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OZ KNEW HE SHOULD BE following orders. He was about to lead his Match into battle and if he didn’t give her as much training as he could, he could be the reason for her demise. But two hours wasn’t long enough to learn much of anything, and there was something much more important they had to do before they risked death.
They had to remember they were alive.
Emily was quiet beside him, but she linked their hands together. He liked that, the way she seemed to want to touch him as much as he wanted to touch her. He didn’t know if he’d ever get enough.
The door to his quarters slid open silently and he led her inside. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Emily grinned. “I’m not sure that whatever kind of training Solan was talking about could take place in a bedroom.”
There were words he should give her, promises and vows. But at the moment he found them choked in the back of his throat, so he did the only thing he could. He pulled her close and covered her mouth with his own.
Emily melted into him, her arms going around his shoulders as she pressed her body tight against his. It was a perfect fit, as if they’d been designed for one another. He backed her up against the wall and she wrapped her legs around his waist, arching up against him, pressing against his straining cock.
He wanted to give it to her slow, to give her the care she deserved, but already his body was strung tight with need and if he didn’t have her soon he was going to explode.
Emily might have been new to lovemaking, but her need was just as great. She tore at his clothes, but never broke their kiss. It was a difficult thing, and given the way his buttons and straps worked, there was no way to get naked without pulling away.
But he didn’t want to pull away.
He devoured her mouth until the taste of her was imprinted on him, something he’d never forget. He wanted to kiss her until they both grew old, and beyond that when their bodies faded and they became one with the stars. He wanted a full life with her, one with laughter and kisses and children and happiness. He didn’t want to lead his Match into a battle neither of them might return from.
Emily must have sensed the turn of his thoughts. She put her hands on his cheeks and pulled away enough so that they could look at each other. “We’re both coming back from this thing,” she said. “I trust you, and you’re not going to let me get hurt. So fuck me like you mean it right now, and then when we get home you can make love to me all night.” He could see his spark in her eyes and their power crackled along his skin.
They didn’t have time to get naked. Not with this need racing through him.
And though he still wanted to treat his Match with care, he could give her what she needed, hard and fast and explosive.
He set her on her feet for long enough to get her pants down and freed himself, and then he was teasing her entrance while he had her in his arms and pressed up against the wall.
Her eyes were glued to his face as he entered her, and Oz could feel the depth of their connection. So fast. So complete. So right. He didn’t know why he’d ever been worried about the intensity of a Match. Emily was everything he could ever want, and he would give her everything she needed.
He moved slowly enough to give her time to adjust to him, but when she ran one hand through his hair and tugged, begging him to go faster, his restraint snapped. Oz thrust hard, seating himself all the way in and groaning along with her as her tight heat enveloped him.
Had he ever felt anything more perfect than this woman? No, and he never would. She was it for him, and he couldn’t imagine it any other way.
Those were his last coherent thoughts as sensation overwhelmed him and it was just him and his woman in a dance as old as time. She gripped him tighter and made noises that couldn’t have been words in any language in the galaxy. And then she was crying out, shuddering around him as he brought her to the edge of pleasure and over.
With a roar Oz emptied himself into her. Bliss exploded behind his eyes and he forgot where he was for several long moments.
Emily wrapped herself around him, draping her head against his shoulder as he took all her weight. He carried her from where he’d held her and laid her down in his bed. She looked right there. Perfect. And he wished he could leave her there while he ran off into danger, but he knew she’d never forgive him.
He cleaned her off and found her another set of clothes from the Quartermaster machine that doled out clothes for all the crew. It already had measurements for the humans recorded and was able to construct battle gear with the press of a few buttons.
Oz set them down beside Emily on the bed.
“Lay with me for a little while,” she said, patting the bed beside her.
“We don’t have much time,” he warned.
“I want to hold you before we go,” she confessed.
It was a request he couldn’t resist. He held tight to his Match and tried to prepare himself for war. He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t keep her safe. And the conflict tore him apart inside.
***
EMILY’S HANDS WERE shaking. She didn’t want Oz knowing how nervous she was, so she was glad he was caught up in conversation with Solan. Lena gave her a sympathetic look. When Solan had instructed the others to prepare shuttles, she’d thought they’d be going down in two vehicles, but it turned out they used some sort of technology to bind them together like train cars. It meant they all traveled together and if she freaked out everyone would witness it.
So Emily wasn’t going to freak out.
They had a plan. And her only role was to stay close enough to Oz to make sure he could use his powers. She didn’t have to fight. She was as safe as could be.
Ish.
She was still heading into battle and accidents happened. No one was eager to talk about the captain’s prognosis, and that mission had been much simpler than what they were running into. But Emily had to hope everything would turn out alright. She’d just found Oz; she didn’t want to lose him now.
The journey down to the planet happened faster than Emily would have wished, but once they landed in a safe location they split up. Oz, Emily, Grace, and Crowze would enter through the south while Solan, Ax, and Lena took the north. It was just before midnight and the streets were quiet.
