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Which was all we needed—Zyair’s crazed flip had effectively flummoxed the Nirzks pursuit. He dove the Stardrifter so close to the hull of a freighter that I caught a glimpse of a startled face through a viewport, before shooting out the other side and into clear space.

It took the two remaining Nirzk pursuers a few moments to get clear of the queue themselves and follow. But they weren’t alone.

“We have four more in orbit around the moon,” I said. “Now heading our way.”

Zyair snarled, very low, and shoved the throttle to full. The Stardrifter shot away from the slipstream port, and toward our ultimate goal.

I swallowed as it loomed ever larger in our viewport.

The asteroid belt…

Unfortunately, the Nirzks had no intention of letting us get to the cover the asteroids would provide.

A phaser bolt ricocheted off the Stardrifter’s shields, and the entire ship shuddered.

“Your side, Xandros,” Zyair growled.

“Affirmative,” the answer came over the comm. “That was just a warning shot. They don’t seem to want to blow us up.”

“If they damage his shaftzing cullions , Brentoq will be displeased,” grumbled Xandros.

“That will change, if they think we might get away,” Rhodes stated calmly. “Two more coming in fast.” And then, the ship shuddered as he fired.

I shot Zyair a glance. Wasn’t cullions Drakonian slang for balls? “Why do the Nirzk want you so bad?” I asked.

“It is Brentoq.” He glanced at me, and his eyes were gleaming brilliant green. “And that—that you do not want to know.”

Considering his balls seemed to be at stake, I kinda did want to know. But another hard blast hammered the Stardrifter, and the ship shuddered as Rhodes and Xandros returned fire.

There was a continual muttering over the comm. I thought it was Xandros, but I couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying?—

“Xandros mutters when he is tense,” Zyair told me.

“He’s tense for a reason.” I replied. “They are gaining on us,”

Zyair grunted as he drove hard for the asteroids. He’d been the one to ascertain that Nirzk ships could outrun the Stardrifter . I guessed if he’d been captured by the Nirzks before, he should know.

I peered through the viewscreen. Just beyond the field of tumbling rocks, was the planet that they ringed—it gleamed bright green through heavy clouds. The navcube named it Ssanue, and it was a Nirzk occupied world.

It looked much more lush and inviting than the ship-crushing rocks we blasted toward. As they loomed closer, I had the oddest sensation. Almost like déjà vu—I was seeing them close up, and then I blinked, and they were farther away.

“Still just the eight?” Zyair asked. As though avoiding eight lethal Nirzk ships was doable.

“Yes.” I looked ahead to the churning rocks. They spun slowly through space, but their appearance was deceptive. The reality was that they were crashing into each other and rebounding off, a continual grinding maelstrom of destruction.

Zyair took us straight in among them.

I’d already had a demonstration of his ability as a pilot, but now—as he ducked and dodged through the spinning rocks, I knew I wasn’t in his caliber. I’d never seen anyone toss a ship around like this.

I told myself that he’d likely been flying in combat for many years, whereas I’d spent most of my time shuttling cargo. But still . Even though I was strapped in, my fingers clenched around the armrests.

Fucking hell , he could fly.

The rocks moved too fast and came at us from all directions. His skill wasn’t going to be enough. Twenty seconds in, I knew it. And by the look on his face, he did too.

“Four of the Nirzk ships have followed us in,” I told him as I glanced at the navcube. “Uh—I mean three. One just bit it.”

I got a glimpse of a rock bigger than Stardrifter , ricocheting off an even larger asteroid and coming straight at us.

“RIGHT! Go right!”

Most guys would have hesitated while they evaluated my urgent yell, but Zyair just reacted, yanking the ship to the right. Just as he did so, the rock bounced off the asteroid and blasted right through where we would have been.

Another glimpse?—

“Drop!” I yelled.

Again, he didn’t question, just reacted. The ship dropped, and the asteroid I’d glimpsed passed right over us .

“Drop again!”

He did so, but this time he cast a rapid glance to me. “How are you?—”

“LEFT!”

He jerked the ship left. A millisecond later, a rock spun by where we’d been.

Another quick glance at me. “You know things before they happen.”

No way. He had to be wrong. But then I shouted, “Climb!” And the asteroid crashed by below us.

Dammit. He was right. My first reaction was denial. “I’m not—DROP!”

