Page 72 of Tracked and Taken

Then I pull back, with control I do not have, my hand on his chest where his heart is beating to the rhythm of mine.

“Vosk?”

“Torres”

“On the ship?”

“On the ship.”

We cycle through the interior hatch. Two steps. He pushes me against the bulkhead.

Not gently this time. The push is deliberate, and the bulkhead is at my back, and his mouth is on mine before the hatch fully seals. My hands come up to his field jacket; it comes off at his shoulders. Mine follows, pushed off by his hands at my arms, both jackets on the decking between our boots. The purr has gone to a frequency I feel in my teeth.

His mouth at my jaw. My throat. The hollow where my pulse is outrunning his. He sucks there, hard enough to mark, and I gasp and fist his shirt.

“Been wanting to do that since the bar,” he says against my skin. “Wanted my mouth on you in front of that keeper. Wanted my hand between your legs under the table while you drank that green shit and pretended you weren’t wet.”

“Vosk—“

“Rook. Or Tael. Pick one and say it while I take this off you.”

My fingers at the hem of his shirt; it comes up and off, the fabric landing somewhere, my palm flat on the rosettes over his heart. His skin is burning. I drag my nails down his abdomen, and he shudders.

“Bunk, Vosk.”

He does not say anything. He gets his arm under my thighs and moves. Corridor, bulkhead curve, the galley door I do not look at, the bunk hatch. He sets me down on the bunk and kneels on the deck in front of me, silver eyes level with mine, his hands at my hips, the purr audible through every layer of fabric between us.

“Lie back.”

“That is not a request.”

“It is not a request, sweetheart. Lie back.”

I lie back. He pulls my boots off. Then the pants. Slow enough that I feel every inch of them leaving my legs. The lace is black. He sees it and goes completely still.

“Fuck.”

His hands land on my thighs. Spread them wide. He looks at the lace as if it is a problem he is going to solve with his mouth.

“You wore this on an op.” His voice is wrecked. “You wore this under kit while I sat two meters away wondering if you’d put it on.”

“Yes.”

“Cruel.” He kisses the inside of my knee. Then higher. “I am going to ruin these.”

“Then ruin them.”

His mouth at my throat. My collarbone. His hand slides up under the tactical kit. Under the under-layer. Up my waist, and — His hand stops.

His breath catches.

His palm is flat against the silk.

Black silk. At my ribs. The bra he found in the galley, which I have been wearing for the last six hours under a field jacket on an op, and which he has just discovered with the flat of his hand as I lie back on his crew bunk in the matching lace with his mouth at my collarbone.

The purr stops.

Actually stops. For the first time since the cache, the ambient frequency cuts out.