Page 155 of Tracked and Taken

“Mute.”

“Muted.”

A pause. Then, not muted at all:

“Sentry has moved Article Seven off pending. One transmission per cycle. Personal classification.”

“Congratulations, JINX.”

“…Correspondence,” JINX says, in the register of a system naming a folder it intends to live in.

“Mute.”

“Muted.”

I walk.

The walk takes me through Finder’s Market, past the chai vendor at the corner where Tev pours Natalie’s morning cup, past two of her security officers off-duty at a noodle stand that is not the noodle stand we are going to. The two officers see me. They give me a small nod. The nod is the we know our boss is bonded and we know it is to you and we are not, today, going to make this weird nod.

I return it.

I walk slower.

Six days ago, I walked through this same market on day one of the case, and a male of Natalie’s command would have given me the Draelith civilian contractor of unconfirmed status nod, which is a nod with very different content. The new nod is one I am, and I am willing, now, to admit this in the privacy of my skull, enjoying.

I can still smell her on my hands if I lift them. I do not lift them in the market. I think about her open collar the whole way.

I see her at 1228.

She is at the noodle stand. Hair down. Mark visible. Collar open at the second button. A small folded printout in her hand, which is the lunch order she pre-filed on the way over, because she is a woman who pre-files lunch orders.

She has not seen me yet.

I stop at four meters and look at her.

Mine.

My chest does the thing it has been doing since the morning of day one, and which I have now stopped trying to discipline it out of doing. My cock remembers the tiles and the sound she made and the fact that I have not been inside her since last night.

I close the four meters.

She looks up.

The smile she gives me is small. Private. Then her eyes drop to my mouth, and I have to put my hand on the back of the stool or I am going to put it in her hair in front of the noodle stand.

I am going to remember this moment for the rest of my career.

We sit at two stools at a small bar table. The noodles arrive. My tail finds her ankle under the table. Skin. Warm. I wrap and I hold and I stroke once up the inside of her Achilles because I can, and because she is sitting in public with my mark on her throat and I want something of mine on her that the radial cannot see.

She doesn’t look at me. She picks up her chopsticks.

“Your hair is down.”

“I am off shift.”

“You are off shift for forty-five minutes, Natalie.”

“Forty-three.”