Ar'Tok - Alana Khan Page 0,54

I kiss him, exploring his mouth, losing myself in his sweet, spicy vanilla taste. He lifts me up and I spread my legs wide. I wind up with my clit notched against his straining cock, which garners a surprised gasp from me.

“I did,” he says breathlessly when he pulls away far enough to try to make out my features in the dim light. “And as I recall . . .” he nips my bottom lip, pulling it between his teeth. “You said it back.”

His cirr comb through my hair, as if they’re seconding his pleased announcement and thrilled with my response.

“Yes. I believe I did,” I admit, not certain he can see the happy smile stretched across my face. Wiggling, I try to get down, I want my hands free to skim along every plane and angle of his hard body. We have less than fortyty minutes before we catch the grinton and I want to make the most of it.

I’m panting with desire; my blood is pounding in my veins. We kiss for long minutes. I’m not only drowning in the joy of the powerful feelings coursing through my body, but I’m exulting in the knowledge that we’ve both acknowledged our love for each other. This is the happiest day of my life!

He sets me down next to the wall, and before I slide my fingers under his shirt, I glance at my wrist-comm.

“Crap, Ar’Tok! We need to get moving. Now!”

He grabs my hand and begins to pull me to the opening when the rock floor beneath me gives way.

My mind barely has time to register my shock as I fall down a narrow tunnel, feeling every scrape and pull of the jagged rock, then hit with a hard thud.

Ar’Tok

She was in my grip! One moment I had my hands on her and the next she slipped right out from under me and disappeared. The rock was solid under our feet, at least it felt that way. But it must have been thin enough that Star’s slight weight cracked it open. I tried to grip her wrist, but she fell like a heavy rock down the hole.

“Star!” I call, but hear no answer.

Kneeling, I see nothing but the black, tubular walls of a narrow tunnel. A piece of her yellow coat, smaller than the palm of my hand, clings to a jagged piece of the newly-created passageway wall.

I snatch it before it, too, falls, and press it to my mouth as if it was my beloved herself. My wrist-comm says we have five minimas before the last grinton leaves. The little station wasn’t manned. Even if I run, the vehicle will have pulled out of the station before I get there. This mountain will be deserted until the trains start again tomorrow morning.

“Star!” I call again, but hear nothing in response.

My eyes are better accustomed to the light by now. I’m on my hands and knees, peering into the hole. I think I see her! It’s her yellow coat in a crumpled heap, twenty or thirty fiertos down.

I try to use my wrist-comm, but we’ve been out of range since the first grinton stop. I could leave the cave, trying different spots on the mountain to hope for a signal, but that would be a waste of time—time we don’t have.

Since I was old enough to play, I hung like a fresta from the bars at the top of my cell. My upper body strength is prodigious. If my shoulders can fit through this hole, I can shimmy down. Somehow, I’ll figure a way to bring her back up—I have to.

I slide into the hole, press my outer thighs against the jagged rock and lower myself down. The moment when I loosen my grip from the top and am fully underground, I allow myself the fleeting thought that there’s a chance neither Star nor I will ever emerge. Shaking my head to dislodge that thought from my mind, I lower myself through the narrow channel deeper into the chasm.

It also strikes me that it’s not just our lives hanging in the balance. If Star doesn’t meet Ergonn in less than four hoaras, he’ll be gunning for every one of our friends.

Friends. It’s an interesting moment to realize I value the others on the ship as my friends.

I shut all those musings down and focus only on the task at hand.

The tube is narrow. At times, I have to drag my wide shoulders against craggy rock in order to slip