But the facility wasn’t. Vehicles and people were in the lot out back packing up for their morning journey. It should have been impossible to infiltrate, but the Apsyns were so focused on getting things ready that they didn’t notice a few strangers sneaking inside.
“Those aren’t guards,” Grace said. “Hired movers and scientists. The place is in chaos right now and they aren’t paying as close attention as they should be.”
Perfect.
But Emily’s nerves were still frayed and she didn’t want to think of what could go wrong. Something had to. She was too pessimistic to consider otherwise. And as she walked down familiar halls she felt bile rise in her throat. She hadn’t considered what it would feel like to come back here, to be faced with what had been done to her and her friends. She wanted to burn this place to the ground with all the researchers inside. She wasn’t some animal to be experimented on, but they’d done their best to strip her of her humanity until there was nothing left.
It hadn’t worked. She was still herself. And now she had Oz, too. Things had worked out well.
But she knew she’d have nightmares about this place for the rest of her life. How could she not?
The south dorm was guarded by electronic surveillance, and Apsyn guards did their rounds multiple times an hour. Their group was almost caught in one of the sweeps and if it hadn’t been for Crowze’s fast action, they would have been caught in a fight. But he pushed them back and kept them quiet, and the guards passed them by. The video surveillance had been taken care of before they entered the building. Grace had infiltrated the system early in her captivity and figured out how to loop the feeds. Unless they were unlucky, that subterfuge wouldn’t be discovered until they were well on their way back to the ship.
The humans in the south dorm were confused when Grace walked in with two aliens who looked so much like their captors, and even more confused when Emily followed behind her. It took fast talking to convince them that Oz and Crowze worked for the good aliens and that they were breaking the humans out, but eventually they followed. Evading the guards with three extra humans in tow was even harder, and when a woman named Julia asked for ‘a gun or something’ grumbling started among them. They didn’t want to be helpless. Emily understood, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t want them to be quiet.
They just had to make it back to the ship. They could do it. It was going to be okay.
But clearly some malevolent force in the universe had heard her optimism and decided to ruin Emily’s day.
The fastest way to get back to the shuttle meant going through the labs. Emily didn’t want to do it. The labs were full of traps and built like a maze to make sure that if humans ran they couldn’t escape. But Grace had been insistent that as late as it was, the labs were their best bet. Besides, it would give them to opportunity to sabotage anything they came across. Emily hadn’t had the clout to change the plan, so she was forced to go along with it.
She recognized the hallways. They were imprinted on her mind. But it was a little less terrible to walk through them knowing it would be the last time. Whatever issue she was having, she had to get over it.
Then the alarm blared.
They all froze and looked at each other. But no one had done anything.
A loud noise echoed down the hallway and Emily looked back to see the doors closing.
“Run!” Crowze yelled. “Get through the doors or we’ll be trapped.”
They ran. There were only three doors left and less than a hundred feet until safety. Or, well, relative safety. They passed the first one just as it started to descend. The second one was even closer.
But when they made it to the third, Julia tripped. She cried out and Emily was the closest. She stopped, yanked her to her feet, and kept moving. But those precious seconds meant the door had dropped another foot.
Emily pushed Julia through the crack, but it closed too quickly for her to roll through. She felt something reverberate through the door and knew it was Oz trying to use his powers to blast through. Emily thought of him and called up her own spark. She aimed her lightning at the door and let it loose. It left a mark, but the door didn’t budge.
She searched around for a switch or a panel, something that would open the door back up. She even found one, but the commands were written in the Zulir language and she still had no idea how to read it. She punched things at random and managed to turn the overhead lights on, but it did nothing to the door. She aimed her powers at it and fried the thing.
The door in front of her remained stubbornly shut.
The door behind her opened.
Emily looked back. There was a corridor behind her she could take and maybe find her way out. Or she could wait and hope that Oz found a way to open the door. He wouldn’t want to leave her, she knew that to the depths of her soul. He needed her, even, if he wanted his powers to work. Though she wasn’t sure that a few hundred feet would make that much of a difference. That was another thing they hadn’t tested. But she couldn’t regret how they’d used their time. Especially if she couldn’t find him again.
No.
Emily wanted to wait to be rescued. She wanted someone to come find her and shield her from harm. But Oz had a duty and there was no way he could stand on the other side of that door for long.
She placed her hand against it and imagined him doing the same on the other side. They were so close, and yet she couldn’t cross that distance. She wanted to hit the control panel again, but she was afraid it would close off her avenue of escape.
“I’ll find you,” she promised, knowing he couldn’t hear. “You better not fly away.”
And then she turned around and headed down the hall. She had to escape the facility.
Again.
But when she turned the corner, her blood ran cold as the head researcher stepped out of a room and a cruel smile lit up his face. “Well this is a lovely surprise.”
