Chapter 6 The Rust Bucket #2
But I hear what he’s not saying: Before I lose what’s left of my control and take you right here on the deck plates.
The airlock hisses open, and the smell hits us instantly—stale recycled air, frying oil, and the metallic tang of old blood.
Junker’s Rest is a sensory assault. The corridors are narrow, lit by flickering neon strips that buzz like angry insects.
Music thumps from the walls, a heavy, dissonant bass that you feel in your teeth.
It’s crowded. Scavengers, smugglers, and Fringe-dwellers push past us, and I feel Rynn move closer. Protective. His hand hovers near the small of my back, not quite touching but close enough that I can feel the heat of him even through my flight suit.
Close enough that every jostle from the crowd pushes me back against his palm.
And I swear he’s doing it on purpose. Each time someone bumps me, his hand is there, steadying me, pressing me back against him for just a second before I step forward again.
“Keep your head down,” I mutter, trying to ignore the way my body lights up every time we make contact. “My contact’s shop is on the lower deck.”
“Who is this contact?” Rynn asks, scanning every shadow, his hand now definitely on my lower back. Possessive. Claiming. His voice has dropped into that dangerous register that makes my thighs clench.
“Jax. He’s... an old friend. Best mechanic in the sector, assuming he’s sober.”
Rynn’s hand presses harder against my back. “How old a friend?”
There’s something sharp in his tone. Something that makes my pulse spike.
“Does it matter?” I glance back at him, and his eyes are gold-flecked amber. Watching me with an intensity that should be illegal.
“It matters.” His thumb strokes across my lower back, just once, and the casual possessiveness of it makes me stumble.
We turn a corner into a cavernous hangar bay filled with the carcasses of stripped ships. Sparks shower down from the ceiling where a loader-droid is welding a hull plate. In the center of the chaos, a pair of legs sticks out from under a battered freighter.
“Jax!” I shout over the noise, stepping away from Rynn’s touch. I immediately miss the heat.
The legs slide out. A human male, broad-shouldered and covered in grease, sits up. He wipes his hands on a rag, pushing back a mop of shaggy blond hair. He blinks, then a slow, lopsided grin spreads across his face.
“Rocket?”
He scrambles to his feet, dropping the rag. “Rocket, you crazy starkiller! I thought you were dead in the Karris Nebula!”
Before I can answer, he crosses the distance in three long strides and scoops me up in a bear hug that cracks my spine. He smells like engine oil and cheap spice-liquor—familiar and safe. Completely, utterly platonic despite the enthusiasm.
Nothing like the way Rynn smells. Nothing like the addictive mix of alien spice and male heat that makes me want to bury my face in his neck and just breathe.
“Put me down, you oaf!” I laugh, slapping his shoulder, but I don’t pull away. It feels good to be touched by someone who isn’t a walking existential crisis. Someone who doesn’t make me question every decision I’ve ever made.
Jax sets me down but keeps his arm draped heavily around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. “Damn, girl. You look good. Trouble, but good. You here to finally pay off that tab from Risa? Or are we making new mistakes tonight?”
The temperature in the hangar drops about twenty degrees.
I feel it before I see it—a wave of cold, heavy menace rolling off the man standing behind me. The hair on the back of my neck stands up, and suddenly I’m very, very aware of how Jax’s hand feels on my shoulder.
How it must look.
“We are here for business,” a voice says. It’s Rynn, but it doesn’t sound like the Rynn I know. It’s deeper. Flatter. Terrifyingly calm.
The same voice he used when he said he’d pin me to the mattress and fuck me until I forgot my own name.
My core clenches at the memory.
Jax blinks, looking past me. He seems to notice Rynn for the first time. He looks the Valorian up and down—taking in the messed-up hair, the grease smudge, the expensive boots—and I can see him cataloging, assessing.
“Who’s the stiff, Rocket?” Jax asks, his grin sharpening. “New boyfriend? Or did you rob a Core World bank and kidnap the teller?”
Rynn steps forward. He doesn’t rush. He moves with a liquid, terrifying grace that screams threat. Every predatory instinct on full display. He stops three feet from us, his golden eyes locking onto Jax’s arm where it rests on my shoulder.
And I realize with a jolt that Rynn is jealous.
Not just protective. Jealous. Territorial. That Valorian biology that makes them possessive of their mates is fully engaged, and Jax just painted a target on himself.
