It was a sexy game, and one Larsson played well. It was a relationship that would never be dull, that’s for sure. If Tarr could gain his trust, get Larsson to realize how much he was attracted to him, they just might have a chance—a slim one, but still a chance. And if he could gain his trust, he might even be able to gain his affection. He realized he wanted that now more than anything. Not just his grudging admission that he was attracted to him against his will, but his affection, even someday his love.

Larsson moved beneath him and whimpered, the little sound going directly to Ta rr’s cock. His hand moved faster, coaxing a deeper response. He wanted Larsson to make that sound again. “Kiss me,” Tar whispered against his lips and Larsson turned his mouth toward him, blindly searching for his kiss.

He gave it to him, licking at the corners of his lips before thrusting his tongue inside his mouth and tasting him. He moved his hand up to the sensitive head and swept his thumb around them both in a circular pattern, smearing their pre-cum together.“Come on,” he urged again. “Give it to me. Come in my hand, baby.”

Larsson’s breath came faster he arched up into him, thrusting his chest against Tarr’s. Tarr moved to bite his ear just as he dipped his thumb into his slit again and a deep, guttural moan came from his nobyo’s throat. He strained against him as his orgasm swept over him and Tarr joined him, milking them both through it.

When his touch became almost painful, he fell back beside Larsson, his hand sticky with their cum. Too spent to move, he lay there for a few moments, the smell of their seed heavy in the air around them. Easing off the bed, he stumbled to the bathroom to clean up. Leaning against the sink, Tarr stared at himself in the mirror.He didn’t look any different, yet the world had subtly shifted for him. Larsson belonged to him now, whether he wanted to admit it or not, and he would take him home to Tygeria with him and never let him go. Their life together would be volatile, but Tarr expected to enjoy every moment of it. Heheard Larsson’s soft snores coming from the other room and felt an almost overwhelming rush of tenderness.

It was too soon to love him, surely, but whatever this was, it was powerful. He wanted the time and space to explore this thing, and one way or the other, he would get it. He wet a cloth with warm water to take it back to the bed to clean his nobyo, although he rather liked the idea of making him wear the scent of his cum to let everyone know exactly who owned him.

When Larsson awoke, Tarr was gone, and a quick glance at the door showed he’d locked him in again. Asshole.Larsson’s pants were still shoved down around his hips and he still felt sticky and messy, even though he vaguely remembered Tarr dabbing at him with a cloth. He was giving some thought to climbing into the shower in Tarr’s bathroom when a large boom shook the entire ship and he was thrown violently off the bed and onto the deck.

Shocked, he jumped to his feet, pulled wildly at his pants and ran to the door. It was locked, of course, so he pressed his ear to it in hopes of hearing what was going on. He heard muffled shouts and running, but then an ominous silence before another loud explosion rocked the ship. Larsson was knocked down on his ass again and could feel a strange, violent vibration through the deck. What the hells had happened? It felt like the ship was breaking apart. Alarms started up right away and the lights in his room began to flash rhythmically. Leaping to his feet, Larsson rushed to the door and saw with horror that black smoke was seeping under it and swirling around his feet. He banged on the door, calling loudly for help.

Suddenly, the door flew open, knocking him backward, and Tarr was there reaching for him through thick swirls of choking black smoke.“Come on, baby, let’s get you out of here.”

His thick, curly hair was standing on end, like he’d been running his hands through it or trying to pull it out. His eyes were almost glowing with excitement, rather than alarm, and Larsson had never been so glad to see anyone in his life. Tarr wrapped his arms around Larsson and hugged him close, and Larsson let him do it. His arms felt warm and comforting, but now that the door was open, Larsson could hear the alarms shrieking even louder.

Tarr pulled Larsson out into the corridor. The smoke was so black and thick here that Larssoncouldn’t see a foot in front of him, so he let Tarr pull him along by an arm around his waist. Presumably he knew the ship a lot better than Larsson did, so he was glad to let him take the lead.

Larsson must not have been going fast enough to suit him, because Tarr suddenly turned and picked him up bodily around the waist. Larsson flailed his arms and legs, but Tarr ignored his struggles and took off down the corridor. He set him down after a minute and began pulling at a door that was supposed to slide open. Larsson put his shoulder to it, too, and together they managed to prise it open enough for both of them to slip inside. It was the launch deck and Tarr ran toward a small shuttle, climbing up on a wing and shoving back the hatch. He held out a hand to Larsson, who grabbed it and hauled himself up to clamber inside the tiny ship, just as the door they’d had so much trouble opening suddenly blew inward from a loud blast and fiery explosion.

