Once again it’s time for another episode of Dragon Ascending.  Last week we saw that Ascent is not immune to jealousy. This week tempers flare. As I mentioned, I am now attempting to post episodes at lengths that will be better suited for the flow of the story and enhance your reading pleasure. Some will be slightly shorter, some will be longer. I hope you find this switch-up helpful. I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, the sequel to Piloting Fury, as much as I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, I love it when you share my work with your reading friends, so feel free. In the meantime, enjoy!

If you missed the previous episode of  Dragon Ascending follow the link for a catch-up. If you wish to start from the beginning, of Dragon Ascending. Follow the link.  

For those of you who would like to read the complete novel, Piloting Fury, book one of the Sentient Ships series, follow the link to the first instalment.

 

 

Dragon Ascending: Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felish, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.

Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.

 

Dragon Ascending Part 49: Why Did You Say it When You Knew it Would Hurt?

She was barely out the bathroom door, still wrapped in a towel, when D said, “Is this Arji Finkle’s your lover?”

“What? Of course not, Ascent. He’s been like an uncle to me. I’ve never thought of him in any other way.”

“That is certainly not the way he thinks of you.”

“So I noticed.” She slipped out of the towel and began to dress.

“He kissed you. Twice.”

“I know that, Ascent. I was there remember? I didn’t kiss him back, but I don’t suppose you noticed that since you were too busy growling in my ear. Jesu Vaticanus, Ascent, I was trying to do my job, what I was sent for.”

“And if that job had involved fucking him?”

She pulled her shirt on over her shoulders with so much force she nearly ripped a seam. “If it would have kept you and Fury safe, if it would have gotten rid of the Fallons, I would have done what I had to do, yes.”

“Is that how you paid for your passage on the Dart.”

If he had gut punched her it couldn’t possibly have hurt any more, and with everything else that had happened today, she wasn’t up for anymore.  “Get out now! Get the fuck out, or I swear I’ll go sleep in the goddamned sandstorm outside. Get out!”

“You cannot go out. You’ve been forbidden,” came the irritatingly smug reply.

“I’m not a goddamned little girl!” She jerked her trousers up over her ass and scrambled for her boots. “I’m not a prisoner and I’m not a fucking whore. But even if I was, it would be honest work. And guess what, you judgmental son of a bitch, it was two whores who kept me alive and nursed me back to health. And they treated me with respect!” The last word broke in her throat and the room around her refracted and glistened through tears she blinked back. “Now get the fuck out!” She threw a boot in the general direction of where she thought he stood, then she grabbed it back, jerked it on along with the other, stumbling about the room on one foot. It wasn’t dignified, but nothing about what was happening was dignified. She shouldered her pack and turned back toward the door.

“Where are you going? I will not let you go out? You cannot. It is not safe.”

“If you’re not leaving, I will. This room is not the only place I can go.” As she shoved through the door, she stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “At least Arji would treat me with respect and kindness. Is that a part of your memory you lost as well, how to be kind, how to be decent because if it is, then what’s the pissing point of any of this?”

She left.

 

“I did not mean that the way you took it.” He seemed to be walking along beside her.

She picked up her pace. “Then why did you say it? You knew it would hurt. First you say I’m your home and then you accuse me of … of letting those men do what they did, as if I have ever given you any reason not to trust me. What is it, Ascent? Can you really not know my heart any better than you allow me to know yours? Fury knows my heart. His compliment know my heart, and they barely know me. But you! You can’t seem to forgive me for not being your goddamn compliment, who’s been dead for twenty years. Do you think I don’t see my own inadequacies every day? Hell I’ve lived with them every day for the past ten years!”

“I don’t compare you to her. You compare yourself.” He grabbed her by the arm, and she took the chance and slapped, feeling the sting of her palm as it contacted the representation of flesh.

“Not only do you have no memory, but you’re in complete denial, and yet when I spend an hour with a friend doing what little I can do to help this mission, you turn that into another flaw that doesn’t measure up. You’re darling companion would never have let a friend kiss her.”

“Shut up!”

“Your darling companion would have never ended up on a fucking pile of sand in the middle of nowhere working as a goddamned salvager.”

“Shut up, Lenore.”

“You’re darling companion would have never crawled onboard a ship and got herself savaged because she wanted a better life.”

 

 

“Lenore stop it!” The words were only half articulated, half spoken pressed against her mouth, as he jerked her into his arms with such force that the bones in her neck cracked.

She slapped him again and shoved free. “What? The goddamned truth hurts, does it? Well does it?” She shoved both hands hard against his chest, but he rooted, grabbed her arms and back walked her to the closest wall, trapping her wrists above her head with one hand. The other cupped her chin with such force that for a moment she was frightened, and then she kissed him hard before she even realized what she was doing, biting his lip until he opened and took her tongue into his mouth. “You’re a fucking asshole!” She said pulling away from his mouth only long enough for the words to escape against his lips, and then he lifted her up against the wall, cupping her butt in both palms while what? Had he cuffed her hands over her head?

“You’re a reckless, naïve child.” He ripped open her shirt and buried his face in between her cupped breasts, tonguing and licking his way to the nearest nipple, then he bit. It hurt, and it made her wet, and she fisted his hair and pulled him closer feeling the nibble and suck all the way down between her legs.

But she wasn’t ready to let it go yet and she pulled his hair. “The only thing you fucking remember is how to be surly and hurt me, and I’m not a child.”

“No! No you are not.” She was startled to find herself completely naked. Well, he’d made her clothes; there was no reason why he couldn’t unmake them just as easily. He fingered her open and slid inside her, and this time, the pain of being entered so roughly sent waves of pleasure up and down her spine, all culminating in her own hard heat at her center. “You are a goddamn woman, a wild creature, untamable, and you drive me fucking crazy.” He thrust so hard it took her breath away, and she came in waves. “I cannot stand the thought of anyone else touching you the way I want to touch you, wanting you the way I want you, and I will not have this … bartender, pawing over you every time you go to Sandstorm. I don’t care what he can tell you.”

“You stupid bastard!” she kicked him hard in the kidneys and bit his neck until she felt him surge inside her. “Have you lost your superior intelligence with your memory? Goddamn it, Ascent, it’s you I want?” She clamped down on him hard and felt his fingers bruising her ass, felt his chest expand against her and then every muscle went tight. “It’s you I want and nobody else. Are you too stupid to figure that out?” And then he pulled her so tight, he was practically inside her ribcage, and she was inside him, and together they came in waves and the world fell away around them, except a flash of memory Ascent’s memory, and it hit like the sandstorm after dusk.

“Come back to bed, my love. Nothing will happen tonight. And you are exhausted.” Ascent’s voice came from a long way off, in the memory. “I shall make love to you and together we shall keep the rest of the galaxy at bay for a little while longer.” And then he was thrusting and grinding and caressing a woman, pale in the ambient lighting, and yet dark haired, her face was pressed to his, and they were one, more one that Len ever knew two people could be.

And then it was Ascent and her again, and they were one, more one than she could have ever dreamed it possible to be, and she felt whole. But it was the place of a compliment to feel whole with her Bonded. Was it possible that her body felt another woman’s memories, her muscle memories of love with Ascent? Surely he could never feel that for her.

Back in her quarters, in her bed, Ascent held her close and spoke against her throat between kisses. “Lenore, I am sorry for what I said, all the words I did not mean. I am not sorry for the sex it brought about.”

She didn’t respond. His mouth was suddenly no longer on her neck, and as her legs fell open, and he found his way to the place he’d already left tender and quivering, intimate, almost too intimate, closer than her heart, and yet, somehow she felt farther than ever from his in her inadequacy.