Page 27

A gasp slipped out before she could bite it back, and his gaze dropped to her mouth. The blue and green of his eyes was darker now, like a storm-tossed sea. Need and want and dangerous promise all rolled into one.

Heat curled low in her belly, and she hated it. Hated that she wanted him to close the last inch between them. Hated that she wanted to know what his lips would feel like on hers.

He leaned down and his lips brushed hers. Warm, soft, it was a fleeting touch. Not even a proper kiss.

Then it hit her.

He’d lied to them. Lied to her.

A growl tore out of her as she shoved both hands into his chest.

He stumbled back a step, surprise flashing across that stupidly handsome face.

“No.” Her voice came out rough. “I’m not doing this. Not happening.”

Before he could reply, she ducked around him. Yanking the door open, she disappeared into the corridor before she could do something really stupid.

Like kiss him back.

Four hours later, Rann could still feel the brush of B’s lips against his.

Not that it could really be called a kiss. It had barely been a kiss. Not even enough pressure to call it one, really. Just warm softness and a startled little breath, then she’d shoved him away as though he’d burned her.

He’d stood there half-undressed and stupidly pleased for a whole second before the meaning of it had caught up.

But by then she’d run.

Not from fear, though. B didn’t strike him as the sort of female who ran from anything. But she’d run from him, and he wanted to know why. Why she’d gone soft in his hands, then furious.

He thumped back in the pilot’s chair, growling in the back of his throat in frustration. All he wanted to do was track the stubborn female down, sit her somewhere she couldn’t escape, and ask what the hell was going on.

But he couldn’t. Because the universe had decided to cockblock him with one mother-draanther of an asteroid storm.

It had blown up just as he’d stepped out into the corridor after her. The alarms in the corridor had about burst his eardrums, and Stevie had called for him. He’d been in the cockpit ever since, steering the old trader through tumbling rock and debris that ranged from fist-sized chunks to boulders big enough to crack the ship open in one hit.

Not that they’d ever truly been in danger. Not with him at the helm. He’d been doing trall like this since he was old enough to walk.

The TW-37-A shuddered as a smaller fragment skimmed past the portside armor-plating, close enough that Stevie flinched. Adjusting the controls by a fraction, he guided them around a slow-turning slab of dark rock.

The asteroid field was thinning out now. Most of the larger bodies were behind them, and the storm had settled into the kind of manageable mess that he didn’t really need to keep his full attention on.

But he stayed in the pilot’s seat, keeping an eye on everything anyway. That was the thing about space: once you got comfortable, it bit you in the ass.

Beside him, Stevie sat curled in the copilot’s chair, one foot tucked beneath her as she worked through a stack of paper manifests. Actual paper. It was such a novelty to him that Rann glanced at it again.

Humans were so strange.

Silver threaded through her blonde hair at her temples, delicate little streaks that framed her face. Her blue eyes moved steadily over the figures, mouth tightening every time she found something she didn’t like.

She was small. Fragile-looking by Latharian standards.

And somehow she reminded him of Ryke.

Not in appearance. Ryke was taller, broader, scarred to hell, and had the kind of expression that made most people consider their life choices. But Stevie had the same stillness that Ryke did. At one point he would have called it command… a quiet certainty that everybody would do exactly what she wanted just because she expected them to. But it wasn’t that. It was more than that. It was an innate confidence that seemed to fill every inch of her tiny body in just the same way it filled Ryke’s.

She looked up and caught him looking at her. “What?”

“You remind me of my—an old boss of mine,” he corrected quickly.