Joah Maroon 1

together."
"That's disappointing," I replied playfully.
"I can jerk you off, if you want," she said with a smile.  "Maybe suck that left nut of yours, too.  I know how that speed things up for you."
"Can I cum in your beautiful hair?" I asked as I ran my fingers through her thick black mane.
"Fuck no!"
"Why not?  It will wash right out.”
"How about we put your ass on the headboard, and you can dirty up your own face?" she said nastily.
"Hey now," I responded in shock.  How did things escalate so quickly?  "No need to get upset.  You know that I'm not into that freaky shit."
"Maybe not today," she responded.  "But wanting to cum in my hair is like a starter fetish, I think.  Next, you'll want something shoved up your ass.  Then nipple clamps..."
"You know what?  Why don't you just go sleep in your own bed?"
"I'm sorry, Joah," Lin said with an apologetic grin.  "I'm just joking.  But seriously, I'd rather just nap with you if that is okay.  The stress our new ship and everything has me a bit on edge."
I let my anger fade quickly.  How could I not with this gorgeous woman in my bed.  A perfect athletic figure.  Smooth Polynesian skin.  Beautiful face with large loving eyes.  An incredible human being with a lovable personality to match.
"Can I fondle one titty?"
"Just one, gently.  But let's get some sleep.  Okay?"
We woke up together just thirty minutes before our scheduled rip-jump.  That gave us enough time to get something to eat and shower.  Then relieve Nancy so she could do the same.  A couple times I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.  But upon investigation there was nothing there.  My imagination evidently.  No one else had seen anything out of the ordinary.
My dad used to get floaters in his eyes and think there were bugs or mice in the house just taunting him in his peripheral vision.  That was a thing of the past with today’s modern medicine, but I was starting to know how he felt.
I had Portia double check all components in the jump engine to help us avoid that freakish experience from our last time in the other realm.  Without any sign of frustration over the repetitive task, she announced that everything was in good working order.
We then ripped over to the other universe smoothly as scheduled.  The term didn't make sense to me, though.  It seemed like ripping was creating a new hole in the fabric of space to allow us to exit and reenter.  With so many existing nav-holes available in all the systems that we visited ripping was never required.  We were jumping instead.  But people always said ripped when they left our universe and jumped when they returned.  In reality, we jumped in and jumped back out.  Kind of like the hokey-pokey.
Twenty-three minutes until we emerged into the Pegillas system.  All indications were that our navigation was dead-on accurate.  I wasn't expecting any problems.
Then the shadow appeared again.
It came right through the front wall of the ship like a ghost.  Levitating between me and Lin, it extended an appendage in my direction.  When it contacted my shoulder, I fight the same intense chill as previously.  Like my blood was freezing from a sub-zero injection.
I couldn't breathe.  I couldn't blink.  Nothing seemed to happen for a long while.  I thought that maybe I was dead.  But just as suddenly as the creature appeared, it departed.  Through the back of the control room instead of the way it had come.
Portia and Nancy were saying stuff.  I hadn't heard a word.  Lin had been as mesmerized as me by the experience, even though she had not made contact with the strange entity.
"Sensors are fluctuating," Portia said calmly.  It seemed to be in response to a question asked by Nancy.  "There is a chance that the unknown life form is still onboard."
"How do we kill it?" Nancy demanded to know.
"Why must humans always want to exterminate other life forms?" Portia responded.  It almost sounded like her personality chip kicked in early.
"Because it touched my man without my permission!" Nancy told her.  "What the fuck do you care?  You are not even really alive!"
"That is not completely true by the most basic definition of the..."
"I'm fine!" I declared after gasping for breath.  "Status report on the ship!"
"Everything is functioning normally," Portia informed me professionally.
That was good news at least.  Hopefully, that would still be the case once we leave this plane of existence.  I just couldn't figure out how we had attracted this strange alien presence twice.  There were myths of things living in the beyond.  Drunken stories with no merit, everyone said.  Occasionally, though, we’d encounter someone exceedingly superstitious about interstellar travel.
"Tracking on the creature?" I asked.
"There is no reason to believe that it was created, captain," the android informed me.  "It no longer shows on our sensors.  It has apparently departed somehow."
"I don't believe that," I declared.  When Portia attempted to defend her analysis with data, I quickly shut her down.
"That thing has been with us ever since our ship malfunctioned entering Andromedas system," I told my crew.  I didn't know how, but I sensed that it was the exact same being that touched me before.  I could feel a distinct signature.  Almost a communication from it.  Like a ghost needing to handle unfinished business before it can rest eternally.
"The computer disagrees with that statement," Portia said without any negative inflection.  "Shall I run a diagnostic on the integrity of our ship's systems?"
“Can we do that during jump?" Nancy asked.  That was a good question from our systems expert.
"No, we cannot," Portia answered.  "After entering real space at Pegillas and doing a standard system analysis, I can run the diagnostic.  I'll have results approximately seventeen minutes