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Fal’ran continued, his voice fond and eager. “Imagine how good it’s gonna be when we have some actual time and space.”
Patrick glanced up into his face to see him smirking, his full lips twisted around his gleaming tusks. So he let the self-doubt go and shook his head with a smile as he pulled the soiled shirt over Fal’ran’s head. He brushed a thumb along the edge of one of Fal’ran’s tusks as he went, and a spark of warmth lit in those orange eyes and flew straight to Patrick’s heart.
Patrick balled Fal’ran’s shirt up and tossed it to the side. He pulled his own over his head. “Here. Put this on, I’ll just do up my jacket.”
“That’s one way to get your scent on me.” Fal’ran pulled Patrick’s tank on and lifted the collar to his nose.
“Not that I’d notice.” Patrick zipped his jacket all the way up, hoping to cover the mark Fal’ran had left on his throat. “I don’t even know what I smell like.”
“You smell like—”
“I didn’t ask.” Patrick snatched up the oxygen canister and Fal’ran’s shirt. “Come on, lean on me.”
When he turned to offer his arm for support, Fal’ran frowned at him with those shrewd eyes. Patrick waited for him to ask why Patrick was being weird about his smell, not sure how he’d answer if he did. But Fal’ran didn’t. He put his arm over Patrick’s shoulders and rested his weight on him, his long legs shaking.
“Let’s get you back to your quarters.” Patrick steered them toward the transport, walking slowly. Fal’ran hobbled along beside him, making tight, pained noises. “The team was worried about you.”
“Yeah, I saw Sazahk on the balcony with a tablet.” Fal’ran chuckled. “I wasn’t sure if he was checking on me or studying me.”
“It was Sazahk. It was probably both.”
“I think studying people is how he shows he cares.” Fal’ran pressed the button to call the transport. “And Bar’in does it by yelling.”
“That sounds right.” Patrick maneuvered them to lean against the wall. He closed his eyes, enjoying Fal’ran beside him and the comfort between them. He’d never been this comfortable with anyone. Even with Mal’ik, there’d been a distance that wasn’t there between him and Fal’ran. Not right now, at least. Maybe it was the glow of an orgasm—for one of them at least, Patrick’s balls still throbbed enough to remind him he hadn’t gotten off—but it felt like more than that. Patrick couldn’t say how much more, or more of what, but more.
Fal’ran sighed. “I’m going to get yelled at tonight, aren’t I?”
“Oh, most definitely,” Patrick snorted. “And tomorrow morning, too, probably. Aren’t teams great?”
“Yeah,” Fal’ran squeezed Patrick’s shoulder and looked down at the floor with an embarrassed looking half smile. “I think maybe they are.”
Chapter Fourteen
The next day, after a morning going over briefings and lunch alone because no one risked being seen with him, Patrick couldn’t find his team for the life of him.
He knew they’d had morning training because, when he’d given them their routine before heading off to his meetings, they’d already dressed in their fatigues. But by the time he’d searched for them in the training wing after lunch, they were nowhere to be found. The training wing was huge. Part simulated city, part simulated wilderness, part flat training grounds with running tracks, weight rooms, shooting ranges, sparring rooms, and more.
But it had strict entry and exit logging and camera streams into every nook and cranny and Bar’in, Tar, Fal’ran, and Sazahk had all come and gone before lunch. That aligned with Patrick’s estimation of how long training should have taken, but now they weren’t in their quarters, and they weren’t in the mess, so where the hell were they? He’d sent them all messages, and he knew they’d all received standard issue tablets, but whatever they were doing was keeping them too involved to answer.
His heart sank and he paused at a corner on the main thoroughfare. He felt guilty for the thought, but now that he’d had it, he couldn’t dismiss it, so he turned left and trudged toward the brig. If they’d gotten into a fight and been taken into custody, the military police should have contacted him. But that could take hours if the officers on duty were swamped or bitter.
But—thank fucking god—he didn’t find anyone from his team in the main holding cell, just a couple of drunks and brawlers that he didn’t recognize, and they weren’t in the booking computer either.
He groaned as he left the building. Base Givast was only slightly smaller than Lewis Station. It was an entire military base built to house a fighting force for the duration of a war and take that fighting force to whatever system it needed to go to. It was a city and his team had gone missing in it.
He’d checked the training wing, recreational wing, administrative wing, the running track–Patrick blushed as he counted that one off on his fingers—and the hangar. That left the medical bay and science wing. He hoped to God they weren’t in the medical bay. Surely, he would have heard about that. The science wing was the best bet, what with Sazahk’s role and fascination with all things learning. Patrick would have checked it sooner except that when he’d brought up the wing to him before the qesh had turned blue and purple, made a dour face, and informed him that there was nothing in that over-funded, poorly staffed, set of sterilized rooms that the cartel hadn’t already provided him.
Patrick hadn’t pushed the subject.
He zipped along the transport tube to the ship’s farthest module. Base Ship Givast’s architects had put the science wing in the back, away from the engines and the barracks, in case an experiment went wrong. When he arrived in the atrium, he checked the podium computer for the entry and exit logs and let out a puff of breath, both relieved and frustrated.
There they fucking were.
He found them all in the largest lab on the port side, a well-appointed space with a windowed wall, a view of Qesha below them and workstations scattered about. Sazahk sat at the largest workstation. The dark-haired, light-eyed Dominic Turner, who still made Patrick’s blood boil, occupied the large screen mounted above him. Tar sat on a stool beside Sazahk, the small slender thing somehow not crumpling under his weight. Bar’in stood beside Fal’ran at another table, running a test tube under his nose while Fal’ran squeezed a tiny drop of sky-blue liquid into another tube.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you all,” Patrick groused as the door slid shut behind him. He’d planned to snap a lot harder, scolding them for not reporting their movements to their squad leader and reminding them they were at war and needed to be ready to act at a moment’s notice. But the sight of them all so content with each other while they bustled around a lab, of all places, softened him to goo. Even if they’d invited Dominic Turner to do it with them.
“Sazahk!” Bar’in rolled his eyes as he lowered the test tube from his nose. “You didn’t send the message, did you?”
