Explode: Team Supernova (The Great Space Race) Read online

  She rubbed herself against his thigh, suspecting he’d feel how wet she was even through his wrap pants. “I’m both of those and more—including a grown woman who’s ready to rip your clothes off.” She wrapped her tail around his lower legs, her right leg around his hips. Oh yes. If he didn’t have pants on, they could fuck like this. Luckily wrap pants were easy to get rid of. “Want these things out of the way?” She flicked at the waist-cord of the pants.

  His eyes darkened, black pupil threatening to overtake the warm brown. “I… Is this when you cut my pants off with your claws, walk out, and get the camera-drone in here while I’m standing here half-naked and confused?”

  “What?” For a second, she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or be angry at his distrust. Laughter was usually a better response than rage with someone you liked, so she managed a giggle that didn’t sound quite convincing.

  “I was an ass. It’s too soon to tell if you’re bruised, but I’d be surprised if you’re not. If you’re coming on to me, there has to be a catch.”

  This time the laugh was real. “I want to tear your clothes off, but only if you like that kind of thing. The only catch is you have to listen to me when I say the roughness was hot as the core of a star. Apex predator, remember? We play hard, we play rough, and sometimes we bite and scratch. My body reacted to a man I want being so glad I wasn’t hurt that he latched on, didn’t want to let go, and maybe left a few marks. I could have done without the scolding, but I’d yell at someone else who did what I did today and I understand”—how close mating frenzy and hunting frenzy can be—“this is what passes for normal for my people. I’ve had it on good authority that most species consider us a little crazy and a little kinky. But kinky’s good, right?”

  He raised an eyebrow and gave one of his half-smiles. This one wasn’t subtle at all. It lit his eyes with some dark, sexy energy. “Kinky’s good as long as gentle’s good too. I like to take it slow sometimes, tease. And for what it’s worth, I hate these wrap pants.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  HE DIDN’T EXACTLY hate them, but he wanted them out of the way before the mercurial Sarr’ma could change her mind.

  Or before he could. All the reasons why getting involved with her was a dumb idea still applied, but he didn’t care. Cute, bubbly Sarr’ma was hard enough to resist. This new, more complex version was irresistible. Dangerous, maybe, and posing a lot of questions he’d like answered—not that he could slam anyone else for having secrets—but irresistible.

  When Sarr’ma’s lethal claws hooked the cords that held the pants together, he froze, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to do much except to savor the mixture of arousal and primal terror that surged through him. This tiny, slender woman could gut him if she chose to do so.

  Instead, the waist-cords parted with a delicate snick. The pants were pinned in place by their bodies but he know they’d hit the floor as soon as they moved. “Shirt too?” she whispered.

  Why the hell not? Octiron kept giving them clothes that he never would have picked out for himself, slathered with corporate logos, Octiron’s or a sponsor’s. If he destroyed enough of them, maybe they’d let him wear his own comfortable old clothes even when he might be on camera. He couldn’t imagine a better way to destroy them than via Sarr’ma’s claws. “Please,” he replied and was surprised by how much of a plea it sounded, as if he desperately wanted that hint of danger, that taste of well controlled lethal force.

  Admittedly, he did want it that badly. He’d never thought of himself as thrill-kinky, but he’d never had a chance to play those games with someone who could walk the walk.

  She smiled, and he saw the universe in those emerald-green eyes. Life and death, pain and pleasure. This has to be some weird after-effect of sharing a near-death experience with a hot woman. My hindbrain wants to make yay-we’re-alive sex with a friend into something more.

  She was a friend. He was sure of that much. Anything else was too much of a leap, especially when he was a man living a fake life under someone else’s direction.

  But when she rested the tip of one claw in the hollow of his throat and whispered, “Trust me,” logic failed. That lethal claw touching him so gently snapped a tight band around his emotions, finishing work she’d already started. His cock was so hard the air made it ache, let alone her body brushing against it. His eyes ached from absorbing all her beauty. And all that other weird shit he’d imagined he’d seen in her eyes? Not imagination. Tonight, at least, it was real. Everyone was star-stuff, part of the universe, but the star-stuff in her glowed.