The rock barely missed us, this time. Too close. That was too close. The Stardrifter’s shields could handle smaller debris, but not these monsters. If they hit us?—

“Left!”

Another close call. The next few minutes had me sweating, as I called each one, and Zyair responded just fast enough to save us.

As he dove into the shadow of a massive rock, I hit the quick release on my harness. “Let me pilot.”

His brows dropped. “No. Buckle that restraint back up.”

“Dammit—CLIMB!”

He did, but the rock clipped our aft shields. The ship shuddered.

“Getting hammered here,” Xandros complained over the comm.

“You can’t react fast enough with me shouting at you.” I rose from my seat just as Zyair swerved into a canyon on the big asteroid, seeking shelter. But the Nirzk ships came after us…

“You are not a combat pilot,” he insisted through gritted teeth.

He spun the Stardrifter , and I had to grab hold of the arm of his pilot’s seat. I had precisely zero experience in combat. But the asteroids were as big, or bigger, a risk?—

“Left!”

He was just banking right and had to yank hard on the controls. Something deep within the ship whined ominously, but the Stardrifter slewed around to the left. The rock hurtling toward us took out a Nirzk ship instead.

The look Zyair shot me was frantic with calculation. He took one hand off the column to hit the quick release on his harness.

“Sit on me,” he said. “We do this together.”

Sit on what ? “Go right!” I shouted.

He leaned right, and I lost my balance. Somehow his left arm snagged me, and pulled me into his lap.

“Strap in,” he ordered.

I pulled the harness around him and me. It was designed to have significant stretch, but considering his muscles and my breasts, this was a reach. By the time the clasp pulled together, I was pinned against Zyair’s hard body. But I couldn’t hope to reach the controls…

“Put your hands on my arms.” The powerful muscles there flexed. “When you sense something coming, squeeze, and I will follow?—”

I yanked on his left arm and pushed down at the same time. He dove and went left in an instant.

This was faster. I lost myself in a talent I didn’t know I’d possessed, while Zyair reacted instantly to my arm pressure and translated it to the Stardrifter . He left the larger asteroid, and as we ducked and dove, something even stranger happened.

With his body wrapped around mine, I felt not only every twitch of his muscles as he piloted the ship, but also every beat of his heart, every breath.

I swear that my own heartbeat synced with his, and when he exhaled, so did I.

My pulse might be racing, but it was also curiously alight.

As if having him wrapped around me fulfilled it…

He’s a fucking Drake, Jaz. As I fought to keep my focus, my signals about the asteroids became increasingly refined, almost as though he sensed what I was experiencing.

I breathed, he breathed. My fingers tightened on the arms that partly encased me. It was like we were becoming one entity…

But we were an entity in peril. As we moved deeper into the asteroid belt, the rocks came closer and closer. Even the pursuing Nirzk ships had enough and headed out of the belt.

“They are outta here,” announced Xandros.

“We should be too.” Rhodes sounded tense.

“They will have us, if we do.” Zyair ground his teeth. “They know that we will have to emerge. Stay alert, next—they will use drones.”

Right on cue, small red dots appeared on the navcube, and a second later, blue fire erupted across our bow.

Zyair banked hard, leaving the drone stranded—a moment later, it exploded when an asteroid bounced directly into it.

By the bolts shooting around us, there were more.

I counted five red dots swirling around on the hologram.

“I had hoped for less of a determined pursuit,” Zyair growled. “I do not think we can stay here much longer.”

Brentoq clearly wanted Zyair more than a hedgegopher wanted snickerdoodles. I was beginning to relate… my breathing had accelerated, and so had his. The fact he was a Drake no longer had the bite that it should have…

The Stardrifter was taking damage now. She jolted with the impact of smaller rocks I couldn’t react fast enough for us to dodge. A red light appeared, and an alarm sounded.

My focus was split between the oncoming rocks and the hard warmth wrapped around me—it was as though I heard it from a distance. “We’re losing shields,” I murmured.

“We will be—good,” he whispered back, his arms tightening around me. I was enveloped in his scent—musky with his beast, and sexy as hell. Heat suffused me, and I had to restrain myself from rubbing up against him.

Holy crap. We were about to be either crushed by ricocheting asteroids or zapped by enemy drones and my girlie bits were getting hopeful—my priorities were seriously screwed. What was wrong with me?

