Page 56 of Matched to the Alien King
Maxx would, most definitely. I glanced down and was unsurprised—and yet completely shaken down to my roots at the same time—to see the room had shrunk to two by two.
Maxx jabbed his finger toward the hand wall and yelled something at Miekil.
He was sending Miekil up before himself. His worst enemy, but also one of his only allies on this planet.
My heart swelled and kicked around my ribs painfully, feeling like it was also slowly being squeezed.
Reluctantly, Miekil started upward and met my gaze with his vibrant green eyes. Something within them showed just how stricken he was with Maxx’s selflessness as I was.
Above me, Bling made it to the top and then disappeared over it. Seconds later, she dropped the thick rope over to this side, her eyes saucer-wide as she stared down the narrowing shaft.
“Hurry, Nera,” she said, her mouth trembling as she reached down a hand.
I already had plenty, but I took hers anyway. As I swung myself over the top of the wall, I found no sign of Judge. All I saw was a metal platform which hovered over dark, choppy water. Tied to the platform was a little yellow raft with four oars. That was all I could make out up here.
When I turned back, my lungs fused together in a panic. The walls were squeezing in on Miekil’s wide shoulders as he scaled upward. I couldn’t even see Maxx behind him.
My movements feeling jerky and too slow, I grabbed one of Miekil’s horns to help him up, beyond caring if that was some kind of rude faux pas. Bling took the other, and we hauled him over onto the platform with us.
Then I turned back for Maxx, who was only a little over halfway up.
“Maxx.” My voice broke, same as my heart, while the walls closed in on the man I loved. “Keep going. Think really,reallyskinny thoughts.”
A strange wheezing sound escaped him when he reached for the next correctly numbered hand up. “Can’t…laugh…”
“The show won’t kill him,” Miekil assured me from my left. “Just thinking about what the rest of the Xenoxx warriors will do to Umo if their king dies makes evenmyasshole pucker.”
I gripped the ledge so tightly that my knuckles ached. “The show’s sure not going to make it easy for him either.”
Miekil nodded. “Where’s some lube when you need it?”
“Judge can spray lube from his wrists as sort of a defense mechanism to mark his territory.” Bling jerked her thumb over her shoulder, supposedly in the direction he’d gone. “Like Spiderman’s webs, but not. The Akarks call itbinny ha, which roughly translates to crotch mucus.”
Miekil blinked at her over my head. “No one needed to know that, Bling.”
“I’m just saying.” She held up her hands as if defending herself for knowing stuff. “Some bodies make great lube naturally.”
I nodded slowly. “Well, I’m currently as dusty as a beaver down there because I’m clenched too tightly, and I’m no Spiderwoman, so…”
Miekil shot me a horrified look. “I didn’t need to know that either. Maxx,please. Can you speed things up?”
“All this talk…about puckered assholes…and crotch mucus…and Nera’s dusty beaver…” Huffing and puffing upward through the barely foot-wide shaft, Maxx finally reached the point where the three of us could help haul him the rest of the way. “You really know how to get me out of my least favorite hole of the day fast. And I’ve been in a lot.”
It was only when he was planted right next to me, free of any walls about to crush his beautiful everything, did I allow my relief to flood through me so hard that it weakened my knees. I threw my arms around him and squeezed, a different kind of force crushing us together.
He breathed against my neck, kissed me there, and then murmured against my skin, “I would climb a thousand walls in a thousand universes just to be in your arms, my beautiful star.”
I felt it more than heard it, and I soaked those words deeply into my heart.
“Leastfavorite hole?” Bling asked Miekil, her eyebrow cocked. “How many holes have you been in?”
“Okay, no one needs to knowanythingmore about that either.” Miekil scrubbed his hand down his face and shook his head. “Trust me.”
Chapter twenty
Maxx
Heknew.Hefuxxingknew.
