The ship soared into the sky like an agile bird. David handled the craft with skill, with style. Alinna imagined the muscles cording in his arms inside his flight suit as he gripped the controls. His abilities, his confidence in the sky, reminded her of the control and the strength he’d shown her in bed. The thought sent shivers of sensation along her L’inar.

“I need the position of your ship.”

Alinna brought herself back to the mission at hand. She fired off the coordinates, but David looked at her blankly.

“That’s great,” he muttered. “Can I have the location in Starforce coordinates?”

Alinna swallowed. She sensed he felt angry—little waves of fury sloshed over his barriers and against her. He’s sorry he helped me.

She reached out to tap a control pad. Once again, her time studying the Earth language proved invaluable. “These are the coordinates of your base, and these are the ones for your new Mars base. If we use them as reference points, the comp can understand my directions.”

“I can take it from there.”

“I’m certain you can.” Alinna hesitated, and then reached out her hand to touch his arm. She needed contact with him, even if it had to be through her gloves and his heavy suit. If they made it to her ship, he would likely abandon her there. But she should be grateful he would do that much for her after her deception. He would leave her there and return to his home. He avoided her eyes, keeping his fixed on the starscape.

She sighed, pulling her hand away from him and settling it on her lap, and looked out at the fast approaching moon. Regret flooded Alinna. Her lies, even while necessary to the future of both their people, ensured that David would never desire a formal mating, would never complete the M’itta lensahn with her. She took a deep breath. She couldn’t expect or even hope for anything better. No, she would concentrate on the hope for a new Treaty. The Inarrii had never found a true partner, even within many species of the Confederacy. Humans could be what the Inarrii had hoped for when they joined the intergalactic gathering of races. Life would be interesting. It would be good, she told herself, even if it had to be alone.

David brought his ship down low over the surface of the moon, skimming the pockmarked surface close enough that she could see the walls of the shallow craters. The man was born to fly.

“You’re very good.”

“What?” He glanced over at her.

She cleared her throat. “You’re very good at flying.”

He pressed his lips together and looked away. “We’re almost there.”

Alinna swallowed. He was shutting her out. “I need to deactivate the shields, or we could fly right over it and never know it was there.”

“Really? You can’t even see it?”

Curiosity was far better than anger. “You can’t see it. Your ship can’t detect it with any of your scans.” Alinna activated her internal comp, sending out a signal for her ship to lower its shields. She grimaced. Dropping the shields would send a signal back to the secret Inarrii Jupiter Moon base. It wouldn’t be long before she either received communication, or a visitor. David would be gone before that.

“What?”

She hadn’t realized David was still watching her. She summoned the strength to form a small smile. “Nothing. There it is.”

“She’s a beauty.”

Alinna glanced at her ship, nearly a third larger than the fighter David commanded. Snub-nosed, but tapering out in a sleek elongated oval, her ship was a welcome sight. At least she would be comfortable there when David left her.

“Dock on the left side. Just set down beside the ship, and it will hook us up, create a sealed dock.”

David’s eyes narrowed as he contemplated the landing. He held the ship in his control, bringing it smoothly down in a controlled descent. His landing was probably better than she could manage, and she’d been flying since she was a junior. With a gentle bump, the two ships locked together. Inarrii and Human—a good match. She held back a sigh. Hopefully the Treaty would be more successful than her brief Inarrii-Human alliance.

“I understand you have to go back now…” she began.

“Hell no.” David released his seat’s magnetic grapple and pushed himself away from the command seat of his ship. “I’m not going anywhere. I showed you mine, now you show me yours.” He waved in the general direction of her ship.

* * *

He should go. But the flip words about checking out the alien technology flew from his lips, and he knew he meant them. He wanted to see an alien ship up close and personal. It might be his only chance. And damn it, he didn’t want to go. If he left now, he had nothing to return to other than the abrupt end of his career. There was no way he’d get away with dropping her off here and just sliding back into his life.

He ground his teeth together. If he left now, he’d have to say goodbye to Alinna. There’d be no chance of ever seeing her again. He ached to touch her, hold her, make love to her. Fuck.

Alinna led him into her ship. Her bouncing gait and casual grab of the convenient handholds was the same as any long-term spacer in the weightless environment of space. No small ship used gravity control, the energy drain judged too high for the minor convenience. As he followed her, he could feel her, although he was doing his best to pretend to himself he couldn’t. How he had come to be able to sense and experience her emotions was beyond him. It had to be her. He’d never sensed anyone else’s emotions like this. Sure, being aware of his team’s emotional status made him a better commander, but it hadn’t been the same.

He’d already had her. He should be able to let her go, this woman from a strange land, a strange people. She’d needed him, so he’d helped her and satisfied them both in the process. He’d fulfilled a fantasy he never imagined could come true, at least not without paying a sexu-temp a huge amount of money. Paying to dominate someone was pretty much a contradiction of terms. It didn’t mean anything. What he had shared with Alinna…if she had been human, it might have meant everything. The fact that she wasn’t human…hell, it made it even better.

