Adiron (Corsair Brothers 1)

I feel like I'm going to hyperventilate. "Oh my god. What do we do?"

"Don't worry. There's another way to get in," he reassures me.

"There is?"

"Oh yeah." He hands me the case of tools. "Hold this for me." As I do, he opens it and considers the contents. He pulls out an object that looks a lot like a pointy screwdriver and holds it up. His white teeth flash in the darkness, showing me a hint of fang. "Observe."

"You're going to use that to pry it open?"

"Kind of." He slams the tool into the metal casing of the black monstrosity and punches through the casing.

"Adiron!" I hiss. "What the fuck?"

"It's okay," he reassures me. "It's already dead, right? It can't hurt us."

"What if you just broke something?"

"We'll find out soon enough." He bends over, running his hand along the metal structure once more. Then he punches the tool through again. I bite back an angry sound that rises in my throat, because he's worked on ships before. I haven't. I have to reassure myself that he knows what he's doing.

When he jams the tool into the thing a third time and pries off a large section of metal, though, I start to have my doubts.

"There's a manual override in here," Adiron says, as if I've voiced my worries aloud. "It's hidden away so you can't accidentally hit it, and locked down. It's a manual switch because if the computers go down, you're keffed." He pauses and grins up at me. "Kinda like now."

I squat down next to him, trying not to block his light. "Show me? I want to see." In case I need to know for the future.

He runs a big hand along the panel and then grunts. "Found it. Okay. Here." He finds my hand, then takes it and guides it toward the switches. "It's the big one that feels like a knob. Run your fingers over it."

There's a large, smooth thing under my grip. "Okay."

"Got it?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, now…put your fingers around it…and pump."

"Pump?" It feels like a thick knob. How am I supposed to pump it? "I don't understand."

"Squeeze the base, too. Tell it how big and thick it is, and how wet it makes you—"

I reach out and smack Adiron on the arm. "You dick! That's not funny!"

He chuckles, batting away my hands. "Oh, come on. It's a little funny. Can I help it if I'm still thinking with my cock?"

"YES." I smack him one more time, just because.

Adiron grabs my hands and kisses my knuckles. "All right, my humor is misguided. You're right." He releases me and puts a hand back on the knob. "It's a process, this thing. You have to pull it out of the housing, turn the shaft, move it across to the secondary housing, and then lock it into place. Like I said, it's so you don't accidentally reboot the ship at a critical moment." He snaps the lever into place, and I hear the “clink” of things locking in.

There's a low beep, and then silence.

I lick dry lips, tugging Ruth's blanket closer around my body. "What now?"

Adiron sits on the floor and reaches for my hand again. He pulls me down into his lap, and then slides his arms around me. "Now, we wait."

Waiting. Well, I'm pretty good at that. I've had a lot of practice.

44

ADIRON

Jade smells so keffing good. She's warm and soft in my arms, and even though she's tense and worried, I can't get over how amazing today has been. We had a date. She let me lick her gorgeous pussy until she came. Even now, she goes into my arms without protest.

A male could die happy like this.

I can still taste her on my lips.

I just hate that she's so keffing scared. I stroke Jade's back in the darkness, murmuring soothing sounds to her as we wait for the ship to hum back to life again. The manual override is chirping along, running through its paces, and I have no doubt that eventually everything will be back online again. Ships are complicated beasts, sure, but they're also meant to be running. The lights and the air will pop back up soon, and then Jade can relax.

Heck, even if it doesn't, it's not like we don't have options. There's an escape pod with our name on it, and we could easily manually launch it from the ship. It would mean leaving the people in stasis behind, but it doesn't have to be forever. I'm more interested in keeping Jade safe than anything else.

Well…almost anything else.

Because my cock is still hard and aching from earlier. Jade's curled up against me, her face buried against my neck, the blanket wrapped around both of us. It's hard not to think about pushing her onto her back and licking her pussy again, but something tells me she's probably not in the mood, what with being terrified and all.