ë Archer - Chain Reaction

She smiled. “I won’t feel so badly next time I polish my medals.”

“You should never feel badly about what you’ve achieved.”

“Believe me, I don’t.” She turned back to her work, half-burying her next words. “It’s other people who have a problem with it.”

Was that the cost of prestige? He had his own reputation in Engineering, but no one outside of NerdWorks ever came up to him and slapped him on the back, congratulated him for his incredibly innovative plasma-conversion processor. No one whispered about him in awed tones as he walked down the corridors of the base. No one expected him to be better than everyone else—except himself. He always held himself to a high standard.

Not Celene. She was Stainless Jur. Flawless. Except she wasn’t. But rather than disappoint him, it made Nils appreciate what she had accomplished that much more.

Could he even say that to her? And would she want him to?

Yes, Lieutenant Celene Jur was far more complicated than the most arcane computer system. But if he had to choose between simplistic and complex, he would choose complex, every time.

The work in the systems room was not difficult, not for him, in any case. Though he had stabilized the life support, the climate controls required more repairs, keeping the temperature at a blistering level. Soon, he soaked through his uniform. Celene had already peeled off the top of her uniform, so that she wore her tank top and uniform pants. He couldn’t help but stare as sweat gleamed on the sleek muscles of her arms and in the valley between her breasts.

“Analyzing my systems?” She turned, putting her hands on her hips. Seeming to dare him to look at her.

He would have blushed if he wasn’t already overheated. “I might be a fellow 8^th Wing officer and I might be NerdWorks, I’m also a man with perfectly good vision.” He turned away to adjust the torque on a valve. “The only way I wouldn’t notice you was if I had already crossed to the Starfields of Eternal Bliss.”

“You want an inspection? Go ahead.”

He studiously avoided glancing at her.

“Come on,” she chided. “Consider it a research and discovery mission.”

“Mission accepted.” He turned back to face her. And swallowed hard.

She stood with arms wide, her chin tilted up, daring him to look. And he did, because once he caught a glimpse of her he couldn’t look away. Her dark hair had come loose from its sleek ponytail and damp tendrils clung to her neck and her bare shoulders. Back in SimCom she had also worn a tank top and uniform pants, but he’d been too busy fighting for a place on this mission to truly see the tight, lean wonder of her body. His gaze followed the lines of her collarbones to the hollow of her throat, and lower.

Gods, he couldn’t believe he was staring at Lieutenant Celene Jur’s breasts, but by the Ten Hells, how could he not? For such a slim woman, her breasts were surprisingly full. His hands were the perfect size to cup them, feeling their silky weight as he lowered his mouth to hers…

“Thorough inspection.” Her voice cut through his thoughts, and his gaze snapped back to hers. He expected to see anger or amusement on her face. Instead her dark, wide pupils nearly eclipsed the silver of her irises, and her breaths came shallowly.

Was she…aroused? He certainly was. And, as a pilot, she had excellent vision. She couldn’t miss the fact that an erection tented the front of his uniform.

He almost groaned when she ran her tongue over her lips, moistening them. “The Laws of Galactic Equality state that in all transactions, reciprocity must be observed.” She eyed his uniform. “So…”

“You want me to disrobe?” He stared at her.

“It’s hotter than the two suns of Lamia Zed in here. This way, you can honor the Laws of Galactic Equality and get more comfortable.”

Impossible for him to get comfortable in these circumstances. But he saw the gleam of challenge in her eyes, and that goaded him on.

“The 8^th Wing is all about equality,” he murmured, and began to undo the fastenings to the top of his uniform. He never took his eyes off of her, observing her as she watched him slowly undo the gray material.

He didn’t consider himself a prude. Though he hadn’t participated in the fertility rites each Green Solstice, which involved sexual acts performed before a crowd of celebrants, he had seen the rites and found them…very enlightening. He might not be the most daring lover, but he had never been given complaints, and, in fact, received a fair number of compliments. An engineer’s mind could be very creative, given the proper motivation.

But he’d never undressed in front of anyone—not deliberately, leisurely. Yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself from carefully undoing each fastening beneath his collar and then along his shoulder and down his side. Celene’s gaze followed his every move.

The front of his uniform gaped open and he pulled his arms free from the sleeves, then let the whole top hang from his waist, as she had done with her uniform. After cleaning himself in the UV stall earlier in the solar day, he’d put his uniform on, but in his haste to get back to the tracking device, he’d neglected to don the tank top he always wore beneath. Which now left his upper body completely bare.

“Great Lady.” Celene sounded breathless. “That’s not what comes to mind when someone mentions NerdWorks.”

Self-conscious, Nils glanced down at himself. He knew what his body looked like, but he tried to see it through her eyes. Though all members of 8^th Wing had to do PT, most in Engineering got by with the bare minimum. That wasn’t enough. You never knew when PRAXIS might come calling, which meant you had to be ready to fight. When others in Engineering spent their off hours watching vids or playing crypt-marauder games, he was in the training chambers, listening to tech journals on his headset while boxing or practicing H2H combat maneuvers.

“Seems like my time in the training chambers paid off.” If the look of pure feminine appreciation in her gaze was any indicator.

“Oh, yes. Yes, it did.”

