Page 66 of Tracked and Taken

“You— out, Vosk. Bench. Off. Move.”

She crosses the galley in two strides, past me, past the counter, close enough that her scent hits me broadside, and closes the duffel with the efficiency of a woman who has, in four years of office, closed many things she did not wish her colleagues to have observed. Zips it. Slings it. Turns. Her face, in profile, has gone the color my biology is mapping as the most attractive configuration a human female has ever deployed in front of me. The color of a woman who packed silk for a male and just got caught doing it.

“You will not speak of this. On this ship. To Flossie. To Thane. To JINX. To SENTRY. To any species in the registry. For the rest of this case.”

“Sweetheart.”

“Vosk.”

“You packed it for me.”

The sound she makes is half-strangled, half-inhalation. She walks out of the galley. In the doorway, without turning:

“And bring me the coffee, Vosk. Strong.”

“Strong.”

I stand at the bench with the half-grin fully deployed and the purr at the highest register it has hit since the cockpit couch and my cock still hard against the front of my pants. I lift my hand and look at the fingertip. Cool silk. The shape of a small bow. The memory of her blush.

Sweetheart. That was the best four minutes of my operational career.

And underneath the smirk the cold thing comes up again, quick and quiet, the shape it takes when the wanting goes too high without somewhere to land. And if she walks. After this. After she packed for me, and I caught her at it and she still walks.

I push it back. Harder than I should have to. The smirk holds.

JINX, private channel, dry: “Logged.”

“Quietly, JINX.”

I make her coffee. Strong.

* * *

She is at the yoke. She does not look at me when I set the cup at her right hand. She drinks. Her pulse is at one hundred and four. Her sitting-still pulse is sixty-eight.

I take the co-pilot’s seat and strap in. A small chime sounds at her console. She reads it. Her face does the dry-amused thing for exactly half a second before she suppresses it.

“Vosk. SENTRY has filed a formal compliance objection regarding an unauthorized fabricated comm-signal alert. She has copied JINX on the filing. Inside JINX’s own folder.”

“…Has she.”

“She would like JINX to acknowledge receipt.”

A long silence on the private channel. Then JINX, in the smallest register I have heard from him: “Acknowledged.”

SENTRY, open channel, prim: “Receipt logged. The objection will remain on file for the duration of this transit.”

JINX, private, to me only: “She did not need to copy me on it, Tael. She did it on principle. This is a betrayal.”

“Quietly, JINX.”

Natalie picks up her coffee. Her face has gone from the cardiac-alarm flush to the small containment configuration that means she is working very hard not to laugh. She does not laugh. She drinks. The half-grin on my mouth has gone from a recovery posture to something I am going to have to physically hold back from the corner of my mouth for the rest of the transit. The silk is still in my fingertip memory. So is the blush.

Parr’s Anchor in the middle distance. Rust-colored hull plating, a docking ring patched in seven configurations across forty years of independent operation. Rethlor’s SRS-issue Tier 3 hauler is on the board. We will dock with an hour at the top end and as little as twelve minutes at the bottom, and he will not be punctual; Rethlor was the Tier 3 who pushed his pre-flight checks to the last twenty minutes. I am betting on the ulcers.

Natalie has not spoken for two hours. The silence is not empty. The silence is the galley, still running under both of us.

JINX, low: “Tael. Your tail.”