  He wanted to say things about the future and the stars he saw in her eyes, but it was way too soon for that even if his life was his own to give. He’d take what she could offer and he could accept—this moment and the ones that followed. “Trust you? With my life.”

  “Good answer.” She pressed the claw-tip in, not enough to break the skin or even sting, but enough to remind him what she could do. Then she slit the front of the obnoxious shirt—an all-over pattern of the race logo—with one neat stroke.

  She stepped back, surveyed her handiwork. “Those clothes look better as rags on the floor, and you look better naked.”

  “You’re overdressed for this party.” Her clingshirt, the color of her eyes, had less fabric in it than her hair bow, and he already knew she wasn’t wearing underwear under her swishy green leaf-print skirt, but it was still way too much between his skin and hers.

  He could undress her in about thirty seconds, and she could do it herself even faster, but he had a better idea. “Do you love that shirt?”

  A shrug and a giggle. “Not if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

  “Hold still.” He felt her gaze on his ass as he took the few steps to the bedside compartment where he’d stowed his knife, her frank appreciation almost as solid as if she was tracing its shape, testing its firmness, with her hand. He loved the way she owned her sexuality, that underneath the game of being of being a sexy girl she was a fierce, sensual woman.

  He hadn’t been able to bring any of his knives from home. He thought of them as tools, not weapons, but for obvious reasons, Eno’s thugs had seen them differently. He’d chosen a knife as one of the optional pieces of gear they’d been allowed to select on Primaera.

  It hadn’t been useful so far, as a tool or weapon, and he’d sometimes regretted not picking something else.

  The knife was about to earn a place of honor.

  It was a simple but well-made blade. The handle felt good in his hand and it was as sharp as he could make it. When he laid it across Sarr’ma’s bare belly, she didn’t flinch. Instead she blew him a kiss and whispered, “Please.”

  The skirt was held up by one large button in the shape of a yellow flower. He flicked the knife and the button went skittering across the floor. Sarr’ma wiggled so the skirt slipped over her tail.

  The top was clinglace; it would have been easy to cut her if he slit it down the front as she’d done to his shirt. In the end, he stretched the bottom of the shirt out, slipped the knife underneath and slit up and out. He pushed the remains of the shirt down and she shrugged it off the rest of the way as he sheathed the knife.

  “Stars, you’re beautiful. Looking at you is never going to get old. Not if I saw you naked every day for a hundred years.”

  She bounced in place at the compliment, but he thought he saw a look of something darker—sadness, regret?—dance across her face. He wanted to ask what was wrong, but she rose on her tiptoes and stopped the question with a devouring kiss.

  Her raspy tongue danced with his and anything he had left resembling rational thought got sucked into the nearest black hole. She wrapped one supple leg around his hip, then the other. Cupping her ass with both hands, he marveled at the texture of her skin and the silkiness of the tail brushing against his legs.

  The position spread her slickness against his lower belly and the head of his throbbing cock. Stars, she was wet, moving against him and me
wling with need. Which he was doing too, except his mewls were more like groans. He hadn’t been so aroused this quickly since he was a young teen and his “partner” was his own hand. Maybe there was some simple reason why they both got turned on so fast, but he’d worry about that later. Right now, he needed to enter that wet heat with almost the same urgency as he needed to breathe. With a small adjustment…yes…oh stars, yes. She slid down onto him, enveloping him in tight, slick heaven.

  “Bed?” he managed to ask with some vestige of courtesy.

  She threw back her head so her hair brushed his hands and laughed. “Silly human. Beds are for round two!” Then she changed position slightly, captured his mouth again.

