Page 57 of Tracked and Taken

“Like Xor and Flossie.”

“Cousin biologies. Maren is dying because Torek has been out of her bond’s range for four months and the link cannot hold at distance. That is what your case is in.”

“And your biology has identified me as a candidate for that.”

“Yes.”

“The smirks. The cardigan in the airlock. The kasa. The reading light on low. The hand on my back at the counter.”

“All of it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me in my office.”

“Because in your office you did not want to hear it, and I had no business saying it. You are the Head of Station Security at Junction One and I am a Tier 2 tracker you had been told to coordinate with, and mate was a word I had no right to put in your mouth. Two days has not been long enough for the right to exist. Tonight you watched me put my body between you and a blade, and you put your hands on me, and my biology decided it was done managing, and you asked me directly.”

She does not answer. I wait her out.

There is a second thing.

It sits behind my sternum at the same frequency the first thing did, and I know the frequency because my body has been running it since her office and does not negotiate. I will not say it. Not tonight. Not from a bunk. Not to a woman who deserves the answer she asked for and not the one that would make her choose. She is going to choose in her own time, on her own terms, and not on what my biology is costing me to hold.

The cost is mine. I keep it.

When she speaks, it is quieter.

“On the couch. And just now, when I was kneeling. You were having thoughts.”

I do not breathe, so she continues.

“About what Vosk?”

I have not lied to her tonight, and I will not start.

“About you. On the bunk. About my mouth on your throat. About what your body would do if my hands were the ones under your tank top.”

Her pulse, which I hear through the thin mattress because her cardiovascular system is louder to me than the snore through the wall, climbs eight beats.

“I am not apologizing for it.”

“I am not asking you to.” A pause. Her breath is uneven against my shoulder blade. “You can keep having them.”

“Torres.”

“I am not consenting to anything else. I am not in a position to. But you don’t have to manage those for me.”

“You are going to ruin my discipline.”

“Your discipline is already ruined. I am giving you permission to stop pretending it isn’t.”

I close my eyes. The purr is involuntary. The permission she has just given me is not one I am allowed to use yet.

She turns over slowly, the half-roll of a woman who is half-asleep and is choosing, before she goes the rest of the way, to put the choice on record. Her front to my back. Her face against my shoulder blade through the bandage. Her hand comes to rest on the mattress between us, and after a count of three, on the small of my back.

Bare skin. Her palm flat against the rosettes that run from my spine to the waistband. The loudest thing my nervous system has registered this evening, and she does not move it. The contact goes through me in a single, clean line.

“Tael.”

The name. Not Vosk. The first time it has been in her mouth, and she has put it there in the dark, against my back, at the register she has been keeping for Vosk.