Page 11 of Logic Broken

There was a bonk, and then Da’vi straightened from the panel, rubbing at one of his horns. “Arianna… When did you get here?” he asked gruffly, but I knew it was because he was embarrassed to be caught hitting his horn on something again.

Smiling, I crossed my legs and swung them back and forth, “Oh, just now. Did Babbit’s purring give me away?” I laughed when Da’vi narrowed his amethyst eyes on his wayward pet. He crossed the room, one hand reaching out to scratch Babbit under his chin, the other curling around the back of my neck so he could angle my mouth up for a kiss. Hmmm, always so demanding, my mate.

“What are you watching?” he asked when he finally let me up for air. I turned my datapad over to show him a still image of Akri and the woman as they leaped from a seedy bar. Everything about Akri’s posture screamed protective and I kept puzzling over who the woman was. There was a pain collar around her throat; was he rescuing her?

“Hmm,” Da’vi said as he eyed the image along with me. “Akri’s wearing that damn amulet… I figured he’d hide it since it’s a data device.” He froze in place, and then he hunched over, grabbing the datapad from my hands to peer even more closely at the image. “You remember how facial recognition led us to assume that the body Akri occupies is Brake? A former gladiator also once owned by Drameil until he mysteriously vanished?”

That was bad news. See, I shouldn’t have been so fixated on Akri’s love life. Real shit was going on. I had heard that, that he was in the body of Brake, a prime gladiator that vanished forty years ago without a trace. “What are you saying, Da’vi?” I asked him because he sounded very serious, even for him.

“That amulet is a data storage device that likely belonged to Drameil, if he sees the footage just like we did… Ov’Karal is his favorite location to stay at, and it’s the twin planet to Ov’Korad, where Akri is.” We shared a very grim look at those words. Drameil might be much closer to Akri than we were, even with Da’vi’s super engine running to give us an extra edge.

“We need more speed,” I said, “You can make that happen, can’t you?” Da’vi could build anything he set his mind to, so I wasn’t surprised at all when he gave me a nod, followed by a slight grin.

“You inform the crew, and I’ll get to work,” he said, already turning away while rubbing his prosthetic hands together in anticipation of the work ahead. I nodded, leaping off the table, nearly going ass-over-teakettle when my soft moccasins didn’t get the right traction on the slick metal floor.

I heard his gruff laugh and stuck my tongue out at his back as I attempted a more graceful glide out of the engine room. “Hey Ari, I’ll be back in our bunk in time tonight. Make sure you’re ready,” Da’vi called out behind me, and my body flushed, my nipples perking up immediately. I knew what he meant. Since we’d gotten mated, he very rarely lingered in the engine room, not when he knew I was waiting for him in bed.

“You bet, hurry up. I’ll be waiting.”

Chapter 7

Akri

“That’s the ship,” I said, pointing at the sleek gray short-range vessel parked not too far away from our hiding spot. I’d created a blind spot for us on the camera feeds around here, but we still had to avoid being seen by any of the people on the docks. That was no easy feat as it was extremely busy in the port at all hours of the day.

On the side of the ship, the name was scrawled in the typical hieroglyphs of the Ovt language. This was it, the supply ship bound for the research facility with the supercomputer I needed and the scientist whose brain I wanted to pick, which was actually my primary goal.

“Looks deserted. That’s good, right?” Jenny asked me. She was currently in just a thin blouse and her pants and boots. During the day, Ov’Korad got much too warm to wear much more. It allowed me to see the freckles that dotted her arms and the upper part of her chest. I hadn’t counted those yet, but I really wanted to.

“Yeah, it’s scheduled to leave in about two hours once they finish loading it.” I gestured at the open loading hatch at the back, where crates stood in stacks, ready to be brought aboard. Nobody was working on them yet, though we’d watched as bots had brought them to the back of the ship not long ago.

“Seems like our window. Let’s go,” she said, and then she was off before I could even contemplate if she was right. With her big backpack on her back, her silhouette was a strange shape, especially as she ran bent over to keep hidden behind a row of containers as much as possible. I rushed after her, following her example.

