Page 45

ALICE

I gasped for air as I was coming down from the orgasm Xyrek had just wrung from me so effortlessly. The moment he curled his fingers inside me, my body exploded like never before. Wave after wave of bliss moved underneath my skin, raising goosebumps in their wake. My toes were still curling when Xyrek picked me up and placed me deeper onto the bed.

Soft kisses rained down on my face. His hands roamed my body. I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. Gently, he pushed my thighs apart and situated himself between my legs. I was barely able to raise my hips to give him easier access; my last high was still very much surging through me. Unbelievably, the moment he entered me, filling me like no other had ever before, I came again.

"Ah, frygg, Alice, you're going to be the death of me," he rasped, tensing. Sweat dripped down his neck and back as he tried to hold his own orgasm back while I felt my walls knead his cock sheathed all the way inside me.

"Don't move," he begged. It was an easy enough request to follow since I wasn't able to even lift my little finger. Slowly, ever so slowly, he pulled out, only to thrust back in. I gasped; my pussy was already sensitive and primed, and every stroke of him against my walls made me quiver with bliss. I didn't think I could come again, but once he started moving faster and his hands gripped my hips, I felt another orgasm building.

"Fuck Xyrek, I think I'm coming again!" I screamed the last word. He pushed my hips down so that his cock moved against my swollen clit, and for the third time, I exploded all around him.

This time he wasn't able to hold back either, and he bellowed my name as his cock pulsed and his seed filled me.

Exhausted, I closed my eyes. I was barely able to move when gentle hands cleaned me between my legs and moved me into a more comfortable position. I felt the bed dip, then his body spooning mine, and with a sigh, I fell instantly into a long, deep sleep.

Xyrek was still beside me when my eyes fluttered open. My body was the most relaxed it had ever been. When I stretched my legs, nerves I hadn't known existed tingled all the way up into my pussy, recalling the delicious sensation he had wrung from me last night. Three times. Three times! I would have never thought I could come more than once.

Alice, get up. You have one more task .

The voice inside my head was familiar; even though I had never met him, I knew instinctively that it belonged to Zapharos.

Get up .

I looked at Xyrek, who was still sleeping. What am I supposed to do ? I asked in my head. Despite the strangeness of having another entity speak to me in my brain , I was neither freaked out nor alarmed. I’d heard the others complain about Zapharos, but to me, his presence felt reassuring.

You will know when you see it .

I put on some clothes, making enough noise to wake the dead because I really wanted Xyrek to get up and come with me wherever I was going. But he didn't stir. I contemplated rousing him but decided against it.

In a trance, I moved through Luph's silent ship. I walked out of the open hatch. Had we left it open ? It didn't seem possible. The guys took security very seriously. I walked over the tarmac straight toward the building we had raided yesterday. Was that really only yesterday? The longest day of my life?

Nothing but stillness greeted me there. But at least the power had been restored, which meant the lights were on and the elevators functioned again. I hoped that one of the men left to guard the women would stop me, but I never saw anyone. I took the elevator all the way down to the third floor as if someone was telling me what to do, but this time, there was no voice in my head.

I walked into the conference room. The large window allowed a full view of the now-empty lab. I shivered when I thought about all that had taken place there. Inside the cylinders, the bodies of the Ohrur's cruelties still floated, attended to by small drones. It was so eerie, and a cold shiver ran up and down my spine. I turned from the window. It was just too unnerving to stare at the… the objects.

At the end of the conference room, I saw another door I didn’t remember seeing before. We must have overlooked it in the chaos of the raid. A sudden bout of nervousness overcame me. I felt like I shouldn't be here. Most of all, I shouldn't be here alone. What if more Ohrurs were hiding out inside? I might have been a fool for coming here, but I wasn't an idiot. I called Vader and Maul over the comm and waited until my trusted drones were next to me. Only then did I move to the door. A panel next to it blinked, requiring a palm scan or code or whatever other security measure the Ohrurs had dreamed up.

Just like the others never went anywhere without their blasters strapped to them, I always put on my toolkit, a smaller version of the one Xyrek had originally given me. Selecting something akin to a screwdriver but a little wider and flatter, I moved it between the panel and the wall and pried the lid off. Pulsing cords, like arteries filled with blood, greeted me. The fluids I knew held different components: some for power, some for data transport, and so on. It was the dark orange one I wanted, the one that held the power. This was going to be messy, but it needed to be done. A pair of pliers cut through the cord, and I jumped back, careful not to be drenched in the orange liquid. The door hissed open.

The light inside the room came on automatically, and I stared at a large storage room filled with boxes. Most of them were the size of shoeboxes, but some were larger. There had to be hundreds of thousands of them if not more. Each one was labeled. Rylax, Querrek, Toltant—name after name, stack after stack.

There were so many that it would have taken me days to look at all of them, so I pulled one out at random: Vrexium. With the screwdriver, I pulled off the lid. My mouth dropped open at the sight of a belt, a ring, a necklace. I swallowed. These were things that must have belonged to Vrexium. Again, I stared up at the stacks and stacks of boxes as tears rolled down my cheeks. I had no reason to believe that I was right, but instinctively, I knew that every single one of these boxes held whatever the Darlams had been wearing or carrying on their last day. One of these boxes would hold Xyrek's gold bracelet, his belt, and his sword.

I took a deep, shuddering breath. This was not something I could tackle alone. It took a herculean effort to raise my hand with my comm up to my lips to alert all the others. "Come to the conference room in the Ohrur building. I need you."

My hand fell back down, and I was too numb to answer the millions of questions thrown at me in response. I just sat there, staring at the walls of boxes.