David tore his eyes off Alinna, forced himself to pay attention to her ship. This was another fantasy. An alien technology. Who among the Starforce pilots didn’t imagine meeting an alien? Didn’t imagine a first contact, a major discovery? He’d dreamed of this since he was a child. Not that there was anything to see in there. The walls were black, featureless as they moved into her ship’s dock.

Alinna slapped her palm against a flat pad in the final docking lock. The hatch slid shut behind them. She pulled her helmet off and motioned for him to do the same.

“This is it.”

“What? Everything is…flat. There’s no controls.”

“Hmm? Oh.” She slid a finger over the pad. In seconds, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, every surface glowed to life with tiny luminous patches. Ever changing, the flow of lights seemed to form pictures, words perhaps, and then flit away as he stared. “Sorry, one thing we don’t share is quite the same visual range. That should help you to see. Put your hand here.” She motioned to the flat pad.

David laid his hand where hers had been a moment before. The panel warmed under his skin, and he felt tiny patterns rising to his touch. The heat and texture reminded him of Alinna’s L’inar, and he snatched his hand back, disturbed.

“The ship will recognize you now as an ally.”

“We haven’t signed your Treaty yet. Hell, no one even knows you’re here but me.”

“True, but they will. After I make my report, my people will be in contact with Earth, probably within hours of verifying what I’ve seen.”

“You’ll tell them what you saw of the base? Of my ship?” David’s heart pounded. She’s seen our defensive capabilities up close and personal after the attack on the base.

“David, they know all about your base. What they don’t know is about you.” She shook her head at him and turned away. The hatch slid open, and she pushed away from him, using the low gravity to propel herself forward. He followed her, one hand gripping his shed helmet and the other grasping handholds along the wall as he moved.

“About the mind-talking thing.”

“Yes.” She turned a corner and floated into a wide room.

David hesitated. Clearly this room encompassed her private living quarters. The walls and ceiling reflected a hologram of a deep red sky, cloudless and vibrant compared to the shadowed tones of the black flooring. Her bed, a wide platform against the back wall, seemed out of place. Part of him wondered how she managed to rest against a mattress without gravity to hold her there. Another part of his mind wondered if the images of the red sky were from her home or someplace she’d visited. He couldn’t acknowledge the tiny voice inside of him that asked what it would be like to make love under the red sky as they floated weightless.

“They need to know about your ability to achieve m’ittar, but they also need to know you are compassionate. Thoughtful, honest, honorable.”

She’d begun to pull off her flight suit. The air inside her vessel felt warm against his face, and he wondered how much power went into keeping the place from freezing while she hadn’t even occupied the craft for the last week. The Inarrii had technology that surpassed his. She’d been telling the truth about that. Hell, she’s telling the truth about everything. Relief seeped into him, warmed him. He’d made the right decision after all, even if part of it had been dictated by his cock.

“I doubt my commander’s going to find me so honest. I expect they want to kill me right about now.” David pushed off from the handhold on the back wall to float toward the other end of the room. Through an open hatch, he observed what had to be her cockpit. It wasn’t so different from his. He glanced back at Alinna. She was struggling to remove her leg from the last of the flight suit clasps. Bent at the waist to reach the tab, her sweet ass looked heart-shaped. She wasn’t so different from a human either. But her L’inar caught his eye, reminded him of her intense response to his touch.

She was unlike any woman he’d ever been with. She didn’t feel ashamed to lose herself in sex, didn’t think it made her less in his eyes or more. She was comfortable with the part of her that needed him. It felt damn good to be needed. That much about their relationship was different.

Alinna shook off the last tenuous grip of the flight suit, the action sending her weightless body up toward the ceiling. With a rolling flip, she corrected her path and used the impetus to move toward him. Her sweet lips turned down slightly at the corners.

“I feel responsible for the trouble you will face when you return.” She caught a handgrip and hovered near him. He could touch her, if he just reached out with his hand. “But you have to know that the Confederacy will offer your people a Treaty that could save your entire world.” She reached out for him, touched the skin on his cheek with her fingertips. “Because of you, the Inarrii will ensure that the Treaty is more favorable than you could imagine.”

“Because you can hear my thoughts? What if no one else can do it? What if I’m just…different?”

“If one human can attain m’ittar, then many will likely have the gift. I’m simply lucky to have met you and be able to prove the gift exists.” She leaned in, touched her lips to his. “I’m lucky to have been with you.”

He deepened her kiss, tasted the desire in her.

“Open yourself to me, David. I want to share something with you.”

“We don’t have time, sweetness.”

“Not that.” Humor twinkled in her eyes at his remark, but her mouth held a serious line. “Open your mind.”

