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Tambi looked at the spot where the bottle had landed, stopping in front of me. “Full diagnostic. We start in four hours. And for fuck’s sake, Monica, shower before you show up.”

Chapter 6

Rennick

Cass’s bourbon sat on the nightstand.

I’d been staring at the bottle, flat on my back in sheets that smelled citrus sweet, and I couldn’t make myself get up. Not because the bed was comfortable. It was short for me by a full foot, but Cass’s scent was everywhere, soaked into the pillow, and every breath I took landed somewhere south of useful.

Paperback books sat in a messy stack by the bed, their spines cracked. I hadn’t seen an actual book in years. A pair of her work boots were by the door, scuffed at the toes, laces still knotted from being kicked off in a hurry.

I turned my face into the pillow and breathed her in.

Get up.

Four weeks on the Hollow Chorus and I’d forgotten what a room that didn’t fight back felt like. No temperature swings, lights guttering, or voices whispering out of walls. Just quiet, that intoxicating smell, and the low light coming through the window from the yard below where fairy lights still burned.

I pushed the sheets back and stood. Everything ached. A month of sleeping upright so I was alert when the Hollow Chorus screamed had left me feeling broken. The muscles down both sides of my spine had locked into knots that would take a week to work loose, and my hands were raw from handling the column breach, the skin split and pink where the resin had burned.

I’d heal.

The bathroom was small and human-scaled, but set up for comfort. Cass’s shampoo sat on the shelf beside a bar of soap that smelled like cedar. A clean towel hung over the heated rail.

I turned the water on hot enough to fog the mirror and stepped under it. The heat found every locked muscle and worked into it. For the first time in weeks, I did something other than brace, tipping my head back and closing my eyes.

Cass underneath me on the gangway. Her forearm coming up against my throat, efficient, no hesitation, and how her body had fit against me burned into me more completely than the resin column ever could. The curve of her waist under that jacket, and the muscle along her stomach where she’d braced against my weight after the ship kicked me out. The scent of coffee and chocolate, dark and sweet, as her hair fell against me.

My hand moved down my stomach, slow, gripping my already hard cock and stroking the length.

Her hands on that column, sure and fast, working the break while resin tried to fuse to her skin. Cass hadn’t flinched. There was calm in her voice while the room tried to kill her. She was born to work on a living ship. It had been a fucking beautiful sight.

I stroked my cock harder and let myself have it. Her mouth when she called the Chorus a princess, and the way her tongue had traced her bottom lip. What would that mouth feel like against my throat? Against my chest? Lower.

Those lips parting and taking my shaft, sucking the head, tracing her tongue along my length as she looked into my eyes. Her fingers wrapped around my cock, her palm small and rough with calluses, and she wouldn’t be gentle about it. Cass would take what she wanted and make me grateful just to have her near me.

My cock ached in my fist, thick, the head flushed dark, and I braced one hand against the shower wall and stopped pretending this was about anything other than her.

Her weight pinning me to the deck. Her hips. The way she smelled.

Fuck. I came hard enough that my knees almost gave, forehead pressed to the wet tile, the water hammering my back, and her image in my head. My hand stayed where it was until the last pulse faded and my breathing evened out.

I turned the water off and stood in the steam. Jacking off didn’t help the need in me. If anything, it was worse now. How could I get more of Cass? The ache of desire wasn’t gone. It had relocated, deeper, past the skin and the muscle and into a place I didn’t have a fix for.

Damn. Humans rarely bonded to Kelvane, and never to our ships. Our bond mate was a one-and-done event, and as rare as Earth gold. I could fuck a hundred women, but none lasted if there wasn’t the bond to sear us to each other.

Males who found their one true mate were blessed by the stars, and there was no way to find her unless she came to you. You could search, but until she was ready, it was a frustrating waste of time. The females chose. That was how it should be.

I dried off with Cass’s towel and didn’t think about the fabric stroking against her bare, wet skin, or the taste of her pussy fresh out of the shower, either.

I dressed facing the window, with a partial view of Dead Stick Salvage. It was a high-quality operation. Their tools were expensive and top of the range. Their attitudes... well, they were questionable, but they could say what they liked, so long as they saved the Hollow Chorus.

And the team worked well together. They each had a skill set, and they blended. It had to be enough to give me the Chorus back, whole and healthy.

My comm chimed on the nightstand, and I crossed the room and picked it up. It was an automated alert from the Hollow Chorus. It fired when the bio-readings spiked past the threshold I’d set after the last crew walked.

What was going on? The temperature in the main corridor had climbed twelve degrees in an hour, dropped twenty, then climbed again like a fire got lit and then extinguished.

There’d also been a power draw. The neural matrix ran too hot, patterns I’d never seen in weeks of monitoring, like the ship was searching for a signal it couldn’t lock onto. This was different from anything it had done while I was aboard.