Defying Death (12 page)

“Our connection is strong,” she corrected.

“I put you at risk.”

His concern for her safety pulled at her heart.
“Then you’ll have to protect me.”

Pain flashed in his eyes. “I’ve failed others.”

He was thinking of the Erinomean girl. “You didn’t
stay by her side. Do you plan to leave me unprotected?”

He shook his head, his expression grimly
determined.

“Then you won’t fail me.”

The severe set of his lips didn’t ease.

“We’re alone.” She didn’t expect him to reveal his
emotions in front of witnesses. “You’ve bred with me every rest
cycle since we met. You don’t put me at risk then and nothing has
changed.”

He gripped her chin and tilted her face upward.
“Everything has changed.”

He covered her mouth with his, his kiss firm yet
gentle, sure yet sweetly apologetic. Her lips parted, surrendering
to his dominance.

His tongue and nanocybotics swept inside her, a
current of energy-infused lust surging down her throat, not
stopping until it reached her fingers and toes, warming her all
over.

He was right. Everything had changed. He was
trusting her with his emotions and she would never abuse that
trust. She’d protect him as he protected her.

Tifara sucked on his tongue, drinking him in. They
were a team, a couple. Some of that was genetics, but they fit in
many other ways.

Those other ways would be explored later. She glided
her hands up his arms. Fucking him, kissing him was her focus
now.

She contracted and released her pussy muscles,
massaging his cock, and he murmured his approval, his words muted
by her mouth. Fuck. He felt good, his length as unrelenting as his
metal frame.

Death moved her up and down him, acting as though
she weighed nothing. This was no human male inside her. He was a
cyborg, half man, half machine, able to lift her without
tiring.

Tifara had always been conscious of her size. Death
made her feel small, delicate, feminine. There was no doubting his
desire. His cock hardened even more inside her.

“Yes, Death, yes.” She arched her back, dragging her
nipples along his chest, and his lips flattened. He ravished her
harder. Her ass bounced against his thighs, all points of contact
heating, the burn delectable.

“So right. How you feel. Harder, yes,” she called
out in encouragement, her mind scrambled by their rutting. Sweat
beaded on her skin. He bent his head and licked the swell of her
breasts, his tongue rough and hot. Tifara trembled, rippling her
inner walls over his shaft, pulling an excitingly animalistic grunt
from her cyborg’s throat.

Death burst into frantic action, humping her in
earnest, impaling her again and again on his thickness. She panted,
each drive downward pushing the air from her lungs. The warrior
touched virgin flesh, reaching a part of her no other male
could.

“Yes.” Tifara clutched his shoulders and held on.
“Yes.” Her pussy hummed. Her curves jiggled. Tremors of need rolled
over her.

These grew in intensity, shredding her grasp on
reality. She gazed upward, drawn in by the flashes of gold in his
eyes. The bolts of energy surged to the rhythm of his fucking,
exciting her, pushing her closer to the edge.

“Death.” She sealed her lips over his chin and
sucked.

He growled. His chest vibrated against her breasts,
teasing her taut nipples. His fingers splayed under her ass, his
fingertips pressing into her skin. His cock bobbed inside her.

Fuck. He was fierce.

But so was she. Tifara hung onto him with her lips,
her arms, her legs, not relenting with her full-body assault. He
slammed her down on him and she squeezed him with her inner
walls.

Death howled, bucking upward. Hot cum spurted from
his tip, splattered inside her and she screamed, euphoria smashing
over her, a sonic wave of pleasure nearly flattening her.

He captured her lips with his, severing the sound,
and he pushed even deeper, filling her with his essence. She
writhed, her pussy convulsing around his thick cock, coaxing every
last drop from his rigid form.

Lights and color spun around her. His nanocybotics
flowed into her mouth and her pussy, triggering more changes within
her. She didn’t know what she was, what she was becoming, but she
knew she was no longer entirely human.

Tifara collapsed against her cyborg. He stroked her
hair, supported her weight, murmuring words of comfort, of
reassurance into her throat.

The bubbling sensation engulfed her from head to
toe. Even her scalp tingled. And her need to touch him, to be near
him, hadn’t abated. In mere moments, she’d need him again and he’d
need her.

