Page 50 of Starfighter’s Salvation

“Yes, you are,” he murmured.

Matched pair, definitely. The apprentices fought sleep until I sat between their seats.

“Tell us something,” one whispered.

“Like what?”

“A rescue story.”

I told them about the worst night of my first year in trauma. Six-car collision. Three ambulances at once. Not enough nurses. A doctor who vomited in a trash can, washed his hands, and came back. Everyone lived, and I left out several details. The older apprentice fell asleep first. The younger lasted another minute.

“Tavar is going to live?”

I checked the sergeant’s pressure. Still low. Still there. “Yes.” If I had to reach into the abyss and grab his soul by the tail, he was going to survive.

“You promise?”

“I already told him he was. I don’t lie to my patients.”

That satisfied him. When they were asleep, Corvan sat with me on his lap and his back against the bulkhead. The ship was freezing, but he radiated heat like a small bonfire.

We sat in the dark listening for the sounds of boots or weapons' fire.

“You don't have to sit with me,” I whispered. "I'm okay."

“I am not.” His hand flexed against my upper arm. I turned my face toward him. We were close enough that his breath moved over my mouth. Honest. I liked that.

His hand slid into my hair and he kissed me. Hard, but quiet enough that the wounded ten feet away kept sleeping. His hand was in my hair, the other locked around my waist, and he pulled me closer.

The hard length of him pressed between my thighs. Even through armor, even in the freezing dark, my body answered. I made a small sound into his mouth, and Corvan went rigid. “Gina.” This time my name was a plea.

I touched his jaw. “What?”

His eyes closed. For one raw second, all the controlled pilot discipline went out of his face. “I need you alive tomorrow.”

The answer should not have made me ache. It did. "Why don't you tell me what you want to do after we get out of this mess?"

His hand tightened at my waist, and he pressed his lips to my ear so none of the others would hear him. “I want you.”

I kissed him again. Slower. I let my mouth tell him everything I could not say without shaking.

He broke away first, chest rising hard beneath my palms. “How dare you kiss me like that? You have terrible timing.”

I smiled in the dark, even though he probably couldn't see me. Then Tavar made a sound from the last rack. The wrong kind of sound.

Corvan was pressing an alien flashlight into my hand the moment I was on my feet. I hurried to Tavar’s side. His fever had spiked. His pressure had dropped. I replaced one line, increased fluids, adjusted the warming field, and talked to him the whole time.

“Not tonight, Sergeant. Your apprentices are sleeping. You’re not making me wake them with bad news.”

Corvan held the light for me and handed me everything I needed before I asked. I changed his bandage, switched up the antibiotic and watched the monitor. Forty minutes later, Tavar’s pressure climbed. One point. Then another.

Corvan had not moved from my side. He had given me every instrument before I asked, counted drops on the fluid line when my hands shook, and never once made the fear on his face my problem to manage. When the monitor finally steadied, he crouched beside me, close enough that his shoulder took some of my weight.

God help me, I loved this man. Alien. Whatever. I loved him. "Thank you."

“You are the best medic I've ever seen,” he said quietly. "It's as if you will them to live."

I looked at him. “That's because I do.” I couldn't explain the feeling I got when I was fighting to save someone's life. It was a war, a spiritual, psychic, emotional battle to the death and I really hated to lose.