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"Why do I have to stay in the storage room until we land?" she demanded I answer. "It’s not like I can jump ship while we’re in orbit."
I broke free of my concentration on her lower body. "Knowing you, it wouldn’t surprise me if you attempted to hopscotch through an asteroid belt to leave."
"Wrong." She angled her chin. "I’ve already had to deal with lack of oxygen twice since I've been around you. I happen to like air."
"You use up a lot of it to chew my head off." I opened the door to the storage room. "It’s only another hour before we land. I’m sure you’d do the same if you were me." I corrected myself. "As a matter of fact, you did exactly the same when you tossed me in the clink."
She did a casual sweep around the room before she anchored her eyes on me again. "I did what I swore to do, protect people from criminal threats. This feels like petty payback."
Sheesh. The sting from that one hung around. I didn’t expect to be sensitive from a little back and forth. It damn sure wasn’t the first time she reminded me of my past. Why were things hitting different lately? "I’m not keeping you in here as payback, but don’t act like you can’t be petty. You haven’t stopped calling me a jailbird more or less since I ran into you."
A glimpse of remorse flickered in her round, expressive brown eyes. Or was it simply my hopeful imagination? "Then why are you keeping me in here?"
"Part of it is because I don’t know if you’d try anything and risk hurting yourself to leave.”
“I’m not a child.”
“The other part is there’s no other place for you on the ship. We only have two resting quarters, and Gravix and Zorbluk aren’t giving up their space. Don’t even ask about mine."
"I don’t want to be in your Cubs fanboy room. I could sit in the kitchen."
How did she know I had baseball gear in my room? Was she some kind of psychic detective? I watched those crime shows, too. I leaned in and made a show of lifting my eyebrows. "Then you can help me do the dishes. Those soft-scrambled clucatric eggs are hard to scrub." I held in a laugh as a shudder rippled through her shoulders.
She wrinkled her nose. Were those freckles always there? "Let me know when we land."
She walked right into the room and allowed me to close the door. Guilt gave my own shoulders a nudge when I locked the door.
Only another hour.
I trudged to the kitchen to wash the dishes. Guilt floated behind me. What else could I do? Detectives were notorious for being...well, nosey. Plus, we both knew Faye didn’t really want to be here. If she had free roam around the ship, she might find a way to get the Wanderstar Fleet involved.
The last thing I needed was the biggest intergalactic military on my tail.
I frowned as I filled the sink with water. Maybe I already got them involved when I decided to seek Faye’s help. Today she agreed to help me, but they didn’t know that.
As soon as we could find exactly who was framing me throughout the cosmos, I'd take her back to the Wanderstar Fleet so she could resume cracking cases.
Then I could start fresh. After twenty years plus of this life, I was ready to retire. I didn’t plan to sell replicas of pricey artifacts to rich people forever, though. There were plenty of other honest things I could do at thirty years old. I just had to figure out what.
I’d have all the time in the world to think about it after I cleared my name.
I washed and dried the dishes. Faye’s little jabs made me smile. I never could resist a good game. Then again, it’s how I kept getting into trouble in the first place.
This time, I intended to stay on track. I moved around the kitchen, returning dishes and utensils to their cupboards with new determination guiding my steps. The old con games were over. Malecor Station might have been my former stomping grounds, but I wasn’t returning there to start old mess up again.
I took a sniff of the air, shook my head, and headed from the kitchen to my room for a quick shower. Clearing my name just might be easier than clearing my body of these damn pheromones. Every time I was within walking distance of Faye or simply thought of her, their production ramped up.
I scrubbed my skin harder than I did the dishes. This couldn’t be normal. I’d been with different females from other planets, but I’d never had this type of physical reaction to them. I didn’t so much as hold Faye’s hand and my body was churning out the hormones.
Whenever I was around her, this strange feeling crept up on me. My inner radar went haywire, buzzing with an instinct to bond that was out of this world. I couldn’t help noticing the cosmic pull, as if the universe were nudging me to forge a connection with Faye.
I toweled off after the shower. My reflection in the mirror showed more physical reactions to thoughts of her. My skin glowed, and not in that little way humans did when they worked up a sweat or slathered on moisturizer. I looked like a beacon. Another part of me decided it wanted to stick out and shine from a hill, too.
Dammit. What was happening to me?
Once I got everything concealed and didn’t shine bright like a diamond anymore, I headed to the front of the ship to check on Gravix and Zorbluk. By my guesstimation, we should’ve been nearing Malecor Station.
"Hey." I greeted the two of them when I reached the cockpit.
