Chapter 7: Disobedience and Discipline
The cockpit was a silent observatory. The shimmering Quintessence Fringe nebula filled the forward view, a violent bloom of violet and crimson that seemed to pulse like a bruise. For two weeks, it had grown from a pinprick to an all-consuming swirl, the prettiest warning sign in the galaxy. Matthew sat in the pilot’s chair, a data pad in his lap, his glasses reflecting the starmap he’d called up. He looked absorbed, but Gwen saw the tight line of his shoulders, the subtle tension in his jaw.He was listening. To the ship, to the silence, to her.She leaned against the bulkhead entry, watching him for a long moment. The hum of the engines was a familiar vibration through the deck plates, a sound that had become the backdrop to their new, fragile understanding.It was the sound of them moving towards something terrible, together. It was also the sound of the space where she’d learned the taste of his skin, the cadence of his breath when he slept, the way he whispered her name like a secret he was finally brave enough to tell.She pushed off the wall and padded toward him, her socks silent on the cold floor. He didn’t turn. She saw his focus shift, a slight relaxation in his posture that meant he knew she was there.“Still a trap?” she asked, her voice soft.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, not looking up.“Signal’s cleaner now.Stronger. They’re not even trying to hide the fishing line anymore. They want us to bite.”
She came up behind his chair, letting her hands rest on his shoulders.His flight suit was worn thin at the seams. She traced the line of his collarbone with her thumb. “So we bite.”
He tilted his head back to look up at her, his expression grim. “We’re twelve hours from the projected source.Drop out of warp in the debris field of a shattered moon.Good cover. Good ambush spot.”
“Good place to hide something real,” she countered. Her fingers drifted down, toying with the first clasp of his flight suit.The metal was cool under her fingertips.
He caught her wrist, his grip gentle but firm.“Gwen. Focus.”
“I am focused.” She bent down, her lips finding the curve where his neck met his shoulder. She kissed the skin there, then sucked gently, feeling him shiver under her mouth. He still hadn’t let go of her wrist.She scraped her teeth over the spot, a faint promise of pressure. “I’m focused on the fact that in twelve hours, we might be dead.Or captured. Or worse.”
He released her wrist. His hand came up to cup the back of her head, fingers threading into her wild hair.It wasn’t a push away.It was an anchor.
She undid the first clasp.Then the second. Her mouth moved up the column of his neck, to the sensitive spot just below his ear. “So I don’t want to focus on star charts right now, Matt.” She whispered it, her breath hot against his skin. “I want you to forget the trap.I want to forget my name.I want your mouth on my cunt. I want your fingers inside me, fucking me open. I want your cock so deep I can feel it in my throat.”
He stood up abruptly, the chair swiveling with the motion. He turned to face her, his eyes dark and intent behind his glasses. The nebula light painted his face in unnatural hues. For a second, he just looked at her, and she saw the conflict—the strategist, the survivor, warring with the man who had wept against her shoulder just weeks ago.“You’ve been a brat all day,” he said, his voice low. “Distracting.Pushing.”
“So do something about it.”
He moved fast. One hand hooked around her waist, the other gripped her thigh, and he hauled her off balance, turning and depositing her face-down over the arm of the pilot’s chair. The breath left her lungs in a surprised huff.The worn leather was cool against her cheek. He held her there, a firm pressure between her shoulder blades.
“This what you wanted?” he growled, his voice close to her ear.Her heart hammered against her ribs. “Maybe.”
His hand came down on the back of her leggings, on the curve of her ass.It wasn’t a love tap. It was a sharp, stinging smack that jolted through her. She gasped, more from shock than pain.
“You’ve been insubordinate,” he said, and brought his palm down again on the other side.A brighter bloom of heat. “A distraction.”
Another spank, harder.The sound was loud in the quiet cockpit. A thrill, hot and dark, shot straight to her core. She could feel herself getting wet, a slickness soaking through the thin fabric of her panties.“Fuck,” she hissed, pushing back against his hand.
He spanked her again, and again, a steady, rhythmic punishment. Each impact was a jolt of sharp sensation that melted into a deep, radiating warmth.Her skin grew hot and tender under the fabric. She wasn’t pretending to struggle. She was arching into it, a low moan escaping her throat as the heat between her legs became a throbbing ache.He paused, his hand resting on the warmed fabric. She heard the rasp of his own zipper. Then his fingers hooked into the waistband of her leggings and panties and yanked them down to her knees in one rough motion. The cool cockpit air hit her fevered skin, raising goosebumps.She was completely exposed.
