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There it is.
“I can’t.”
“You’re scared.”
Fuck off.
“I’m not. I just—”
“You know I’m going to fuck you soon.” His voice was so quietly matter-of-fact she knew it was true. Itwasgoing to happen. It was always going to happen. And maybe if she just gave him a little bit, just a taste, he’d let her have more time.
Kaia leaned back on her heels, shuffling her knees one by one to face him. She knelt between his legs. There was a little glint in the shadows when his eyes traversed her form, managing to make it feel like a violation even beneath her loose clothing.
Kaia held her breath when she scooted forward, shrinking the distance between them. She didn’t need his smell in her head now. Orion didn’t move, but he watched. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt them—burning through the bruises beneath her long-sleeved shirt, to the skin and bone.
She looked at his mouth, set in a neutral line that gave nothing away. When she closed the gap and brushed hesitant lips against his, he remained a statue.
Kaia wanted to pull away after that light touch, but that wasn’t the kind of kiss he’d meant and she knew it. She didn’twantto open her mouth and feel for the seam of his lips. She didn’t want to feel his tongue slide out to meet her. She didn’t want his teeth on her lip, tugging. She didn’t want the deep, hot, bitter breath mingling with hers. Shedefinitelydidn’t want their mouths to part further, their tongues to press flat against each other, the uhyre spikes on his hardening against her.
The spikes came first. The addictive exorin came after. But judging by the strained sound he breathed against her mouth, it might very well be soon.
Alarm bells rang when the first trace of it melted on her tongue, but she couldn’t pull away yet. She had to make sure she’d done enough to satisfy him for a little while longer.
Finally they drew back in unison. Kaia took care not to allow herself an instinctive swallow.
The warmth that had begun to pool between her legs was crawling up her spine, and somehow she was sure he knew.
“Good girl,” he rasped, bringing a hand up to sweep a thumb over her burning cheek. “This could be so much more with an NS, you know. Like being plugged in.”
The fucking Neurosync again. Whatever arousal she was beginning to feel drained out of her, so she supposed she should be grateful. He must’ve seen her eyes shutter because he sighed and dropped his hand, then moved aside the leg blocking her exit. Kaia slid past him and hurried from he suite.
The first thing she did when she was out was spit whatever she could onto the floor. She didn’t notice any silver tinge, thankfully, but she’dtastedit, and that was a risk.
When she was back in her cabin, she wasted two shots of her precious water to swirl in her mouth and spit into the sink. Just in case. She’d heard too many stories about how exorin would make people crazy and drive them up the wall for it. She couldn’t let that happen and risk having it jeopardize her mission.
She should encrypt and send what she’d learned straight to Loran right away. Kaia still hadn’t replied to his message to tell him more about the expedition, nor to the follow-up that he’d sent the next morning. She wasgoingto. Soon. It’s not that she was stalling—she just had to be careful not to overdo it. If she got caught, her transmissions intercepted and encryption broken, they’d be fucked.
Kaia couldn’t deny the fact that Orion’s show of naïve belief in the colony’s mission had a gnawing effect on her. He’d tried to hide it, but she saw the glimmer of hope in his eyes when they were talking about the probabilities of a New Earth being out there, and it was familiar. When Loran got his claws intoColossal, how bad would it be? He was used to picking ships, and people, apart and spitting out the bones to get what he needed. How much chaos would he wreak onColossaland its expedition?
Not that it matters.
Kaia crawled into bed and spent an hour perusing footage of her brother, who—she reminded herself—was alone and waiting. But she didn’t have a clip of the scene she replayed in her mind now, treading old grooves in her memory in self-flagellation. She remembered how he looked that last night, with the giant Upload headset strapped onto his tiny head. They’d just been playing as colony explorers that morning—Ahton commanding her, the lead navigator of the stick that was their “colony,” to the coordinates of a promising planet he’d detected. He’d been fine. They’d been laughing. How had he deteriorated so fast?
That night he was gone, and she made her promise to reunite with him in Heaven. A promise she was determined to keep. She just needed to keep her head on straight.
CHAPTER31
ORION
Orion barely focused on his meetings the next day. After admitting his doubts about the expedition out loud to someone other than his mother, his qualms had grown even more concrete.
There was something Mother wasn’t telling him. She may be dying, but she was nothing if not logical. Cold, hard facts: that was what drove her. No matter what state her body was in, she wouldn’t send them so far out based on nothing.
There had to be more, and he was sifting through docs in his NS vision for clues.
“Mr. Halen?”
“Hmm? What?” He glanced at old General Loris, who was tasked with running him through several defense simulations.
