Author's note: This chapter primarily features our feline female in some heavy femme-domme type scenes, but it does also contain some M/M stuff. So, if bi dudes ain't your thing, then this ain't your story and I'd move on. Thanks for reading. I promised chapter 3 wouldn't take 8 more years to get out, and it didn't!
She took a deep breath, counted to ten, and slowly exhaled. Counted to ten again before inhaling once more. Lather, rinse repeat. She'd lost track of how long she'd been sitting there, again, while a blend of machine sounds and shouting echoed up through the hold.
Without turning to look behind her, the young Kithkran merely lifted a delicate orange furred hand- paw? Hand. - to the slim figure that was behind her.
"Fuckin' space me how the fuck you do that I'll never figure" he said, lapsing a bit on the creativity of his usually colorful cursing. He handed her the cup of tea that he'd brought her.
"When you learn to stop making so much noise, then too will you learn to listen." she replied rather smugly. She enjoyed how much her superior sense of hearing and awareness tended to amaze him. Kithkrans have better hearing than humans even without cybernetics, and her implants didn't do much for the auditory. Her right eye was cybernetic, and she was using its infrared range to keep an eye on the man she called her "Tiger Lord" as he worked, though the occasional sparks and flame from grinders and welding torches would obscure him.
She sighed again and took in the smell of the hot tea. It was one she had not had before, something exotic that Onas must have brought himself; its spiceful aroma was outside the realm of what her lover and Kritka would have enjoyed. She decided to reach out to him with her implants, linking them together. It wasn't something they did often, but it was always an intense and intimate experience.
The young tiger immediately felt like she was awash with flames. Both the very real heat and fire of his machining, as well as the heat of his anger and frustration at the equipment he was working on. Her body tensed up as she tried not to get lost in the connection and let his mind's fire take over. She breathed deep once more, taking a sip of the tea to calm herself, and tried to project that calm outwards to him. She sent her deep love for him as well, reassuring her master that she would support him and would give him whatever he needed if he would only ask.
She felt the flames in his mind abate a little bit, cooled by the nurturing intentions she was sending out to him. He made sure his care for her flowed back through the link, and an apology for worrying her. He reassured his kit that he would be fine, he just needed to work through this and could not stop in the middle. She nodded and assured him she would leave him to it and would be there the moment he was done.
She disconnected from his implants. "How long do you think he will be at this?" she asked, and not for the first time.
The young man took a bit before answering. He was leaned against the frame of the open hatch, warming his hands holding his own mug of the tea. His bright green eyes scanned the hold, not sure what he was looking for but looking nonetheless. He knew she could see what their de facto captain was up to better than he could, though her mining and mech experience was still fresh enough she may not really know what he was doing.
Hell,
Onas thought,
I
don't really know what the man is doing.
Onas could practically pull a ship apart and put it back together while sleeping, but the chem needed to tinker with the refinery gear was something else. Inverters and electromagnets he could do, but chem? Might as well be magic.
Scrunching up his decidedly pretty face, framed with straw blonde hair, he finally said "I got more cocks hangin' off me than I got ideas, love, so that rounds up to zero." He took a long sip of the tea, its strange herbal bite perking him up a bit. "If you want, uh. Uhm."
She smiled as she discerened his dilemma. "You may call me 'kit' as well, Onas."
He smiled, lips parting to show his bright whites just a bit. "Sorry, kit, wasn't sure where I stood in this...whatever the fuck this is goin' on here. Den? Pack? Fuckin' whatever it is. You ain't MY kit, you're Jek's, I don't want to step over any bounds."
"You may call me 'kit,'" she repeated. "You have earned that right." And earned it he had. He'd only been aboard for about three days for their trip out to their target system to pull some ore for a contract, but in those three days he'd proven himself more than just a foul-mouthed miner, but a capable pilot, adequate sparring partner, and an attentive lover- to the both of them. Though he barely knew her, because Jek cared for her, he cared for her as well. And while she did not submit to him the way she did to her Kritka, her Tiger Lord, she did still rather enjoy pleasing him.
"Uh, well Kit, I could ask 'im. But you know Jek, when he's like this. He's got some space-brained idea 'bout upping the efficiency of that refining rig some little ten percent and he ain't stopping for nothin' short of a brace of pirate coupes droppin' on us, or that fuzzy little ass of yours."
She smiled, still watching her master with her electronic eye through a haze of smoke from something that had just had a minor explosion. "Or yours," she replied.