Trapped with the Alien Transporter (Ragrim Explorations #1)

Chapter 15

Waking up in a strange room with an alien’s arm draped over her hip should have set off a thousand alarm bells, but Ophelia could only moan in protest at being awake and snuggle in closer. Hsinth’s cock against her ass didn’t even startle her at this point.

Tears started and fell, dampening the pillow beneath her head. Her face didn’t hurt from the cold, she was finally warm if not hot, since the room seemed to be set for whatever the default for Geshallans was, and she wasn’t going to turn into an ice mummy like those people in old pictures of Mount Everest.

And yet… and yet.

This wasn’t the room she’d come to think of as hers . She couldn’t hate the room on principle. It wasn’t Hsinth’s colorful mess of a nest, but the sheer fact that it was warm was doing a lot in its favor.

Opening her eyes meant she could see a door on the other side of the room from the entrance that hopefully meant there was some kind of a bathroom in there. With real water . She’d gotten unhappily used to the bacterial spray, but the thought of a hot shower and a toilet that maybe flushed was enough to lure her out from beneath the covers.

As she closed the door and started fiddling with the controls for the shower, she tried not to think about why she loathed where they were right now even as relief made her knees weak. Her time with Hsinth was coming to an end. That should be a good thing, right? It meant she could finally get to Ysenys, start her new job if it was even still available, make sure her grain spawn had survived the journey okay, and say goodbye to this hellish chapter in her life.

Water hitting her head unexpectedly had always made her jump, and this was no exception. It heated up fast, though, and before Ophelia could second guess her way back into old habits, she stripped her clothes off and stepped in. The feel of water cascading over her body was ecstasy once her hair was fully wet, and she grabbed a handful of soap from the wall dispenser and rubbed it in. Again and then again, before she realized with some chagrin that if she kept at it, there wouldn’t be anything left for Hsinth.

The cleansing gel left her skin feeling slightly sticky, even with her hair feeling far lighter than it had been. It wasn’t the made-for-humans stuff that she was sure Hsinth had on his ship, that was for sure.

Eventually she got the feeling that no matter how much she ran the water, she was going to continue to feel not quite clean no matter what, so she shut the water off and hit the dry button. Fast, warm air filled the small room, leaving both Ophelia and the room dry, though she could tell just by touch that her hair was frizzier than she’d like. It was still far better than she had been. While thoughtful, the bacteria spray had made her have to not touch her hair because of how greasy it always felt, and with how often she always ran her hands over her hair or her face, it had been just another thing ramping up her anxiety. Strange that even though they were safe, she still felt like she was walking around with her heart in her throat.

She loitered in the room as long as she could, bare as the day she’d been born. Going back out into the room meant either crawling back into the bed with Hsinth or waking him up. Did she pull his arms back around her and fool herself that things would stay the same between them? Push herself a little bit more down the path to falling for him? Waking him meant moving forward with what happened next. It meant talking about things that she didn’t want to talk about. Discussing Neshii. Discussing getting her to Ysenys. And then saying goodbye. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

She stood up from where she’d been perched on the toilet, stalling, and blinked.

Putting her gross clothes back on was one of the worst things she’d ever done, but she managed with a few of the top layers. The inner, more soiled ones could go into her bag. Right now all she could do was wake Hsinth up. Something had changed while she’d been moping.

It wasn’t the low hum that had always been present in Hsinth’s ship. If it had been, she might have started screaming and never stopped. The gravity felt different now, and she couldn’t tell if it meant that the ship had landed or something else was going on.

A ping sounded through the small room, stirring Hsinth out of his slumber just as Ophelia reached out to shake him.

“This is Yorth,” a familiar voice sounded from the gray talkbox next to the door. “We are in hyperspace now and your ship is in the bay.”

Hsinth stumbled out of the bed and over to the door. His clothes were rumpled but no worse than they’d been on the ship, and he glanced at her over one broad shoulder. “Yorth… Which one is that?”

Ophelia could only shrug. Was that the guy who had come into the ship or one of the others they hadn’t met yet? She wasn’t even sure how long they had been asleep. Long enough to pull the ship into the bay and jump past lightspeed, but how long had that taken?

Hsinth opened the door. The first alien they’d met stood on the other side. The red exosuit was gone, replaced by a plain black jumpsuit that highlighted the exotic red face and hands.

Pretty , she thought, though it was abstract. Gray trailed across his skin like a paint can had sprung a leak. She wanted to know what his alien heritage was, to put him in a neat box, though asking such a question of the people helping them would be really stupid.

“We’ll be at Neshii in a short amount of time,” Yorth said. “Do you need anything here?”

His eyes found Ophelia where she was sitting on the bed, tugging her boots on. His eyebrows rose.

“A payment plan?” Hsinth suggested. “I appreciate you responding out to the middle of nowhere like you did.”

Ophelia did a mental count to see how much money she had. She couldn’t let Hsinth pay whatever they wanted alone. Getting to Ysenys meant she could make more money, though she wouldn’t be as secure as she’d planned. Then there was whatever it would cost to fix the ship at Neshii Station… her fingers clenched around the edges of her boots.

“No charge,” Yorth said.

Hsinth stepped back. “Are you sure?”

Ophelia looked up.

“Call it a goodwill tour,” Yorth said. There was a smile on his face. “My brothers and I came from a difficult situation and are trying to… give back.”

“I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Ophelia said. “Thank you.”

She saw a look pass between the aliens.

