Princess of the Void

“Eeeasy does it.” Sykora’s hand clasps his as he bends the yoke up. “Check the landing gear indicator… good. And now nudge us forward… very good. And brace for zero G.”

The halfmoon interceptor slips from the Black Pike. The void embraces them. The cockpit fills with stars.

Grant looks toward Sykora. “Where do we go now?”

The starscape suffuses her with a soft glow. “Wherever you want, Grantyde.” She smiles and there’s a pang of longing in his heart so staggering that he’d need to sit down if he wasn’t already. An angel. His wife looks like an angel.

“You want the artificial grav on?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “I want to go fast.”

He grins. “As you command, Majesty.”

She whoops as he hits the afterburner. They careen into the firmament. There’s no belt here, no danger. He cuts loose. The pod simulated rumble and turbulence, but it didn’t prepare him for how visceral it would feel. The sheer joy of speed. They streak through a candy-colored cloud of dust and billow it into a smear across the firmament.

They spiral and spin. They dive and barrel roll. He’s peacocking, he knows. But the look of pure elation on her face is worth it.

He turns off the afterburner and lets their momentum drift them through the firmament. Her laugh trails off with the tapering-off engine sound. She falls silent, and stares at him. Her expression is clouded and unreadable. Her smile is still on, but it’s crooked and strange and diminished. “You did it,” she says.

“I did.”

“You can fly. You flew so well.”

“Thank you, Princess.”

“If I.” She forces her breathing to neutrality. They stare at each other. The harness across her body. The sweet rise and fall under the fabric.

“If I free you now,” she says, “you could fly away. You could escape.”

He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He hears his own heartbeat.

Her hands ball into fists. “You could steal into the hangar bay and take a ship and disappear into the firmament. And I’d never see you again.”

“I could.” He clicks his harness open. “Or…”

He reaches across to her seat and opens hers, too. Her eyes widen as he gently pulls her by the hand from her chair. He wraps his arm around her midsection.

“I could turn around,” he says, “and choose you.”

He turns on the artificial gravity. She expels a quick oh! as she falls into his lap, her back on his chest.

“And the moment you freed me, you could take whatever you wanted from me.” He closes his arm tighter around her belly. “No compulsion needed. No ownership. Just ask. And I would give.”

She wriggles further into his lap. He’s hard—achingly hard—and judging by the lip-biting grin she wears, she can feel it. She slides her butt up and down along him, the fabric of their uniforms whispering against each other as she dryhumps him like a giddy teenager. His other arm buckles over her chest. Her triplet heartbeat raps against his forearm.

There’s something in the noise she makes when he tightens his grip on her. Something that gives him ammunition.

“Or maybe…” His fingers fan out across her taut stomach. His knuckles flex. “Maybe you’re curious.”

“Curious?” she breathes.

“You called it perversion.” His hand creeps past her collarbone. “But maybe you wonder what it would be like. To have someone so much bigger than you, who you can’t control. Who you can compel and compel, until you’re red in the face, and they won’t yield.” His fingers wrap lightly around her neck. He feels the vibrating hum of her responding groan. “Maybe you want someone to take you and do what they want with you, Princess.”

The tendons in her neck dance as she swallows. Her voice is a throaty whisper. “Maybe.” Her palm is slick with sweat where it lies over his.

His hand around her middle slides lower. Her thighs part. “Do you know what I want to do with you?” he murmurs.

Her tail raises, exposing the flexing, grinding curve of her ass where the silk clings to it. “What?”

He flips the gravity off again and nudges her into the air. “Free me and I’ll tell you.”

Sykora screams like a banshee.

She slams her fist onto the console. A streak of white fire roars out of the interceptor and erupts into a burning nova a kilometer away. She seizes the controls and spins the interceptor back toward the Black Pike. “We’re going home.”

“Princess—”

“We’re going home,” she barks, “before I crash this fucking interceptor into the moon and kill us both.”

“Pike to Indus Red.” A crackling voice over the radio. “Majesty—we just detected a missile launch. Are you—”

Sykora punches the radio button. “Indus Red to Black Pike we are fine.” She lets out a ragged laugh. “Accidental discharge. We’re returning now.”

The landing gear is scarcely down when she’s on her feet, practically dragging Grant from the interceptor, spilling onto the deck. Her tail is thrashing like a serpent. The dockworkers and crewmates can’t hide their stares as she marches him past them.

“Where are we going?” He stumbles after her. She pulls him into the lift and slams the button to take them to her cabin. She slaps the turbo before he has a chance to catch the handrail, and he has to scrabble for it in zero G.

