Chapter 6: The Bunk's Confession
The walk from the cockpit to the crew quarters was a journey through shifting gravity. The ship’s familiar corridors seemed softer, the usual sharp edges blurred by a haze of spent desire and a looming, tender exhaustion. Gwen led, her hand locked in Matthew’s, the warmth of his palm a grounding current. She felt raw, open in a way that had nothing to do with her nakedness and everything to do with the quiet in her head. The constant, grinding fear had receded, replaced by a low, physical hum.
The bunk room was a closet, really. A single narrow bed recessed into the hull, a flickering blue panel casting the only light. It was where they’d slept in shifts for months, a foot of cold space between them.Not tonight.She pushed him down onto the thin mattress first. He landed with a soft grunt, his glasses—retrieved from the console—slightly askew again. He looked up at her, his eyes wide and dark in the low light, his cock already half-hard again against his stomach.The sight sent a fresh, liquid heat pooling low in her belly.
“Your turn to wait,” she said, her voice a rough whisper.
She didn’t give him time to answer. She climbed over him, her wild hair curtaining their faces as she lowered herself, not onto his cock, but onto his mouth. She braced her hands against the cold metal bulkhead above his head, knees framing his shoulders.He understood instantly. His hands came up to grip her thighs, his thumbs digging into the soft flesh as he pulled her down onto his waiting tongue. There was no hesitation, no fumbling exploration. He ate her out like a man starved, his mouth hot and desperate against her cunt.
“Fuck, Matt,” she gasped, her head thumping back against the bulkhead.He hummed against her, the vibration traveling straight through her core. His tongue was relentless, flat and broad against her clit before spearing deep inside her. He used his lips, sucking the sensitive nub until she saw white flashes behind her eyelids. Two of his fingers found her opening, slick with her own wetness and his saliva, and pushed inside, curling upwards.
“Right there,” she choked out, her hips stuttering against his face. “Don’t you fucking stop.”
He didn’t. He worked her with a focused intensity, a engineer’s precision applied to the task of unraveling her. His fingers fucked her in a steady rhythm, his mouth never leaving her clit. The coil of tension she thought had snapped in the cockpit wound again, tighter and hotter, deep in her gut. The sounds were obscene—wet, sucking noises, her ragged cries, his ragged breaths against her.She came suddenly, violently. Her body locked, a silent scream tearing from her throat as the pleasure detonated, wave after wave shattering through her muscles.She trembled, her grip on the bulkhead slipping. He gentled his mouth, licking her through the aftershocks until she whimpered, over-sensitive and spent.
She slithered off him, collapsing onto the mattress beside him, her chest heaving. He turned toward her, his face gleaming with her. He kissed her, letting her taste herself on his lips, salty and dark.“My turn,” he murmured, his voice gravel.
He rolled her onto her back, hooking one of her legs over his hip.He pressed into her in one smooth, deep stroke. She was so wet, so open, he slid in with a ease that made them both groan. This was different.Slower.Deeper. He braced himself on his forearms, his face inches from hers, his glasses removed and discarded somewhere in the tangle of sheets.
He moved inside her with a deliberate, grinding cadence, each thrust a full, possessive claim. She wrapped her legs around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper still.
“Look at me,” he whispered, a command, not a plea.She forced her eyes open. His gaze was unwavering, intense, stripped bare. In it, she saw a year’s worth of silent longing, of shared grief over cold comms, of his hand brushing hers in a mess hall and pulling away too quickly.He wasn’t just fucking her.He was showing her. Showing her all of it.“I’m here,” he breathed against her mouth, his rhythm never faltering. “I’m not going anywhere.Even if we find them.Even if we don’t. It’s you and me.You get that?”
The words pierced her harder than any thrust. They shattered the last brittle wall around the fragile hope she’d buried. A sob caught in her throat, not from pain, but from a relief so profound it was terrifying.
“Matt,” she managed, her voice breaking.
“Say it.”
“It’s you and me,” she repeated, the vow leaving her lips like a surrender and a victory all at once.He kissed her then, deep and consuming. His pace quickened, losing its controlled precision. She felt his tension building, the corded strain in his arms. She reached between them, her fingers finding her clit, rubbing rough, frantic circles.The second peak rose fast, a steep, breathtaking climb.
“Come with me,” she gasped into his mouth.
He drove into her one final, brutal time, burying himself to the hilt as his body shuddered.His release pulsed deep inside her, hot and endless. The feeling triggered her own, a sharp, clenching orgasm that swept through her, milking him dry. They held each other through the storm, fractured breaths mingling, sweat-slick skin sticking together.When it passed, he didn’t pull out. He collapsed beside her, turning them so they lay on their sides, still joined, his arms a heavy, welcome cage around her. The ship’s hum was the only sound for a long time, a steady baseline to the slowing of their hearts.Her cheek was pressed against his chest. She could smell them both—sex, sweat, him.
“The signal’s a trap,” he said into the dark, his fingers tracing idle patterns on her shoulder.
The words were so matter-of-fact, so at odds with the intimacy of their tangled bodies, that it took her a moment to process.She went still. “What?”
“The Garn beacon.The repeating loop.It’s too perfect. Standard Garrison distress patterns, but with a phased harmonic in the carrier wave.It’s a Galra fishing lure. I’ve seen the signature before, in the debris fields after they… after they took Kerberos.”
The mission crashed back in, cold and hard. But it didn’t feel like it was crashing down on her alone. The weight was shared now, distributed across the new, unbreakable tether between them.“You knew,” she said, not accusing, just understanding.“I suspected. Ninety percent sure.” He sighed, his chest rising and falling under her head. “But it’s the only lead we’ve had in six months. And it’s pointing towards the Quintessence Fringe.If they’re using a lure, they’re looking for something. Or someone.Maybe…”
“Maybe they’re looking for them, too,” she finished. The fragile hope flickered, not extinguished, but sharpened into a blade.A trap meant bait. Bait meant the Galra believed the Paladins, or someone like them, might bite.
“We’re walking right into it,” she said.
“Yeah.” His hand found hers, lacing their fingers together on her stomach.“But we’re doing it with our eyes open. Together.”
She closed her eyes, listening to the double rhythm of his heart and the ship’s engine. The fear was still there, a cold kernel in her gut. But it was wrapped in something new, something warm and durable.They had a few hours of charge left. A few hours of this—his skin against hers, the fragile peace of the bunk.
Outside, the void waited, and the lure pulsed its deadly song.But inside the Mirage, for now, they were anchored. They had a direction.They had a trap to spring.And they had each other. It was, for the first time in a long time, enough.