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“Morning,” she whispered back. Blinking rapidly, she yawned, her nose wrinkling as she fought it. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a baby,” he lied, curling his arm more securely around her waist when she started to slide toward the edge of the narrow bunk. It was barely wide enough for her, never mind both of them.

A bigger bed. They definitely needed a bigger bed. Or he could drag a couple of mattresses to the floor.

He’d sleep anywhere, but he wasn’t risking B falling out of this damned plank in the middle of the night and cracking her head on a locker or something.

“Must have been all the adrenaline from yesterday,” he said.

She gave a sleepy chuckle and pushed herself upright, dark curls tumbling over her face. She shoved them back with both hands, and he watched, fascinated.

Her hair was a complete mess, but it was beautiful.

Humans had such strange, rich colors. The dark brown-black of her curls, her blue eyes that looked brown until the light caught them. Latharians had color, of course, but theirs was simpler. Less... varied. He supposed that was what happened when an empire bred itself into neat little boxes for long enough.

“Adrenaline. Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “More like I wore you out last night.”

“Wore me out?” He scoffed. “As if a little thing like you could wear me out.”

She slid from the bed, completely naked and utterly unselfconscious, and he forgot what he’d been about to say next.

She was so small compared to him. Petite enough that he could lift her one-handed if he needed to, though he doubted she’d appreciate him proving it. Lean muscle moved beneath her skin as she crossed the tiny room, graceful curves softening the hard lines of her body. There were faint scars over her arms and one near her hip, pale against her skin.

Not delicate and never useless, like females of his species had been near the end. Wrapped in silk and protected from anything rougher than a harsh word. B would hate a life like that. She crawled through engine spaces, swore at broken machinery, and had punched a thug hard enough to put him on the deck.

His kind of female.

Glancing back over her shoulder, she caught him watching and winked. Chuckling, he lay back against the pillow.

His female had a sense of humor. He liked that she teased him. Not many people did, mostly because of his size. Covak did, but that was only because the vorrtan was even bigger than him. If Rann slapped him for some comment, Covak just roared with laughter and told him not to tickle him.

Folding his arms behind his head, he stared up at the ceiling. Grey metal, with one tiny light fitting, a few old scuff marks that almost looked like a boot had been thrown at it. Not nearly enough to distract him from the sound of water hitting metal and tile, or the knowledge that B was in there.

Naked. Wet.

He bit back his groan. He was hard as a rock again. Had been since the moment she’d slid out of bed, all that lean muscle and scarred skin on display. He shook his head, she was amazing, beautiful… and last night she’d shattered every expectation he’d had about human females.

And he’d had some expectations, right or wrong. Human women were so small; he’d assumed they’d be fragile... and they were, in some ways. B was not. She’d proven last night that she could take everything he gave her, and the sounds she’d made⁠—

He sucked in a breath as his cock ached. Trall, he was never going to get those out of his head.

The toilet flushed, followed by the faint rustle of movement before the shower snapped on with a clunk.

The water pattered against tile. Idly, he listened to it, tracking the small sounds of her moving around. The click of a bottle. The soft, almost-inaudible hum she made under her breath. It wasn’t quite a song, more a sound of contentment.

His chest tightened. He could live here, in this moment, for the rest of his life and count himself a lucky male.

“Well?” Her voice cut through the water noise, sharp and amused. “Are you planning on joining me, or are you waiting for a written invitation?”

He was off the bed in a heartbeat. One second he was lying there, and the next he was through the bathroom door and stepping into the shower, ducking under the low-mounted head and into the steam.

She was right there. Wet skin, dark hair plastered to her shoulders, water running in rivulets down her breasts and stomach. She looked up at him with those dark blue eyes, and he forgot how to breathe.

So he kissed her instead. Hard and desperate, sliding a hand into her wet hair, as he gripped her hip with the other. She made a small sound against his mouth and kissed him back, her hands flattening against his chest.

And then his head hit the showerhead.

It was high enough for her, but he had to stoop, his shoulders wedged against the narrow stall walls, and his back curving in a way that was really going to ache later. When he pulled back to grab a breath, he cracked his elbow on the soap dish.