His thumb brushed over her wetness, sliding through her folds. “Look at that,” he murmured, a dark satisfaction in his tone.“Soaked. You like being punished?”
Before she could answer, he spread her legs wider with his knees.Then his mouth was on her.
There was no tenderness this time.It was a devouring. His tongue licked a broad, flat stripe through her slit before zeroing in on her clit. He sucked it into his mouth, worrying it with lips and teeth just shy of pain, then fucked her with his tongue, deep and relentless. Two fingers pushed inside her, curling up, finding that perfect spot with unerring accuracy.
“Oh god, right there!” she cried out, her fingers scrambling for purchase on the leather. The chair creaked under her weight.The star chart on the console beside her head flashed with silent, indifferent data.
He didn’t let up. He worked her with a single-minded intensity, the same focus he applied to a broken engine or an encrypted signal. His tongue was a wicked, clever thing on her clit, his fingers a demanding rhythm inside her. The heat from the spanking combined with the brutal pleasure of his mouth, pushing her higher, faster than she’d ever gone.
The orgasm tore through her like a solar flare.It was blinding, violent. Her back arched violently off the chair as a raw, shattered scream ripped from her throat. She spasmed around his fingers, her vision whiting out.He didn’t stop. He drank her in, licking and sucking through the convulsions until she was sobbing, sensitive and overspent, her limbs liquid.
Only then did he pull back.He stood, and she heard the crinkle of a foil packet. A moment later, she felt the blunt, slick head of his cock press against her soaked entrance. He didn’t ask. He gripped her hips, angled her up, and drove into her in one brutal, filling thrust.She was so open, so sensitive from her climax, that the stretch was exquisite torture. He buried himself to the hilt, a groan rumbling from his own chest. For a second, he didn’t move, just held himself there, seated deep inside her.
Then he pulled back and slammed home again.
He set a punishing pace, fucking her over the arm of the chair with hard, deep strokes that shook her whole body.The chair squeaked in protest with every drive. Her forehead was pressed against the cool leather, her ass in the air, taking him, taking all of him.Each thrust sent a shockwave of pleasure-pain through her tender flesh. He hooked a hand under her thigh, hiking her leg up higher, changing the angle, and she saw stars again as he hit a depth that made her cry out.
“Is this what you needed?” he grunted, his voice strained with effort.“To feel me? To know I’m here?”
“Yes,” she panted, the word breaking on a moan. “Fuck, Matt, yes.”
His rhythm faltered, grew more frantic. She could feel the tension coiling in his body, the ragged edge of his control. She clenched around him, milking his cock, and he swore, a filthy, beautiful sound. He slammed into her one final, shuddering time and held himself deep as he came. She felt the hot pulses of his release through the latex, the way his body went rigid and then collapsed, his weight sagging over her back, his forehead pressed between her shoulder blades.
They stayed like that for long minutes, joined, panting, the only sounds their ragged breathing and the eternal hum of the Mirage. The nebula continued its silent, beautiful rotation outside.Slowly, he softened and slipped out of her. He gently pulled her leggings back up, his hands surprisingly tender now. He turned her around and gathered her into his arms, leaning back against the edge of the console.She tucked her head under his chin, her body still humming.
He kissed the top of her head. “We drop out of warp in eleven hours and forty-three minutes.”
She nodded against his chest.“I know.”
“We’ll run silent. Deploy the sensor drones the moment we’re in range. If it’s a drone platform, we blink out and re-route.If there’s a ship…”
“We assess. We adapt.” She finished the old Garrison maxim.He was quiet for a moment. “I rewired the port thrusters.Gave us a twelve percent boost in sub-light evasion. Just in case.”
She looked up at him. His glasses were slightly smudged, his hair a mess from her hands.He looked young and exhausted and impossibly dear.The strategist, the survivor. Her anchor.She reached up and straightened his glasses. “Good.”
He smiled, a small, tired thing.“You should get some rest. I’ll take first watch here.”
“You’ll wake me in four?”
“I’ll wake you in four.”
She pushed off him, her body sore and satisfied in a way that felt like a weapon. As she walked towards the hatch, she paused, looking back at him. He had already turned back to the console, his fingers calling up new data, his shoulders set once more against the void.They were heading into a trap. But they weren’t just biting.They were walking in eyes open, together. And for now, that had to be enough.