“And wrong,” Shank said. He nudged her, and she scooted over to make room for him. “I never registered as dynamic.”
“After Claire, I’m not surprised. She’s a bit of a psycho.”
Shank chuckled. “Yeah, my family may have mentioned that once or twice. But if I wait to tell someone I’m dynamic, I can talk to them about what kind of dynamic. It’s not all cookie-cutter, and I know I’m not what people think of when they see someone registered as a dynamic submissive.”
“No,” Allie agreed, “you really aren’t.”
“Exactly.” Shank ran his fingers over Allie’s love mark. She could feel the deep ache of the bruising. “So telling them part of the truth is worse than telling them nothing. They’re going to make assumptions. It’s like Jacqs. He saw you were registered as hypersexual, and he really thought that meant you slept with anyone who didn’t disgust you. He didn’t understand, so having part of the truth was way worse than having nothing.”
Allie sighed. While she’d never seen it that way, she did know Shank was at least mostly right. “But without registering, I would have propositioned Copta. I know myself. I would have.”
“And she would have nicely turned you down. It would have been up to her to either tell you she’s asexual or let you think she just really isn’t into you.”
“Great. Back to trying to figure out people’s sexuality without being able to check the list.” Allie thought about that for a second. “And you know, since I don’t plan on having sex with anyone else, I’m weirdly okay with that.”
“Good. I never did feel jealous of you on the ship—well, except for when you slept with Bolson, which drove me insane—but right now, I feel like I don’t want to share.” He leaned in and brushed a gentle kiss across her lips. “You ready to go rescue our wayward crew?”
She groaned. “Shit. Jacqs is going to see this mark. I really hope to hell he has settled down now that he’s got a partner, because I would hate to shoot him for saying something stupid.”
“Well, if you do need to, aim below the knee,” Shank suggested. He stood and held out his hand. Allie let him help her up. Her legs were stained with her own dried juices, and she smelled like sex. Either that or their bed smelled like sex. Maybe both.
“I’ll take the world’s fastest shower and meet you on the bridge,” Allie said.
“Deal. I’m going to leave before the sight of you naked forces me do something that makes us even later.” With a quick grin, he turned and left rather quickly.
Allie smiled. She liked the idea of having so much power over his reactions, and he didn’t seem to mind either. He was dynamic, but she had to admit she hadn’t expected it to take that form. She showered, thinking about Shank’s long, lean form chained to the bed, lined metal shackles holding him while he fought. And he would fight. She could leave him enough slack to really buck and writhe. Allie reached between her legs and flinched as she found bruised flesh. She was definitely going to have to wait until later.
* * * *
AFTER WALKING ONTOthe bridge, Allie went straight for the displays. The ship had top-notch sensors, and the planet only had one settlement.
Ben leaned over the console and pointed to the most important display. “I found the only life signs in this area right around the landing site.”
“Okay, that means our guys are in the mining camp,” Allie said. She refused to believe anything else. If Command was afraid of a rescue, that had to mean someone was actually there to rescue. She studied the computer readings. “There are two main groupings of life signs. This group is clustered far too close together for living quarters. They’re on top of each other in this area.” She pointed to a sector north of the housing structures all lined up in faint blocks on the scan. There was a concentration of small dots with a long trail that led off to the northeast like ants all following a path. “With the line of people scattered along here,” she said, pointing at the screen, “I’m guessing this is the mine.”
“That’s what I figured,” Ben agreed.
Everyone was crowded around the display except Copta, who stood at the front of the bridge and looked out at the curve of the planet and the rings surrounding it. Allie had never seen a bridge with transparent alumina. The material was impossibly expensive, and while the window itself was actually more resistant to impact than the alloy skin of the ship, installing a window required seams and bolts that could fail in a firefight. That was why most of the time the bridge was buried deep in the center of a ship with multiple bulkheads between it and space.
“Why are those life signs fading? Is something going on down there?” Shank leaned in closer, his braid brushing against the console.
“The signs fade out as they get farther from the main group, so I think that’s the mine shaft descending into the hills,” Ben said. “I’ve also seen the signs getting brighter as they move closer to the main group, and no one is moving with any haste, so I don’t see any tactical signs of trouble.”
“This looks like the main settlement,” Allie said. “The life signs here are more spread out and random.”
“Except for here.” Ben pointed toward a tight grouping of computer-generated marks.
“Except for there,” Allie agreed. “Mess hall?”
“Training?” Ben guessed.
Allie rolled her eyes. “These are miners. They’re more likely to eat than train for battle.”
“They might have taken up training to make sure they could defend themselves when the bats came back; after all, these are miners that might have Jacqs and the commander with them,” Ben argued.
She looked down at the marks. “God, I hope so.” That was as close as she’d come yet to admitting her greatest fear—that they were going to bring home bodies. She’d made a promise to Jacqs. After everything he’d done to stand by theCandirucrew, letting him down felt like failing him. She’d badly misjudged him, and she needed time to make up for that mistake. However, the universe was cold enough to deny it to her, and she knew it.
Shank caught her hand, using it like a towline to pull her out of the chair and into his arms. “Whether they’re there or not, we’ll know we didn’t leave them behind.”
