Page 143 of Tracked and Taken

“That is the shower.”

“Sure, sweetheart.”

The lift opens at level six.

He walks me the forty-two meters to my door at the half-pace he runs when he’s escorting me, right shoulder slightly behind mine, the pace that acknowledges the territory is mine. At my door, his hand stays at my back. His tail unwinds from my wrist. The unwinding is the slowest thing his tail has done in my presence. The last inch of it strokes across my pulse like a kiss it is not allowed to be in the corridor.

“Lunch,” I say. “1230. South radial.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Don’t be early.”

“I am not going to make any promises, sweetheart.”

He kisses me at the door.

It is supposed to be quick. It is not quick. His mouth opens. His canine grazes my lower lip. For three seconds I am back in the cubicle with his fingers in me and the mark in his mouth, and then he sets me back on my feet like a male who has remembered, just in time, that I have a director to meet.

Then he goes.

I watch him walk to the lift. He doesn’t turn back.

His tail is in the loose curl it runs when his body is satisfied with an outcome.

He is so smug and I don’t even mind.

I go inside. My hands are not as steady as a Head of Security’s hands are supposed to be.

My quarters are exactly as I left them, which is the problem.

Bed made. Datapad squared on the nightstand. The personal terminal on standby. The print on the counter, my mother’s garden, the only personal item in the room, at the angle it has held for four years.

The room is perfect.

The room is also, this morning, lonely in a way I have not, in the four years I have lived in it, allowed myself to clock. It smells like me and station soap. It does not smell like him. The absence is a physical fact. The bond ticks once, distant, as if he felt me notice it.

I set the kettle on.

SENTRY chimes.

“Natalie, you have a document in your queue from JINX.”

I get a mug down.

“What kind of document.”

“It is titled ‘Treaty.’”

“Read it.”

“Reading. Proposed inter-AI coordination agreement between JINX, attached to Operative Vosk, and SENTRY, attached to Head of Station Security Torres. Six articles. Annex pending.”

“Six articles?”

“Six, confirmed.”

“Read the articles.”