Bad Boy Romance: Nick (Romantic Suspense Alpha Male Romance) (New Adult Rock Star Contemporary Short Stories) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 2) (30 page)

****

Alexis chased after Tyrok,
bursting out of the house while still pulling her shirt on over her head.

"What do you mean the stars
will go out?" she asked frantically.

"Where is the ship?"
Tyrok asked without answering her question.

"It's on the other side of
that hill," she said, pointing in the direction of the hill on the border
of the village. "You didn't answer me."

Tyrok started toward the hill,
his jaw set with determination.

"You thought that Star
Lords were fairy tales so you probably didn't know that our ships are not the
same as others."

"What do you mean?"

"My ship carries
extraordinary power. It literally has within it the ability to extinguish the
actual stars just as quickly as I created the little ones in your bedroom.
Without the stars, everything in this universe will die."

"I still don't
understand."

By this point they were cresting
the hill and Tyrok was staring down at the crashed ship. Alexis followed his
gaze and gasped. Ahead of them the ship looked nearly perfect, the warped,
twisted mass of metal now a sleek, shimmering ship.

"Thank god it's still
here," he muttered. "The creature inside that ship, the one that was
controlling me, has been repairing it since the day of the crash. It knows that
if it can get the ship operational again, it will have the ability to control
the universe."

"But if it could do that on
its own, why was it controlling you?"

"I know how to operate the
ship and as long as it was controlling me, it was also controlling my
capabilities. We have to stop it before it figures out how to operate the
ship."

"How are we going to do that?"
Alexis asked, struggling to keep up with him as he ran down the side of the
hill and pushed toward the ship.

"We have to kill it."

"You don't have any
weapons," Alexis said, pointing out that Tyrok had run from the house in
only his pants and shoes.

"I don't need weapons. When
I said that without the stars everything in the universe would die, that wasn't
completely correct. Everything but those creatures. They detest sunlight and
will die if exposed to it for more than a few seconds. To them, even the
tiniest of stars is just a sun waiting to happen."

Alexis suddenly remembered the
tentacle slithering out of the wrecked ship and then recoiling quickly into the
darkness.

"How are we going to get it
outside?" she asked.

"I'm going to lure
it."

"No!" she protested,
"It has already had control over you before. I'm not going to let that
happen again. I'm going in."

"No, you aren't," he
said, trying to pull her back.

"It is my sworn duty as the
medic of this mission to protect everyone within the colony, and for the last
week and a half now, that includes you."

"You would protect anyone
in the colony this way?" he asked uncertainly.

Alexis stood on her toes to kiss
him.

"Absolutely not." She
took a breath and started for the repair ship door, pausing most of the way
there to toss the messenger pad from her wrist back to Tyrok, "If anything
happens, call my father. His name is James."

She turned back to the ship and
approached the door. Her hand trembled as she rested it on the lever to the
door and pushed it open. The door slid toward her a few inches and Alexis
leaned forward to check inside. Everything was calm and quiet so she took a
step forward. Suddenly she heard a screeching sound from within the ship and
felt something thick and strong wrap around her waist. She screamed as the
black tentacle dragged her inside. Behind her, Tyrok was shouting her name.

Alexis thrashed against the
tentacle, pushing down on it as hard as she could trying to free herself from
its grasp. It dragged her down the main hallway, slamming her against the walls
as it slithered across the floor. She managed to catch herself on a metal guide
bar on one wall, slowing the tentacle enough that she could hear the faint
sound of her father's voice coming into the ship.

A moment later the tentacle
yanked her forward again, painfully pulling her away from the bar. It was
dragging her toward the emergency control room where she found Tyrok and she
felt terror building in her stomach as she thought of what it may have planned
for her. Suddenly she saw a flash of movement beside her and heard a screech as
the tentacle tightened around her to the point that she couldn't breathe.

Darkness was building around her
and she turned her head to see Tyrok digging a large spade into the tentacle. A
look of fury on his face, he withdrew the tool and slammed it back down into
the creature. Alexis could hear James shouting in the background and just as
everything went completely dark, her body slipped from the tentacle's grip and
crumpled to the cold metal floor.

****

"Come on, Alexis. Open your
eyes."

She heard Tyrok's voice
whispering to her as if it was coming through water toward her. It waivered
slightly and she felt the soft, soothing touch of his hand brushing her cheek.
She wanted to respond to him but it felt like her own voice was out of her
reach.

