7
Jamie
Sittingin the cockpit of the Valor felt like a dream, or hallucination, or just so bizarre it seemed I was having an out-of-body experience. Maybe it was being with Alex, because what we’d done in the control room… God, that had been incredible. Insane.
We’d been like teenagers with heavy petting and getting off. The not-sex had been hotter than any actual sex I’d ever had.
It had taken a while, but we’d pulled ourselves together. Set our uniforms to rights, found a washing station to rinse the evidence from our hands. I’d felt like a rebellious teenager sneaking around, and it was fun. I loved that we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I’d never felt like this about anyone I’d dated. I looked at Alex and I wanted.
He led me back to the ship, my hand in his, and this time we climbed inside.
I might have almost come again when I gripped the controls. It was real. Alex was real. All of this… Velerion. I was slowly catching on to it being reality. Maybe it was the sound Alex had made when he’d come all over my hand, the hot spurts rock-solid confirmation that he was as into me as I was with him.
Rock-solid. Hah! Just like his—
“Ready, Starfighter?” he asked.
“I can’t believe this. It’s exactly like the game.” Now I sat in the cockpit of the Valor. The seat was similar to my gaming chair but better. It fit me… perfectly. I watched a hand, my hand, touch the holographic displays that told me the ship was full of fuel, loaded with weapons, and ready to go.
Alex settled into his seat beside me and buckled his harness into place. “Secure your harness, Jamie. This is not a game.”
His voice was deep and back in control. The only time he’d lost it had been under my touch.
Excitement mixed with terror made my fingers shake as I pulled the harness over my shoulders and buckled myself into the pilot’s seat. This was one thing that I hadn’t done in the game, but the feel of the straps, the snug security, was a promise that I’d feel every thrust and every turn I made in the responsive starfighter.
“I can’t believe this.”
“Do I need to take you back to the control room and convince you some more?”
My laughter rang through the small space, and I was shocked at the sound. I didn’t sound like me. I sounded wild. Happy.
Free.
Maybe it was the orgasm. Maybe it was the hot guy beside me. Maybe it was this ship. A real, live starfighter spaceship.
Maybe I was thinking too much.
I pulled the control station forward, and it locked in place across my thighs, the joystick and control-pad button arrangement exactly like what had come with the gaming package on Earth.
“Even the controls are the same.”
“What good would come from training our Starfighters on control systems that they were not going to use?”
I thought about that for a moment, staring at the joystick and control pad. “I can’t tell you how weird this is.”
Alex’s large hand appeared from nowhere and settled over both of mine, which I’d been wringing in front of the joystick, afraid to touch the darn thing. It made my mind go to what those fingers had done just a short time ago. He was skilled at more than just flying.
“These controls will launch the Valor into space. This ship is real. The weapons are real. If you are not prepared to attempt your first flight, we can do this another time.”
“No. Let’s go. I want to see what she can do.”
I leaned my head back against the seat, which looked and felt like dark gray suede.
Alex reached out and pushed a button on the controls in front of us. I smiled as the translucent cockpit shell lowered into place over our heads without making a sound. As the alien graphite composite—which the entire ship was made of and was supposedly much, much stronger than any metal we had on Earth—locked us inside, everything within me settled. It was so strange and yet completely familiar at the same time.
Had even one thing been different, I would have hesitated. But I knew this ship, every single control and display. Even the docking bay where the ships were held looked identical to the videos I’d seen inside the game. The symbols. The uniforms. The ships and walls and people. Except for the control room. I hadn’t known that was there. If I had…
Everything suddenly felt more real to me than anything else had in my life. I’d spent hundreds of hours playing the game with Alex at my side. I lifted our joined hands to my lips and kissed the back of his fingers. “I want to fly, Alex.”