I had never experienced anything like this before. Zyair’s scent permeated my soul, sending a desperate kind of heat flooding through me. It wasn’t sweat soaking my panties. Despite the alarm shrieking at us, I breathed deep and pressed back against him.

My world narrowed to a combination of crashing asteroids and rock-hard muscles.

For his part, Zyair managed to keep the ship ducking and dodging, but his heart hammered against my shoulders, and by the feel of what jutted against my buttocks, I wasn’t the only one with questionable priorities.

And his preferences for piloting unencumbered by coveralls had permitted that particular beast to be released.

Meanwhile, the Stardrifter was getting hammered.

“Destroy those drones,” Zyair ordered into the comm.

“Oh, that is what I am supposed to be doing? I was busy polishing my talons,” Xandros muttered.

Apparently, sarcasm wasn’t a lost Drake trait.

I forced my gaze to the navcube. “There’s only two left.”

There was a shudder of firing phasers, and Rhodes corrected, “One, now. Other is on your side, Xandros.”

“Not for long.” More shaking, and then the light winked out on the navcube.

“Good shooting, Xandros,” Zyair praised.

“Of course,” he replied.

“They will send more,” Rhodes cautioned.

But then another, larger signal showed on the navcube, just above the asteroid field.

Zyair sucked in his breath. “Drones are not necessary when they have a shaftzing battlecruiser.”

Battlecruiser? My gaze fastened on the signal, and my brain screamed for me to pay attention, even as my body pushed back into the rigid column of pure male behind me.

As Zyair’s breath left him in a rush that gusted across my temple, Xandros muttered something that sounded like a curse, but in a language I didn’t know.

Then he added, “You could have just fornicated with the bituk . But no . You had to have principles. Now we are stuck in a rockgrinder with a battleship stalking us.”

“You might stick your shaftzing cock into anything that smiles at you, but you know as well as I that submitting was a short road to a fast end.” Zyair gritted his teeth as we ducked another asteroid. His hips shifted, ever so slightly. Pushing into me.

Even as my own breath hitched, my mind fastened on what he’d said. Fornicated? With who? Who and what were they talking about? I was having a difficult time concentrating on anything other than the hard warmth wrapped around me, and the even harder body bit poking me in the back.

Before I could clear my mind enough to ask, Rhodes interjected with a calm, deep rumble. “Use that superior brain of yours, Zyair. We need an alternative to confronting a battlecruiser.”

In an impressive display of brain over rather rock-hard hot and insistent body, Zyair spun Stardrifter around and headed for a mammoth piece of rotating rock—with one eye on the navcube, he lowered the ship close to the surface.

“Zoom,” he told the cube in a voice gone hoarse, and repeated the command until the cube showed us a scan of the asteroid surface.

It was pitted and grooved by repeated strikes from its smaller brethren.

He leaned forward, examining the hologram.

Charted coordinates, and asked for another zoom. Then, “track.”

I caught a glimpse of a channel extending deep into the rock. My scrambled brain offered up a comment. “Watch for space slugs.”

“What is a space slug?” he murmured, his arms tightening around me.

I huffed a laugh. “Guessing you don’t watch many human movies.” Then I gasped, and squeezed his left arm, ever so slightly. He banked, and the rock shot past us, striking the surface below in a cloud of shattered debris.

Zyair spotted what he was looking for. “Ten seconds to radio silence,” he called into the comm.

“What?” demanded Xandros .

“You have ten seconds to shut up,” Rhodes clarified.

“Get ready to purge the airlock.” Zyair’s voice was hardly more than a whisper, but it vibrated straight through me.

As my heart did more useless gymnastics, my finger hovered over the appropriate button, and he spoke into the comm to his brothers, “Choose a rock. Both of you blast it, together. Sustained blast.”

“Why?” Xandros asked.

“Always with the stupid questions,” Rhodes growled. “Follow my lead.”

The Stardrifter shuddered as he fired at a nearby asteroid, and kept doing so as he didn’t let up. It amplified as Xandros opened up on it too. The rock glowed red-hot, before it exploded.

“Now!” Zyair told me, and I hit the button. The airlock disgorged its non-living cargo to space.

I was clutching Zyair’s arms as he barrelrolled the Stardrifter and shot her into a cave within the mammoth asteroid…