more of him. Demanded more. His control was like iron, and he moved in and out of me with a slow, steady pace that pushed me higher and higher until another orgasm sent my body into spasms, taking me by surprise.
With a groan that sounded like my name, he moved. Hard. Fast. Out of control. I moved with him, taking everything he had and wanting more. Always more.
We both exploded, his body shuddering over mine with an intensity that shocked me.
He covered me when it was over, and I welcomed the warm weight of him, just enough to make me feel protected but most of his weight on his arms.
“You are dangerous,” he said.
The compliment pleased me, and I stroked his back with every ounce of emotion I wasn’t ready to name, let alone speak aloud.
For long minutes we remained entwined, neither of us ready to move until forced to abandon the few moments of bliss.
Eventually reality invaded my thoughts. Food. Shower. Mission briefing. More fighting.
Darius must have felt the tension in my limbs, because he rolled to the side, pulling me with him. When I was tucked under his shoulder, he sighed. “Can we stay here all day?”
“You know we can’t.”
“I don’t want you fighting today, Lily. It’s too soon.”
I didn’t argue. We still had time to be together, like this. I didn’t want to waste a single moment.
