Page 21 of Hijack! (Cosmic Connections Cruise #1)

His delicate closed worlder, walking beside him into the unknown. Ellix’s muscles tightened with the violent urge to put his mark on her, so that the universe itself would know she was taken, that he would protect her with teeth and claws, with his life.

With his love.

And yet he was the one asking her to take this risk?

For so long I was afraid to take risks. But in the end, I didn’t let that stop me.

If this wasn’t the end-end, he wouldn’t let his fears stop him either.

He steadied her as they climbed up and over the temporary scaffolding into the center of the torus.

Suvan and Griiek had repurposed materials intended for phase two of the Love Boat cruises—something labeled “disco ball of the cosmos”.

The refractory crystal structure would supposedly confine their anomaly once the nullifying energy was pulsing through the torus, but at the moment, the hexagonal facets only captured tiny slivers of the two of them, echoing into infinity.

Felicity turned a slow circle, gazing around. “It’s like being trapped inside a fun house mirror.”

He flattened his ears. “This would be fun on Earth?”

“Well, I guess a fun house is actually meant to be a little unnerving, a way to change your perception of reality.”

“That sounds like the place to catch a ghost.”

She pivoted to face him, her hands clenching in front of her. “What if I’m wrong about this? What if emotion has nothing to do with triggering the distortion? What if we waste our power for nothing?”

Capturing her anxious hands, he drew her closer. “What if we find out?”

She tilted her face up to him, her blue eyes wide and bright in the shimmer of standby lights. Her exhalation was a little shaky but when she smiled at him, he believed it. “Bite or no bite?”

He flexed his grip on her. “I would happily feel your teeth, azeeli.”

“My translator doesn’t know that word.”

“The little blossom in the atmo-hall bower. I think you would call it sunflower.”

“We have sunflowers on Earth, but they don’t have teeth.”

“You aren’t on Earth anymore.”

When she leaned into him, the weight and friction of her seemed out of proportion with her physicality, pulling him even closer, bending all his awareness to her, as if the laws that governed the universe didn’t apply to this moment.

He didn’t even try to resist, just lowered his mouth over hers, opening to her.

Her teeth on his lower lip were sharp. Her tongue so soft. The taste of her sweeter than any nectar and heady as the freshest planetary air. The sensations spun him round though his boots stayed planted in the center of their last-chance experimental trap.

Maybe he was the one caught.

She skimmed her hands up his chest, raking her fingers through his mane where it tufted out of his uniform. Finding the ventral seal, she widened the opening and splayed her fingers over the shorter fur across his pectorals. Her ragged breath this time wasn’t worry, he sensed.

It was desire.

His heart slammed against her palm, trying to reach her through every strand of hair, every nerve. It wasn’t just the devotion hunger or even the risk to their lives; this was something new, just between them.

“Harder,” he whispered against her mouth.

Her growl was so fierce he would’ve laughed—except she did bite him, exactly hard enough, and he forgot he was supposed to be saving their ship.

Maybe she wasn’t Kufzasin with the incisors and pheromones to inscribe the devotion, and yet she marked him anyway, deeper than skin, fiercer than hunger. A scar he welcomed for eternity.

He dragged her up against him, no space left, just their panting breaths mingling, bodies yearning to meld even closer.

His wrist datpad beeped, and the conduits powering the capacitorus began to glow with the first beams of power siphoned from the engines.

“It’s coming,” he warned her.

“Not quite yet. I… Oh, the anomaly. Yes, okay.” She clung to him. “Should we…keep kissing?”

Aye, forever.

But they didn’t have that kind of time. The shadowy fingers of the harmonic distortion reached across the torus, darkening patches of the crystals and erasing the reflections of their embrace.

“Felicity, when I say go, I want you to climb out and run for the exit.”

Her fists clenched in his fur, not in a pleasurable way. “And you’ll be right behind me.”

“As soon as I’m sure the anomaly is neutralized.”

“That wasn’t a yes.”

“The energy needed to contain the distortion might be too much for you.”

Her jaw clenched. “What if it’s too much for you?”

“I’ve survived worse, and you’ve seen the scars to prove it.”

“Ellix, this is definitely no time to tease.”

No time left at all. More of the crystals were darkening; he needed to send the command to flood the capacitorus, to spring the trap.

“I’m not teasing,” he said harshly. “That’s an order.”

When she lifted her chin, it trembled a little. “Yes, Captain.”