“What’s a horse?” Yorth mouthed.

Hsinth shrugged.

All Ophelia could do was roll her eyes.

“Can we come out of the room?” she asked. “Not that I don’t like it here, but it’s a bit cramped.”

Anything to get out of the too-quiet white room. Anything to distract her from the fact that once Hsinth’s ship was fixed, they would be parting ways. If she lingered too much on it or held onto him too tight, he would know something was up.

What had started during their little confinement jaunt had to be out of desperation, right? Ophelia wanting to continue things the way they had, with the hovering and the constant touching and the kissing and sex and—fuck.

She really wanted to get some space.

“Please?” she asked, giving Yorth sad eyes over Hsinth’s shoulder.

“As long as you stay with me and don’t touch anything,” he said.

God, she was so fucked up that she couldn’t decide between being sad or relieved at the reprieve.

“Shower’s nice,” Ophelia said to Hsinth, dancing carefully around him so she they didn’t come in contact until they had time to sort everything out. “If you wanted to grab one.”

“I can take a hint,” Hsinth said, eyeing her. He didn’t say anything, and Ophelia was thankful. “Will this door stay unlocked when I want to leave?”

It took her a second to realize that he was talking to Yorth.

“Yes,” Yorth said. “For all of our sakes, please use the talkbox to call when you’re ready to come out. Xang can be… touchy about people in our space.”

“Xang is the one we met last night, right?” Ophelia asked.

Yorth nodded.

“So he’ll be careful,” Ophelia said. She fought the urge to reach out and squeeze Hsinth’s hand in warning. “Won’t you?” she asked Hsinth.

The Geshallan nodded. His eyes were fixed on Ophelia but the skin around them was dark in that streaky way she’d come to associate with stress.

She gave him a tight smile and followed Yorth out of the room. The door hissed closed behind them and she sighed, letting some of the stress that had been holding her upright go.

“Are you all right?” Yorth asked, looking slightly alarmed.

“Fine,” Ophelia said. “It’s just been a long few days. Weeks. Whatever.”

Yorth nodded. “As you say. This way, please.”

She followed him out one of the doors in that wide, plain entry hall. She’d been too tired to notice last night, but there were quite a few of them. This one led to a hallway and a lift that took them what her still dazzled inner ear perceived as up . The door opened into a long, wide room that Yorth led her through without comment. One of his streaky red and gray hands on the talkbox on one side of a huge metal panel made the room groan, then a long section of the wall slid back to reveal a viewport. Swirling purple and silver light told her that they were still in a hyperspace hop. It was different from what the view outside Hsinth’s ship had been, but not by much.

“So now that we are alone, I must ask,” Yorth said, leaning against the window in a way that Ophelia never would have dared to. “Things seem tense between you and your companion. If we placed you in the same room in error, I apologize. Are you being held against your will?”

Ophelia stared at him. A hysterical giggle rose in her throat. “By Hsinth? Ha—oh, fuck me, ha-ha, no.”

“So why did you seem unhappy?” Yorth asked.

She grimaced. “I just—jeez, it’s a lot. We’re, um, together but not at the same time. We had to be in close quarters to not freeze to death, and it meant dropping a lot of my personal boundaries, and now I’m afraid my human sentiments towards, uh, certain activities may have gotten me in trouble.”

Ugh. Word vomit.

The light dropped away to reveal bright pinpricks in the black of regular space. How close had they jumped to the station?

Ophelia glanced around, looking for anything that remotely resembled a space station, but all that was coming to mind was the old ISS.

“I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with humans,” Yorth said carefully, watching the same vista. Ophelia thought she would never get tired of seeing things like this, but Yorth just seemed lost in thought. “We haven’t had much contact with your people.”

“I’d like to say we’re starting to get around more,” she said, “but I can’t really speak to that. Like I said, I’m on my way to a more human-oriented colony. I guess sometimes we do tend to stick to ourselves. That’s why I’m not sure what’s going to happen with Hsinth after that.”

The alien looked interested. “Why?”

“This just started with him transporting me,” Ophelia said. “Things got… complicated down on the surface.”

Yorth actually snorted. “I know all about complications, trust me. We have our issues, my brothers and I.”

The look in his eyes was so rueful, so sad, that Ophelia couldn’t help herself. “It’s just the three of you here? I haven’t seen anyone else.”

“Yes.” Yorth seemed hesitant, but he pushed through it. “The ship takes care of a lot of things. It was built to make things easy for just one occupant. Having three of us here means some things are easier, but we’ve all had to pick up a lot of specialized repair skills to keep it running. There used to be more of us, but the rest scattered.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Ophelia asked. “But you all have that very unique skin, and I—”

A chime sounded from the door, cutting her off. It opened to reveal Hsinth and what she could only assume was the last brother. This one had gray cutting down across his left eye and forehead. A pair of goggles was down around his neck, and unlike Yorth, he wore a pair of overalls bristling with tools.

“I told you they would be here,” Kovi said to Hsinth.

Hsinth looked at Ophelia, then past her, and his eyes widened.

She turned around.

The great gray bulk of what she could only assume was Neshii Station rose in the viewport. Huge box-cradles that could encompass even Yorth’s ship sprouted from a slender central cylinder like spokes from a wheel, stacking up and down the length in pairs. Two… four… six… sixteen, her brain finally told her. Sixteen cradles, and only half of them were occupied.

They could get Hsinth’s ship repaired, but at what cost?

And what would happen to them after that?