Wemovetothegalley. HORATIO gives the containment report — container sealed and logged, biological transport protocol confirmed, the pod itself flagged for inspection because the stress fractures mean it never goes back into rotation — and she listens and nods and asks one sharp question about the fractures, whether they were there before the breach or made by it, and it is the right question, the question that means she’s already thinking about who built that pod and why, and I want to press her against the galley hatch and kiss her for asking it.
I do not press her against thegalley hatch.
The galley is small. Bolted table. Two bench seats. Prep unit. HORATIO’s display. One mug on the drying rack. One plate and one set of utensils. The kitchen of a male who has been eating alone for fourteen years and has never set a second place.
She stops in the hatch and takes it in. She doesn’t comment.
HORATIO makes tea. Two cups. “One Skiveth black, one station-standard. Ms. Vance, I have taken the liberty of assuming. If I am mistaken, I apologize, but I am not wrong.”
She takes the mug. Wraps both hands around it. Closes her eyes. Breathes it in. The sound she makes — soft, involuntary, a sound of warmth finding someone who needed it — goes through me directly. No defense.
I sit across from her. Pull up the incident report on the galley screen. The station will want it for the quarantine log. I need something to do with my hands that is not reaching across the table.
“Can I help?”
“You were involved. You’re a witness, not the filing party.”
“I triggered the quarantine. I feel like I owe you at least a damage inventory.”
“Fine. Start with the cargo manifest. HORATIO can give you the pre-breach list.”
She pulls the spare datapad toward her. Tongue between her teeth again. That concentration face. I focus on the report and do not look at her mouth.
I am certainly looking at her mouth.
The temperature climbs. The galley runs warmer than the hold — smaller space, climate rerouted. I am comfortable. She is not. Her cheeks flush and there is a sheen at her temples as she shifts inside the jacket.
“I need to —” she gestures. “I’m roasting.”
“Go ahead.”
She unzips. Shrugs the jacket off. It drops to the bench behind her, and she is in the lucky top underneath and —
The top has been under the jacket since her arrival at Bay 14. Fitted. Sleeveless. Scooped at the neck. Pale yellow-colored fabric pulled tight across her chest, embroidery at the hem. It has been hiding under the jacket like a classified document, and it is now declassified, and I am not prepared for the declassification.
Her shoulders. The line of her collarbone. Bare arms from the shoulder down, soft and pale in the galley light. The curve where her neck meets her shoulder. A freckle — one freckle, right there, at the juncture of throat and collarbone — and my tongue wants to taste it.
I want to start at that freckle and work down and my teeth want the tendon at the side of her neck, not hard, just enough pressure to feel her pulse jump, and I want to follow the jump with my tongue and I want my hands on her waist and I want to feel what happens to her breathing when I pull her forward and put my mouth on the hollow of her throat.
I want to lift her onto this table. I want to stand between her knees and press my mouth to that freckle and feel the vibration when she makes whatever sound she’d make. I want to find out what sound that is because I want to make the sound happen. I want my hands under the hem of the top, pushing up, finding more skin, finding the curve of her ribs and the soft plane of her stomach and the underside of —
I want to chase her.
The thought arrives from the oldest part of my brain and it is the most Skiveth thought I have ever had. I want her to run. Not from fear — from the game of it, from the heat of it. I want her to run,and I want to catch her. I want to crowd her into the narrow corridor between the galley and the cabin and put one hand on the bulkhead beside her head and the other at her hip and lean in and let my mouth find the skin behind her ear and saycaught youand mean it. I want to pin her wrists above her head with one hand and use the other to tilt her chin up and I want to take my time. I want to take so much time she forgets there was ever a world outside the width of my body. I want to make her shake. I want to feel her shake. I want to be the reason.
And then I want to do all of it again.
Ereux. The report. The REPORT.
“Problem?” she says. She caught me staring. She has absolutely caught me staring and there is something at the corner of her mouth that is going to be the death of me.
“No problem.”
“You stopped typing.”
“Thinking.”
“About the report?”
