Still, she’s exhausted. It must take a lot of energy to produce color like that, so I give her an extra moment.
She takes it. Drops her chin to her ample breasts and lets out a long exhale.
Then she lifts her eyes to meet mine from behind a curtain of unusually dark hair. Most of these princesses have bright-colored hair. Bellatrix blue, Demon Star orange, nebula green, and even some Arcturus red.
The dark color is a disguise, I realize. And now that I look close I can see that her dye job is fading at random places all over her head.
What is up with this girl?
She seems recovered now. So I say, “That all you got?”
“Fuck you,” she breathes, still panting. “Just… go away.”
I allow myself a chuckle, but then I remember why I’m home in this condition and it fades like the daylight from three setting suns back on the home planet.
Draden is dead. Ceres, blown up. Booty damaged.
I turn away and call out to ALCOR, “Send me a bottle of good whiskey and a girl. I’ll be down in my quarters.”
“Very well, Serpint,” ALCOR says with a sigh. It bothers me when he adds humanoid emotions to his typically flat speech patterns and normally I’d tell him to knock it off, he’s fooling no one with that bullshit. But today I can’t be bothered.
I’m too fucking sad.
To my dismay the stupid bot Crux ordered to stay with me actually stays with me. Hovering at shoulder height and just a little too close, so I have an urge to swat him away.
But I don’t. ALCOR is protective of his stupid bots. Treats them like family—which I can respect. I’d be pissed as hell if ALCOR went off on one of my brothers. Shoot his server beds up with laser fire if he ever pulled that shit.
So fuck it. I let the thing hover.
We descend in a private elevator that opens up right to my quarters. The bot and I move forward at the same time, bumping against each other, and the urge to flatten the annoying piece of junk against the wall almost overtakes me.
But ALCOR must sense this. Because his disembodied voice from nowhere and everywhere says, “Your shower is ready, Serpint. High-heat and lightly scented. Just the way you like it. I’ve even laced the steam with a mild analgesic. For your… injuries.”
I appreciate the gesture. I can’t remember the last time ALCOR has bothered to make me comfortable. We tolerate each other, but that’s about it.
This makes me sadder for some reason.
“Thanks,” I mumble under my breath.
“You’re welcome.”
“And stop being so nice to me,” I growl. “It’s making it worse.”
“Very well.”
I brush him off and walk down the hallway to my bedroom. The lights come on as I approach—a sure sign that ALCOR isn’t taking my orders today, because I usually have to give voice commands for lights—and the bot hovers just behind me. I step into the room and press the button on the door to shut and lock it before the pesky thing can follow.
Feeling a little triumphant that I managed to acquire some privacy, I turn to take in my room.
It’s big by station standards. Hell, most of the rooms in this place are no bigger than the bed. And more than half of them are just pods.
But mine is extraordinarily large. There’s a bed fit for a king. Quite literally. Draped in silver-blue nyla-silk straight from a planet I can’t remember at the moment, and more pillows than I can count. I could fuck seven girls at once in this bed. I might even have done that. Once. Back in the old days when I spent more time here.
There’s a data station on the far end with a direct link to Booty and the docking bay, but the flashing red letters spell out OFFLINE on the screen. Telling me that she’s not fixed yet.
I try not to think about that and let my gaze wander to the metal binding wall where I like to secure girls with magnetic bracelets. I have another one just like it out in the living room. Just thinking about the energy it takes to sexually punish a girl right now…
No. That’s not the kind of sex I’m looking for today. Just a simple girl who likes to fuck is about all I can handle at the moment.
So I look at the bathroom instead. Which is another perk. Bigger than I need, filled with more gadgets than I’ll ever use, it’s what I miss most when I’m on ship because we have no water rationing here. This neighborhood has more floating chunks of ice than we could use in a million years.
Tiled in black obsidian from floor to ceiling and a shower that practically makes love to me, it’s the epitome of luxury.