“This game is over.” Her horns are higher and sharper than he’s ever seen them. “This game is done, Maekyonite.”

Out the lift and through her cabin door. She slams her palm against the seal and spins around, her eyes aflame. “We are not leaving this cabin until you fuck me.”

Grant draws himself up and crosses his arms. He returns her flashing stare as well as he can without her compelling crimson. “We are not fucking until you free me.”

“This is—Grantyde, this is torture.” She takes a shaky step toward him. “You can’t do this to me. You can’t keep lighting my torch and then snuffing it like this. I need you tonight. I need you.” She wraps her arms tightly around his waist. Her core flexes. Her hips roll. Every piece of her is trying to get as close to him as possible.

He should step away from her. He should create separation. He can’t. His body is in full rebellion.

“My neck needs your hands. My tongue needs your taste. My skin needs your skin. I’m losing my mind.” She inhales him like she’s drowning. Her tail winds around his legs. The paintbrush tuft at the end tickles his back. Her smoky voice of command is pinched and tremulous with need. “I’m losing my fucking mind, Grantyde.”

“And you think I’m not?” He huffs a caustic laugh. “Do you know how many times I’ve been this close to throwing everything I have left away for you, Sykora? You’ve pulled me into a nightmare, and you’re the only thing I want from this entire galaxy, and I can’t have you.”

“But you can.” She nuzzles his stomach. “The nightmare could end. I could keep you safe. Warm and safe and so, so happy. You would have your fill of me every night. You would fall asleep inside me and awaken to my lovemaking. I’d hang off your every word. A breath and you could have me. A look and I would bend for you. I beg you, Grantyde.” She clings to his legs and buries her face in his thighs. “I am begging.”

Her desperation is gutting him. His desperation is screaming in his skull. He wraps his hands around her hips and tugs her into the air. It’s so easy to lift her. His mind darkens with all the things he could do to a body this light, with so many beautifully shaped handholds. Focus, Grant. It’s now or never. He stares at her, lined up eye to eye. “Free me.”

“I could give you so much more than freedom. I want—” She swallows. “You gave me back my life. I can’t give you back yours. But I’ll give you something better.”

“Freedom first. And then everything else.” His hands drop from her hips to close around her full, round ass. It’s the perfect size. Each cheek fits into each palm as if preordained by fate. “The rest of our lives,” he whispers. And he catches her trembling lips in a sloppy, greedy kiss. His tongue slides across her fangs, mingles with hers, feels its feline roughness. A steady whining moan is bubbling up from her, rising in pitch as he seeks deeper. Her tail wraps around his wrist. She’s so inhuman, and he’s so far from home. And so close.

She leans her head away. “I can’t free you,” she says. “I can’t. I prize you. I’d burn the firmament to keep you.”

“Then my answer—” He kisses her forehead and puts her down. “Is no.”

She falls backward into her bed, heedless of the boots she’s still wearing. She buries her face in the pillow and screams her frustration into it. She kicks her little legs. She rolls over. “You impudent little custodian

He shrugs. She drags her hands down her face.

“If,” she says. “If I grant you your ‘freedom.’ What would that even look like? Hmm? Shall I just drop you off on your world and let them execute you?”

“Of course not,” he says. “I can’t even speak the language anymore.”

“You have nowhere else to go,” she says. “Nowhere. I am the only home you have in an infinite dark.”

“I’d stay. I’d stay with you forever.”

“If you stay, you’re subject to my command. I am Princess of the Black Pike. My crew obeys me.”

“I’d obey you,” he says. “Always.”

“So if you can’t leave the Pike.” She tugs a boot off. “And you must obey the Pike’s commander.” Off goes the other. “Then it would just be a word, freedom.” Her voice is increasingly frantic. “Just a nothing word. That’s all it would be.”

“Sure.” He’s hopping out of his own boots.

“That’s all it’s ever been. You weren’t even free on your world.” She rises onto her knees. “Your overlords were going to kill you.”

“They were.”

“So you have no reason to want it.”

“And you have no reason to deny it.”

They stare at each other.

She throws a pillow at him.

He lunges across the bed and picks her up.

“Down.” She hammers her little fists into his back. “You put me down right now.”

“See? I’m already insubordinate as fuck.” He stands, hefting her onto his shoulder. “And you already can’t stop me.” He smacks her well-cushioned ass, relishes the scandalized gasp and the jerking flinch. “What would change?”