He didn’t need a feelings button or an IDA handbook on Earthers to know he’d hurt her. The blue of her eyes dimmed, as if the distortion’s shadowy reach had fallen over her. But it wasn’t the anomaly’s fault; it was his.

With a shuddering breath, he pulled her back into his arms, closing his eye. “I’m sorry, azeeli. I’m not questioning your commitment to this ship, but I need you to be out of reach of the distortion.”

“What if I need you to be with me?” She pressed her face into his ruff, muffling the question.

Gently, he cupped her chin and tipped her head back to meet his gaze. “You know that’s not possible, considering.”

She rested her cheek against his paw. “If not for this anomaly, the cruise would be over already.”

That truth struck him hard. If not for that little surge he’d noticed in the Starlit Salon, he would’ve spoken with the passengers, danced with her briefly, and then gone back to the command module, maybe seeing her again when they disembarked.

They would not have experienced any of these stolen moments.

As his chest tightened in visceral denial of such loss, the distortion swallowed more of the light in the crystal facets.

In response, the capacitorus brightened, drawing harder on the engines.

The exertion combined with their excessive speed and reverberated through the bulkhead as a deep, unsettling vibration.

At least the old ship was too sturdy to tear itself completely apart.

He hoped. As for whether the same thing could be hoped for himself…

“Ellix. The distortion, it’s fading.”

Cursing under his breath, he checked the datpad which Suvan had linked to the capacitorus. With the circulating matrix of energy only halfway to maximum, he couldn’t lock it down, especially not if the anomaly wasn’t properly aligned along the capturing wavelengths.

“Kiss me again, azeeli” he urged. “One last time.”

Choking out a cry, she reached up to frame his jaw.

The backs of her knuckles brushed his whiskers as he swept them forward to feather over her face.

Their kiss was all teeth and tongue and yearning breath while the accelerating shine through the torus and the dark distortion chased across the crystal facets, around and around them.

Only half heard through the irregular thrum of the struggling engines, a distant whisper—not Felicity’s voice—broke through his haze of sensation.

Where the belonging?

It wasn’t words his translator understood, more like a feeling. A confused, anxious seeking that struck him as utterly alien—and yet achingly familiar.

“Ellix,” Felicity whispered. “Do you hear that?”

“I don’t know.” The desperation in the not-words clawed at him. “It might be some sort of feedback in the capacitorus.”

“Where is your feelings button? I left mine in the salon.”

“Why—?”

“Hurry. Before it fades again.”

Poking through his pocket, he winced as he stabbed himself with his claws, which had instinctively extended at the threat. When he handed her the button, it was shining gold.

Her gaze snapped up to him, the flyaway strands of her hair shimmering like spangled sunlight in the brilliant glow. “Ellix…”

He did not want to explain his feelings, reflected in the button. “You said to hurry.”

In her palm, the gold shifted, oscillating through the device’s simplified wavelengths, as if trying to focus. She stuck the button to the inner wall of the torus, and every time the distortion shadow passed over, the button dulled to gray with streaks of muted yellow and faded blue.

“It is alive, with emotions too,” she said, her voice softening with the wonder felt only by a closed worlder fresh to the universe. “And it’s lost. Like us.”

“We weren’t lost,” he objected. “Not until it stole us.”

“I think it’s stuck, just like a ghost.” She straightened, one hand bracketing the button. Around her fingers, the distortion paused, like a looming shadow around her. “We have to reach it, make it understand we’re here and want to help it.”

“We want to stop it,” he corrected.

According to the calculations Suvan had put on his datpad, the capacitorus would be at full burn in moments. Then the distortion would be nullified.

“Captain.” She faced him, chin high. “The IDA is about connection. It’s why we’re out here.”

“This cruise isn’t even supposed to be here.”

“Not here-here. But it’s why we don’t just stay home and wait for our chance to find us.” Her blue gaze was steady on him. “It’s why you answered a cry for help even though it might’ve been a trap.”

He wanted to yell at her. Because it had been a trap. He had the scars from it. Her feelings couldn’t counteract the reality of the risks.

Except… The way she stood square, the shadow behind her, wasn’t the stance of a delicate, oblivious closed worlder.

He’d seen how she held her datpad like a shield, how she gulped for breath sometimes as if desperate to find some molecule of calm in the air.

She wasn’t unaware of the problems, even the dangers.

She just faced them. With an Earther smile.

But he’d waited too long, and he hadn’t believed her. His datpad beeped, and the capacitorus went nova-white.