Andie laid beside Oliver, face-to-face, their bodies flush, nestled perfectly—like gummy bears melting together, fused, the lines blurred. His right arm wrapped around her body, his hand pressed possessively into the small of her back.

He is alive. He is alive. He is alive. At this moment, Andie didn't care about drones, evil mothers-in-law, awful assistants, valiant spaceships, her best friend, hunger, or annoying inner voices. Only that Oliver existed—his breath hot and spicy, stirring her hair.

"I heard that," Bad Andie said. Andie ignored her to the extent it was possible to ignore such a relentless pest.

Andie sniffled. At this point, she'd shed all the tears her body could produce. Lifting her head, she peered at Oliver through her lashes, covertly studying his condition. No need to alarm him.

Despite a blue sheen in his eyes, his face appeared rather gray, and tiny beads of sweat clung to his forehead. Being wholly unschooled in alien physiology, Andie could not exactly diagnose what kind of shape he was in, other than to conclude he did not look right. Where was a medical tricorder when you needed one? She moved a few inches further away to get a better look at the rest of him.

"No," he rasped. "Come back."

"I promise I will as soon as I've determined you don't need any weird alien first aid."

He managed a weak grin. "Are you a physician?"

"No, but I've been to doctors. Human ones. I mean, obviously human ones. But even if I was a doctor, your spleen is probably somewhere in your thigh, and your hypothalamus could be in your ear canal or big toe." Andie exhaled in frustration. "I honestly know nothing about your physiology."

He pressed his groin into hers, and two things became apparent: 1. Oliver was feeling better, and 2. She knew something about his physiology.

"How did I ...?" He glanced down at what was left of the hole in his spacesuit.

"I'm not sure. But I think it had something to do with my all-new blue lightning superpowers."

"You saved my life."

"I believe I did. But I would sure like to know why I caught these powers from you. Like some sexually transmitted disease." Andie gulped. Could it be ...? A fleeting thought passed through Andie's mind. So shocking she could not even entertain it.

Oliver's head jerked upward. He scanned the sky, eyes widening.

"What's wrong?" Andie said.

"Drones," Oliver whispered. "They're about a mile away. They must be searching the beach."

"Do you mean one of those ten-foot tall metallic jellyfish thingies?" Aside from the slapping of the waves against the beach and the occasional shriek from one of those screeching birds, the beach was quiet. Somehow, these birds seemed at odds with the whole celebrity paradise idea. Paradise should have Vivaldi or a nice delicate lark song or perhaps the industrious hum of a ten key, but gulls? "I hear nothing."

"Keep your voice down. Drones have excellent audio recognition. You've seen one?"

Andie nodded. "But last I saw, it was trapped in the door of The Big Guns, heading into outer space."

"It must have been a scout. How long was I out?" He coughed and then winced. "There is not much time. We need to take cover while I finish regenerating."

"Where?" Oliver nodded past her shoulder. She turned. About fifty yards up the beach, a tiny thatched cabana stood nestled between two gangly trees. Kind of like palms, but with feathery blood-red fronds. "Can you walk?"

"I think so," he said, grimacing as he tried to sit. "Maybe with a little help."

"I'm here," Andie said.

She wrapped her arm around his shoulders, and they tripped and stumbled down the beach. Without the additional strength from the magical spacesuit, this wouldn't have been possible because her dear alien boyfriend was as easy to maneuver as a neutron star. If she was going to search for the mall with the big red shoe, Andie would have to leave Oliver behind and drag Sterling back here by herself. And then what? They had no spaceship. Andie sighed. Here she thought this would be the simple part of the rescue operation. But she could not abandon Oliver in his condition.

Arriving breathless at the cabana, a sheen of sweat trickling down Andie's spine, she kicked open the straw door, breaking off a hinge as they fell inside. She ended up collapsing on top of Oliver in a flurry of sand. He grunted.

"Sorry," she said, trying to dismount. But he would have none of it. He pulled her tight against him.

"Now who is destroying doors?" Barely suppressed laughter rippled through him, doing the most interesting things to her breasts.

She tried to ignore the tightening of her nipples, straining against the jumpsuit. She blushed. How unprofessional. Andie was the absolute worst nurse ever. Getting turned-on by her patient. She cleared her throat. "That door was flimsy. Not like you with the metal Accounting door or the planetarium bathroom door or ... I can't even remember how many doors you've destroyed." He shifted her a little lower. More nipple stimulation ensued.

"Never ignore your nipples!" Bad Andie scolded. "Have I taught you nothing?"

For once Andie wanted to heed Bad Andie's advice/demands. "We could get obliterated by a drone."

"Worry wort."

"I have every right to be a worry wort. Whatever a wort is. Nothing has gone right since I met that strawberry margarita-swigging cowboy."

Oliver pushed her hair away from her face, blue lightning returning to his eyes. Tingles raced along her neck, down her breasts, and into her core.

"I don't think everything has gone wrong," Bad Andie gloated.

"What would you know? I'm the one who has to do all the work."

"If that's what you want to believe."

"... Andromeda? Andie? Are you all right?"

Andie shook her head, trying to dispel the effects of Bad Andie. "What? Yes. Why wouldn't I be? Other than that I'm on an alien moon; my friend is still in captivity; we are in danger of being annihilated by jellyfish drones, and I still haven't quite recovered from the worst five minutes of my life. I thought your mother had killed you." Andie managed another tear.

"My mother ...?" Oliver patted the spot on his uniform where the last remnants of the laser blast were mending and shook his head. "Where are my parents?"

"They left," Andie said. "Do you remember what happened?"

Anguish moved across his face. "Star! Star is gone!"

