Page 74 of Tracked and Taken

“…Copy.”

He stands and hands me his shirt. His actual shirt. I look at it. My pants are on the floor. The lace is still on. The silk is askew. I am shaking.

“Vosk.”

“My shirt is closer.”

“Where is mine?”

“In the corridor. Unclear.”

He gets my shirt. The field jacket. The cardigan folded on the bunk. I put the cardigan on over the tactical under-layer, because the cardigan is the only item of clothing I can get back onto my body in under six seconds with the coordination currently available to me. My hands do not work. He helps with the sleeve. His fingers brush my wrist, and both of us flinch.

I hit the comm. My voice, when it comes out, is the customs-counter register I have trained into a reflex. Flat. Professional. Alert. It is a lie. I can still feel his fingers.

“Flossie. Yes. We are on the ship. Go ahead.”

Tael is in the cockpit doorway with his hand flat against the frame and his silver eyes on me, wearing an expression of composure that’s just been handed back to him by a female. He is still hard. He is not hiding it. He is looking at my mouth like the comm is a personal insult.

I cannot look at him.

“Loveys,” Flossie says, warm, briefing. “I have news on the Korrhai case. Xor ran a secondary pass. Will you give me three minutes?”

“Copy, Flossie. Three minutes.”

I turn my head an eighth of a degree toward Tael. Not to look at him. Enough that he can see the side of my face.

The half-grin on his mouth finishes building. He is the most unbearable male in the Velarkis sector.

I will revisit the matter of the good girl at a later hour. I will revisit his fingers. I will revisit the word wrecked in his mouth. I am still wet, and the comm is still live, and I have never hated a case update more in my life.

“Let me tell you what Xor found.” Flossie says, oblivious, warm.

13

Say Please

Tael

Flossie signs off.

The cockpit speakers cut. The drive hum comes back. Iris-Nine sits in the scope — fourteen hours out, dark, a station that has been declared scrapped and is not scrapped — and Thane’s vessel is at the staging point, because Flossie sent him the coordinates between the silk and the comm.

She came back aboard at Parr’s Anchor carrying an MP-issue blade she did not have when we docked — seated in an ankle sheath under her pant cuff, squared to the bone at the angle she squares everything. I clocked it in the airlock. I did not comment. A female who arms herself before a rescue is a female who has already decided how far she is willing to go.

Natalie sets the comm down.

She does not look at me.

She turns her head a quarter-degree. The corner of her mouth twitches — the twitch I have calibrated to read as I see you trying, Vosk, and I am going to let you keep trying — and she unbuckles.

She stands.

She walks.

Three steps across the cockpit, her hair coming loose from the pin where my fingers were an hour ago, her dark eyes level with my throat because I am at the console and she is closing the distance at the pace where she decided she is done waiting.

I catch her at the console.