Chapter 7: Reckless Reunion
The silence after her question stretched, thin and awkward. Breakfast. A mundane, stupid word in a vault full of weapons that had just killed gods.
Elliot’s hand was still hovering near her elbow. He let it drop. “Nutrient paste. Flavor of the day is… grey.”
Pandora’s nose wrinkled. “The fabricators on this ship can synthesize a five-course meal from stellar dust and it serves you paste?”
“We were conserving power. For you.” Kaelen shrugged, a ghost of a smile on his face. “And I’m not a great cook.”
She took another step, her legs holding. She looked from one to the other, this makeshift crew that had anchored her ship—and her—for a year. The gratitude was there, a warm, unfamiliar knot in her gut. But it was tangled with a violent, clawing need. A year of nothing. A year of silent, frozen non-existence. Her skin felt two sizes too small, every nerve ending screaming for sensation, for proof she was actually here, solid, alive.
“Right,” she said, her voice too bright. “Well. I need to move. Get the blood flowing.” She began a slow circuit of the armory, trailing her fingers over the floating racks. The weapons hummed at her touch, recognizing their creator even in her diminished state. The familiarity was a balm and a provocation. She had built these to exert her will on the universe. Now she could barely steady her own hands.
Elliot watched her. He saw the tremor she was trying to hide, the too-wide gaze taking in the vault not as an arsenal, but as a cage. He knew that look. The aftermath. The adrenaline gone, leaving a hollow, shaking vessel. He’d felt it himself a hundred times.
“Kaelen,” Elliot said, not taking his eyes off Pandora. “Why don’t you go tell Sasha the good news? See if you can coax something edible out of the galley fabricator. Use my command code. It’s ‘Blackwood-7-3.’”
Kaelen glanced between them, sensing the shift in the air. He nodded, hesitant, then turned and left. The archway sealed silently behind him, leaving them alone in the hum of the vault.
The quiet deepened, became a physical thing.
Pandora stopped her pacing, her back to him, staring at a particularly vicious-looking blade that shimmered with captured light. “A year,” she said again, the words barely audible.
“You said that.”
“It feels like five minutes. And like a century.” She turned. Her amber eyes were blazing with a confused fire. “I can still feel the gel. In my lungs. I can taste the static of the stasis field. But my body… it feels like I just fought that battle. Every muscle is raw. Every thought is too fast and too slow.”
“That’s the reintegration. It’ll pass.”
“Will it?” She took a step toward him. Then another. “You stayed. For a year. Why?”
Elliot leaned back against a solid support column, crossing his arms. A defensive posture. “The ship’s nice. Good view. Quiet neighbors.”
“Don’t.” The word was a crack of a whip. She was in front of him now, close enough for him to see the fine, silver lines of the scars at her collar, the frantic pulse in her throat. “Don’t give me that charming mercenary bullshit. Not now. I’m tired of calculations. I spent a year in the dark. Give me one true thing.”
Her breath was warm on his chin. She smelled of ozone and the sterile, clean scent of the stasis gel.
Elliot uncrossed his arms. His facade of casual indifference crumbled, leaving something older and more dangerous exposed. “I stayed because I owed you. From before. And because leaving felt…” He searched for the word, his green eyes locked on hers. “…cowardly.”
“You hate me.”
“Often.”
“Prove it.”
Her hand shot out, fisting in the material of his flight suit at his chest. She yanked him forward, off the column, and spun, slamming his back against the cool, seamless wall of the vault. The impact knocked the air from his lungs.
Before he could react, her mouth was on his.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was an assault. A claiming. Her lips were chapped, desperate, her teeth clashing against his. She bit his lower lip, hard enough to draw the tang of blood. The pain was sharp, bright, anchoring. A true thing.
A groan ripped from his throat, part protest, part surrender. His hands came up, not to push her away, but to grip her hips, his fingers digging into the lean muscle there. She was solid, real, burning hot against him.
She tore her mouth away, breathing ragged. “You waited,” she accused, her voice a raw scrape. “You watched me sleep for a year. Did you think about this?”
“Every damn day,” he snarled, the admission torn from him.
That was all the permission she needed. Her hands went to the seals of his flight suit, fumbling with the clasps. Her fingers, still clumsy, shook with urgency. “Fucking… thing…”
“Here.” Elliot’s own hands were steadier. He batted hers away and undid the seals in one swift, practiced motion. The suit peeled open to his waist. The cool air of the vault hit his skin, followed immediately by the searing heat of her palms sliding up his chest, mapping the planes of his stomach, the old scars.
She shoved the suit off his shoulders, trapping his arms for a moment. He wrestled them free, letting the heavy fabric pool at his elbows. Her own clothing was a simple, grey shipsuit she’d found in the pod’s compartment. He found the seam at her neck and tore. The material wasn’t made to rip, but he put all his frustration, all the pent-up, silent year into the motion. It gave way with a sharp sound, splitting down the front.
She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Her body was as he remembered—lean, powerfully built, a tapestry of old silver scars and new, pale ones from the stasis. Her breasts were small, high, her nipples already taut and flushed. The sight of her, bare and fierce in the weapon-light, hit him like a blow to the gut.
