My tongue flicks. The warm-sweet is faint, dispersed. She has been everywhere.
But the hum-sense is always pointing at her. Close. Down one level. The storage units.
I move through the corridors. Low. Fluid.
“Lorri.” The hunting voice. “Your note was very detailed.”
Silence.
“Courier boy? You called me courier boy. On paper. In your handwriting. I am going to remember that, little human.”
A sound. Ahead and below. A storage unit door being eased shut.
“I liked the part about the belt and being pinned down. The specificity was appreciated.” I descend the maintenance stairs. “Three days of planning, according to HORATIO. You ran laps. You got Polly to let you into a restricted area. And you did something to get ready for me that you put in a note on paper because you knew the paper would get me.”
I reach the storage level. Three units. Manual locks.
“The part about both — that part I have been thinking about since this morning. And the getting-ready part — my sneaky, magnificent female — that part is making my claws do things I cannot control.”
The scent-spike hits me from unit two. Massive.
I open the door.
She is on the floor. Not the crate — she has laid out a blanket. One of the thick cargo blankets from the residential stores, spread on the deckplate. The oil is on the crate beside the blanket, within reach. A small bag next to it — things from Marker 7 and Marker 9. The planning.
She is lying on her side on the blanket. In the red standby light. Wearing a dress — dark, fitted, the kind you wear when you want someone to take it off you. Boots. One knee bent. Chin propped on her hand.
“Six minutes,” she says. The smile that is mine. “Took you six minutes.”
“Your heat dispersal was good.”
“But?”
“But the hum-sense doesn’t lie. And neither does your chemistry when I talk about the belt.”
She blushes. Dark in the red light.
I step inside. Close the door. The manual lock engages. No windows. Not soundproofed. I do not care.
“Stand up,” I say.
She stands and steps out of her boots. I walk around her. Slowly. The dress fits the way the green one fit — inevitably, catastrophically — and there is no line underneath. Nothing at the hip. Nothing at the back.
“Lorri.”
“Mm?”
“Are you wearing anything under that dress?”
The almost-smile. “Why don’t you find out?”
My claws extend. I run one claw-tip down her spine. Over the dress. From the neckline to the base. The fabric parts — a whisper of a cut. She shivers.
“No underwear,” I say against her ear. “My sneaky girl.”
“I wanted to save youa step.”
I ease the dress off her shoulders. It slides over her curves. Pools on the floor. She is naked. Completely. Nothing underneath. Nothing between her skin and the red light and my hands except the air.
