Page 142 of Tracked and Taken

“I am factoring the interest into the schedule.”

He laughs against my hair, quiet, low laugh knowing his biology has been handed a debt it is going to enjoy holding for the rest of the day.

He lets me out of his arms. I rinse. I get out. He stands in the water. I watch him do it through the steam. It takes longer than eight minutes would have allowed if I had stayed.

I leave him to it.

I get into the soft pants and the under-layer I came over in last night.

Yesterday’s clothes. The plain cotton underneath, the cotton I wear when I am not running operations, the cotton he lifted off me last night and set down with more care than cotton has ever been shown, is going to spend the morning against skin that is still oversensitive. I feel it when I pull the underwear on. I am going to feel it in the lift.

My boots. My hair down, because I did not, when I walked out my door last night, pack a hair-tie for this.

He’s in the bunk alcove pulling on a fresh field set when I come out of the wash, and he stops with the under-layer halfway over his head to look at me.

I look back.

He is still a little hard. The field pants do not hide a Draelith secret of that size, and he does not appear to be trying. The mark on his throat sits above the collar of the under-layer like a fact. Mine. Dark. Fresh. I want to put my mouth on it again. I do not, because if I do, we will miss the 0830 and Morrison will send someone.

The look holds seconds longer than the wash deserved on a morning when I have to run, and shorter than it will be the next time, and I have a sudden sense that the rest of my life is going to be a series of looks like this and a series of mornings I did not, in the years before I knew him, know how to want.

“I have to go to my quarters,” I say.

“I’ll walk you.”

“It is one level and forty-two meters, Vosk.”

“Then I will walk you the one level and the forty-two meters.”

He says it without looking away from his under-layer, in the easy register where he is not asking. He is informing.

I let him inform.

The corridor outside his door is in pre-shift quiet.

His tail finds my wrist before the first junction. Wraps. The loose grip, not the working grip from the cache and not the tight grip from the tactical shower, but the grip of a male whose tail has decided that my wrist is somewhere it likes to be. The inside of the coil is warm. Every few steps it tightens a fraction, as if checking I am still here.

I am still here. I am also still wet, and the bond is a low, satisfied hum under my skin that spikes every time his tail flexes.

His hand goes to the small of my back at the lift door. He pushes the call panel. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. The heat of his palm is a claim the corridor can read even if the corridor does not have the vocabulary.

A maintenance officer named Renn passes us at the junction. Renn has been on Junction One as long as I have. Renn’s eyes go to the dark fresh scars at my throat, to the tail at my wrist, and Renn says, without preamble: “Morning, Boss. About time.” And keeps walking.

The lift opens. We get in.

In the lift, with no one watching, his hand at the small of my back travels up the line of my spine and rests, briefly, at the back of my neck. His thumb finds the edge of the mark from behind. He does not press. He just holds the heat there, a reminder.

I lean back into the rest.

My ass finds his thigh. Not an accident. He inhales once, sharply, and the purr ticks up a register the lift’s acoustics have no business carrying.

“Natalie.”

“Parameters, Vosk. I am about to put a uniform on.”

“I am aware of the parameters.” His mouth at my hair. “I am also aware you are still shaking. Very slightly. In my hand.”

“That is the bond.”