Page 40 of Tracked and Taken

She doesn’t step forward. She doesn’t step back.

My cock is hard against the small of her back through two layers of cloth, and there is nothing I can do about it except not move, because every available movement on the vector I want to take would mean taking her hip in my hand and turning her and pressing her into the bulkhead she is already backed into and showing her what my species does when a female of her register walks into its airlock and doesn’t walk out again. The urge is so strong my jaw locks against it.

My head drops. Not far. An inch. My jaw at the top of her head, my mouth level with her temple, where the loose strand of hair has been curling against her skin for seven hours, and I can feel the heat of her scalp through it, and I can smell the scent underneath the soap, and my teeth, the back ones, the ones that are not for display, are suddenly, bluntly, alive in my mouth. The urge to set them against the soft skin of her throat is primal and immediate, and barely held.

Tail, low. Uncoil.

It goes around her right calf through her pants. Soft. A single loose pass. Not a wrap; a touch. The lightest possible claim a male can make on a female’s body through cloth, and my tail has made it without asking me, and I am not retracting it. The claim is made. She can feel it. I can feel her feel it.

Her pulse spikes.

She leans back.

A quarter-inch. A quarter-inch of her weight shifting from her feet onto me, and her head tips a fraction, and her throat offers two inches of skin my mouth could be on in one movement, and the noise that tries to climb up out of my chest is the noise my species makes when a female gives ground and every instinct I have is telling me to close the gap before she takes it back. The sound is raw and hungry, and I swallow it by force.

She takes it back.

Half a breath. A minute correction of her spine, and her weight goes back onto her own feet, and the moment she chose is gone, and I am still not breathing, and she is not looking at me. Losing the quarter-inch is physical and my body protests it.

Her voice, when it comes, is thick.

“Vosk. Your tail.”

“I know.”

“Is on my leg.”

“I know.”

“Your hand is on the wall beside my head.”

“I know.”

A pause. Her breathing is shallow. The quarter-inch she took is still in the room. The heat of her against me is still in the room. The hardness of my cock against her back is still in the room, and neither of us is pretending it isn’t.

“I need to use the head.”

I count three seconds in which I do not move, and I do not want to regret any of this. The three seconds are deliberate.

My tail uncoils from her calf. My right hand drops. My left hand comes off the bulkhead. I step back, the only step the corridor will allow, and she reaches for the door handle without turning around, and the door catches this time, and she pauses on the threshold.

Over her shoulder, flat, the voice she uses to close out a shift report: “Fix that door, Vosk.”

“I’ll fix it.”

“Before Velarkis.”

“Before Velarkis.”

The door closes, and the lock engages.

The pump does not engage for a full eight seconds, which is longer than any physiologically plausible delay for a woman who actually needed to use a head, and I stand in my galley corridor and let myself have the eight seconds. Eight seconds of knowing she is on the other side of that door with the memory of my cock against her back and my tail on her leg and my hand caging her against the bulkhead. Eight seconds of knowing her body is still processing what just happened. The knowledge is pure possession.

Then I walk back to the cockpit and put both hands on the yoke of an autopilot-flown ship and wait for my body to rejoin the rest of the morning.

SENTRY, crisp, into the quiet: “I am logging.”

“Mute.”