“Fuck me like you hate me, Blackwood,” she whispered, her lips against the shell of his ear, her voice dripping with venom and need.
He grabbed her, one hand tangling in the fiery mess of her long red hair, the other clamping on her ass, and reversed their positions. He spun her and pinned her front-first against the same wall, her cheek pressed to the cool surface. Her breath fogged the material.
He leaned into her, his mouth on the juncture of her neck and shoulder, biting down, not gently. She cried out, a sharp, approving sound, and arched her back, pushing her ass against the hard ridge of his erection straining against his trousers.
“Is this what you wanted?” he growled, his hand sliding from her ass around her hip, delving through the coarse hair between her legs. She was already wet, soaking hot. “A year in a box, and this is your first priority?”
“Yes,” she hissed, spreading her legs wider as his fingers found her clit, circling it with a ruthless, knowing pressure. “Feeling anything. Feeling this. Proving I’m not a ghost.”
He hooked a finger inside her, then two. She was tight, clenching around him, her inner muscles fluttering. He worked her with a rough, steady rhythm, his own breathing ragged in her ear. “You’re not a ghost. You’re a fucking pain in my ass.”
“Then act like it,” she panted, pushing back against his hand. “Stop playing and fuck me.”
He withdrew his fingers, slick with her. He fumbled with the fastening of his trousers, shoving them and his underwear down just enough to free himself. He was thick, hard, the head leaking. He didn’t bother with gentleness. He didn’t guide himself. He positioned the blunt head at her entrance and drove into her in one deep, brutal stroke.
The sound she made was punched out of her, a guttural “ungh” that echoed in the vault. She was incredibly tight, her body resisting for a split second before yielding, stretching to take him. He buried himself to the hilt, his hips flush against her ass, and stopped, shuddering. The heat, the incredible slick tightness was almost too much.
“God,” he breathed, forehead dropping between her shoulder blades.
“Don’t stop,” she demanded, voice ragged. “Don’t you fucking stop.”
He pulled back and slammed home again. And again. Setting a punishing, frantic pace. The wall was cold against her front, his body a furnace against her back. Each thrust jolted through her, a relentless, grounding rhythm. This was no tender reunion. It was a collision. A fight. Each snap of his hips was a word in an argument they’d been having for years. You left. You stayed. I hate you. I need you.
His hand snaked around her hip again, finding her clit. He rubbed rough, tight circles there, in time with his thrusts. The dual assault was overwhelming. Sensation detonated along her nerves—the pain of the wall, the fullness of him, the sharp, building coil of pleasure under his fingers.
“That’s it,” he muttered, his voice dark with strain. “Come on. Come for me. Prove you’re here.”
Her climax tore through her without warning, a violent, seizing wave. She screamed, the sound raw and unchecked, her body clamping down on him like a vice, milking him. The contractions pulsed around his cock, pulling a groan from deep in his chest.
He fucked her through it, his rhythm faltering, becoming ragged. The sight of her coming apart, the feel of it, the sheer animal reality of her broke the last of his control.
“Maria,” he gritted out, a name he almost never used. His hips stuttered, and he buried himself as deep as he could go, his release erupting in hot, pulsing bursts inside her. He held her there, pinned, as he emptied himself, his whole body taut as a wire.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. The hum of the vault. The smell of sex and sweat and metal. Their harsh, mingled breaths fogging the wall.
He softened inside her, but didn’t pull out. Didn’t move. His weight slumped against her, his face still buried in her hair.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their breathing settling.
Pandora’s cheek was still pressed to the wall. The cold was seeping into her skin. The raw, throbbing ache between her legs was a profound, satisfying anchor. She felt… present. Inhabited.
Elliot finally pushed himself back, sliding out of her. He righted his clothing with stiff, awkward movements, not looking at her.
Pandora turned, leaning against the wall for support. She didn’t try to cover herself. The torn shipsuit hung open, revealing her completely. She watched him, her gaze unreadable.
He finally met her eyes. His were dark, haunted, sated. “That true enough for you?”
She reached out, not for him, but for her own discarded clothing. She pulled the torn fabric around her, a flimsy shield. “It’s a start.”
He nodded, once. The silence now was different. Charged, but not with combat. Something more complicated.
“The Consortium will be back,” she said, her voice returning to its familiar, strategic cadence, though quieter. “They know I’m vulnerable now. The immortality is… offline. They’ll think I’m weak.”
Elliot finished fastening his flight suit. “You are weak.”
“I know.” She said it plainly. No defiance. “And they’ll come. Not just for me. For the Olympia. For everything in this vault. They’ll bring everything they have.”
“So what’s the play, Captain?”
She looked around her armory, at the legacy of her past fury floating silently in the gloom. Then she looked back at him.
“We don’t wait for them,” she said. A spark, the old, dangerous one, was rekindling in her amber eyes. “We’re not hiding in this tomb anymore. We take the fight to them. But first… first, I really need some goddamn breakfast that isn’t paste.”
A ghost of Elliot’s old smile touched his lips. It was grim. It was real. “Now that,” he said, “sounds like a plan.”