And she didn’t have to act like she was asleep
during their encounters. “There. That wasn’t that bad, was it?” Her
tone was unapologetically smug. “You showed some emotion and we
survived. We weren’t sucked into the nearest black hole or attacked
by a fleet of Humanoid Alliance ships.”

His eyes gleamed and his lips curled upward.

“What? Is that a smile?” She touched his lips, joy
blooming inside her. “I believe it is. You’re not grim as fuck now,
are you?”

His lips flattened.

“Oh Death. I understand why you’re grim.” She
skimmed her lips against his. “And I won’t tell any other being you
smiled. It will be our secret.”

He pushed her head down, against his chest.
“Sleep.”

“I’m not tired.” Tifara snuggled closer to her very
warm male. “I like that we have secrets.” She shifted against him.
“Between us,” she clarified. “We shouldn’t keep information from
each other. Trust is essential for a good relationship.”

He tightened his grip on her.

“We have to—”

Death scooped her off his lap and plunked her in her
own chair.

Her ass smacked against the hard surface. She glared
at him. “What the—”

“We’re not alone.” He leaned forward and placed his
palms on the console’s control panel. The image on the main
viewscreen changed. An object was amplified.

“It’s a ship.” She gasped, her outrage dissipating,
morphing into concern. “Can they see us too?”

“We’re cloaked.”

“We can see them. Aren’t they cloaked?”

“I’m a cyborg. I can penetrate any concealing
mechanism. ” Death’s arrogance would be amusing if the situation
wasn’t so perilous.

For the beings in the other ship.

Tifara, confident in her destiny, wasn’t concerned
about Death or herself.

An image appeared on the bottom left side of the
main viewscreen. It was rotated, flipped, expanded. Blobs of bright
orange and yellow were positioned between gray and black
structures.

“Are those lifeforms?” she guessed.

He nodded.

“There are quite a few of them for such a small
ship.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “All of the humanoids seem to
be in their private spaces, their extremely tiny chambers.” That
couldn’t be comfortable. “Except this one.” She pointed to a
lifeform. “He’s in the hallway, right outside his chamber. And
she’s not in her chamber either.” Tifara indicated a second
lifeform. “I’m assuming she’s on the bridge.”

Silence stretched. The ship moved closer to
them.

Death tapped on the control panel. His lips
flattened into a thin white line.

“You’re not going to blow their ship up, are you?”
She worried. That was an action her violence prone cyborg would
take.

He grunted.

That sounded like a ‘yes.’ “There’s no need to do
that. They might not see us.”

He said nothing.

“Blowing up their ship will draw attention to us.”
She tried a different tactic. “Why do that if it’s not necessary?
You’re a cyborg. They’re humanoid. You can react faster than they
can. If they raise their shields or power up their weapons,
then
you can shoot them out of open space.”

His gaze slid to hers.

She widened her eyes, putting as much pleading into
her expression as possible.

His lips twisted.

She interpreted that as agreement. “Thank you.”

They waited. Tifara thought about the ship, about
the unique configuration, the tiny chambers, the humanoids staying
inside the small spaces when they had a much larger vessel to
explore.

“It’s a Retriever ship.” She realized. “My friend
Safyre told me about Retrievers.” Her mood sobered as it always did
when she thought about the friend she’d lost. “They work for the
Humanoid Alliance, capturing rebels and other beings, returning
them to be sentenced and reprimanded.”

Death’s body stiffened.

“She has a full ship.” Tifara hastened to reassure
her trigger-happy male. “Every chamber is filled. She won’t be
interested in us.” She hoped. “And she can’t see us, remember? She
doesn’t know we’re here.”

He didn’t reply.

“We’ll wait and watch and take action only if she
does.” She concentrated on the image of the Retriever’s ship,
willing the female not to notice them.

Safyre, her friend, hated Retrievers with a burning
passion, thought them the lowest of the low, but Tifara merely saw
precious lifeforms, beings she could save.

She held her breath as the ship soundlessly drifted
by theirs. It was frighteningly close yet there was no indication
that they were detected. The Retriever’s ship didn’t slow or react
in any way.