David hesitated. He did believe her. Did believe in what she said her people were here for. But doing as she asked, it wasn’t just a matter of listening to her. It was allowing her to touch his soul. If there was any way she could hurt him, this was it. Never mind losing his career—that was likely gone now. Opening to her meant he could lose his heart.

Fuck, he thought. Might as well face it—you already love her, or you wouldn’t be here, no matter how good she was in bed.

“I’m here.”

Alinna looked into his eyes. He shuddered, then stilled as he saw what she wanted him to see: her memories, her home. Her people. Men and women in some sort of short skirt-pants, their chests bared to the air, played on an ocean shore unlike any he’d ever imagined. Black sand and red skies competed for his attention in the vivid landscape, and the scent of salt permeated the air. A beautiful woman with long brown hair laughed and sang a song with a simple melody to an audience of captivated males, their hair even longer than hers, and their L’inar flared in pulsing ridges as they listened to her song.

“Is this what your life is like?”

“Yes, these are my people. My mother. My father was killed by the Raveners as he fought to protect another planet.”

David saw it. He saw the grief, the pain that crowded Alinna’s life when her father died. Felt her passion as she moved upward within the Inarrii forces. Understood her disgust and feeling of impotence as she explored a world already ruined by the pirates. The very pirates who would likely find Earth.

“Alinna.” He reached to touch her and realized he still wore his flight suit gloves. “Damn it.” He dropped his helmet and ripped his gloves off, rushed to touch her again. “I can’t stay.”

“I know.”

“But I want to.” He stroked the soft skin of her neck, followed the line of her L’inar in a gentle caress. “Don’t think it is because I don’t want to.”

David opened his mind to her again. It hurt to show her his past, but he offered her what he could. The memory of his parents finally admitting they were severing their marriage felt as raw and painful now, showing it to her, as it had when he was little and so alone. Alinna responded with a pulse of warmth, and he sighed with relief. He’d been lonely for a long time.

She leaned into his hand. A shiver ran through her shoulders. He let go of his handhold to wrap his arm around her, burying his fingers into her silky brown hair. He held her, melting into her embrace as though they were one. He sought her lips, took them, took her and kissed her with the passion burning inside him. This could be their last moment together. Whether he had a future to offer her or not, he ached for more time together. After what he’d just experienced though, he had to make sure that his people were ready, that they understood the threat and the necessity of the Confederacy’s offer of a Treaty.

He had to leave, go back and explain it all, now.

“Base to Major Brown, we request confirmation of your location.”

The compad in his helmet blared Eddie’s request. Alinna stilled in his arms, and he sensed a quiet withdrawal from her as though she waited to see how he would respond. For a moment, he did nothing. Alinna’s jade eyes watched him. Finally he sighed and released her, pushing away from the wall to grab at his free-floating helmet.

“Major Brown here. I’m making a swing of the moon, Base One. Is there a problem?”

“There are several officers here looking to have a chat with you and your guest.”

Eddie didn’t sound too happy. The implication that he was aware, as were others, that David had lied about who had boarded the ship with him was easy to read. David ground his teeth together. There would be no time to make love to Alinna again. No time to explain to her what she was coming to mean to him.

“We’ll be completing our swing of the moon in twelve minutes.”

“Base requests visual confirmation, Major.”

Sweat trickled down the inside of David’s flight suit. He licked his lips and thanked God he’d locked the controls on his compad and on the ship. It would take hours for the base to force control over either. “We’re on the dark half of the swing, Base One. We’ve had a slight malfunction, and all visual is out at this time.”

“Base One requests full compliance, Major. Return to base immediately.”

“Copy, Base One, ETA in…fourteen minutes.” David flicked the channel shut. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“They’ll be waiting for us.”

“If we go back now, you’re done, the Treaty is done.” David slammed his fist against his thigh. “Damn it!”

“You believe me, then?”

He pushed off the floor and floated to her, pulled her to him. “I believe.” He drew her in for another kiss. “There isn’t time for this, though. We need to get you out of here. They’ll be watching this area.” He gestured toward the cockpit. “This doesn’t seem like a long-range ship, unless your technology is a hell of a lot different than ours. Do you have a base nearby?”

“Yes. But if I move the ship, they’ll probably be able to pick me up, now that they know there’s something to look for.”

David ran a hand through the short spikes of his hair, tugging them in frustration. “Okay. Where is your base?”

“Jupiter, the largest moon. What are you thinking?”

“If they see your ship, they’ll be on you before we clear the moon’s gravity. The You-fos are waiting for it, I’m sure. If we go in my ship, we can be halfway there before they realize we aren’t coming back.”

She gripped his arms, her fingers pressing deep into the thick fabric of his flight suit. “You can’t. You won’t just lose your career. You’ll be arrested.”

“Sweetness, I don’t think there’s much chance I’m going to get anything different. I’m in this, Alinna, all the way. Just make the Treaty worth it, okay?”