Page 66 of Fought and Found

"Right. Logistics." Morrison-mode. My hands on his chest, feeling the purr, which makes logistics challenging but not impossible. "When we dock at Junction One, several things happen at once. SRS believes you killed me. Drask has given us a deadline. The container still needs delivering to the Tessaro Foundation. Saar needs his ship put back together and a head start. Morrison is going to want a full debrief and she's going to want it five minutes ago."

"Morrison." His tail tightens on my ankle. The reflexive brace of a combat specialist anticipating an engagement.

"Morrison is the scariest woman in the Outer Rim and she trained me and she loves me and she is going to take one look at the bite mark on my shoulder and the Xarthian in my co-pilot's chair and she is going to lose her absolute mind." I trace the marking at his collar. "I handle Morrison. That's not a suggestion — it's an order. You do not engage her until I've had twenty minutes alone with her. She needs context. If you walk in cold she will eat you."

"I am a Tier 1 combat —"

"And she will eat you. Lovey, I say this with the deepest respect for your terrifying skills. Morrison is not a combat scenario. Morrison is an emotional weather event. Let me manage the weather."

His jaw flexes. The arrogance warring with the pragmatism. "Twenty minutes."

"Thirty."

"Twenty-five."

"Twenty-five and you stay with Sprout until I signal. Sprout will keep you alive."

"I will keep him moderately alive," Sprout confirms. "I make no guarantees about his dignity."

"Drask." I shift in his lap — a practical adjustment that produces an impractical friction, and his fingers grip my thighs and his pupils dilate. I press on. Logistics. "His deadline is a station-day from the corridor exit. That gives us tonight after we dock — maybe less. We need to know what's in the container — actually know, not Drask's version. We need to understand who his buyer is. And we need to decide whether we hand it over, deliver it to Tessaro as contracted, or find a third option."

"A third option being?"

"Whatever option keeps us alive and doesn't involve giving a dangerous broker what he wants." I lean forward. My mouth close to his. Not kissing — the proximity is strategy and desire in equal measure. "I have been running cargo in contested space for twelve years. I know how to find a third option."

"I do not doubt this." His voice has dropped. The proximity doing its work. "Your competence is not in question. Your proximity to my mouth while discussing tactical options is the current challenge."

"Focus, lovey."

"I am focused. I am focused on several things simultaneously, not all of which are tactical." His thumb traces a circle on my inner thigh and I bite the inside of my cheek. Fair. I started it.

"And Trell." I say it gently, watching his shoulders. "Whatever he said to you last night is yours until you want it to be ours. I'm not asking. I'm just saying I know the shape of a male who's been somewhere bad, and when the somewhere wants company, I'm three feet away."

His hands go still on my thighs. His jaw works.

"The margin," he says finally, "did not move."

"I know, lovey." I press my palm flat over his sternum, over the purr. "Why do you think I'm not asking."

"And you." The serious part. My hands frame his face. Small palms on his jaw. "You have no job, no home, no legal identity outside SRS records. You are, by any metric, a fugitive with a bonded mate and a ship AI who has adopted you and absolutely nothing else."

"An accurate summary." His voice is dry but his hands on my thighs are not dry — they are warm and large and his thumbs are tracing patterns that are not conducive to strategic planning.

"The Petal has a co-pilot's chair." I run my fingers along the cracked armrest. His claw marks. "OOPS needs operatives. Morrison's been trying to partner me up for ten years and I've refused every candidate. The pay is awful compared to SRS. The equipment is —" I gesture at the cockpit. Fairy lights. Tea stains. "— characterful."

"You are offering me a job."

"I'm offering you a life." The distinction matters. I lean forward. My hands on his chest, feeling the purr. "SRS gave you a function. I'm offering contested-space runs and triple-rate pay and Sprout insulting you every day and a ship that's held together by stubbornness. And me." Small word. Terrified word. "If you want me."

"If I —" His jaw works. "I am knotted-bonded to you. The biology —"

"I don't want the biology's decision." Sharp. His hands tighten on my thighs. "I know your cells chose me. I'm not asking your cells. I'm asking the male. Do you want to be here? Not because the purr tells you to. Because you looked at a woman with a notebook and a blaster and thought: her. That life."

His hands slide from my thighs to my waist. Lift me — an inch, a shift, repositioning me against him so we are face to face. Eye to eye.His strength doing the thing it always does with me: moving me gently inside a grip that could crush.

"I chose you before the bonding." Low. The voice from beneath the weapon casing. "Before the kiss. Before the biology had a name. I chose you when you wrote down lost things nobody asked you to keep and the writing was the bravest thing I had seen in thirty years."

"Xor —"