“So thank you,” I whisper, “for this beautiful, disastrous, perfect anniversary. And for every day before it.”
Then I kiss him again, and this time there’s nothing gentle about it.
His growl vibrates through both of our bodies as he surges up, catching me around the waist and spinning us so my back hits the wall beside the destroyed table. The cold metal of his ceremonial armor presses against my overheated skin through the thin shirt, and the contrast makes me gasp into his mouth.
“Zola.” My name is a reverent curse in his language, all rolling consonants and sharp edges. His hands are everywhere—sliding under my shirt, gripping my thighs, threading through my hair. “My Zola. My mate.”
“Yours,” I agree, wrapping my legs around his hips. The strategic placement of his armor means I can feel exactlyhow much the disaster hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm. “Always yours.”
He lifts me higher against the wall, one hand supporting my weight while the other tears the shirt over my head with zero ceremony. The fabric catches on my hair, and I’m laughing again even as he’s kissing down my throat, finding the permanent claiming marks that still make me shiver when he touches them.
“These plants,” I manage as his mouth finds my breast, “are still screaming.”
“Let them scream.” His fangs scrape my nipple, gentle enough not to break skin but hard enough to make me arch into him. “They can bear witness to how thoroughly I claim my mate.”
The bond flares bright between us as he positions himself—still in that ridiculous ceremonial armor that makes him look like a warrior-god from some ancient mythology. When he pushes inside me, slow and deliberate and absolutely perfect, I feel it in every nerve ending amplified by our connection.
“Still perfect,” he breathes against my throat. “After a year of having you, and you’re still perfect.”
I want to tell him he’s wrong—that I’m a disaster who panics over paperwork and can’t cook to save my life and spent the first six months of our partnership convinced I was going to get us both killed. But the words dissolve into a moan as he starts to move, each thrust driving me higher against the wall, each angle calculated to make me forget my own name.
The plants continue their off-key screaming. The industrial solvent keeps eating through the deck. Jitters has recovered enough to turn a supportive pink and strategically position himself to block the worst of the smoke. And through it all, Crash makes love to me with the focused intensity of someone who knows exactly what his mate needs.
“Come for me,” he demands, his thumb finding my clit with devastating precision. “Let me feel you,zihah’tel.”
The bond amplifies everything—his pleasure feeding mine, mine intensifying his, until we’re caught in a feedback loop that has us both crying out. My orgasm crashes through me like a supernova, and through the bond I feel him follow, his roar vibrating against my claiming marks as he fills me with heat.
For a long moment, we just breathe together in the aftermath, surrounded by chaos and smoke and the lingering smell of industrial solvent.
“So,” I say eventually, tracing the patterns his armor left on my skin. “That was quite an anniversary celebration.”
“It was a catastrophic failure that nearly resulted in chemical burns and electrical fire,” he replies, but he’s smiling.
“Exactly.” I kiss him softly. “Perfect.”
A short time later, we dock at Junction One’s main bay with slightly less ceremony than usual, mainly because we’re running late for our scheduled performance review with MotherMorrison and The Precision still smells like smoke and screaming plants.
“She’s going to know,” Crash mutters as we make our way through the bustling station corridors. He’s changed into his standard OOPS flight suit, but I can still see faint marks on his throat from my enthusiastic appreciation of his anniversary gesture.
“She always knows,” I reply, adjusting my own collar to hide the claiming marks. “That’s why she’s Mother.”
Junction One hasn’t changed much in the year we’ve been running contracts—still the organized chaos of couriers coming and going, cargo being loaded and unloaded, the constant background hum of dozens of species conducting business in a dozen different languages. But somehow it feels different now. Less intimidating. More like... home base.
“Cross! Maxone!” A familiar voice calls out, and I turn to see Dove Foxton waving from the cargo processing area. She’s got her arms full of manifest datapads and there’s grease on her cheek, but she’s grinning. “Heard you two were coming in for review. Mother been chewing you out yet?”
“Not yet,” I call back. “Give us five minutes.”
Dove laughs. “I’ll set a timer.” She hefts the datapads. “I’m about to head out anyway—agricultural run to Kepler.”
Something about the way she says it makes my inspector instincts flare. “Kepler Station? That’s in the middle of storm season.”
“Yeah, but there’s a window.” She waves one of the datapads. “Tight timing, but the terraforming station needs these supplies before the next cycle hits. Should be in and out before the atmospheric instability kicks in.”
I exchange glances with Crash. We’ve run enough high-risk deliveries to know that “should be” is courier code for “definitely going to get complicated.”
“Dove,” I say carefully, remembering what it was like before I learned to trust my instincts, “those storm windows on Kepler Station are notoriously unpredictable. The meteorological data is often off by hours, sometimes days.”
“I know, I know.” She’s already turning away, clearly eager to get moving. “But the pay is fantastic, and I really need—” She cuts herself off, then forces a smile. “I’ll be fine. I’ve done tighter windows before.”
