Page 185 of Tracked and Taken

My hand at the small of her back. My tail at her wrist. Her stride at the half-pace I have calibrated to the half-pace a bonded female sets when she is, this evening, in no particular hurry.

She is in no particular hurry.

Neither am I.

“Tael.”

“Mm.”

“You are smirking.”

“I am not smirking.”

“You are smirking through the purr.”

“The purr is at the standard register.”

“The purr is at the register the purr runs at when you are smirking, Vosk. I have learned to read it.”

“Noted, sweetheart.”

She tilts her head. The mark at her throat catches the corridor light. The brass disc against my chest warms by another increment.

“Vosk.”

“Sweetheart.”

“Whatever you are about to do, do it inside my quarters.”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

The lift opens. We get in.

In the lift I put my mouth at her temple and do not kiss her. I breathe her. Nine hours of station and tea and the warm under the open collar. My tail tightens on her wrist. She leans into my chest like the lift is not public. It is public enough. I do not put my hand between her legs. I think about it the entire way up.

Her quarters are, in three months, no longer her quarters.

The print of her mother’s garden is at the same angle on the counter. The kettle is at the same place. The personal terminal is on standby. But the field jacket on the chair at the door is mine. The boots beside hers are mine. The second mug at the kitchen alcove is mine. The book at her bedside, the one she reads when she is not, by the half-set of her body at the register of off-shift, operational, is the one I gave her.

The room was ours within three months. I have not said it. Neither has she. But we don’t need to.

She turns at the door.

“Vosk?”

“Sweetheart.”

“Take off the jacket.”

I take off my jacket.

The brass discs in the inside pocket move with the jacket and settle on the chair at the door. The discs can wait. The female in front of me cannot.

Her hand at my collar. Her eyes on mine. The mark at her throat at the warm. The pulse-sync running at our shared baseline, eighty-four, and climbing as her hand slides under the collar and finds the mark at my throat and her thumb runs the slow circle she runs when she is informing me that the time for the smirk has ended.

I let the smirk stay one count longer.

Then I lose it.