“Insufferable Maekyonite!” She writhes in his grasp. Her tail whacks him upside the head. A mad giggle escapes her before she can pull it back. “I will bite you. I’ll rip your throat out. I—”

Grant drops Sykora into a bridal carry and underhand tosses her into bed. She squeaks in alarm as she lands among her pillows.

“You tossed a Taiikari Void Princess. Oh, my God.” She sits up. “I’m gonna have you boiled.”

He lands heavily on the bed and pins her wrists above her head. She’s rolled onto her back. Her eyes are wide with shock.

He recognizes the cut of this dress uniform. He saw it down the barrel of a useless gun. He pulls the pin from its keyhole neckline and it flows open. The fearsome Princess of the Black Pike unwraps like a little blue gift.

“Grantyde,

He plucks Sykora, shiny and flushed, from her shucked gown. She has panties on tonight. Little and lacey and red. His leg slides under hers and folds her up, until her thick thighs are squishing against her chest. There’s a dark damp patch on the thin gossamer. A strangled groan rises from her as his hips sink between her thighs, spreading them apart. His grip digs into her wrists, and they’re so close he can feel the throb it causes in her.

Her tongue lays across her plush lower lip as she pants for air. He can't resist it. He falls into another kiss. Her legs bind him and tug him close so she can grind into him. He feels how pliant she is. How open. He releases the kiss and leaves them both gasping.

Her foot prods at the release on his belt. “Get this off.”

“Two words,” he says.

She snarls. “Fuck you.”

“Two little words, Majesty. You’re free.”

She shrieks in wordless frustration and thrashes under his weight. “I am going to vent you into a fucking sun!”

“All right, all right. God.” He thumbs the release and his shirt splits in two, sliding off his shoulders.

She giggles and reaches for his chest. “You’re so hairy.”

He undoes his belt as she strokes his chest hair. He kicks his pants off.

Her breath catches and vents out in a shaking sigh. This is the first time, he realizes. The first time she’s seen him naked. Maybe the first naked man she’s seen in the flesh.

“It’s big,” she breathes.

It’s average, actually. He’s not embarrassed to admit it. Normal, healthy, perfectly serviceable—he’s no porn star, but nobody’s ever complained. But he’s average for a human. And the little alien squirming underneath him is far from human.

She slides her hips under his cock. A purring groan rises from her throat when its head pokes up past her belly button. Her eyes bulge with awe. “Oh, Grantyde.” Her toes knead the bed. “Oh my God. You’re gonna remodel me.”

“Is it—” He blinks the sweat from his eyes. “Are you sure it’s going to fit?”

“Yes.” His tiny wife is practically vibrating. Her wagging tail beats against his calves. “Yes yes yes. Oh, it’s perfect. It’s fucking perfect. Hello, gorgeous.” Her trembling fingers reach for it as she wiggles halfway out of her panties. “Welcome to your forever home.”

He seizes her hand and tugs on it so that she’s sitting halfway up, nose to nose. The motion nestles him against her core, silky and wet and needy, and he needs a moment to remember how to speak.

“Free me,” he says.

“Fuck me,” she says.

“Free me.” He peels her panties the rest of the way off, watches the thick plushness of her thighs bloom against the pinching elastic. Their bodies are so close he can feel the heat radiating from her pussy. His thumb caresses the downy little triangle of pubic hair above her tight vulva, the stubble where she’s carefully trimmed it. For this moment. For him. “Free me and I swear to God I’ll fuck your brains out every night for the rest of our lives.”

Her spine arches. She whines. Her midnight-blue nipples are pebbled and peaked. She falls onto her back again. Her body ripples with the motion. “You’re awful. You are evil. I don’t even want it anymore.”

“Yes you do,” he says. “Your horns.”

“Don’t look at them.” She hitches her hips forward, desperate to kindle friction between them; he pulls his further away. She lets out a pathetic squeaking whine, rocking and thrusting against thin air. He sees the beacon. He’s almost through. A moment of cruelty for a life full of love. White-knuckle it, Grant.

“Come on.” Her fists ball into the silk. Her body rolls and tremors involuntarily. “Come on, you big pink son of a bitch. We can’t go back now. We can’t. I need you.”

He extricates himself from her legs. He settles back onto his knees. Every inch she was in contact with him feels tundra-cold without her skin. Every starving cell of him is howling its protest.

“Please,” Sykora’s eyes shine with frustrated tears. “Please, husband.” 

His arm feels like lead as he reaches for his uniform.

She howls the words like they're stripping her soul from her:

“You’re free!”