"Listen to me," he
whispered again, "Focus on my voice and come back to me."

Alexis fought against the
sinking feeling that kept her away from Tyrok and felt the fog lifting. She
turned her head slowly from side to side and heard a murmur escape her lips.

"Tyrok," she
whispered, finally able to find her voice.

Her eyes fluttered open and
Tyrok's beautiful face, worry etched into the gorgeous features, came gradually
into focus. He leaned down and kissed her gently. The touch of his lips broke
through the fog and she lifted her head to press harder into his kiss. Tyrok
tucked his hand beneath her head to support it and deepened the kiss, opening
his mouth over hers and dipping his tongue inside.

Alexis welcomed the kiss,
looping her arm around his neck to give herself leverage so she could crush her
body against his. He groaned into her mouth and pulled her up further. She
complied with his strength, allowing him to lead her so that she knelt in the
middle of the bed, him mirroring her position in front of her so that their
bodies touched from their knees to their chests.

Not breaking their kiss, Alexis
smoothed her hands down over Tyrok's shoulders. She reveled in the feeling of
his warm skin and strong, hard muscles beneath her palms. He returned her
touch, slipping his hands beneath her shirt and pulling it up, taking his mouth
from hers only long enough to remove it and toss it aside. She hadn't put her
bra back on before they returned to the ship and when she tucked back into his
arms her nipples grazed his chest.

Alexis whimpered at the
sensation that shot through her stomach and into the apex of her thighs.
Seeming to take her sound as an invitation, Tyrok steadied himself with his
hands on her hips and ducked his head down to capture one of her hard peaks
between his teeth. He bit just hard enough to create a tiny, pleasurable shock
of pain, then followed the bite with the soothing coil of his tongue around her
nipple.

Her hand came to the back of his
head to hold him in place, but Tyrok seemed to have other plans. He pulled his
mouth away from her breast, moved it to the other one to flick his tongue
quickly across that nipple, and then touched it to her stomach. Alexis arched
back to offer him better access to her skin and closed her eyes to savor the
delicious feeling of him kissing and licking his way slowly toward the button
on the front of her pants.

By the time the tip of his
tongue slipped beneath her waistband to tease the curve of her hipbone, Alexis
was panting and gripping his shoulders for stability. Tyrok straightened back
up on his knees and pulled her closer. She felt the pressure of his erection
pushing into her belly and bit her lip, her hips making tiny, involuntary movements
against his. He kissed her deeply, drawing her bottom lip into his mouth and
sucking on it softly. Finally he brought his mouth to her ear.

"Now?" he whispered
and Alexis remembered how she had stopped him the last time they were in her
bed together.

Unable to speak over her labored
breath, Alexis nodded. Tyrok wrapped an arm around her hips and swept her off
of her knees, lowering her down onto her back on the mattress. He stretched his
body along hers and she parted her thighs, drawing her knees up beside his hips
so he could settle closer against her. Slowing their pace, he rocked his hips
against hers and kissed her languidly. She tilted her face up to him to offer
her mouth completely and felt his hand slip between them again to release the
button on her pants and draw the zipper down.

A moment later she was naked
before him again, but this time her shyness was overshadowed by her intense
desire for him. Sitting back on his knees, Tyrok unfastened his own pants and
pushed them off so that they finally had nothing between them. Still moving
slowly, he slid back on the bed so he could lower his mouth between her legs.

Alexis cried out as his tongue
swept across her, focusing in on the taut, swollen spot he had teased with his
fingers before. He paused briefly as if to let her calm down, then continued,
using just the tip of his tongue to trace circles through her folds and coax
her toward the edge. His hands went beneath her hips, filling with her flesh as
he tilted her pelvis up against his mouth. She writhed on the bed, mewling
sounds tumbling from between her lips as he continued his blissful torment.

His masterful licks had brought
her right to the edge and when his tongue delved inside her, the sensations
crashed together in a dizzying, all-consuming climax. She was still riding the
waves of tremors that rippled through her body when he moved up and the hard,
thick length of his shaft replaced his tongue. He entered her in one smooth
movement and her hips lifted to meet him.

