Page 50 of Deep Alien Obsession

The Lung turns below us, changing the light from blue to gold. For one impossible instant, Darius is lit from both sides—ancient machinery below and the blazing gold of Jalshagar beneath his skin. The realization that I love this man breaks something open inside me.

I pull him closer, and the bond floods.

The boundary between physical pleasure and emotional weight disappears. I feel his history—the loneliness, the silence, the weight of the city—and he feels mine—the years of leaving, the fear of permanence.

"Darius," I sob, my body tightening around him.

"I've got you," he groans, his voice breaking.

The release hits me like a physical blow. The platform and the cavern vanish beneath a wave of pure, blinding sensation. My fingers lock against his shoulders, my body arching beneath him while the bond carries the force of the orgasm straight through both of us.

Darius makes a sound—a low, shattered cry—as the markings flare almost white. His control vanishes completely. We collide in a shared, explosive peak, a psychic and physical white-out that leaves us both gasping and shaking.

For a long time, neither of us moves. My breathing is loud in the silence, mirrored by his. The Jalshagar markings remain bright, casting a soft light over the sweat-slicked skin of our bodies.

I touch one glowing line beneath his eye. He turns his mouth against my palm, a small, tender gesture that hurts more than the intensity of the sex.

We stay tangled together until the Lung has changed the light twice. Eventually, Darius shifts his weight and lies beside me, his arm coming around me automatically, pulling me into the curve of his body.

I put my palm over the fork in the markings again. The light remains bright beneath my hand, a warm, humming reminder of the choice we made.

It takes forty minutes to fade. And as it does, something in the bond changes—a locking into place, a settling of the soul.

We both feel it at once. We are no longer two people sharing a bond; we are a single, unbreakable circuit.

Not stronger. Closer. Before this, reading him took a movement of attention, an internal turn of the head. Now he is simply present, continuously, the way my own left hand is present without being considered. I feel him decide to speak before he speaks.

"Say something," I tell him. "I want to test it."

He doesn't say anything. He thinks a number at me — deliberately, I can feel him aim it — and it arrives whole and unambiguous.

"Four hundred and eleven," I say.

"Yes."

We lie there doing that for an hour, and partway through it stops being funny, because we both understand what it means.

Whatever the nexus needs, we have it now.

"Tomorrow," Darius says.

"Tomorrow."

Neither of us stirs for a good while, above a city finally breathing, on the balcony I said was mine.

CHAPTER 26

DARIUS

The Custodian gives us the approaches on day fifty-six. Four of them, and three impossible.

FOUR AUTHENTICATED ROUTES REACH THE CORE. ROUTE ONE PASSES HUB ONE, WHICH IS HELD. ROUTE TWO IS THE PLANT SPIRAL, WHICH IS NOW MONITORED — THERE ARE OBSERVERS AT FOUR TURNS. ROUTE THREE NEEDS SIX AUTHENTICATED TRANSITS. YOU HOLD FIVE.

"And four?"

ROUTE FOUR IS A VERTICAL SERVICE SHAFT DESIGNATED IN MY RECORDS AS A GRAVITIC LOAD COLUMN. IT DESCENDS TWO HUNDRED AND ELEVEN METERS TO THE OUTER CORE APRON. IT WAS CLOSED FROM ABOVE DURING THE WAR AND I HOLD NO STATUS ON IT.

"Closed by whom?"