  Small, strong hands gripping his upper arms, she began to writhe, to ride, in a way he hadn’t imagined she could in this position. He encouraged her, guided her with his hands on her ass, but she was doing a lot of the work herself. And oh stars, the way her cunt muscles gripped him, so slick and tight.

  He wanted make sure he got her there before he did his best personal imitation of their team name, but when he tried to guide her to move more slowly, she nipped at his lower lip and squeezed harder with her inner muscles. He grunted into her mouth, “Can’t hold…”

  She pulled away from the kiss, locked him into her emerald gaze. “Then don’t. Explode with me.” Her eyes were dreamy and sharp at the same time, and as he looked into them, he swore he saw solar systems, nebulae, the meaning of life. Insane, but he couldn’t make himself look away.

  She was the one who broke the connection. “Tripp, now!” Her voice was hoarse, but those two words sounded musical—at least to his ears, which proved he had it bad.

  She bit down into the meat of his shoulder, hard enough to break skin. Any other time, it would have hurt. Now the pain shifted almost instantly to searing pleasure that shot to his cock. “Now,” she repeated, a wail this time. “Yes, stars, yes.” Her sex tightened around him.

  The pleasure/pain and her orgasm combined to push him over the edge. A nebula spiraled in his brain, bright and swirling, as he shot into her.

  He narrowly managed to avoid groaning, “I love you.”

  It wasn’t true, right? Sometimes a guy said outrageous things when his brains had just shot out his cock. He desired her, sure. Liked her. She made the race bearable, giving him something to think about besides win or die trying. But he didn’t love…

  Larf it, that sounded like love.

  But what good would that kind of star-dust do them? At the end of the race, she’d return to her home planet and he’d head to Arias to ransom his sister or die.

  Might as well enjoy the moment.

  *

  They staggered to the bed and flopped down in a tangle of limbs. Sarr’ma couldn’t resist licking a few bright drops of blood off Tripp’s shoulder.

  “Tickles,” he protested without conviction. “Please tell me that isn’t some predator thing.”

  “You’re not prey.” She wouldn’t flat-out tell him it wasn’t a predator thing; it was, though not in a you-look-edible way. Blood was life. That tiny taste of his blood merged them, in a way, his cells literally becoming part of her, cementing the mating bond. So not ready to talk about that. “Think of it as kissing you to make it all better—or maybe to start you thinking about biting me.”

  Which was true too.

  “You are insatiable!” The way Tripp said it wasn’t not a complaint, especially since even as he said it, he was stroking her nipple. Seconds ago she’d have said she was sated for the moment, blissfully worn out. But her sensitive nipples sang to the rest of her body, which expressed the opinion that a long, slow session could start right now, and they could take their time to get back to full arousal.

  She moved, allowing his hands more access, freeing her tail to begin a teasing journey over his skin.

  Then Tripp asked out of the blue, “How does a low-G designer get so good with ’bots?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  OH CRAP. SO much for a lovely evening of sexytimes and cuddles after a dramatic day. “Like I told Zissel, I took some robotics classes because I wanted to be able to program my own ’bots for projects, and I turned out to be good at it.” That part was true. She could leave it at that. But she shouldn’t.

  “Thanks for telling me, because I never listen in on your interviews. I’m usually too busy breathing deeply and repeating calming mantras so I don’t blow up at Zissel and her stupid questions when it’s my turn. Then I usually do anyway.”

  Great cosmos, she understood that. Interviews were play because the Sarr’ma she talked about bore only a passing resemblance to the real one, but if she had to answer all those nosy questions about the real her? No thank you! “I’d have called the interviews the worst part of the race until we met the gylax.”

  “ I think it’s still a toss-up which is scarier, the monster or the determined blue woman shoving a microphone in your face. ”

  Tripp had accepted her explanation and moved on to another topic. There was nothing wrong with talking around the truth—stars, there was nothing wrong with an outright lie if you did it for a good reason. Or it was funny, but nothing about this situation was funny.

  Tripp was her mate, even if he never knew it. That meant he deserved the truth.