Tyrok groaned as he filled her
and began moving his hips in long, deep strokes. Alexis gasped at the feeling
of him gliding against her and lifted her head to catch his mouth in a kiss.
His pace quickened and his thrusts became more urgent. Each hard, intense
stroke brought a cry from her lips and Alexis parted her thighs further to
accept more of the sensation. Deep, animal grunts poured from his throat as he
drove himself into her again and again, his eyes staring into hers. As she
gazed at him she realized that what she thought were shimmering blue streaks
were actually shooting stars suspended across the honey-colored background.

Her body contracted around him
again, the rapid spasms of her muscles milking him until his head fell back and
he roared. She could feel him spilling into her, pulsing in time with her
tremors. As his muscles relaxed, Tyrok lowered himself down onto her, tucking
his sweaty head into the dip between her shoulder and neck. He kissed her
gently, his panting breaths rippling across her skin as they both cooled and
calmed.

Alexis smiled and let her eyes
drift closed. She would ask about the ship tomorrow. For now, all that mattered
was the stunning man in her arms and his heartbeat against her chest. She knew
that from that moment on she had one less thing to miss about home.

THE
END

It took forty-six Galaxy minutes
to get from Caden’s hub to Xondux, and only ten of them had passed. This was
the longest inter-system flight she’d ever taken. She kept looking out the
ship’s windows expecting to see that they’d actually circled back to her hub,
or gotten caught in the atmosphere of a planet. The cyborgs in her dorm were
fond of pranks, and once they’d convinced her that her weekly mission had begun
without her in her sleep. No matter how often she checked, all she could see
was the inky blackness of space, dotted with pinpricks of light and
occasionally interrupted by a gas giant or a belt of asteroids. She tried to
remember her parental unit’s words--- Evan and Willow were all about logic:
close
to one hundred percent of cypeople make it through a flight vessel catastrophe.
Their fatality rates in common accidents were far better than most other
organisms, but this statistic never did anything to stop the ice rattle of
anxiety from coiling around her heart.

Reflexively, she tapped her
right index finger against the cuff of her left sleeve, activating the
projection screen in her suit that allowed her to access the ships data as well
her own. Caden brought up the map of their flight path, letting her cold gray
eyes move over the bright blue trail for what must have been the tenth time.
Thirty five more minutes, no stops. Thirty-seven if they allowed for possible
interceptions of the Ridley Asteroid Belt around the gold sector. The belt was
a nuisance, but it was more effective at keeping out pirates than any other
method the Intergalactic Council had come up with thus far, so no one could
object to its continued existence. Caden didn’t mind, because that meant fewer
incidents and therefore fewer reasons to have her pulled from regular
patrols---but her regular patrols seemed to be at an end now, anyway. She
always felt more daring on pirate missions, and those were often the times she
liked to pretend she was a caped crusader, or a masked vigilante.

“Nervous?”

Caden spun her chair around so
forcefully that she did a full revolution and had to come back around again.
She placed her heeled boots on the ground to stop herself, facing the Hyppo
accompanying her while she wrangled her pulse under control. The tall alien was
sitting about fifteen feet away in his straight-back chair, his slim face an
expression of calm and understanding. She fought the urge to drop her gaze and
cut off her projection screen with another sharp tap of her finger. “No,” she
lied, crossing her legs at the ankle in an attempt to appear more relaxed. “I
just want to see if we’re getting ahead of the asteroids.”

Umi nodded, flashing all of his
brilliant white teeth at once. “Can you control that kind of thing?”

“Well…no,” Caden answered,
straightening the zipper on her onyx suit as her anxiety flared to life again.
“The ship’s path is automated. But I like to see how we’re doing, anyway.” She
bit back the snide remark she actually wanted to make, reminded herself that she
really was just nervous about this new assignment.
It’s just a new mission,
she
kept telling herself.
Would Catwoman flinch because she was in new
territory?

Umi nodded again, blinking all
of three of his calm blue-green eyes in unison. “Please don’t take offense at
my asking; I only ask because of course I pick up the energy signatures of the
creatures around me, and I have to be especially in tune with yours.” His
fingers adjusted his short green kilt nervously, flashing the tops of his
strong thighs as he pulled on the material. It was the closest thing to a tic
he seemed to have; besides other cyborgs, Caden had never seen someone sit so
still for so long.

“I understand,” Caden said
quickly. She wanted this conversation to be over very badly, and she started to
turn back toward the wide front window of the ship, but the Hyppo spoke again.