Weaving around what cover we had along the way, we avoided the line of sight of the dockworkers one ship over. Jenny didn’t even pause as she reached the open loading hatch to the ship, her booted feet thudding on the metal ramp as she ran inside. I was hot on her heels, my heart pounding rapidly in my chest. What if there was someone inside we hadn’t seen? The ship looked deserted from the outside, but that didn’t mean it truly was.

The cargo bay was empty and unlit, the only source of light the daylight filtering in through the open hatch. There weren’t many visible hiding places but I knew exactly where to go. I’d downloaded the schematic of the ship; I knew it inside out. Jenny was standing just far enough inside the cargo bay that she couldn’t be seen from outside, but she was staring around the empty space with dismay.

“This way,” I said, and I grabbed her hand to tug her along with me. My nearest tentacle immediately reached out to her, the tip brushing along her shoulder, and I saw her chin raise, a smile flirting along her lips. Heat surged through me at the response; even though my tentacles kept malfunctioning, my control of them slipping, she didn’t mind. It filled me with a sense of satisfaction that she welcomed my touch.

It was when I was leading her to the maintenance hatch where I’d planned to hide that I realized just how small and cramped the space would be for us together. Using my tools, I made short work of unscrewing the panel; all the while, my body was breaking out in a cold sweat. I identified this sensation as nerves. Was I nervous about being in such close proximity with Jenny again? I’d been dreaming about her body pressed to mine each night since we met, was the reality going to live up to that? To the memory of that first night?

Once I had the panel off, I carefully watched Jenny as she appraised the narrow tunnel. It was meant for mechanics to crawl into or send a bot in to do the work, so they could reach some of the life support systems beyond this wall. It wasn’t very big, barely big enough to fit an adult male; she’d have to lie on top of me for us to fit. It wasn’t deep enough for us to get in there in succession.

“Hmm,” was all she said as she took off her pack and started stuffing it inside. “You better get in first,” she added once the pack had been kicked in as far as it could go. She was right, and we needed to hurry if we didn’t want to get caught. Crawling in feet first, I flattened myself on my back, it was a tight fit for my shoulders to lie like this, but there was plenty of space above me for her to fit.

Jenny cast one glance over her shoulder at the open loading hatch and shuffled on her feet as if she was feeling a little hesitation, but finally, she moved. “How long is this going to take?” she asked as she slung one leg over my head, her knee settling on my shoulder. That’s when it finally sunk into me what position I was asking her to put herself into. Just to get inside this hatch… She had to climb over my face; I was asking her for a lot of trust.

My tentacles didn’t play fair either. They curled around each leg and slid up, seeking her heat. She froze in place, and I fervently apologized, trying to get my arms around so I could grab my wayward limbs. “I’m so sorry, Jenny. I don’t mean to do that.” She let out a nervous little laugh, the sound echoing loudly in the cavernous cargo bay.

A scuffing noise came back at us, followed by the soft rumble of an engine and several male voices. The dockworkers had arrived and they’d start loading this ship in a moment. If Jenny wasn’t in the hatch before they came inside, they’d catch us. She had arrived at the same conclusion as I had and scrambled to get her other leg in. There was very little grace to her movements now, just a mad dash for safety.

She landed crotch first on my face, and I instinctively inhaled, a musky, sweet smell I’d never encountered before filling my nostrils. My body’s physical response was instant, my cock growing erect in my pants, my heart pounding in my chest. Everything in me just wanted to grab her and grind her against my face, to keep breathing in that delicious scent, yank her heat down my body to press my aching cock against it.

A pained groan escaped me, my hands finding her hips. I started to press her against my mouth, my tentacles leading the way, stroking along the seam of her pants. Sounds from outside managed to penetrate my lust-addled brain just enough to show me the danger of the situation we were in. It was a herculean effort to use my grip on her hips to yank her inside the hatch instead of doing with her what I really wanted.

She yelped, the sound muffled when she turned her head into her shoulder. Her soft belly dragged over my face, my tentacles clinging to her ribcage, rubbing up the sides of her even softer breasts. They were warm and soft as they landed on my face and I found another spot I wanted to bury myself in. Now that I knew just how soft each part of her was, I knew I would never get that information out of my head; I didn’t want to.

She had her back arched, her head lifted while she tried to assist in climbing down my body and into the maintenance tunnel. Her heat was all over me, legs along mine, belly to belly. There was no doubt that she knew that my cock had escaped my control just like my tentacles had.