Page 82 of Tempting Cargo
I shook my head, blinking. “Back on New Earth, we’d need ballistics gel far thicker than this if we didn’t want anything out the other side.”
“Be glad you’re in this sector, then. Now stop skykking around, and do it again. You might be out of practice, but based on that, I’m not sure you know more than how to pull the trigger.”
I glared at him, a spark of anger firing in my chest, but I’d never lost my shit at my training officer, and I wouldn’t lose my shit at self-appointed drill sergeant Tokoran, either.
Once both of them were behind the line, I let out a comfortable breath and fired another short burst at the target.
Better. The grouping could be tighter, but we had plenty of time to practice.
“How come you don’t have those laser rifles the Reserve has?” I said.
Daiytak chuckled. “Who says we don’t? Get better with this and maybe we’ll let you play with the fun equipment.”
Get to work with alien tech? Hell yeah.
I THREW MYSELFback into training, running drills with the others, spending equal amounts of time in the training room and converted cargo bay. Some days I let myself be involved with theplanning discussions. Others, I was content to do my own thing, honing my rusty skills, ensuring I was an asset not a liability.
It was easier to keep busy.
My feet landed in a steady rhythm on the stepmill, and my lungs burned as I cranked up the speed.
I’d expected Shohari to be focused on the mission, but the easy softness we’d shared after take-off was so far away, we may as well have left it back on Vadias—the way she’d meant to leave me.
The only thing we had was the night. Neither of us had mentioned I could have taken the sofa in the galley. Each night I returned to the only bed I wanted to be in, even though it was torture. She’d come to bed once I’d already settled down; kri’ith needed less sleep than humans, and without intimacy to take up our time, she kept to a different schedule.
As soon as she woke, she’d leave the bed. Some mornings I was still asleep. Others, I woke tangled up in her embrace, breathing in the way her fingers twitched over my chest, the way her hips rocked softly against me as she started to rouse, her clit hard and wanting. But she pulled away, always, without fail.
I heard her angry grumbles as she got dressed, and sometimes her longing sighs. I knew her reasons for holding herself back even if I didn’t fully understand them. There was nothing I could say to change it.
I never said anything. How could I?
One morning my dick had been so hard it was painful, and it had only taken a few steady strokes of my fist to spray fast lines of cum across my chest after she’d left. The pleasure was sharp and faltering, my teeth biting down on my lip so hard it drew blood. Her scent on the sheets surrounded me, the warmth of her body still lingered behind me. I’d have felt bad about jerking off in her bed except she did it in the shower too.
Three days ago, soft moans had drifted through the walls over the hammering water. That, and the shower couldn’t fully wash away the unmistakable scent of sated Shohari. She’d stepped out of the convi already dressed, but I knew the telltale flush on her ear ridges. When she caught my eyes on her, she’d dropped her head and left.
I whacked the stop button on the stepmill and let myself roll off the end, my legs aching.
I’d stopped even saying good morning to her. The pain—as if my heart was made of glass and she could crush it with one more silent daybreak—wasn’t even the worst of it.
It was infuriating. More than the sexual frustration was the exasperation that I knew she wanted me, and I wasright fucking here. She already cared about me, and it should have filled me with so much joy. Instead it threatened to make my limbs so heavy, some days I struggled to train.
Like today.
I should have been here for another hour, but I finished up one more lacklustre set of burpees and swiped a towel across my neck.
I could shower later. Maybe a chrya would help.
Air puffed out from the wall vents seemingly every time I walked past one, as if theDorimisaherself was trying to get my attention.
“I know,” I muttered, uncaring that I was speaking to the ship. “But what can we do about it?”
I knew Shohari wanted to protect herself. Fuck,Iwanted to protect her. I wanted to crush her family so they could never hurt her or her brother again. I had to focus on that anger to fuel my body, so I wouldn’t succumb to the despair that sought to overwhelm me.
I understood the need to protect against all rational thought. She was trying to avoid some hypothetical future, but it was onewe were doing everything we could to prevent. Surely life was here and now? The pain of denying what we both desperately wanted felt like too high a price. Was another week or two of being together not worth having?
Much as I wished it could be more than just sex, if that was all it could be, I accepted that—albeit with a stone in my guts.
The last—and only—time I’d had a fuck-buddy, I’d struggled to handle the not-sure-where-we-stand aspect, even though I’d known from the start he wasn’t interested in a relationship. And now, in this horrid limbo, I remembered with acute clarity why I’d ended it.
