It’s possible that I saw the face of god. I’m certain I cried out for him.
Karnac didn’t let up, thrusting deep into me, holding me up with one hand as the other teased me, explored me. Claws grazed my back, and my heart raced. I clawed at his back too, scratching hard and driving him further into his wild frenzy of lust.
We panted together, our hearts racing at the same speed, and I felt my orgasm approaching like an oncoming tidal wave. I tried to say something to Karnac, but no words came, just little mewls of pleasure.
I’m sure he knew what I meant. Thrusting harder, more insistently, his growls louder and more urgent, he urged me on. And I felt him swell inside me, making me arch again, screaming into the icy mountain air.
As if that was a signal, his cock vibrated. And that was more than I needed to send me over the edge. I convulsed, pressing myself to him, the world dissolving into a pure bright light of ecstasy. For a moment that felt like it lasted forever, nothing existed apart from Karnac and me, and telling where one of us began and the other ended was impossible.
His howl of joy joined my scream, and he came powerfully inside me. His legs giving way, he lowered me down to the roof, cushioning my fall with his body as he landed in the snow.
Steam rose from our bodies as I collapsed onto his chest, kissing him and shaking as I came back to myself. So much tension gone, I felt relaxed for the first time since the Crash. So relaxed that my eyes drifted shut, head resting on his chest, lulled by his heartbeat. As I drifted into the dark of sleep, the last thing I felt was Karnac pulling his coat over me as a blanket, stroking my hair, and whispering something in Prytheen.
6 Karnac
Looking down at the beautiful sleeping human nestled against me, I sighed. Molly was all I’d dreamed of and more, things that I’d never have thought to want. But my conscience niggled. She’d worked so hard to maintain distance, and then I’d wrecked that for her. Above, the metal framework of the antenna tower shifted in the wind.
I knew my capabilities. I could have landed safely away from her. Without making a conscious choice, I’d landed next to Molly. Frightened her into falling, giving me the chance to catch her. Everything after that wasn’t hard to predict. Neither one of us could resist the other, not in close quarters like that.
“She is my khara,” I said, speaking to the uncaring sky. “We would be here eventually.”
A few flakes of snow drifted down. The clouds held no other answers for me.
I should talk to her about this, I thought, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to work out what she wanted on my own. But she looked too peaceful to disturb, and I wanted to savor this moment.
Fate had other plans for the two of us. Glitch fizzed into existence beside us, opening his mouth and beeping. I didn’t know much about Earth animals, but it didn’t sound right for an organic being.
On my chest, Molly squirmed and muttered something, waving vaguely in Glitch’s direction. The hologram took no notice. I considered trying to mute the thing, but it was too late. Wrapping my coat around herself and sitting up, Molly looked flustered, embarrassed and entirely sated. Pride brought a smile to my face, happy to have pleased my khara so.
Molly shook her head, swallowing and blushing. “Who is it, Glitch?”
An image appeared above the hologram, and both Molly and I groaned. It was Allison, presumably looking for an update. Molly made a quick check of her messages and swore.
“Why didn’t you tell me that there were messages, Glitch? God, she’ll be raging, thinking I’ve ignored her.”
Glitch somehow looked both contrite and smug, meowing and looking at me. I nodded my thanks to the little creature, wondering just how smart he was. Ignoring his mistress’s calls so we had our time together didn’t sound like behavior that the programmers would encourage.
Grabbing Molly’s jacket, I passed it to her — as fetching as she looked with my coat wrapped around her, I doubted she’d want Allison to see her like that. Her face bright red, she traded the coat for the jacket, pulled her pants on, pulled fingers through her hair to tidy it. She took a deep breath and turned to face the hologram from an angle where I wouldn’t be visible.
“Okay, Glitch, put me through.”
It’s odd to look at a hologram from behind. With no effort made to fill in the back of her head, it was like looking at a mask of Allison’s face from the inside. Fascinated, I watched as she spoke.
“What in god’s name have you been up to, Molly? You went out hours ago and haven’t answered a single call since then. I worried about you, and I don’t like that.”
“We’re perfectly safe, we’ve just been busy looking for whatever chewed through the cables. It looks like we won’t be able to fix the damage, though.”
“Motherf— I mean, that’s bad news. I suppose we’ll have to wait for the supply run to request the cable.”
Molly tipped her head to one side, her face a delightful picture of concentration. “They might send someone up sooner, once they realize we’ve lost contact?”
“Or they might not,” Allison said. “I can’t afford to plan on that. In the meantime, we don’t have communication, which is not good, but it’s not a disaster either. We can still send out the programming we’ve got or what we record ourselves. If it comes to the worst, we can put out a call for help over the general broadcast.”
She talked to herself as much as Molly, I thought. Trying to convince herself it was nothing to worry about. Which was probably true; whatever threat had chewed through that cable hadn’t attacked people yet.
“Right,” Molly agreed. “I’ll keep a close eye on the other cables out here, in case there’s more trouble, but there’s not much we can do with the problem here. Fortunately, our ‘cable rat’ doesn’t seem to like what it ate — it chewed through in one place and then left it alone. No sign of a charred corpse, though, so it might be back.”
“Or it might have friends,” Allison said, then shook her head. “No point borrowing trouble. Unless you or Karnac can find a trail to follow and hunt that thing down, we’ll just have to keep an eye out for trouble.”
The image vanished without ceremony and Molly sat back down, hard. Glitch moved in two directions at once and vanished as I rushed to her side.
“My feet are freezing,” she complained, grabbing for her boots. I helped her put them on, regretting that I hadn’t thought of that before. Humans — a strange combination of tough and fragile. More than anything else, I wanted to protect this one from any harm. She could take care of herself, yes, but she shouldn’t have to.
“Let me get you inside,” I said, lifting her in my arms and kissing her on the cheek. Lip-to-lip contact would be a bad idea if we wanted to get inside. Molly clung to me, letting out a little shriek as I jumped down from the roof. Enjoying the way she held me tight, I wondered how else I’d get that reaction.
Molly glowered at me and pinched my ear. “OW. What was that for?”
“You were thinking of more ways to scare me,” she said. “I won’t have it. Not unless we’re watching horror vids.”
“I was doing no such thing,” I started, only to feel Molly’s fingers tighten on my ear again. “Okay, fine, I promise. Now I will have to seek out these ‘horror vids’ of yours.”