"I'm sorry, Oliver. Truly." Her voice caught in her throat. "I know she meant a lot to you. And she gave her life to help us."

"Thank you, Andromeda. But do not worry, my little galaxy. Star and you share a common trait."

"What's that?"

"Neither of you gives up easily." Andie wondered what exactly he meant by that. She had seen the ship break apart with her own eyes. "And I believe Star was protecting you," he said.

"I think it was more you."

He arched his brow. "I do not know about that. There was something she was trying to tell me. Right before we Wormholed."

"What was it?"

"My brain is not currently working at full capacity. I cannot remember what it was. And I remember nothing after the Big Guns landed, and my mother came out pointing a laser at you." He clenched his teeth and swallowed. "If she had shot you, my Andromeda, I do not know what I would have done."

His face told her everything about what he would have done. It was like an entire opera's worth of drama, pain, destruction, and anguish crossed his features. Good that he didn't remember what had happened. Who had shot him. But should she tell him? What was the protocol regarding informing someone that his mother had inadvertently shot him, and that his father was going to "reconstitute" said "mother?" That she wasn't even his original mother.

Oliver needed to focus whatever reserves he had on healing, not worrying about something in the past. But families are never in the past. Even when they're far away, they're like ghosts, whispering in our ears. Guiding our every move.

Oliver's stubbornness and passion came from Cyra. Where he got his morality was unknown. Perhaps Cyra 1.0 had that.

And Andie, who had become obsessed with numbers because facts were more reliable than her father. The father she blamed all these years for stealing from the studio and subsequently ending up in jail. And now Andie realized her father was a victim. The Amu had instigated his crime. Maybe if not for them, he would never have become a criminal.

Andie brushed her lover's stick-straight brown hair out of his eyes. "Oliver ..."

"Shhh," he said, breathing into her ear while trying to soothe her with long, firm strokes from her neck, down her back, rounding over her behind.

"Where did you learn to massage like that?"

"Well ...."

Why was he hesitating? Could it be that he had done this with Talia? Her stomach twisted in jealousy. "I have a massage module in my microchip," Oliver explained. "The Amu know many things about earth through our microchips. Speaking earth's languages, for example."

Andie's stomach calmed down, but her libido did not. "You better stop the rubbing if you don't want to expose us." Andie half-heartedly pushed his hand away. "What other modules do you possess?" she said, trying to get her mind off of Oliver. His smell. His hard body. His lush, kissable lips.

"I will test them all out on you once we are alone and safe." He kissed her. Tentatively at first, but then deeply. Possessively. She moaned into his mouth. Andie wanted him, despite all her worry. She wanted him badly. Even with the magical spacesuit, her entire body was on fire.

"Yes. I do. I like it a lot. How do you get out of this damned suit?" She clawed at the collar. She could've sworn there was an opening in it when she put it on, but it seemed to have bound itself together like the blast hole in Oliver's suit. Damn! Andie knew with every ounce of her being that this was going to be the best sex ever had by any two or five or seven or even a whole orgy-worth of beings, in the entire universe.

"Where have I heard that before?" Bad Andie teased.

"Are you complaining?"

"Not one bit. Just enjoying the fruits of my tutelage. Mmmmmm."

"Andromeda?"

"Yes?"

"The drones. They are close."

"No, no, no. Not now. They had to get somewhere where they could be alone and safe for thirty seconds. Because that was about how long the whole lovemaking operation was likely to take. "Wait. Why don't we just Wormhole out of here?" She kissed his jaw. Nibbled his ear. Pulled harder on the collar of her suit. "We can Wormhole to the mall. Maybe to a nice, quiet storage room?"

"It is not possible to Wormhole on the Colony," Oliver said. "And keep your voice down."

"But why can't we?" she whisper-whined. We Wormholed to the lunar surface.

"True, but now that we are on the surface, there is a Wormhole blocker in place. I'm sorry, Andromeda. I would like to take you right now. But we shall have to wait."

"I would like to point out," Andie said, still not giving up on the idea of sating her lust, "that the drone is not here at present, and that this will not take long."

"When I make love to you, it will take a very long time. Because I have plans. Many plans. Once I have you alone." He gave her a wolfish grin that also turned Andie on and clouded her thinking. It was like having fiberglass insulation around her brain.

"We're alone now," Andie pointed out, rather logically she thought.

"As much as I would like to worship your body right this very moment, if the drone finds us, we could end up incarcerated or worse—on intergalactic television. Then the Producers would ensure that we never find Sterling. This moon is not like earth. Which means not getting amorous, my electric little human." He squeezed her in his arms and kissed her so profoundly, her toes curled.

"God! That is not helping. And don't say it. I know you're not an honest-to-goodness god." She buried her head in his neck, his warm skin smelling of pumpkin spice. "What do you mean, we would be on intergalactic television? Surely there are not cameras everywhere."

"Oh yes, there are. On The Colony, a celebrity cannot use the toilet without it being broadcast to billions of intergalactic households."

"That's disgusting."

"Utterly. But ... ratings."

Outside, a loud buzzing noise combined with what sounded like walkie-talkie static interference crackled overhead. Andie looked up at the ceiling of the hut and then at Oliver asking a silent question.

He nodded and pulled her closer. She held her breath. It felt like hours had passed. She decided it was probably best if she resumed breathing. She gulped in alien air. The gravity and air on this moon were similar to earth's. Most likely, they chose this moon for this reason if it was to be the home of a reality show starring human beings.

The buzzing got even louder. Maybe breathing hadn't been such a good idea. But then her stomach rumbled like an 18-wheeler in a thunderstorm.