“I am the client,” Rynn says softly. “And we require a stealth stabilizer. Immediately.”
Jax laughs, tightening his grip on me. He has no idea how much danger he’s in right now. “Client, huh? You got a name, Client?”
“You do not need my name,” Rynn says. His gaze hasn’t moved from Jax’s hand. “You need to fix the ship.”
There’s a sound coming from Rynn’s chest—a low, subsonic thrumming that I recognize instantly. The same sound from the bunk. The same vibration I felt against my back when he was grinding against me, marking me with his scent.
Dermal resonance.
He’s purring. Not the happy kind. The warning kind. The kind a predator makes right before it rips a throat out.
My heart skips a beat. I need to defuse this. Now. Before Rynn decides that Jax is an acceptable casualty of his clearly unraveling control.
I step out from under Jax’s arm, putting a little distance between them. “He’s just the cargo, Jax,” I say quickly, forcing a light tone. “High priority. Pays double for speed. But he’s a little... uptight about schedules.”
The words are out before I can think them through.
Rynn flinches.
It’s tiny—just a microscopic twitch in his eye—but I see it. I feel it like a physical blow.
Cargo.
His jaw tightens, the muscles bunching. He looks at me, and the betrayal in his eyes hits me harder than any weapon. But then the mask slams down, colder and more impenetrable than before. The gold bleeds out of his eyes, leaving them flat amber.
“Right. Cargo,” Jax chuckles, giving Rynn a dismissive look that makes me want to shove my best friend away. “Well, if he’s paying double, I guess I can tolerate the attitude. Come on, Rocket. Let’s go check the inventory in the back. I’ve got some ‘blue milk’ saved for a special occasion.”
He winks at me and turns toward the office.
I glance back at Rynn. He stands alone in the middle of the dirty hangar, looking like a fallen prince in a kingdom of trash. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides, and the air around him is practically vibrating with suppressed rage.
With hurt.
I did that. I hurt him. After everything—after he told me his secrets, after he held me while I froze, after he almost claimed me—I just reduced him to cargo.
“Don’t break anything,” I whisper to him as I pass, and it comes out more like a plea than an order.
He doesn’t answer. He just watches Jax’s back with a look that promises violence, his body rigid with barely-contained fury.
And for the first time, I’m not sure if I’m more scared of the Meridian assassins... or what happens when Rynn’s leash finally snaps.
The office is exactly how I remember it: a cramped box smelling of stale hydro-coffee and illegal ozone, walls plastered with pin-ups of vintage starships. Jax kicks a pile of hydraulic couplings off a chair and gestures for me to sit.
My skin is crawling. I can still feel Rynn’s gaze on my back, even through the walls. That predator stare boring into me.
“So,” Jax says, leaning back against a workbench cluttered with half-dismantled droid parts. “Cargo. That’s a new one. Even for you.”
“It’s the truth,” I lie, drumming my fingers on my knee. Trying to shake the image of Rynn’s face when I said it. “He’s a high-value asset. OOPS assigned him. I deliver him, I get paid, I pay you. Circle of life.”
Jax snorts, grabbing a bottle of amber liquid from a shelf and taking a swig. “Rocket, I’ve known you since we were running stim-packs out of the Cassian Nebula. You’re a terrible liar. Your left eye twitches.”
“It does not.”
“It’s twitching right now.” He offers me the bottle. I wave it away. “That guy out there? He isn’t cargo. Cargo doesn’t look at every other male in the room like he’s calculating the most efficient way to sever their spinal cords.”
I shift uncomfortably, suddenly aware of a low vibration coming through the walls. Through the deck plates. That thrumming purr that means Rynn’s control is fraying.
He can probably hear every word we’re saying.
“He’s protective,” I say, quieter now. “It’s a... species thing.”
“Uh-huh. And the purring?” Jax grins, wicked and knowing. “I could hear him vibrating from here when I touched you. That’s a mating response, Polly. I’ve seen it in Felixian warriors, but never in a... whatever he is. What is he, anyway? Human with a glandular problem?”
“He’s none of your business, Jax.” The thrumming gets louder. Deeper. Rynn definitely heard that. “Do you have the stabilizer or not?”
Jax sighs, his playful demeanor slipping just a fraction. He reaches under the workbench and pulls out a heavy, matte-black component. It’s military-grade. Stolen, definitely. Perfect.