It passed without incident and she exhaled heavily.
“That was—”

“The ship is turning.” Death changed the angle on
the main viewscreen, allowing them to look behind their vessel.

The Retriever ship
was
turning. The speed of
that turn accelerated, the ship moving faster and faster. Then it
dropped, corrected, held for a moment, tilted to the right and to
the left.

“What is happening?” Was that normal for an attack?
Tifara’s expertise was healing. She knew very little about battle
or flying.

Another lifeform scan appeared on the main
viewscreen. This time, all of the lifeforms were out of their
chambers. “What is that?” She pointed at the huge yellow and red
blob at the end of a hallway.

“Fire.”

Tifara
did
know fire on a ship was a bad
thing. “We have to help her. They’ll all die if we don’t.”

“They’ll all die if we help, every being except for
her.” Death’s eyes shone with suppressed rage. “She’s hunting
rebels. You could have been one of her captives.”

“But—”

“The rebels she captured won’t be reprimanded, my
female.” He steered their ship farther away from the Retriever’s
vessel. The image in the main viewscreen grew smaller. “They’ll be
sent to a cyborg manufacturing compound.” His voice was flat.
“Newly manufactured warriors will be forced to fight them, to kill
them.
I
could have been one of those warriors. I could have
been forced to fight you, my own female, in the ring. I would have
had to kill you because if I didn’t, some other warrior would and
he might not end your life as quickly, as painlessly as I
could.”

“Oh, Death.” Tifara crawled into his lap and petted
his chest, trying to comfort him.

He wouldn’t have had to end her life. Dying in a
fighting ring wasn’t her destiny.

But he’d been forced to kill others and that must
have hurt her cyborg. Her heart ached for him. She stroked his skin
with her fingers.

“We’re not helping her.” Death’s tone told her he
wouldn’t relent on that. “And you should return to your seat.”

“We’re not helping her,” she agreed, ignoring his
comment about returning to her seat. “Rescuing the Retriever will
doom the others to death. And—”

The Retriever’s ship exploded, bursting into a
million pieces, and Tifara jumped, shocked, surprised, horrified.
Debris, fragments of metal, shot outward, reaching toward them,
deadly fingers of shrapnel flying in their direction.

Her heart raced. Their ship rocked. Alarms sounded.
Red lights flashed.

“Are we hit?” She clutched Death’s arms.

“The damage is minor. The ship remains
functional.”

The Retriever’s ship wasn’t functional. It had been
blown to bits.

Had the female and her passengers survived?

“They could have ejected.” That was possible.

The sound coming from her cyborg indicated that was
unlikely.

But he didn’t know. Not for certain. Tifara clung to
that tiny sliver of hope.

Their ship moved farther and farther from the
wreckage. She swallowed her suggestion that they look through the
wreckage for escape pods. Death would kill any beings brought on
board. Another ship would have to help them.

Tifara curled up in Death’s lap and pressed her ear
against his chest, listening to the comforting thump, thump, thump
of his triple heartbeat, and thinking of their future. He rested
his chin on top of her head and gazed out the main viewscreen.

He watched the blackness of space.

She watched him. Her cyborg appeared as grim as he
usually did.

“Don’t look like that.” She shook her head. Her
curls rubbed against his skin. “This encounter with the Retriever
had nothing to do with you smiling.” The timing was coincidence.
That was all. “Even if it did, we got through it relatively
unscathed. You can reveal your feelings. We’ll survive it. I
promise you.”

The hard set of his lips softened.

The tension inside her stomach eased. He would smile
again. She’d ensure that happened. “I helped you determine that the
ship belonged to a Retriever.” She added value in a small way.
“Admit it. I was useful.”

He made a noise that she construed as agreement.

“Yes, I was very helpful.” She nodded. “We’ll work
together going forward. We’ll have to. In a little over a planet
rotation, we’ll land on Carinae E. It’s a primitive, harsh
planet.”

Airspace wasn’t monitored, which appealed to her
cyborg. There were great expanses of terrain with very few
inhabitants. A ship could land and depart without detection.