Supernova (21 page)

“If you
didn’t, I do.” His fingers found the seal again.

“One
more thing.” The frustrated look on his face would have been priceless if Lily
wasn’t feeling the same herself. “It’s not fair that I’m already half-naked and
you’re not,” she complained.

“You’re
not half-naked,” he protested. “But you would be if I took this off.” He slid a
bra strap down her shoulder.

She took
a handful of his shirt and lifted it. He helped her and stripped it off,
shucking it to the floor. He stood before her, lean-muscled, his blue eyes
boring into her. There was a small round scar on his left shoulder that had to
have been a deep gash at one point. She touched it gingerly. “How did you get
that?”

“Civil
war on Naa’natcha when I was an ensign,” he replied. “Fleet stepped in. Enemy
laser rifle was set to stun.”

She
stood up on her toes and kissed it. He reached around her back and with a
muffled curse against her hair finally unsealed her bra, tossing it to the
floor. She grinned against his shoulder, let her hands creep down his abdomen,
and unsealed his pants. Her fingers slid into them and grazed his erection, and
a low moan sounded from his throat. He tilted up her face and his mouth crushed
hers, tongues tangling as he guided her towards the bed.

She lay
down as Rian kneeled over her, his lips moving over her throat and collarbone
before finding one taut nipple. He eagerly took it in his mouth, and Lily’s
breath caught as he caressed it and then the other. She felt his hands unfasten
her pants, and she lifted her hips slightly as he slid them down her legs. He
raised his head, and his eyes looked over her now-naked body. Any
self-consciousness she felt at being so exposed evaporated when she took in his
appreciative gaze.

His head
dipped further south, and his tongue found the aching spot between her legs.
Her hands fisted in his hair as he explored her, setting off tiny electric
sparks through her body. She felt the first wave of climax and her breath came
in irregular pants. His tongue delved further into her and she moaned. He
raised his head. “I don’t want you to stop!” she insisted.

“I’m
not,” he said.

“Rian,
this is
not
the time to let your sense of humor show,” she muttered. He
slid a finger into her, then two, stretching her. “I’ll take that as an—” She
gasped harshly. “An apology.”

She
groaned in disappointment when he withdrew his fingers from her, then watched
as he pushed off his pants. He positioned his body atop hers, propping himself
up on his elbows. His knee nudged her thighs further apart; his kisses became
more urgent. The head of his cock nudged against her, and she gripped his
shoulders in anticipation before he thrust into her. The feeling of connection
and completion was so gratifying that she cried out.

He
stroked her hair, concern across his features. “Are you okay?” he whispered.

She
kissed him in reply. “Better than okay.”

One hand
slipped beneath her hips, lifting her up as he began to move with an agonizing
slowness that left her on edge. Before she could plead with him, he increased
his pace, thrusting into her more forcefully. She wrapped her legs around him
as he stroked deeper into her, bringing her closer again. She felt the tension
in his body as he fought for his own control.

She lost
hers first, crying out as her orgasm finally racked her body. His rhythm sped
up, intensifying and prolonging her climax even as his body went rigid with its
own. He sagged against her, burying his face in her neck and tightening his
arms around her. For a moment they breathed in sync, then he rolled over and
took her with him. His thumb gently pressed against her lips before he kissed
her. Wordlessly, their gazes caught each other’s. There was an unexpected
tenderness in his eyes, a look that warmed her heart.

* * *

Rian had
pulled the blanket over them, and he lay with Lily snuggled against his chest.
Her eyes were closed, but his years in the military told him she wasn’t really
asleep. He had had to catch more catnaps than he could remember for him to
recognize the signs of deep sleep. She stirred a little, and his arms curled
around her instinctively.

