Cosmic Captain: Chapter 24

“You motherfucker…why did you…try to leave me…” I gasped in between ravenous kisses. Lovath had dragged me back to his quarters and was attacking me with his lips as his weight pressed me into the mattress.

“Drekking bad idea.” He moaned raggedly into my mouth when I wrapped my legs around his hips and rubbed against him. Despite how mad I was—or maybe because of it—my cock was rock hard and I could feel his in answer.

I had to stop, I was supposed to be angry at him. Answers wouldn’t come if I was too busy fucking him to get them. “Fuck, Lovath. Tell me why.” The words were choked as he kissed down my neck, already sucking a hickey into a spot that wasn’t already bruised. My fingers dug into his shoulders, but I used the grip to try and push him away.

I couldn’t think when we were like this. No matter how pissed I was, Lovath’s body against mine was like heaven, and I felt like I’d been so close to losing him that I needed to touch him all over. But we had to talk first.

He sighed, and slowed down his ministrations. With one more lingering kiss to my neck, he pulled my legs from around his waist and sat up. I did the same, even if my eyes kept training on the lips that I wanted back on mine.

“Derrick convinced me it was better for you to stay.”

All the lust clouding my judgment dissolved in favor of irritation. “And you didn’t think to ask my opinion?” He and Derrick both had been talking about my future like I wasn’t my own free person who could make a decision about what I wanted. It would be different if Lovath didn’t want me, but he did. I knew he did.

“He said you felt indebted to me and that was skewing your opinion. There were…other things as well.” Lovath had the decency to look sheepish. “If it helps, I don’t think I would’ve actually told Talisaar to leave without you. Even if I had, I think he would’ve disobeyed orders.”

I huffed in annoyance at that. Why be fucking vague? “I do feel indebted to you, but I want to stay because I love you. I want to be useful, and I feel like I can be on the Horizon. You know all that. What else could he have told you to change your mind about me?” I didn’t tell him that it did make me feel better to know they likely wouldn’t have left without me on the ship.

Lovath hesitated. Then dipped down to press a soft kiss to my lips. That felt like a bad sign. “He told me how you were abused by your parents. He’s convinced you need a quieter life than I can give you and…I thought he might be right.”

The blood in my veins turned to ice. Had I been abused by my parents? Even the suggestion seemed ridiculous. Except I always broke out in a cold sweat when my dad called me, and when he shouted I often found myself curled up in a fetal position on the floor, even as an adult.

When I broke my arm falling down the stairs? And my leg the first time doing the same thing? Dad had pushed me. I could feel his hands on me as clear as day, shoving me down and screaming from the top that he hoped I’d learned my lesson.

I hadn’t been playing behind his truck and accidentally had my hand run over. He’d forced me to sit still with my hand on the burning hot driveway and take it like a man when he rolled over my hand on purpose. As punishment for tearing a page out of his Bible.

I hadn’t hit my face on the hitch to my dad’s truck. He’d beat the shit out of me and kicked me in the ribs until I couldn’t breathe when I came out to him as gay. Mom hadn’t taken me to the hospital because she was afraid they’d look at my medical record and figure things out.

For weeks, I’d suffered in pain, pretending my only injury was a black eye because I was clumsy, when instead I’d spent every night crying and wondering if I was going to die from internal bleeding that I wasn’t aware of. Some nights, I prayed exactly that would happen.

The fear of hospitals came from the fear of what put me in them. I’d forgotten every bit of it. Even when I’d looked at old photos, nearly all of them featuring me in some sort of cast, the memories had never hit. But now they were assaulting me full force and I was helpless to do anything about it.

“So Derrick thinks that I’m too fragile or something? To handle being out in space?” My breath hitched as I spoke, but I held it back. They were awful memories, but that’s all they were. Memories of a place I’d never go back to. It all seemed so far away now, and what my parents did to me didn’t get to define what someone else thought I was capable of.

“To handle being with a group of violent criminals, yes.”

And I hated that I understood the concern. Put a guy who’s been abused by humans and aliens alike on a ship full of people who could and would be violent at any moment and see how long he takes to crack. Not long, I’d imagine, but there was a difference.

“Violent criminals who would never hurt me, though.” Even when Lovath was planning to take me to Torvan, never once had I been afraid that him or his crew would hurt me. Only Kryn had sparked that fear because of a bias against krexxians I had. And I’d worked hard to fix that bias; Kryn was teaching me to read Common for fuck’s sake.

“No, never.” Lovath agreed reverently. “But you will see people get hurt with us, Gray. You’ll see us do it, and we don’t show a lot of mercy. We are not good people—”

“But you won’t hurt me.” I repeated. He had to understand that was all I cared about. I didn’t give a fuck what he did for a living as long as he didn’t hurt me and didn’t trade slaves for credits. Those were the only two things that mattered, and he would do neither.

“That, I swear. My word isn’t good for much, but I do mean it.” His lips quirked into the smallest smile. Lovath was a good liar; probably the best liar I’d ever known. When we were on Rizal Qua Station, I’d seen him smoothly tell vendors all sorts of untruths, and I’d heard how we mysteriously got all our credits back for the fuel he’d bought. I didn’t think he was lying to me though.

All the cargo in the hold was either stolen or being smuggled, and I wasn’t a moron. I’d wandered into their weapons chamber by accident and seen the walls of phasers—at least that was what I was calling them—they had. They hurt people, sometimes innocent people, and they didn’t feel bad about it.

But they weren’t exactly evil either.

“Then I don’t fucking care. Just don’t go into exotic trade anytime soon? I’d need an adjustment period for that.”

Lovath snorted. “I think one experience was enough. I don’t believe in trading people like cargo, and I never plan to.” And when he started kissing me again, picking up where we left off, I couldn’t find it in myself to be mad anymore. I loved Lovath, and I finally had everything I ever wanted.