Page 86 of Fought and Found

Sprout is still running sweeps at combat resolution. The scope is clean. Xor checks it anyway. The world has not stood down and neither has he, and the warmth is warmer for the teeth around it.

The bonding bite hasn’t happened yet. The fuse is burning.

Xarthians have two bites. The mark he left on my shoulder says mine — I have worn it through every corridor on this station and enjoyed every double take. The bonding bite is the other one: the permanent one, the biological one, fangs built for exactly one purpose, his heartbeat taking up residence beside mine and mine beside his. He has been saving the second.

“Two hours,” he says, low, over the nav display. His tail tightens on my ankle. “And then the clock is ours.”

Two hours.

23

Claimed

Xor

Thetransitberthdoorcloses, and she is on me before the lock engages.

Not tentative. Not careful. The full-body impact of a five-foot-four woman who has been sitting in a cockpit for two hours watching my hands on her flight controls and apparently reached the absolute outer limit of professional restraint approximately ten minutes ago and has been counting down ever since.

Her mouth crashes into mine. Hot. Open. Hungry. Tasting of the peppermint tea she drank during the descent and something sweeter and darker underneath. Her hands are already at my collar — not fumbling, not uncertain, nails scraping skin, the handsof a woman who has learned the map and is now navigating with the confidence of a twelve-year veteran courier who knows every route.

"You," she says against my mouth, "have been doing that tail thing for two hours."

"What tail thing."

"The ankle thing. The slow circles on my ankle under the console while you were flying my ship and being competent and having forearms."

"Having forearms is not a deliberate provocation."

"It is when you roll your sleeves up. It is when the fuzz catches the fairy light. It is when you're adjusting the nav display and every muscle in your forearm moves and I can see the —" She bites my lower lip. Not gently. Then sucks it. "The forearms are a weapon, Xor. You have been deploying forearms at me for two hours, and I have been wet since the first hour, and I am done pretending I don't want to lick them."

"You want to lick my forearms."

"I want to lick several things. The forearms are the appetizer. I want my tongue on your ridges. Your knot. I want that perfect tail exactly where it's been threatening to go all day while you purr loud enough to rattle the hull." She pulls back. Grins at me. Brown eyes bright and dark and certain and the grin is the most devastating thing I have ever seen on a human face because it is not seduction. It is joy. Uncomplicated, undiluted, the expression of a woman who wants me and is happy about it and the happiness is worse than the wanting because I have no defence against someone being happy that I exist.

"Sprout," she says, without breaking eye contact. "Privacy mode."

"Privacy mode engaged. I am not monitoring anything inside this room. Outside this room, I am monitoring everything — the scope is clean, and it will stay that way on my watch. I am absolutely notlogging biometric data for posterity. Goodnight." The orb dims to almost nothing near the ceiling. "Soundproofing in this berth is rated for industrial equipment. I mention this for no reason whatsoever."

"Thank you, Sprout."

"You're welcome. I hate this. Goodnight."

The first time was desperate.

The first time was the corridor and the berth and the shower and the fury and the terror of wanting something this much and the rough, shaking, barely-controlled collision of two people who had been denying every instinct for days and finally broke. The first time I could not speak. My hands shook. The bonding chemistry was a flood and we were drowning in it.

This is not the first time.

This time she pushes me onto the berth and climbs on top of me and she is laughing.

The laugh undoes me more completely than the first kiss. More completely than the corridor, the bonding instinct, the biological imperative that rewrote my endocrine system. The laugh is the sound of a woman who is not afraid. Who is not performing. Who is sitting on my hips with her hands on my chest and her hair falling forward and her brown eyes full of delight and she is laughing because she wants me and the wanting makes her happy and I have no defense against someone being happy that I exist.

"Hi," she says. From above. Her weight on me.

"Hello."

"I have you pinned."