He was in
deep shit. Not just professionally, although the Fleet higher-ups would roll
over if they knew what he had done. No, this was personal. Fleet he could
handle; despite their presumption that Lily was some kind of helpless,
backwards idiot and victim, he couldn’t be court-martialed for having a
relationship with someone under his command. If that was the case, two-thirds
of Fleet’s captains and all of the admirals would have been tossed out on their
asses. A life in the Commons Fleet meant near-total devotion to it. Officers
usually gravitated towards partners who understood those obligations.

When
this got out, and he was almost certain it would no matter how discreet they
were, he and Lily would never stop being the objects of scrutiny. He knew there
had been whispers going around the ship since they started sharing meals and
coffee breaks. The
Defiant
was a patrol ship often in sleepy parts of
space, and there was lots of time to gossip.

He had
already broken his own rule about not getting involved with someone on his
ship. But she wouldn’t be here for long, he remembered sadly. She was going to
finish her pharmacy course shortly, then leave for practical training at Kevnar
Station before being assigned to a clinic. And she would be gone.

That
thought discomfited him more than breaking his own rules. That was why he was
in deep shit. He didn’t want to let her go. Lily—on some station or, Gods
forbid, a well-equipped battleship—in
danger
, having to pretend to be
someone she wasn’t, stuck in yet another unfamiliar place with more daunting
technology. He didn’t want that to happen. He wanted to keep her with him for
as long as he could.

He
lightly stroked her hair, loose and spread over her shoulders. Her eyes blinked
open and she leaned, away into the pillow, and propped herself up on her side.
She had a satisfied smile on her face, and she stretched. The sheet slipped
down, and Rian’s heart sped up a little at the sight of her. He reached for her
and ran his hands over the curve of her breasts, her neck, to cup her face. Her
hands moved to caress his back and she kissed him, and g
ods
, could the
woman kiss.

He could
never get enough of her. He knew that now, and that scared the hell out of him
more than anything.

* * *

His
alarm trilled at 0600 hours and the bedroom illumination eased on. He kissed
Lily’s shoulder and neck until she stirred. She rolled over to face him, a
smile spreading across her face. He knew there was one on his, too.

He had
to start his rounds in an hour fifteen, but that thought slipped from his mind
as his hands took on a mind of their own and pulled her to him. It was Lily who
remembered and reluctantly pulled away. “I could go for another repeat,” she
murmured.

So could
he, and he told her so. Their second time had occurred a bare five hours
earlier, when they had woken up in the middle of the night unable to get back
to sleep.

“But you
have to be at work soon,” she lamented. “And I have to read up on Fleet medical
ethics. I scheduled another test three days from now.”

“I’d
rather stay in bed with you,” he said, but he reluctantly got out and reached
for his bathrobe, draped over the bedpost. He left Lily in bed as he headed for
the shower, turning back in the doorway to look back at her. The sight of
her—come-hither look on her face, hair tousled, one bare leg peeking out from
the sheet—nearly did him in. A frisson of need shot through his body, but he
didn’t have time to indulge it properly.

“If you
look at me like that, I’ll never make it to the bridge.”

She
sighed dramatically. “I’ll replicate some breakfast, then.” She tossed off the
blankets and stood up. She caught his wide-eyed stare and pulled a sheet off
the bed and wrapped it around herself. “Go shower. I’ll have coffee ready when
you get out.”

He
grabbed her around the waist and led her to the bathroom. “I’ll have coffee in
my office.”

Chapter 12

Lily
didn’t just have a very boring module on ethics to study back in her cabin. She
could tackle that in a few hours. She had also been combing through the volumes
of data she and Rian had downloaded at the Rubidge Station library, and she had
stumbled across a tiny file buried in with some other historical texts on
Earth. These ones were standard in what must be the modern equivalent of master’s
programs in Milky Way ancient history, a subject no one in Fleet ever studied.
There were complete e-books by Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, and a thrill
shot through her at seeing the names. She dug into the files’ subdirectories
and came across some short video clips from the twenty-first and twenty-second
centuries.

