Page 25 of Starfighter’s Salvation

“No. It is criminally good.” I took another bite. “What is this planet doing with food? Earth has been holding out on me.”

“Your planet has no opinion on food.”

“I'll bet you are so fun at parties.”

“I do not attend parties.”

“Of course you don’t.”

For a few minutes, we ate without talking. It should have felt awkward. Instead, the silence settled around us like the quiet in an ambulance after the patient had finally stabilized. Earned. Comfortable in a way I had not braced myself to feel next to him.

I pointed my spoon at the world outside the dome. “Do you know any constellations around here? The sky doesn't feel friendly.”

Corvan looked through the glass. “No. Drawing in the stars is for old religions and traditionalists who never leave the planet's surface.”

“That is tragic. You have an entire civilization in space, and nobody taught you about constellations?”

“I use navigational charts.”

“That is the least romantic answer possible.”

“I am not attempting romance.”

My pulse gave one stupid little jump. “No?” Why not? God, I sooo wanted some romance from this man right now. One smile would be all it would take. One kiss. Hell, one anything and I'd be all over him. In his lap. In his bed. Naked. Touching. Kissing. Begging.

Oh yeah. For him, I'd beg. If he actually wanted me.

And that thought was a complete and total buzzkill.

"What are we doing, exactly?" I shouldn't ask, but I wasn't the kind of woman to play games.

His gaze met mine. Gray eyes, steady. The scar through the brow. A man who could fly into a war zone without blinking, looking more uncertain over a bowl of stew than he had under simulated fire.

“I do not know.” His honesty stripped the joke right out of me.

“Okay,” I said softly. “Me neither.”

He looked back at the glass over our heads. “The bond mark reacts when you are near. But the bond is not a command. It does not make a choice for either of us.”

I watched his hand close around his spoon. Big fingers. Scarred knuckles. Careful grip. I wondered what that carefulness would feel like turned on me and shut the thought down before it could make my empty, aching body any hotter and wetter than it already was. Like that was possible with him so close to me.

The mark on my neck warmed, a private little pulse, my personal lust compass swinging hard toward him. Corvan noticed. His own hand lifted toward the back of his neck, then stopped before he touched it.

“On Earth,” I said, because the silence had grown intense, “there is a group of stars called the Pleiades. You can see them in winter if the city lights aren’t too bad. Tiny little cluster. Easy to miss unless someone points them out.”

“And what do they signify to your ancient religions?”

“Depends who you ask. Some people call them seven sisters. Some people say they mean change is coming. Some people just like knowing that the same stars show up every year, even when everything else is a mess.”

He considered that as seriously as the rescue route. “You are some people?”

I laughed once, but it caught in my throat halfway out. “I am, generally speaking, a mess.”

He did not reach for me. He set his empty bowl down and rubbed his hands on top of his thighs. I wanted him to touch me more than I’d wanted anything in years. Instead, he slid the bread from his tray onto mine because I had finished my stew and was pretending not to want more. Somehow, he knew I was still hungry. Of course he did.

“You should get some sleep before launch,” he said.

“You, too.”