Hopefully, I wouldn’t need to know.
I had no intention of heading back to that place.
Especially not when I was so close to escaping for good.
“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” Agatha said.
“What?”
“You’re the captain of your crew, right?”
“Right.”
“So, why were you the one to get caught and sent to this place and the rest of your crew got away?”
“They didn’t get away. I did.”
She frowned at me.
“So, how did you end up here?”
“I handed myself over to the bounty hunters.”
She came to a stop.
The beads of sweat gathering on her forehead broke rank and abseiled down her face.
“You did what?”
“I handed myself over.”
“Why would you do that?”
I shrugged.
“My crew got caught.”
“What’s that got to do with you? They should have been more careful.”
“They got caught because my plan didn’t work. It’s every captain’s duty to protect his crew. Besides, the bounty out for me was far larger than what was on their heads.”
Agatha shook her head.
“So much for you being mutinous pirates,” she said, resuming her walk.
“We are pirates.”
“Not if you believe in honor and duty and all that jazz. Pirates on Earth are out for themselves. They would never hand themselves over to protect their crew.”
“It’s the Vulcarian way.”
“Well, it’s not the traditional pirate way, that I can tell you.”
I didn’t know how human pirates operated on their planet but out here, there was a certain code of conduct.
“You really handed yourself in to save your crew?” Agatha said.
“It was my duty as their captain. Besides, breaking one member out of prison is a lot easier than breaking out six.”
She smiled and shook her head in disbelief.
She coughed and barely managed to turn her head to one side before she let rip with a full-throated bark.
It was the lack of oxygen in her lungs, making it difficult for her to breathe.
I slapped her on the back but it didn’t help.
There was only one thing that would.
I spun her around and pressed my lips to hers.
She stiffened in my arms and pushed me back, gasping for air.
“I can’t breathe!” she said. “Kissing me now isn’t going to help!”
Except she was no longer gasping.
She sucked oxygen in through her nose and mouth, her passageways already clearing up.
She frowned at me.
“Yeah, well, it still doesn’t give you the right to kiss me whenever you want!”
“I was the victor, remember? Technically, you still belong to me.”
She poked her tongue at me.
It was a strange thing. In my culture, it meant she was sick. It clearly meant something else to humans.
“I don’t belong to anyone,” she said.
“That kiss I gave you won’t help you for long. If you want to pass through this planet’s atmosphere for longer periods, we’re going to have to do a lot more than that.”
“You would say that!”
I shrugged.
“It’s the truth.”
I couldn’t bring myself to believe she hadn’t enjoyed our sex the first time we did it, nor did I think she disliked the kiss from the night before.
I wondered why she was resisting me.
“Kiss me more,” I said, “and you won’t have to kiss me again. By the time we get to the shuttlecraft, we can program the computer to create the right atmosphere for both of us.”
She screwed up her face.
She might not like it but she didn’t have much choice if she wanted to reach the shuttlecraft in one piece.
“Fine,” she said. “But remember, it’s purely for medicinal purposes.”
She puckered up her lips and stuck them out.
She had her eyes shut and I couldn’t help but smile.
I wrapped my arms around her and, taking her by surprise, she opened her eyes and pulled back.
I buried my lips on hers.
She struggled but I was intent on enjoying myself, so I added a little tongue to the mix.
She slapped me ineffectively with her hands but her attacks weakened.
Her lips pressed against mine harder, and she sucked in oxygen through her nose and gave herself to the kiss.
She even made soft “Mm” noises, though I was certain it wasn’t voluntary.
I reached down and grabbed her ass with one hand.
It was soft and I squeezed hard.
She slapped my hand but it wasn’t angry or aggressive enough to stop me.
I swelled in the front of my pants and ground hard against her.
“Mmmm,” she said once more, involuntarily.
Her arms felt at the muscles on my back and her tongue came out to play.
I meshed it with my own.
I couldn’t get enough of that thing.
She took my tongue in her mouth and sucked on it, licking it slowly and seductively.
She made me rock hard and I wanted nothing more than to dive deep inside her right then and there.
Strictly speaking, we didn’t need to kiss like this, or for this long, but she didn’t know that.
And I sure as hell wasn’t about to tell her!
I was never one to pass up a good opportunity.
And she was a better opportunity than I’d had in a very long time.
When we parted, I was the one gasping for oxygen.
Agatha seemed none the worse for wear.
“What’s wrong?” she said, arching an eyebrow at me. “Need a kiss to help you survive out here?”
And with that, she turned and sauntered into the desert.
I growled in the back of my throat, watching that ass as it sashayed through the endless desert.
It deserved to be ridden day and night and I tried to think of a way I could do that before this whole adventure was over.
I hustled after her and we walked side by side, casting the occasional glance at each other.
The smile on her lips matched the one on mine, even if she didn’t intend for it to come across that way.
We encountered no guards and, thankfully, no drones as we completed the final leg of our journey.
The twin suns were beginning to set on another long day on this moon when we rounded what I thought should be the final corner.
No problem, I thought. The shuttlecraft will be around the next corner.
I thought that four times before growing worried.
The problem with the shifting sands of the desert was