“Forgive me, but I don’t believe
you do. I fear I’ve made you uncomfortable, and that is my very last
intention.” Umi’s voice had been low and soothing from the moment she met him,
but somehow his placid tone seemed condescending. She knew it was probably her
nerves, but she bristled at his words.

“Pointing out my discomfort
won’t help any,” she snapped, and the smile slipped from Umi’s face. He dropped
his chin forward, and the dark green hair on his head tumbled across his
forehead to conceal his third eye; for a moment, he looked like any number of
beautiful humans from earth, albeit one with a constant subtle glow to his
golden-brown skin at times. Caden felt a distant stab of remorse, and for once
she was grateful that her empathy board hadn’t been activated naturally, like
some of the other cyborgs---it would have made the exchange far more awkward.

Caden sighed, and the simple
motion of drawing oxygen into her body made her feel more relaxed. She relaxed
her shoulders and tried to smile.
Just be an alter ego,
she thought.
Make
him feel safe. Make it believable.
“I apologize,” she said softly. She
waited for Umi to straighten in his chair before continuing. “I
am
nervous…
about this mission, and about the fact that you can read me so well.”

“I don’t mean to,” Umi said
carefully, keeping his tone light. “Hyppo receive energy signatures from the
environment constantly, so I can only block you out if I shut out all sensation
completely.”

“I know!” Caden heard her voice
rise, and took another breath to steady herself. She decided to focus on the
nearly imperceptible movement of the ship and uncrossed her legs, trying to
give her sinewy frame some sense of stability. “And I also know that you’re
supposed to help keep me calm. I even know that you’re probably going to help
me activate my empathy board later in the trip.”

Umi didn’t look surprised. “How
did you find out?” he asked, his tone curious.

It was Caden’s turn to drop her
gaze. “I overheard my dorm station manager talking about it before he sent out
the rest of the Minders. They called me in first, to tell me the…good news.”
Caden swallowed, remembering walking into Commander Dorne’s office only two
days before.

He was already standing when she
entered, so she had to lift her chin to meet the seven-and-a-half foot human’s
gaze. The Commander had been her personal mentor for nearly her whole career up
to that point, so being called into his office wasn’t the special event it was
for most other cypeople. He was the only human she interacted with regularly,
so she knew his facial expressions far better than most, but he still managed
to blind side her. Caden remembered laughing when he told her she was being
deployed long term, and that she might not see the orbiting station she called
home for months; it was something she’d never dreamed of hearing without first
being told of the presence of an all out war. Then she saw the Commander wasn’t
joking, and she stopped laughing.

She had expected to be told she
was being discharged for Earth duties; Caden had been doing protection detail
for other cyborgs on the Earth’s surface once a month for four out of her six
years of service. Like the other cypeople in her dorm, Caden had been grown for
guarding and combat duty. Since the age of sixteen, she’d spent ten hours each
week working on marksmanship, ten hours per week working on strength, and
twenty hours per week doing a variety of missions that all required her to
protect other living bodies from wild animals, space pirates, and even debris.

Her first two years were filled
with patrolling school shuttle routes between planets to keep the area clear of
aggressive creatures, radioactive space slugs, and the occasional escaped criminal;
after that, Caden’s incredible power and accuracy finally got her noticed by
the higher Council---particularly due to her small stature. She was two inches
over five feet, while most Minders tended to be at least five foot ten. It
surprised most of the people who worked with her that it had even taken two
years for her to be pulled aside for more dangerous missions: everyone on her
team had quickly become familiar with what they affectionately referred to as
Caden’s Blue Screen. Caden herself loathed the name, but the curious phenomenon
allowed her to dispatch of obstacles with astounding speed and ferocity.
Commander Dorne told her when he observed her in training that she was tapping
into her warrior spirit and simply needed to learn to control it, and her
parental units assured her it was a mix of talent and coding; Caden at first
believed it was an ill omen and refused to even think about it until she
learned the truth about her brain.

Umi was watching her ponder all
of this with an intense interest in his azure eyes; Caden would have been
uncomfortable, but she was used to being looked at that way. “Are you nervous
about activating your empathy board?”

“No,” Caden said truthfully. She
tightened her metallic headband around her red hair, straightening her shining
ponytail out of habit even though she knew it was secure. “I’ve been
experiencing some sensitivity anyway, and Commander Dorne says it should
actually help with some of the problems I have.”

