STORY EXCERPT

He was standing on the other side of the room with his hands behind his back, staring out the porthole at the stars. He turned around and looked at her, tall and imposing, any thoughts he was holding totally masked. Somewhere inside her, she let out a small sigh of relief that it wasn’t Chitra. Junner would have been okay, but it wasn’t him either.

“I know you are bad behaved,” Tinny said. “But here you will be good.” He tapped his head, indicating why.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” she said angrily.

“You have been made exempt of the rule because of your treatment of the others,” he answered.

She swallowed hard. Things didn’t look too good right now. At least not from where she was standing. It was one thing to tolerate him as a work colleague and fellow traveler, but quite another to be thrust at him as a potential mate.

“Sit.” He pointed at the couch in his tiny lounge.

Kash knew this was her first test. And she just had to test, because she wouldn’t be Kash if she didn’t. “No.”

Come on, let’s see what you will do now, Tinny. She could feel her own will being bent to his almost immediately. Her stupid legs carried her over to the couch, bent at the knees and plunked her down onto it. Holy asteroids! He was much more powerful than Lunox or Tipha. She glared up at him, trying to stand up, but it felt like she had an elephant sitting in her lap. The only weapon she had left now was her voice. Or could he influence that, too?

“Is this fun for you?” she snapped.

“Not at all. But you set the tone.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? She tried to stand up again, but the elephant still reclined in her lap. He came over and sat next to her, catching her chin in his hand and turning her face as if he might find something by examining her so closely. Anger leaped along her nerve pathways from her jaw where he was touching her to every other nerve cluster in her body. Her mind tempted her to twist free while her stupid body leaned into him as if the connection to her brain had snapped off at her neck.

“Only the young males were promised partners, due to the mismatch in numbers. It seems I have ended up wif one by default.”

“You sound about as pleased as I am,” she said snarkily to hide the stupid thud of her heart as her eyes slipped over his wide lips. She licked her own nervously, and his gaze shifted from her eyes to her mouth for a moment, following the track of her sliding tongue. The focused intensity in his eyes made her traitorous heart lurch dangerously behind her ribs. Why was breathing suddenly a conscious act? Wasn’t it supposed to be unconscious?

“Oh, I am pleased.” His dark eyes narrowed slightly. “We could be stuck here forever, and my kind is not accustomed to facing a future without the prospect of a mate.”

Gods, why was his voice so low and deep and velvety and sliding down her spine like warmed syrup? It wasn’t right that a male could make her feel like that with just the sound of his damned voice. It was immoral. She signed through her nose, trying to gather her defenses around her.

“You should try singledom. It’s not so bad,” she quipped cheekily in an effort to hide her nerves. He raised a fine eyebrow at her comment, and for a heartbeat she thought she was going to drown in his eyes, be tugged away by the turquoise flecks and lost forever. She would have to say something smart now. Otherwise he would see the effect he was having on her.

“Like what you see?” she asked as her eyes slid sideways to witness his scrutiny of her.

ADULT EXCERPT

Bored, she looked away until she heard the shower running. He had water here now? How curious. Used to be a pathetic, little mist come steam wash. Running water? Get serious! He must have rigged it himself with his engineering skills, she decided. Curious now she traipsed back to the shower cubicle to check it out.

Ho! Tinny, you’re naked!

She reeled back at the sight of him standing under the gushing water, his face turned up. Oh man! She had definitely underestimated this guy. He had a body to die for. Not so bulky like Lunox’s or Tipha’s would’ve been if she’d seen them naked. He had a lean, sculpted body like a world-class gymnast or a very fit ballet dancer. His limbs were long, and the muscles lay along them tightly like strong, corded dock ropes. Wide shoulders smoothed down to a flat plane of a chest, hairless and smooth with abdominal muscles arrowing to narrow hips…Oh wow! And he washed himself with a chocolate bar that he thought was a cake of soap. Hilarious. Could he possibly get any more delicious? Heavens! She couldn’t help looking at his…very nice cock! She wondered what it would look like erect. He wasn’t turned on by himself in the shower, so it lay dormant against his muscular thighs. What kind of workout does this guy do to look like this? She reached her hand out to touch his gorgeous cock. He didn’t have much hair down there, or anywhere else on his body, except his head, where it grew rich and thick and tangled.

As she touched him, he leapt backward and let out a little cry of alarm. Holy cows! Had he felt that? She leaned up against him for a moment and watched as he went very still. His eyes explored every corner of the shower room. She’d tried touching people before with no luck, so why was Tinny any different? Might it be because she spanned present and future when he was close to her? Or had something changed?

Excited, she turned to the glass door and tried to write in the condensation. Nothing. It was like she didn’t exist. But she was real! And she wanted out of this nightmare. She had an idea. As Tinny stood there dripping in all his glory, his eyes still roving suspiciously around, she reached out and touched him with one hand as she had been doing when she had touched his strange machine. She then tried to write in the glass at eye level with her other hand. For some reason, touching Tinny seemed to give her a little more substance as if he were a staple hinged between the two time membranes she spanned. Her finger trembled as she wrote the word HELP on the glass. He didn’t notice, damn him. She reached her hand up and clasped his jaw, turning his head to look at her writing.

She’d moved him. Did he feel her? Did he see? He raised his hand to his cheek and batted at it...and then he saw the message on the glass. His mouth dropped slightly, and he shivered despite the steam of the shower.

“Is that you, Kash?”

Oh hell, yes, yes, yes! She went quickly to the glass and wrote YES under HELP. Tinny let out a long breath as the letters appeared. Then he seemed to remember he was naked. He snatched at the towel hanging over the top rail and thrust it round his hips while the water still poured over him.

“Kasheena?”

She wanted to ask him to keep talking forever, she was so lonely in this in-between place. The steam stole HELP and YES away, giving her a new plane to write on.

HELP ME STANNUM. Overwhelmed with the gravity of her situation she wrote his full name then paused and regarded his face. Oh gods! PLEASE, she wrote under the fading words.

“Did you touch me, Kash?”

YES! IT’S HOW I CAN DO THIS!

“So if you’re not touching me, you can’t draw on the glass? Kash, you touched my cock!”

SORRY! Well, she wasn’t really. She grinned for the first time in hours.

IT’S REALLY NICE :), she wrote cheekily on the glass door, tipping forward and trying to lick some of the melted chocolate off his chest. He almost fell over. She watched as he inclined against the far wall and shuddered. Were those iridescent pearls on the head of his cock just shower water? She wanted to find out. She stretched her arm out and stroked the long, full thickness of his shaft, wishing that she had more substance to her hand. He trembled as she did so, and his erection grew. She truly wished she could return to normal to play with his cock properly and give it the attention it fully deserved. She sighed longingly, her throat dry as dust, as desire curled through her. She splayed her fingers with intense focus as she stroked the thrusting hardness in her hands. Oh, the things she could do right now if only she weren’t as gossamer as a ghost! She curled her toes tightly and bit his collarbone as she slid her fingernails up his very long back, but her teeth might as well have been air.

“Kash!” he warned throatily.Mmmm, so much power! She grinned and licked his chest again slowly, circling his flattened, coffee-colored nipple with her tongue. Hells, what would it be like if he did this to her instead? Her own nipples pebbled to tiny peaks. She sighed, giving his cock another firm stroke, running her thumb over its velvet tip. If only her tongue and her hands were not so faded from reality! The things she could do right now! Why did he have to be such a hottie when she couldn’t even materialize to appreciate him?