Page 15 of Adrift! (Cosmic Connections Cruise #2)

She moved to the small refreshment station, aware of Ikaryo following, very aware of the flutter of the short robe around her thighs, just past her butt cheeks. “What would you like?”

“Something I’ve never had before.”

Like the caress of the nightgown hem, the silky edge of his voice sent shivers dancing over her skin.

And when she glanced back over her shoulder at him, she caught his silvery gaze tracking up her legs.

“Tall order from someone who’s traveled the galaxy.

” She tried for a cheeky grin but found herself admitting, “Not sure I can offer that.”

He propped his hip against the counter, his lean body relaxing as if they had all the time in the universe. “You already have, just by being you, being here.”

Her hands stilled on the dispenser controls. “Ikaryo…”

“Too metaphysical?” He backed away to settle onto the room’s small couch, stretching his long legs out in front of him though his half-moon eyes stayed focused on her. “We can talk about air quality filtration instead.”

“Oh no.” She laughed despite the flutter in her chest at his attention and forced herself to study the in-room offerings.

“It took forever to get the algae sludge out of my hair.” Suddenly inspired, she tapped in a request to the dispenser.

“Tell me something about your experiences in space that isn’t…

” While the machine whirred, she gestured vaguely at the viewport where stars she couldn’t see hung in the darkness. “Quite so awful.”

His eyes spun as she approached with two glasses. “Would you believe me if I told you…I don’t think this is so awful?”

“Really?” Curling one foot under her, she sank to the couch, careful not to flash him, although it was a close thing.

“Truly.” Then he looked down at the beverage she held out and repeated her dismayed, “Oh no.”

She laughed. “You said you wanted something you’ve never had before. Well, maybe this is going to be my signature drink.”

“Why is it so…green?”

“Chef must’ve collected the algae we cleared. It’s offered through the dispenser already.”

Despite his doubtful expression, when she waggled the glass at him, he accepted, his fingertips just brushing hers in the exchange.

At the brief contact, a spark shot across his augmented knuckles, and they both froze.

She gulped. “The resonark…”

He stared over the glass. “No. I think…it was just you.”

Her breath caught, and she found herself wondering how those sparks might spread along her own nerve endings…

He finally blinked, breaking the moment. “You first.”

She held up her glass of green. “Together,” she challenged.

After a mutual clink—although it took him a moment to realize that was what she wanted—they both hesitated. Then they both snickered. Then they both took a sip.

“Not bad,” he declared.

She sputtered at the pungent pong. “It’s so, so awful!”

“It just needs balancing. Wait here.” He plucked the glass from her dismay-slackened hand. A mere moment at the dispenser, and he returned with two taller glasses that looked less like antifreeze. “Some substances are better as seasoning than as core flavoring.”

He watched intently while she took a tentative sip.

“Okay, now that is good.” She grinned at him. “I’ve no doubt you could turn all the bitters and sours to something sweet.”

“No. Like I said, it takes a balance.” He clinked his glass against hers again. “And we make a good team.”

Amusement fading, she took another sip, realized her hand was shaking, and let it fall with a grimace. “Good enough to save the ship with a song?”

“Yes.” He set aside his glass too and shifted to face her fully. “Or maybe no. Maybe it will be like my homeworld that couldn’t be saved. But we’ll sing anyway.”

When she swallowed hard, the taste of the garden lodged in the back of her throat, sweet and earthy both, with a lingering hint of salty tears. She’d made so many mistakes, been wrong about so much. “What if we…can’t?”

“We will. Together.”

From the time she’d left home, she’d always been a solo act. Maybe it was time to change that.

She reached out to him, as she had with the glasses, but with nothing in her hand this time. He echoed the gesture, and instead of the chime of glass, there was only the tiny, silent explosion of a spark rising between their joined hands.

“Just you,” he murmured. “And me.”

Anticipation had her leaning forward even as she said, “With the situation and everything, this might be the worst time…”

“Or the only,” he agreed.

The kiss felt as simply miraculous as a rosebud unfurling, and Remy wished she could hold onto the moment forever.

But even as her fingers tightened greedily on Ikaryo’s, he gentled his hold, his thumb rubbing a slow circle in her palm.

The friction raised a tingle that radiated all the way to her deepest self.

Nothing mystical, she thought hazily, or mechanical. Just him.

She opened her mouth under his, and he intensified the kiss, tongue and breath adding to the intoxicating swirl like he was mixing her into the perfect cocktail.

He skimmed his hand up the side of her face to bury his fingers in her hair, tilting her head into his fist. His lips on the side of her neck were hot and so soft; she couldn’t hold back a keening sound of need.

When she leaned closer, anchoring herself with a hand spread across his chest, his answering groan was exactly the same note, an octave lower, and his pulse pounded in rhythm with hers.

She wasn’t a na?ve dreamer anymore, who needed flowery perfection, hearts beating as one. But this moment felt like the origin of a new universe, and she would’ve sworn she saw stars.

Sure enough, when she opened her eyes, his augments glowed with sparkles that shimmered across his skin, casting a silver-blue light across both of them, and a subsonic hum vibrated through her.

The sensations shook her beyond the physical—not just the cosmic kiss, or the way his extra enhancements responded to her touch, creating feedback loops of pleasure that seemed to echo endlessly between them with the promise of ecstasy.

More than that, when he also opened his eyes, the shining half-moons reminded her some heavenly bodies were close enough to touch—if she wanted.

“Is this okay?” she whispered against his lips, her hand hovering above the enhanced side of his face.

“More than.” His voice was rougher now, and all the more beautiful for the raw edge. “And you? With everything, the anomaly’s interference…”

Hand dropping to his tensed shoulder, she pulled back just enough to really look at him. “Do we think we’re being influenced by outside forces right now?”

