“Okay.”
“It went past that.”
“Right.”
“But she wasn’t good at taking ‘no’ for an answer.”
Allie blinked, shocked at that bit of history. “That’s really not good.”
Shank pinned her with an unhappy glare. “She didn’t do anything sexual,” he snapped. “It was what she did outside of the bedroom that I couldn’t handle.”
Despite her own instinct to snap back, Allie took a few seconds to get control. She was angry at this Claire and frustrated that Shank wasn’t being a little clearer and really aggravated at being yelled at, but she needed to keep her calm. “What did she do outside the bedroom?” she asked quietly. There was still a subtle hint of aggravation, but overall, Allie was quite proud of herself.
Shank stared at her as though confused. It occurred to Allie that he might have been trying to start a fight in order to avoid talking. While Shank didn’t normally go for manipulation, these circumstances didn’t seem to be normal. When Allie allowed the silence to continue, Shank seemed to just lose his charge. He sat down heavily on the other bed, his shoulders drooping.
“This is going to make me look like an idiot,” he warned her.
She grinned at him. “I already think you’re an idiot. You came up with the bar fight plan.”
Shank looked at her with such a deadened expression she could feel her stomach clench.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she said. “You know I trust you, and whatever happened, I’m predisposed to blame Claire. She was clearly ignoring boundaries and abusing your trust if she left you feeling like this. I hope we do run into her. I’d love to tell her how I feel about her.”
“Oh God no. Claire would—I don’t know—shoot you probably.”
“She sounds charming,” Allie said. “And she wouldn’t shoot me if I shot her first.”
“Trust me. She has more practice with a gun.” Shank fell back onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “She thought that because I didn’t mind her being dominant in the bedroom that she could tell me what to do,” he finally said. His voice came out in the hushed tones of a confession.
“What? That doesn’t make sense. If you’re dynamic in the bedroom, that’s a bedroom behavior, not a life behavior. I’m a little dominant in bed, but when I’m on the job, I’m a corporal, and I’m very happy to take orders.”
Shank covered his face with both hands. “And here’s where I look like an idiot. I told her how my people are different. The men are the fighters, the warriors. We come up with the attack plans, and the women from my family ships don’t go on raids.”
“Why not?” Allie asked.
Shank tilted his head up and uncovered his eyes long enough to look her in the eye. “Can we deal with one emotional disaster at a time?”
Allie hated how worn down he looked. She nodded. “Sure.”
With that, he let his head fall back down to the mattress. “I told her that, and I also told her that the women run the families. They own the ships, and if the women don’t want us to raid someplace, all they have to do is turn the ship around and fly in the other direction. We don’t really have a choice but to call off a raid when the women are busy taking home base somewhere else.”
That seemed like a pretty stupid system to Allie, but then she’d never understood cultures that insisted on having gender-based roles. The whole thing didn’t make sense because it was based on the assumption there were two sexes, and that was a flawed premise to begin with. Given half a chance, Allie would happily explain that to anyone who listened, but right now Shank looked like a breeze would take him out. So she gentled her voice.
“What did she do, Shank?”
He didn’t answer immediately. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Allie waited. “She was my first serious relationship. We met on-station, and I loved how strong she was,” Shank said. Allie recognized delay tactics and excuses when she saw them, but she bit her tongue and let Shank tell this in his own words.
Eventually he sat up and looked at her. “She started taking the play outside the bedroom and giving me orders—expecting me to like getting told what to do as if I were a child. If she had been a woman of the family, if she had ordered me to find us resources or take a ship, I would have followed, but she didn’t. She ordered me to be weak.” Shank spit out the last word with hate. Allie could feel a strong case of loathing starting for this Claire.
“Why is your mother trying to remind you of this?” Allie asked. That was almost more disturbing than hearing about Claire’s mental dysfunction.
Shank huffed. “She’s reminding me that I’m an idiot with bad taste in women.”
“It’s a good thing you grew up and developed better taste,” Allie said.
Shank looked up at her, and when their eyes met, he smiled. “I do have better taste now. Much better. You trust me to figure out how to get the job done, and that’s all I really need.”
“And the dynamic stuff?” Allie asked. Shank’s skin had settled back into its normal dusky tones, but that question set off a new round of blushing. “I liked the way we played before.”
