Chapter 28: It’s Your Right

Leo stood in the doorway with one hand on the frame as the soft amber light of the corridor pooled around Chloe’s boots.

She looked impossibly small out there.

She wore only her dark form-fitting base layer, the thin fabric clinging to her narrow shoulders, and her wide green eyes kept flicking between the deck plates and the collar of his shirt... right where her teeth had been.

Her pale hands were balled into fists against her thighs and her shoulders were hunched so high they nearly touched her ears.

"Chloe?" Leo said, keeping his voice low so it wouldn’t carry down the silent hall. "Everything okay? What’s going on?"

"Can I... can I come in for a second, Leo?" she whispered. "Just... for a minute. Please."

Leo didn’t ask questions.

He stepped back and tapped the wall panel.

"Yeah... Come on in."

She darted through the threshold like a frightened rabbit slipping into a burrow.

SWOOSH!

The door slid shut behind her and the magnetic latches sealed with a solid airtight click.

Chloe stood rigid in the middle of the cabin, staring at the floor under the desk with her chest hitching in short shallow breaths.

"I... I wanted to say I’m sorry," she blurted out, the words tumbling over each other in a tangled rush. "About the bridge. Before we went out to the station. I attacked you, Leo. I bit you and I hurt you and I pinned you to the deck like a wild animal. Elena was right... I was out of control and I almost—"

GRRRRRR-ROOOOOM!

The sound cut clean through the cabin, a low cavernous groan of an empty stomach twisting against itself so hard it shook the fabric of her shirt.

Her sentence died in her throat.

A bright crimson blush exploded across her pale cheeks and raced all the way to the tips of her small ears as she slapped both hands flat over her stomach, squeezing her eyes shut with her knees trembling.

Leo blinked.

"Wait. I just brought a full tray to your door... Did you drop it?"

"No!" Chloe shook her head so hard her bangs whipped across her temples. "No, I didn’t drop it, it looked amazing, Leo, really, but..."

"Did it smell off? Did I burn it?"

"No! It smelled incredible!" she cried softly, looking up with real panic in her eyes, desperate not to insult him. "It’s not your cooking, Leo, I swear! It’s me. It’s my talent... The Blood Sovereign class changed my body when I awakened. Normal food doesn’t work for me anymore... If I try to eat meat or bread it feels like swallowing broken glass and ash."

She dropped her eyes back to her boots with her knuckles going bone-white where she clutched her middle.

"I can only drink blood," she whispered, like she was confessing a crime. "Fresh, living blood. If I don’t have it, my body burns through its own strength... My head throbs and my stomach feels like it’s eating itself, and then... then the frenzy comes back and I don’t want the frenzy to come back, Leo... I don’t want to hurt you again."

The confusion drained out of Leo’s chest and left a dull heavy ache behind it.

’She hasn’t eaten since we got pulled into the void,’ he realized.

She had bent hyperalloy with her bare hands, torn a two-tonne girder out of a doorway and thrown an alien predator down a shaft... all on an empty tank, starving in the dark while the rest of them chewed on flatbread.

"Chloe," he said gently, taking a step toward her. "You should have told me right away... You don’t have to starve yourself—"

"I know it hurt you," she cut in, her voice shaking so hard it frayed at the edges.

"It hurt and it took your blood, and you need your blood to fly the ship. You’re the Captain... You shouldn’t have to give up your life to keep a freak alive."

"Chloe, stop—"

"I want to make a trade," she whispered.

Her hands dropped from her stomach to the waistband of her trousers.

Leo froze.

"What?"

Her fingers hooked into the elastic and the drawstrings, trembling so violently he could see it from across the room, and she pulled the fabric down two centimeters... baring the pale soft curve of her hip bones and the delicate dip of her lower stomach under the hem of her shirt.

Tears gathered at the corners of her wide terrified eyes and spilled down her flushed cheeks, but she made herself keep looking up at him with her chin trembling with fragile desperate determination.

"I know I don’t have Survival Points," she choked out, her breath coming in ragged little gasps. "And I can’t route power like Jin-Ah and I don’t know the stars like Sensei and I’m not smart like Elena... All I have is my body, Leo. Everything we knew is gone. All we have is each other out here, and there’s nothing else I can give you to make up for the pain..."

She pulled down a little more.

"I’ll trade you... sexual favors. Anything you want... Whatever you tell me to do, I’ll do it. Just... please don’t let me starve, Leo... Please let me drink so I don’t lose my mind and tear the ship apart... I’ll let you do whatever you want to me..."

A sharp violent jolt of shock shot down Leo’s spine, and right behind it came a wave of cold protective anger... not at her, but at whatever would drive an eighteen-year-old girl to offer herself up like currency just to stay alive.

’What the hell are you thinking...?’

He crossed the room in two long strides.

His warm calloused hands closed over her small shaking fingers where they gripped her waistband and pushed the fabric back up over her hips.

"Stop it," he said. "Pull your pants up."

Chloe flinched under his touch with a tiny terrified gasp, staring at his hands on hers like she was waiting for the blow to land.

"No," Leo said, looking straight into her tear-streaked face as his thumbs brushed over her knuckles until the shaking eased. "You don’t sell yourself to me, Chloe... Not for food... Not for air... Not for anything... You don’t ever do that on this ship... Do you hear me?"

A single tear slid off the edge of her jaw. "B-But the blood... it hurts you—"

"If you need my blood to survive," Leo said, flat and steady and without a shred of hesitation, "then you drink it, Go ahead. It’s your right."