He paused, and she realized that even with “everything”, she’d never felt safer than when he listened to her and considered the implications.

“I feel…” He tilted his head as if listening. “Like myself.” When he lifted his augmented hand, excited electrons still danced along the exposed components. “For so much of my life, ‘myself’ was pieces falling to the wayside, flesh and home and dreams of what might be.”

Remy took his hand between both of hers and pressed his clenched knuckles against her lips. “Ikaryo…”

He unfurled his fingers to cup her jaw. “But with you, that is…enough. No, more than enough. I feel like I’ve finally found all of myself.”

When she let out a shaky breath, he brushed his thumb over her lower lip, making the rest of her shudder at the satiny caress.

“May I show you, Remy?” he murmured. “All of myself.”

A surge of desire hotter than stage lights shot through her veins. “Please.”

With a moment’s awkward first-time fumble, their eager hands together unsealed his crew uniform down his chest.

She caught her breath again at the tattooed symbols revealed in the gap. “So many.”

“Each one was meant as a talisman against losing and forgetting.”

“They are beautiful.” Stradling him, she pushed the uniform off his shoulders to find more tattoos.

Where skin met cybernetic scars, the markings sometimes continued the lines of circuitry before melding into artistic designs, a defiant reminder that he had survived, whole and handsome through the end of a world—and he’d continued on.

With his assistance, she kept uncovering him and the silent story of his journeys until he was naked beneath her. His lean strength triggered an appreciative hum low in her throat—and a deeper, secret echo between her legs.

He leaned back, arms flexing behind his head as he preened beneath her regard, and his eyes narrowed to sly, ice-gray slits. “Are we compatible?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Pushing back upright, she took a step away, toying flirtatiously with the tie of her robe. His molten-steel stare fixed on her, while his hand drifted to his hardening flesh.

That part of him seemed to have no augmentation…

Something between a gasp and giggle caught her throat when he abruptly surged to his feet and stalked closer, reaching for the scrap of silky fabric. “Let me,” he growled.

It had been a while since she’d done anything like this. Well, technically, she’d never had sex with an alien. But suddenly, just getting naked with someone else felt strangely outlandish.

He must’ve sensed her hesitation, because he too paused. “Remy. You don’t have to act brave with me. This is a first time for both of us.”

Her fingers tightened on the belt. “I just don’t want to mess it up.”

“You mean with something like a hijacking or a silage flush or—”

She laughed. “When you put it like that…”

“Not me,” he protested. “The universe put it like that.”

A reminder that failure was always an option.

But when she loosened the tie, the robe whispering down her spine felt like a soothing caress even as her skin tingled with keen expectation.

His harsh, discordant breath and a choked oath in a language she didn’t know was exactly what she wanted to hear.

Hands fisted at his sides, he stared at her hungrily. “Beyond beautiful. When I even think of touching you, every part of me lights up.”

No song and dance, no dramatic lighting, makeup washed away, hair in damp draggles around her shoulders, after days of all her fears on display, and she’d never felt more desired.

“Winning that free ticket was seeming like a curse,” she confessed. “But now… If everything’s entangled, I want to be caught with you. I want you to take me to that big bed and touch me everywhere.”

Without another word, he took a long step forward and swept her up into his arms.

She’d known he was strong—they’d moved a couch together, after all—but to feel it… Yeah, she liked that.

But he laid her down on the yielding bed with infinite gentleness, as if she were precious. Though she liked that too, she wasn’t breakable. So she hooked a heel behind his hips and brought him down atop her.

As they stared at each other across that intimate distance, his slow, dimpled smirk was purely human male. He snuggled his hips against hers. “How much touching?”

She smirked back. “All of it.” Reaching down to cup his backside, she rocked him side to side to get both legs around him. “When I signed with the IDA, I got all my inoculations and lectures and whatnot.”

“Me too. All I need to know now is what you love.” His voice dropped lower. “Show me.”

Another kiss. Another caress. Matching her quickening pulse, his cybernetic lights throbbed—almost as hot as his erection nudging her.

Oh, definitely compatible, if obviously extraterrestrial with a slightly different bulge and kink—

She gasped as he rocked against her sensitized mound to slide down her body, his mouth tracing a slick, searing path across her skin. With no words, only moans and shivers, she showed him how to play her.

And he listened like she was his favorite song.

With a graze of his teeth, he brought one aching nipple to attention while he toyed with a curl of her pubic hair, raising an ache in her swelling clit.

Even after winning the IDA cruise ticket, she hadn’t bothered with anything fancy down there since she’d figured ETs wouldn’t have expectations.

Now she still didn’t care because Ikaryo left her no doubt how he felt.

His groan of enjoyment as he finally centered his mouth between her legs was a vindication.

And when her hips arched up helplessly, he wedged his strong biomech arm under her ass to hold her there, half suspended and all awash in a burgeoning magical concoction of sensations.

The heat of his hands and his lips seemed to brand her here and there and everywhere, as if he’d mark her with the invisible tattoos of her first carnal journey to the stars.

As he refined his technique on her—mixing pressure and friction, suction and tempo— mounting pleasure reverberated along her nerve endings, crashing over her in ever larger waves.

She skimmed one hand over his head, holding him closer as the deep, silent chords of an orgasm began to swirl through her.

When she thrashed her head, comets flared behind her closed eyelids…

She looked down between her legs to find him watching her, silver half-moons alight.

When she reached down to stroke his cheek, he turned his head to kiss her palm, his chin wet with her juice. “C’mere,” she purred.

“You first.”

Anchoring her fingers in his hair, she tugged lightly. “Together?”

He didn’t make her ask again.