Wonder
of wonders, there was an eight-minute segment from Toronto’s local news,
detailing the explosion of a cryonics lab in northwest Toronto and the
disappearances of its two doctors and receptionist. It added to another layer
of mystery surrounding the pair of decomposed bodies found in the Humber River
a few weeks before, which had just been identified as James Richards and Graham
Kent, identified using DNA from relatives. The syringes that had been stabbed
into their necks had held an unidentified toxic substance that corroded the
police department’s forensic unit’s equipment, and the homicide unit was
baffled. Richards and Kent had been the lease holders of the lab, and Lily now
saw how Zadbac and Pitro had taken hold of the property.

The
inferno had occurred moments after Lily was abducted. It had leveled the
industrial park, a bus shelter in front of the building, and damaged a condo
development that was under construction. Not a trace of human DNA had been
found in the vicinity of the industrial park. It was mentioned that the
daughter of “noted” science fiction and horror author Daniel Stewart was the
lab’s receptionist and hadn’t been accounted for, and the police were doubtful
she had survived the blast. Local music entrepreneur Andrew Claybourne had had
an appointment scheduled that afternoon and was likewise unaccounted for. The
cause of the explosion was unknown, and like the toxin in the murdered men’s
needles, the authorities hadn’t yet identified what substances were used.

The clip
was used as an educational tool to illustrate the limitations of Earth’s
science in investigation and the sensationalism used in journalism; it was
included in a text by a current researcher on Earth’s ancient culture. Lily
felt her chest constrict watching the clip a second time and seeing Wilson
Avenue choked with black smoke and flames.
They probably never found out the
cause of the explosion
, she thought sadly. Zadbac and Pitro must have used
something from their time. It was the sole piece of information she had found
detailing her disappearance, and instead of relief, she felt sick.

She dug
further into the datatab’s files. Surely an explosion of that magnitude had
made international headlines. There had to be something from the CBC or the
New
York Times
. But there wasn’t; it was just that little news clip from a
Toronto TV station.

She
sighed and set the datatab aside. Her mind wandered to Rian and last night, and
with that, a twinge of guilt when her spirits picked up. In the morning, she
thought Rian might have gone back into his professional captain mode and
dismissed the night together as a mistake, but he hadn’t had an attack of
misplaced conscience in the morning. She wanted to see that side of Rian again,
and had no doubt she would. Even though she was unsure what to call their
relationship now. It was a very bright spot in this upheaval.

She
picked up the datatab again. She had more research to do. She and Rian weren’t
going anywhere away from this ship.

She
opened a file on the Nym. A highly intelligent alien race of sociopaths, one of
many in space but the only ones close to the Commons and the Kurran Empire.
Many had low-level empathic talents, making her think of Taz’s story. The Nym’s
devotion to science and technology and their pursuit of power was legendary and
far surpassed any other culture in space. They were a fairly small group,
usually keeping to themselves on their home planet outside the Fringes between
trying to invade one world or another every few years. They had tried to annex
several quadrants over the centuries with varying levels of success, defeated
only because they were outnumbered. They were rumored to keep their population
at less than twenty-five thousand, killing infants deemed imperfect and adults
when they reached old age. One document claimed that they had auto-destruct
chips implanted into their bodies; another said they simply took a lethal
overdose at the appropriate age. But since none of them had ever been
successfully captured and interrogated by a Commons or Kurran authority, no one
knew for sure.

Their
world was protected by a treacherous asteroid belt, reinforced with a
Nym-designed force field that could incinerate even the most intrepid of
battleships. Outside intelligence was conducted safely out of the Nym
atmosphere, and random pieces of data collected. The Nym had been strangely
quiet for several years now, which Lily knew worried some of Fleet. They weren’t
a people known for simply minding their own business, like most of the worlds
in the Fringes. If they weren’t regularly monitored, one might assume that they
had simply died off. That happened in the Fringes sometimes; planets could
destabilize and stop supporting life. It was a downside that made living in Commons
space more attractive.