Her pupils blew wide in uncomprehending shock.

’My right...?’ she thought, her mind locking up on the word. ’A monster taking the Captain’s blood... and he’s calling it my right...?’

Leo didn’t let go of her hands.

"I’m the Master Captain of the Wanderer-7 and you’re my crew... Keeping you fed and breathing and alive is my responsibility, s—"

He never got to finish the word as the air shifted.

The small weeping girl in front of him vanished in a blur.

THUD!

The world flipped on its axis.

His back slammed down onto the thick mattress of the bunk and the air whooshed out of his lungs, and before he could lift a single finger two small impossibly dense hands clamped around his wrists like hydraulic vises and slammed his arms flat against the sheets on either side of his head.

CREAK!

The heavy frame of the bunk groaned under the sudden explosive weight of S-Rank strength.

Leo looked up, his breath catching in his throat as Chloe was straddling his waist.

Her knees were planted in the mattress on either side of his thighs and her hips were pinned tight and heavy over his, her small slender body pressed flat against his chest so close that the heat of her bled straight through both their thin shirts like a furnace.

He could feel everything... the soft press of her chest, the tremble in her stomach, the little hitch of every breath she took.

And her eyes.

The wide fragile green was gone. In its place burned two rings of radiant crimson, glowing like molten rubies in the dim light.

The shy terrified girl from the corridor was still in there somewhere... but something predatory and intoxicatingly wild had seized the wheel.

Her lips were parted, the sharp white tips of her fangs resting against her bottom lip, and her chest rose and fell in quick shallow pants against his sternum as her hot sweet breath washed over his mouth.

She was looking at him like water in a thousand-year desert... Like he was the only living thing left in the whole cold dead universe, and she was going to devour him whole.

"Chloe..." Leo whispered.

THUMP-THUMP! THUMP-THUMP! THUMP-THUMP!

His heart was hammering against his ribs, and looking up into those glowing eyes, he knew with terrifying certainty that she could hear every beat... the blood surging hot and heavy through his carotid, millimeters under the skin.

She smiled.

It was slow and soft and not shy at all.

"It’s so loud, Leo..." She breathed, and she giggled, a tiny breathless sound that didn’t match the hunger in her eyes in the slightest. "Your heart’s so loud... Is it for me?"

She didn’t tear into him the way she had on the bridge.

...Chloe took her time.

A low shudder ran through her whole body as she rolled her hips down against him and tilted her head, lowering her face toward his throat so slowly it was agony.

Her nose brushed the sharp line of his jaw and dragged along his stubble as she breathed him in, long and trembling... his sweat, the clean soap, the smoke of the galley and the rich iron humming under all of it.

"Ah..." A tiny breathless whimper slipped out of her, buzzing right against his throat. "Leo... you smell so good... You smell so warm..."

Her lips brushed the hollow under his ear.

A kiss, soft and open and wet, and then another one lower down, and another, tasting her way down the line of his neck like she was choosing exactly where to start.

Leo’s hands strained against her grip on reflex, but her fingers were locked around his wrists like solid iron, and he couldn’t move them a centimeter.

Her thighs clamped tighter around his hips, pinning him down with effortless overwhelming strength.

’Holy hell...’ he thought, his head swimming. ’She’s not even trying.’

Then her tongue came out.

SLIP!

It was a slow wet searing-hot lick that started at the hollow of his collarbone and dragged all the way up the side of his neck, over the pounding line of his jugular to the soft skin under his earlobe... and she hummed while she did it like she was tasting something she’d been dreaming about for hours.

An electric shiver tore straight down his spine and curled his toes inside his boots as his breath broke into a sharp jagged gasp.

The softness of her mouth against the terrifying unyielding iron of her grip was too much as his senses were drowning.

"Chloe, wait—"

SHCK!

Her fangs sank in.

White-hot fire detonated behind Leo’s eyes and his back arched off the mattress as a low strangled groan tore through his clenched teeth...

And then, just like on the bridge, the pain was gone.

The venom of her Blood Sovereign talent flooded his veins and the burn dissolved into a heavy paralyzing wave of euphoria feeling suffocating and sweet.

A deep liquid heat rushed through every vein in his body and pooled low and heavy in his stomach and thighs as soft pulsing rings of gold and crimson swam across his vision.

Every nerve on his skin lit up until the simple brush of her shirt against his chest felt like a burn.

GULP... GULP...

Her throat moved against his jaw in slow greedy swallows.

Her grip on his wrists changed.

She didn’t need force anymore... Her small fingers slid down and laced tight between his, her palms pressing flat against his palms on the sheets, holding his hands like they were something she was afraid to lose.

Tiny muffled whimpers spilled out of her against the crook of his neck, soft needy little sounds like someone dying of thirst finally plunging their face into a mountain spring, and her hips rolled forward on instinct, grinding down against his waist with every swallow as though her body was begging for more warmth.

Leo’s jaw clenched until his molars screamed.

He was twenty-one, exhausted, running on fumes, and pinned to a bed by a beautiful half-feral girl who was straddling his lap, moaning into his neck and grinding down on him with every pull of his blood.

His body didn’t ask for permission.

Under the thin fabric of his trousers, Leo went rock-hard.

With her hips pressed flush against his, there was nowhere for it to go as there was not a millimeter of air between them... and there was absolutely no way in hell she didn’t feel it.