Tarr jumped in beside him, ducking shrapnel and still coughing from the pall of smoke that hung over the deck. He lowered the hatch manually and took a seat at the controls. Larsson slid into the jump seat behind him. He barely had time to fasten himself in before Tarr took off from the deck, soaring through the opening and out into open space. Larsson twisted around to look behind them and saw the ship breaking apart.

“Y-your men…”

“Most of the ones still alive got off on the bigger shuttle while I came back for you.” He turned to grin over his shoulder at him.“We cut it close, baby.”

“Stop calling me baby, damn it. Whatthe hells happened?”

“Hmm…good question. Right after I left you, I was attempting to launch into hyperdrive, when there was a minor glitch in the gravimetric field displacement manifold. I think I might have accelerated a bit too fast.”

“You think? Minor glitch!” Larsson waved his hands around rather than smack Tarr upside the head.“You idiot! Youcould have blown us all up!”

“Calm down, baby, you get too excited. Must be a dog thing. I have this all under control—I got you out, didn’t I? We’re all safe and sound.”

“Safe and sound? We’re on a fucking shuttlecraft in the middle of nowhere!”

Tarr executed a little maneuver to miss a bit of debris coming from the disintegration of his ship and turned his head to smile back at Larsson.“As I believe I’ve already mentioned, you worry too much.We’re in a planetary system—I don’t know exactly which one, but I’m working on it.We’ll find a nice little planet or moon to set down on and await rescue. I was able to send out a distress signal just before I came for you.I’m sure someone picked it up.”

“Oh gods,” Larsson put his head in his hands and sighed. His body had a lot of nerve betraying him like it had—he’d suspected for months that Tarr Bonnet would be the death of him, but he didn’t know his suspicions would turn out to be quite so literal.

“Ah! Here we are,” Tarr said, his fingers skipping over the comp screen.“I’ve found a moon that has an atmosphere with oxygen. Admittedly, not a lot, but let me keep looking.”

“Let me have the damn thing and you fly this fucking shuttle without blowing us up again!” Larsson pulled the compnet from his hands and started looking through the map of the system he had pulled up. The system was called the Miracean system. It contained multiple confirmed planets with several in the habitable zone. A habitable zone was the region in the planetary system where a planet or moon could maintain water on its surface and potentially therefore, life.

It had to be the right distance from its sun, of course, neither too close nor too far away. It looked like his idiot mate had been lucky again, because this system had several likely candidates. The best one looked to be a moon called M10398.

“This one,” Larsson said, pointing toward the blip on the screen.“Navigate here. It might be a little warm, but it doesn’t look too bad and probably has water. No reports of any habitation.”

Tarr nodded and punched in the coordinates.“Uh…would this be a bad time to tell you we’re a lmost out of fuel?”

Larsson felt the blood drain from his face.“Damn it, Tarr!”

“Hang on, baby. I’ve got to take us down fast before we run out.”

The next few minutes were harrowing as they entered the moon’s atmosphere way too fast. Although the air resistance was helpful in slowing down the rate at which their spacecraft was being pulled down to the surface, the friction generated by their fast entry resulted in dangerously high temperatures to the outer hull of the ship.

Tarr maneuvered the shuttle to enter the atmosphere backward so the ship could slow itself down from its high-velocity orbit, turning its blunt side down so a shock wave was formed, keeping some of the heat away from the shuttlecraft. It also helped to slow their rate of descent.

Tarr took controls away from the on-board comps to pilot the ship the rest of the way down. They were still traveling at hypersonic speed, but their shields were holding and the craft was slowing enough that the moon’s gravity was pulling them to the surface. Tarr performed a series of ‘S’ turns, slowing it even further, along with the engines backward thrust, and the shuttle finally began to decelerate. Larsson glanced out the porthole next to him and saw the surface still coming toward them dangerously fast.

Tarr yelled back over his shoulder to Larsson.“I see a likely spot to put us down by that riverdown there. Brace yourself.”

They came in low for a couple of passes over the water, but the engines were stuttering, almost out of fuel. Tarr had to put the craft down and quickly before they simply fell from the sky. Larsson put his head between his knees and held on tight as the shuttle hit the ground with an incredible impact, bouncing along the moon’s surface like a ball before careening to a swerving, spiraling stop as Tarr pulled hard on the controls, turning the ship around and around and spinning like a top.