He was a Xalian, which meant the males of his homeworld did not have hair on their chests, as some other species did. So she could see every ridge of musculature on his chest and abdomen. He would never be thickly muscled like Commander Frayne, but Nils could take care of himself. The round he had gone in SimCom showed that.

“Turn around,” she said.

“What?”

She made a spinning motion with her finger. He took a breath. Why not? Besides, there was something acutely…exciting…about having Celene command him. He didn’t have to obey, yet he chose to. A deliberate handing over of control—something new for him, who liked to be in control of all parameters at any given time. Now he purposefully let go, and a visceral flare of arousal jolted through him.

He turned to face the bulkhead. Her soft, appreciative curse ran like a silk glove down his spine.

“Are those tattoos?”

“No—pigmentation. When people on my homeworld reach sexual maturity, the anahita markings appear.”

“Does everyone have the same kind?”

“They’re different from person to person. Some anahitas are more numerous and thicker than others.”

“You’re very sexually…mature.”

Even his father had been surprised by the thickness and darkness of the anahitas that had appeared on Nils’s back. He then bragged to the neighbors about his son’s virility, which had made Nils want to find the nearest ice cave and never come out. He’d been self-conscious about the markings ever since then, despite the 8^th Wing’s tolerance for all shapes and colors within its forces. When training, he made sure to keep his back covered. Now, hearing the husky excitement in Celene’s voice, he wondered if his shyness was truly necessary. Perhaps not.

“Do they go all the way down?”

“Only one way to find out.” He couldn’t believe he said that. Yet he was rewarded with her husky laugh, and if his cock hadn’t been hard before, it surely was now.

He debated for a moment whether or not to turn back around. Even amongst his colleagues in Engineering, he had a reputation for being reserved, focusing more on his work than on socializing or flirting. He wasn’t in Engineering now. This ship drifted in deep space, free from expectations or past behavior. If a time existed to remake oneself, that time had arrived.

Straightening his shoulders, Nils turned. Celene’s eyes widened as she saw the clear evidence of his arousal. Instead of moving back, however, she took a step closer. Nils did the same, drawn forward by an instinctive pull.

The distance between them narrowed. Dimly, he had awareness of stepping over debris on the floor, the tangles of wires and circuitry, but all he saw was her. She stared back.

Until only a few inches separated them. They were close enough that he could see the tiny scar at the corner of her mouth, like a beacon guiding him to precisely where he wanted to be.

Slowly, she lifted her hand, and he fought a groan as her fingers skimmed the line between his pectorals and drifted down to rest lightly on the flat of his stomach. He twitched beneath her touch.

Gods—need to touch her.

He curved his hands over her shoulders, the sensation of bare flesh to bare flesh a live current of electricity. She was both resilient and soft under his palms, the texture of her skin finer than Hazada silk, but she had a strength of muscle and will that exiled rational thought.

She tilted her face up, another challenge.

I shouldn’t do this. He narrowed the distance between their mouths. I have to do this.

In a moment he would taste her, and he wanted nothing more.

“You two gonna play docking bay and cargo in there,” Gabela snapped from the door, “or you gonna fix my ship?”

Nils and Celene spun around, releasing each other. They stepped apart.

She scowled at Gabela. “An overflow of gratitude, smuggler.”

“Drifting out in this sector makes me nervous,” he shot back.

Nils suppressed the urge to put his boot in the smuggler’s plentiful stomach. “Your ship will be operational in twenty solar minutes. A patch job, but you’ll have enough power to get to a station for comprehensive repairs.”

“Setting my chrono now.” Gabela lumbered down the corridor, his artificial limb making almost as much noise as the smuggler’s grumbling.

Several moments passed as Nils and Celene stared at one another. He was torn between wanting to lunge for her and jettisoning himself into space. There were arenas in his life in which he was bold and took risks—women had never been one of them. And now he’d done just that. Would he ever have the balls to make another move on her?

She scowled at the space where Gabela had been standing. “Mara didn’t mention that her old friend was an ass.”

“He could teach the Okenial Trick Flying Squad something about timing, as well.”

She let out an exasperated breath. “We should finish here so we can pick up where we left off.”

“The mission, or…?”

Her answer was an inscrutable smile. “Puzzle it out, NerdWorks. Let me know your findings—after we fix this ship.”

With that enigma buzzing through him, he quickly got back to work. He repaired the climate controls, allowing his inner and outer temperatures to come down from nuclear levels, and then restored functionality to the propulsion and guidance systems. He welded a panel in place to cover the rupture in the external bulkhead. In less than fifteen solar minutes, the ship became operative.

“And five solar minutes to spare.” He pulled on the top of his uniform, but did not miss the gleam of disappointment in her gaze as he did so.

“Leaving us enough time to get some intel from Gabela.” He felt a similar disappointment as Celene refastened her uniform, as well. “Maybe he—”

The alarm blared.

They bolted from the systems room and stared out a porthole. Three fighter ships sped toward their position.

She cursed. “PRAXIS.”

Celene ran down the passageway toward the ship’s cockpit, with Nils right behind her. She grabbed Gabela by his collar and hauled him up from his seat. The smuggler’s eyes were wide as she gave him a hard shake.

“Did you know they were coming?” she snarled.

“No! They…they must have caught my distress call.”

She still didn’t release him.

Nils stepped forward and pried her fingers from Gabela’s collar. “He’s blameless.”