  She rolled up to a sitting position, put her hand on Tripp’s chest, looked into his eyes. “Please don’t be angry. The truth is, I’m not studying low-G design. My major’s applied astrophysical engineering. My transcripts were mistranslated and…” She shrugged, hoping she was conveying by body language a lot of things she couldn’t put into words. “I ran with it.”

  He nodded, looking concerned but, to her relief, not angry. “I think I get it. If they underestimate you, you can get away with things like reconfiguring that ’bot. But couldn’t you get in trouble with Octiron?”

  “I don’t care!” She surprised herself with her vehemence, by the way her claws were working in and out with the force of her emotion. “I’m gaming their system. They’re risking other people’s lives so they can make more money. I figured they might let something slip about how the transporters work, especially the long-distance ones, if they thought I was clueless. At least I figured I could get away with stumbling into the drive room so I could poke around.”

  “Only you couldn’t, so you sent a ’bot in to check it out, which was great thinking. I figured being locked out made you so curious you decided to find a creative way to get in. Now the annoyance with the tech being so strange to you makes more sense.”

  “I expected it to be different, but it’s so far out of my experience.… I’ll have to pass the vid and notes on to someone more experienced and hope they let me work on the development team. No one’s going to call me a nashbet anymore if I come home with the seeds of game-changing technology, but it would be better if I marling understood it.”

  “Who’s calling you a nashbet?” Tripp sat up himself, rearranged them both so she could lean against him as they talked. “Do I need to smack someone? I know you can handle your own smacking around, but I’d be glad to do it for you. And what is a nashbet, anyway? The translator just came up with a small animal that lives in burrows.”

  This was going better than she expected. Sarr’ma ventured a small smile. “That’s what it is, literally. Nashbets are native to a low-gravity planet where every animal but them has evolved to fly or at least leap and float. The nashbets stay underground their whole lives. So a nashbet’s a boring person who’s stuck in one place and wants everyone else stuck with them.”

  Tripp howled with laughter. “You? You’re the least boring person I can imagine.”

  “I went to university right out of basicschool—no one does that on Mrrwr. It’s expected that we spend time kicking around the galaxy, exploring thing and getting into entertaining trouble. If we go to university or settle into a serious job, it’s after we’ve taken the time to play. And ‘serious job’ means something different to us than it does on most worl
ds. Con artist is a legit career path, as long as you leave your marks with enough to make a fresh start. But no one gets the kind of engineering I want to do is like being a con artist with the whole universe as your mark!” Getting in nashbet territory here, but Tripp looked interested, not put off. “We bend the laws of marling physics so they work for us. Once I figured that out, I couldn’t wait learn more. But so few people get it. It’s why I started racing, I think—people understand why racing’s exciting. Definitely why I applied for The Great Space Race. But sometimes I still feel like a nashbet who flies really fast.”

  He squeezed her tight, kissed her neck. “You’re such a nashbet, you saved our asses today. If you’d gone into racing without going to school first, there’s a good chance we’d have drowned or gotten ourselves blown up. And nashbets don’t go up to giant green spiky monsters and slit their throats. I’m not sure who does that, but not nashbets.”

  “Felinoids. That was probably the most normal thing I’ve done in my adult life.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “How has your species not killed itself off if that’s what you call normal? More to the point, how could anyone think you’re boring?”

  Oh stars, how to explain. “My family…you know how I said being a con artist is a legit profession? That’s why my parents do, and they’re famous for their amazing scams. Half the time they do it for fun and give the money back. They had a holo-drama made about them. My big brother—”

  “The Olympiad medalist, right? That’s a tough sibling to live up to.”

  “That’s just the start of it. He’s a genuine hero, and he does it with style. Everyone expects me to be like him, but I’m not. I’m competent, not flashy. But if I can come home with a Great Space Race win under my belt and enough info to get us closer to our own transporter technology, I can be a hero in my own right, not Rahal’s little sister.”