“Problems?”

“Yes.” Caden turned her chair
back toward the window; the conversation had taken a turn toward the more
intimate, and she wasn’t interesting in pursuing it. Unfortunately for her, Umi
seemed happy enough to converse with her back.

“I heard that you’re ranked top
of the Minders---even the long-range marksmen.” His voice was dripping with
congeniality, and the pleasant tone needled under Caden’s skin. “What problems
could you have?”

“Take a guess,” Caden snapped.
She tapped her left wrist cuff again, bringing up the shining projection screen
and tracing their flight path with her steely gray eyes again. “What’s a
cyperson’s worst nightmare?”

“Something is overwhelming you,”
Umi said softly. “You’re experiencing bursts of emotion.” He paused as Caden
fidgeted in her seat and dropped her eyes. “You’re not decaying, or they
wouldn’t have sent you on a mission. You’re having something go off in your
empathy board, something severe enough to trouble you deeply…but if that were
true, how could you be so good at your job?” Despite the hypnotic quality of
his voice, the words dug into Caden’s brain like hot knives.

Twenty-five minutes,
Caden thought, squeezing her hands into fists to keep them from moving.
Just
twenty-five more minutes.
“You know all this, but no one told you the
details? Nobody thought to tell you about my Hulk mode?” She swiveled away from
the screen and locked eyes with Umi again, squaring her shoulders.

Umi blinked slowly and let out a
noise of bewilderment. “I’m not familiar with the term,” he said. “Can you
explain?”

Caden leaned back in the plush
seat, surprised that there was any sort of gap in the Hyppo’s knowledge. She
assumed all of his kind would know everything about Earth; their lifespans were
much longer than humans even now, and many of them took up Earthling studies as
a kind of special interest. “The Hulk is an old-world figure from Earth media.
He was a human scientist who was trying to replicate the traits and abilities
of another superhero---you know that term?” Umi nodded. “He was messing with
some chemicals, and he accidentally made himself radioa

ctive.”

“So he died?” Umi’s face frowned
up, turning his handsome features into a mask of confusion. “What made this
heroic?”

Caden laughed and shook her
head. “He didn’t die. This is media, remember. Films and comics.”

“Comics,” Umi repeated slowly.
His eyes blinked shut again, and Caden realized he was trying to locate the
word in his memory bank. Hyppo people didn’t have a collective consciousness,
but they could store massive amounts of information and memories in a bank-like
area of their minds that they had evolved to access at will. It was, humans
assumed, the reason they appeared to have such extraordinary powers; their
bodies had been evolving for so long that what looked like simple harmony with
the universe was actually just incredible control over their own biology and
environments, right down the quarks in their electrons.

“Comics were still images of
scenes, put together to form stories. They often had text over the images to
help tell the stories,” Caden explained, suppressing the urge to laugh again.
I’m
teaching something to a Hyppo who is at least three times my age.
“Everyone
has been all about motion for so long that I’m not surprised you haven’t had a
reason to learn about it.”

“I see,” Umi said. He leaned forward
and propped his arms on his bare thighs, and Caden noticed the definition in
his powerful frame for the first time. At first her was gaze was purely for
pleasure---he was all long lines and compact muscle wrapped in a beautiful
shade of light brown, like antique brass. Then her training kicked in a
millisecond later. Almost instantly, she found two ways to disable him: by
attacking his eyes and taking out his knees, which were a weak spot on his
otherwise strong body, or jabbing through the bone surrounding his delicate
system of organs to squeeze his heart until it stopped beating.
Focus,
she reminded herself.
You’re supposed to protect him, not assess him as a
threat.

Umi pressed on. “So, in these
comics, the radiation didn’t kill him?”

“Right. It gave him powers, so
that whenever he was angry or became threatened, he would turn green and swell
up. He became this massive, muscle-bound beast who could beat all of his
enemies into the ground as easily as you or I might swat a fly.” She watched
Umi process all of this, his face slowly smoothing out as he worked through her
speech.

After a moment, he smiled gently
and sat up straight again, and there was an undercurrent of pride in his speech
at having figured it out. “So, your Hulk mode is what happens to you in a
stressful situation? You also swell to an enormous size and possess incredible
strength?” His smile faltered when Caden laughed again.