Page 86 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone
“You ... you took control. You made me ... surrender.”
“Good.” Mila’s hand slid back down, over Carmen’s ass, between her legs again. Carmen gasped as those fingers stroked through her oversensitive folds, gathering more wetness. “And whose pussy is this now?”
“Yours,” Carmen whispered.
“I can’t hear you.”
“Yours! It’s yours, Mila.”
“That’s right.” Mila brought her hand up, those three fingers glistening in the harsh work lights. She pressed them to Carmen’s lips. “Open your mouth. Taste what I did to you.”
Carmen’s eyes widened, but she obeyed. Her lips parted, and Mila pushed her fingers inside. The taste was salt and musk and pure sex: Carmen’s own arousal, the evidence of her complete surrender.
“Suck,” Mila ordered.
Carmen obeyed, her tongue working around Mila’s fingers, tasting herself, feeling the intimacy of the act, cleaning Mila’s fingers with her mouth after they’d been buried so deep inside her.
“Good girl,” Mila praised, withdrawing her fingers slowly from Carmen’s mouth. She traced them across Carmen’s lips, her jaw, down her neck. “This is mine now. Your body. Your pleasure. Your surrender. All of it belongs to me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Carmen said, and felt the truth of it settle into her bones. She was marked. Claimed. Owned.
And God help her, she’d never felt freer.
“Good.” Mila’s other hand stroked soothingly down Carmen’s spine. “Now rest. I’ve got you.”
And for once, for possibly the first time in her life, Carmen believed it. Someone else had taken the burden. Someone else had made the decisions. And she had survived. More than survived.
She had been transformed.
Mila helped her roll onto her side, gathering her into strong arms. Carmen pressed her face against Mila’s furred chest, inhaling that sweet scent now mixed with the musk of sex and sweat. She felt tears leaking from her eyes, not from sadness or pain, but from the overwhelming release of at last letting go.
“I’ve got you,” Mila whispered again, pressing soft kisses to Carmen’s sweat-dampened hair. “You did so well. So perfect for me.”
Carmen’s throat was too tight to speak. Mila held her through the trembling, through the aftershocks, her clawed fingers tracing gentle patterns on Carmen’s bare skin, soothing, grounding her as she slowly came back to herself.
“Mila …” Carmen finally managed, her voice hoarse and wrecked.
“Shh,” Mila soothed. “Rest now. We have work to do, but first, you rest.”
And Carmen did, letting the weight of command slip away, letting someone else hold her together while she fell apart.
CHAPTER 31
The silenceon the bridge was thick enough to choke on. Carmen stood rigid behind Sark’s pilot chair, her knuckles bone-white where they gripped the headrest. On the main viewscreen, Zed was a tiny, blocky silhouette against the vast, star-flecked backdrop of the Forbidden Zone’s perimeter. He looked absurdly small, impossibly fragile, hurtling through the absolute emptiness on the jury-rigged thruster pack Sark had cobbled together from spare parts and sheer desperation.
“Distance?” Carmen’s voice was a rasp, scraping against the tense quiet. She didn’t take her eyes off the screen.
“Eight hundred meters and closing, Captain,” Sark replied, his voice tight “Velocity nominal. Thrust vector holding steady.”
Carmen could feelAntilles’s idling engines vibrating through the deck plates, a low, anxious hum that mirrored the one in her own chest. Every instinct screamed to grab the controls, todosomething. But there was nothing. Zed was out there. Alone. Beyond her reach. Beyond her control. The realization was a cold stone settling in her gut.
She’d sent him. Ordered him. Gambled his existence on a thirty-eight-point-seven percent chance. The numbers Zed hadrecited so calmly echoed in her mind, cold and relentless. Thirty-eight-point-seven. Less than flipping a coin.
The memory of Mila’s scent, the echo of surrender and release in Engineering, was a distant, dangerous warmth she couldn’t afford right now. It felt like a betrayal, thinking of it while Zed was out there in the killing void.
She scanned the bridge. Letitia stood rigid at the sensor station, her dark eyes fixed on her own console readouts, her jaw clenched so tightly Carmen could see the muscle jumping. Norvik was a statue of blue calm at his comm station, his yellow pupils flickering minutely as he monitored the encrypted data stream Zed was theoretically sending back.
No one looked at her. They all studiously avoided meeting her gaze. The discomfort when she’d walked on the bridge was palpable. They’d all heard her. Mila had made sure of that. Demanded it.