“Quantum-state stabilizer. Self-calibrating. Will ghost your signature for about forty-eight hours before it burns out.” He sets it on the table between us. “It’s yours. For the tab, plus twenty percent interest.”
“You’re a thief.”
“I’m an opportunist. There’s a difference.” He taps the metal casing. “But seriously, Polly. Watch your six with that one. He’s wound tight. Men like that... when they snap, they don’t just break. They explode.”
Too late. I already woke the monster.
And part of me—the reckless, self-destructive part—can’t wait to see what happens when he finally detonates.
“I can handle him,” I say, snatching the stabilizer before he can change his mind.
Jax’s grin returns, lighter this time. “Sure you can. Just make sure you survive the fallout.”
He walks me back out to the hangar. The noise of the station hits us again, a wall of grinding metal and thumping bass.
Rynn hasn’t moved.
He is standing exactly where I left him, a stillness in the center of the chaos. But the atmosphere around him has changed. A group of scavengers is giving him a wide berth, eyeing him with nervous suspicion. One of them has a bloody nose. Another is nursing his hand.
Oh, stars. What did he do?
Rynn’s hands are clasped behind his back, his posture relaxed, but his eyes snap to us the moment we emerge. They land on me first—a quick, thorough scan that checks for injuries, cataloging every inch of me like he’s confirming I’m still intact—before sliding to Jax.
The temperature seems to drop another ten degrees.
“Got the part,” I announce, holding up the stabilizer like a trophy. “Let’s get out of here before the air recyclers give up and we all suffocate.”
“Agreed,” Rynn says. His voice is ice over gravel.
Jax walks us to the airlock, whistling a tuneless melody. As the Pink Slip’s ramp descends, he stops and turns to me.
“Don’t be a stranger, Rocket,” Jax says, stepping into my personal space again. He reaches out, his hand lingering on my upper arm, his thumb brushing the fabric of my flight suit. “If the ‘cargo’ gets too heavy, you know where to find me.”
He leans in, aiming for a kiss on the cheek—our standard goodbye for years.
He never makes it.
There is a blur of motion—too fast for a human eye to track properly. One second Rynn is three feet away; the next, he is between us.
He doesn’t strike Jax. He doesn’t even draw his weapon.
Rynn’s hand shoots out and catches Jax’s wrist in mid-air. He holds it there, immobile, suspended inches from my face. It looks effortless, but I see the way Jax’s knuckles go white, the sudden wince of pain on the smuggler’s face as Rynn applies pressure.
Enough to hurt. Not enough to break.
Yet.
“She is not for you,” Rynn whispers.
It isn’t a shout. It’s barely audible over the station noise. But the tone triggers a primal shiver down my spine that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the memory of how he sounded in the bunk when he told me I’d be his.
It is absolute, terrifying authority. Primal ownership.
Mine.
The thrumming sound is back, louder now, vibrating through the floorplates and up through my boots. Rynn’s pupils have blown wide, swallowing the gold, leaving only black pits ringed in molten amber.
This is what he looks like when his control finally breaks.
And it’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
Jax tries to yank his hand back. He can’t. He stares at Rynn, eyes wide, the cocky grin vanishing. “Okay,” Jax wheezes, his voice strained. “Okay. Message received, Suit. Let go before you crush the bone.”
Rynn holds him for one second longer—a heartbeat of pure dominance—before releasing him with a dismissive shove that sends Jax stumbling back.
“Fix the ship,” Rynn says to me, not looking back at Jax. His eyes are locked on mine, burning with possession and fury and hunger. “Now.”
He turns and stalks up the ramp, the air around him crackling with a lethal energy that makes the hair on my arms stand up and heat pool low in my belly.
Jax rubs his wrist, staring after him. He looks at me, shaking his head. “Cargo, huh?” Jax mutters, massaging the red marks forming on his skin. “Polly, that isn’t cargo. That’s a loaded weapon with the safety off.”
“Yeah,” I breathe, watching Rynn disappear into the shadows of my ship. My heart is pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs—fear, adrenaline, and raw, undeniable arousal flooding my system. “I know.”
I turn and run up the ramp, hitting the seal button. The airlock hisses shut, locking us in.
Just me, the ship, and the monster I just woke up.
A monster who just publicly claimed me in front of a hangar full of witnesses.
A monster who’s waiting somewhere in my ship, vibrating with rage and possessive need.
I should be terrified.
Instead, I’m wet and shaking and wondering how fast I can find him before this tension between us finally ignites and burns us both alive.