“I’m a courier. Efficiency is—”
“Not what I meant.” He pauses. “Watching you work is... I find it difficult to concentrate on holding the housing when you’re this close and this competent.”
I almost drop the calibration tool. “Did you just say my competence is distracting?”
“Extremely.”
“Cetus, that’s—”
“Accurate. Every time you identify a problem and solve it within seconds, my cognitive function degrades measurably. Pickles has the data.”
“I do indeed,” Pickles confirms from the diagnostic pad clipped to my belt. “The Terraforming Specialist’s prefrontal cortex activity decreases by twenty-three percent when youdemonstrate technical proficiency, Captain. Conversely, his limbic system activity increases by—”
“That’s enough, Pickles,” Cetus says.
“—forty-one percent. Which is the region associated with desire, reward-seeking, and mate selection. I thought you’d want to know.”
The crawlspace is very small. And very warm. And Cetus’s markings are blazing gold barely a handspan from my face, pulsing in a rhythm that matches my heartbeat so precisely it might as well be a second pulse inside my chest.
“Let’s finish the calibration,” I manage.
“Yes. Professional focus.”
“Exactly.”
Neither of us moves for three full seconds.
Then I force my hands steady and complete the calibration sequence, entering values into Pickles’s diagnostic pad while pressed against a six-foot-eight alien whose biological response to my competence is literally glowing through his shirt.
“How are we scoring in there?” Tavia’s voice echoes down the shaft, tinny and delighted. “Pickles says Papa’s heart rate is really high. Are you doing cardio?”
“Sensor calibration,” I call back. “Very strenuous.”
“Collaborative efficiency rating: nine point four,” she announces. “You lost points because Papa keeps forgetting to breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“Pickles says you stopped three times in the last two minutes.”
“Moving on to the next sensor,” I say firmly, extracting myself from between his legs with as much dignity as a woman can muster when her entire body is flushed and her courier-grade composure has been thoroughly compromised.
We work through the remaining sensors in a state of agonizing professional proximity. Every brush of contact is electric. Everytime I reach past him and our bodies align, his markings brighten and my breath catches and Tavia records the data with the enthusiasm of a scientist documenting a breakthrough experiment.
By the time we crawl out of the shaft, I’m sweating and tense and absolutely not thinking about the way his thigh muscles shifted under my hip.
“Final score: nine point seven,” Tavia announces, beaming. “That’s the highest collaborative score I’ve ever given!”
“It’s the only collaborative score you’ve ever given,” Cetus points out, running a hand through his hair. The gold along his neck hasn’t dimmed.
“Which makes it a record! I’m putting it on the fridge.”
The next eight hours pass in organized chaos. Cetus handles physical prep—bilingual signage, system checks, the evacuation drill I time with military precision while Tavia adds sound effects for imaginary hull breaches. We work around each other in patterns that feel rehearsed, his hand finding the small of my back when we pass in corridors, my excuses to stand close enough that his warmth sinks through my clothes.
At lunch, I steal a vegetable stick from his plate without thinking—casual intimacy that should feel strange with someone I’ve known for days and instead feels like breathing.
His hand catches mine as I reach for a second one. Not stopping me. Holding. His thumb traces once across my knuckles—slow, deliberate, claws retracted so all I feel is warm, slightly rough skin.
“Help yourself,” he says, voice low.
