The First Starfighter

that take care of maintenance and cleaning.”
“Thank God. I hate scrubbing toilets.”
His laugh this time was booming, and my smile was so tight my cheeks ached. When his amusement died down, he focused on me with the look of a man who liked what he saw in a woman. Desired her. “You please me, bondmate,” he said, his voice deep. I’d heard that tone before, but it had always been technical, not sexual.
A thrill of feminine satisfaction shot through me, and I felt my cheeks heat. I glanced away under his intense scrutiny. Then my stomach rumbled.
He grinned and held out his hand. “Come. I will feed you, and then I will escort you to your ship.”
I froze. Hot guy and food were forgotten. “My ship?”
He nodded, his dark hair sliding over his forehead. “Of course. The Valor.”
I raised a hand as if to stop him. “Wait. That was just a name I made up. It was only for the game.”
“As was I,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest, his shoulders back.
I sighed. Yes, I’d made him as part of the game as well. And yet he was actually a real guy. A real alien. That meant the Valor was real, too.
Again, holy crap.

5
Jamie
“Come,” he said again, leading me toward the door that would take me to the world beyond.
For one naughty second, all I could think of was him telling me to come for a completely different reason.
Good grief. I was on an alien planet, bonded to a sexy alien—for life—and I couldn’t get my mind to focus on anything but kissing him again. Having him cup my breast once more. Sex.
Sex. Sex. Sex.
I hadn’t thought about sex this much in months. No. Hell no. Ever. In. My. Life.
As I followed Alex, I decided my obsession was entirely his fault. He was too tall, his ass was too tight, his cock had been too damn hard pressed into my back, and his eyes were too green. Who had eyes like that, anyway? And his hair? Like black silk? Wrong. Totally wrong. He was too much for any normal, red-blooded woman to resist. So clearly this new obsession with stripping him naked and climbing on him was his fault.
And we lived here. Together. Me and him. Him and me. Us.
He studied me before opening the door, cupped my jaw. “How is your head? Any dizziness?”
“No.” I had a tiny lingering headache, but that was all. The shower had really helped, and I hoped when he said I’d adjust, he meant this quickly. “Hey, what exactly did you mean earlier when you said ‘implant’?”
He moved closer and his palm slid around to the side of my head. I held perfectly still, longing for his touch and nervous at the same time. He threaded his fingers through my hair and nudged a very sore spot at the base of my skull. I winced.
His eyes flicked to meet mine. “Apologies, bondmate. The cipher implant is made up of nanites that bond to your nervous system. They will allow you to read, hear, and understand any language known to us.”
My eyes widened. “A universal translator?”
“Yes.”
“And it works for reading, too?”
“The implants adjust the impulses sent to and from the processing centers of your brain. Your eyes may see Velerion standard, but the neuronal implants will adjust the signal so your brain believes it is seeing your native tongue.”
“Any language?”
“Any language known to us, including most languages spoken on Earth.”
Wow. Um… insane. I could have used this in high school French. “What language are you speaking right now?”
“Velerion.”
“Really? But I hear English.”
“As I said, the cipher implant adjusts the electrical signals once they hit your ears. It adjusts the neuronal impulses to emulate your language before they reach the processing centers of your brain.”
Holy shitballs. I should have paid a lot more attention in biology.
“Okay.” I’d think about that later. Or maybe I wouldn’t. I’d add it to the list. A very long, growing-longer-by-the-second list of things that didn’t make sense. I bit my lip. “Hey, Alex?”
He raised a dark brow, waited for me to continue.
“When I picked you, did you have a choice?”
He frowned, blinked. “I do not understand.”
I didn’t like the idea that he might have been forced to partner with me when what he really wanted was a tall, thin redhead with freckles and blue eyes. “Were you… are you stuck with me? I mean, what if you didn’t like me?”
He watched me closely, staring so long I wanted to squirm. “I reviewed your first few training missions. At that time, I accepted you as my training partner. Had I desired another, I could have ended our pairing.”
“How?”
“The training protocol gives each Velerion the option to fail a mission. If we had not been compatible, we would have failed. Had that occurred, your mission would have ended, and you would have been required to begin again.”
My mouth fell open, stunned. “Start over? I would have had to make someone else.” The thought of losing Alex was even worse than before, when I’d thought he was just part of the game. Now I knew he was real.
“Not make, but choose someone else. Every fighter available in the training simulator is real.”
I thought back to the day I had created—or thought I had created—Alex. What he said made sense. I never had unlimited choices in the game. If I selected loyalty as my most important personality trait in a partner, I would then be asked for a second desired quality. Then a third. When I had answered at least thirty questions about my ideal partner, I’d been given the option of a male, female, or androgynous partner. Then size. Body type. Hair color. Eyes. The physical options had been last, but I’d taken one look at Alex on that screen and fallen in lust.
Now he was here, his hand on my skin, his heat sinking into my body, and his gaze fixated on my lips.