Page 54 of Fought and Found

"Yes."

One hour and nineteen minutes remaining on the corridor counter.

I have watched this number the way I have watched nothing in thirty years of deployment—each minute a unit of distance between us and the thing we have promised each other in two words. And then. And then. The words have become the architecture of everything Iintend, everything I have surrendered the framework to contain, and the one hour and nineteen minutes holds all of it: the corridor and the kiss and her pulse in my fingertips and the defection and the margin that embarrasses me and the sound she made into my mouth when my hand closed over her and the future that has no predetermined vectors.

I am going to Junction One.

I am going there for her.

"And then."

"And then." My tail settles on her armrest. Her hand finds the tip. Her thumb traces the fuzz and the sensation travels the length of my spine and the purr deepens and outside the stars burn cold and bright and we are flying toward a woman named Morrison who will hate me and a station I have never seen and a future that has no framework and no architecture and no predetermined vectors.

I am terrified.

The margin is still not close.

15

The Exploration

Flossie

Wearebothamess, and I am going to put my hands on him if it kills me.

Out of the corridor. Drask’s deadline ticking. Saar locked in the cargo bunk with a splinted knee. A night’s run to Junction One on autopilot. All of this is important and none of it is louder than the fact that I kissed this male in a corridor and his hand was on my breast and his body was pressed against mine and I have been wet since, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

His tactical suit is torn in three places. Blood dried along the tears, almost invisible against crimson. He hasn’t mentioned it. He won’t. He’ll sit at the co-pilot’s station running threat assessmentsuntil his body heals itself because that is what he does—bleeds quietly, fixes nothing, needs nobody.

Not on my ship.

“You should clean those.” I nod toward his ribs. Practical. Morrison-voiced. As if the wanting isn’t sitting between my hips like a fist.

“The wounds are superficial. Xarthian tissue regenerates at—“

“Shower. Now. Both of us.” I hold up a hand before the noble objection arrives. “The controls are on the left wall, which you can’t reach without dislocating something. You need me in there. Logistics.”

“The shower unit is not designed for a Xarthian.”

“Nothing on this ship is designed for a Xarthian. Get in the shower, Xor.”

He gives me the look. The tactical assessment that weighs compliance against vulnerability and keeps finding that I am not playing the game his training prepared him for.

“I do not require assistance.”

“And I don’t require your permission to help you. We’ve covered this.” I walk past him. Don’t look back. Morrison’s trick—give the order, walk away. “Sprout, shower status.”

“Operational. I am adjusting temperature to accommodate Xarthian dermal requirements.” The orb dims to deliberate amber. “I am also reducing environmental monitoring to external threats only for—however long this takes. Some data is better left uncollected.”

“Sprout.”

“Don’t break anything.”

The orb goes dark.

The shower is small.

With a seven-foot Xarthian inside it, the word small becomes architectural satire. His horns nearly brush the ceiling. His shoulders touch both walls. His tail has nowhere to go except around his leg or around me.