Chapter 10 Organized Chaos #4
His hands tighten on my thighs. Slide higher. His thumbs brush the crease where my legs meet my hips—close, so close—and then his grip flexes and he pulls me harder against him and rocks forward in a slow, deliberate thrust that makes the world go white at the edges.
I stop thinking. My hands shove under his shirt, finding the markings along his ribs, and the instant my fingers make contact with the ridged patterns, he breaks.
Not gently. The sound he makes is inhuman—a low, wrenched groan that shudders through his whole frame.
His markings ignite. Patterns I’ve never seen before race across his skin in rapid succession, flickering and shifting like his entire nervous system is short-circuiting under my hands.
The light pulses so bright it casts our shadows sharp against the far wall, and I realize with a lurch of want that this is him barely hanging on.
This is what it looks like when a Lividian male’s control genuinely shatters.
“The markings,” he manages, his voice cracked open. “When you touch them it’s—Dove, I can’t—”
I don’t stop. I trace the lines where they fork across his ribs, follow them down toward his hip, and he shudders so hard his forehead drops against my shoulder.
His hips thrust forward—once, hard, involuntary—grinding the full length of those ridges against me through our clothes, and the sensation rips a sound out of my throat that I will absolutely deny later.
I can feel every ridge. The texture of him through fabric—raised nodes catching against the seam of my pants at intervals that seem engineered for maximum effect.
Because they are. Because that’s what they’re for.
And through two layers of clothing, the pressure and drag hits nerves I didn’t know I had.
“More.” The word escapes before I can catch it. Not a quip. Not banter. A plea, thin and wrecked, from a woman who handles everything alone and is currently coming apart in someone’s arms. “Cetus—”
He kisses me again. No precision this time.
Messy, desperate, his teeth catching my lower lip.
His hands grip my ass and haul me tight against him, and for a few breathless seconds we stop kissing entirely—just foreheads pressed together, panting, rocking against each other in a rhythm that’s beyond conscious control.
His hips rolling. Mine meeting them. The friction building toward something that is definitely, absolutely going to happen on this filing cabinet if neither of us stops.
I don’t want to stop. That’s the terrifying part. Not the collectors, not the debt, not the armed men coming to drag me away. This—the way wanting him this much makes me feel cracked open and defenseless and undone—this scares me more than all of it.
My nails dig into his back. My knees lock around his hips so hard my thighs ache.
And I can feel myself shaking—actually trembling—not from fear but from the effort of being this close to something I want this much while every survival instinct I have screams that wanting things is how you lose them.
He pulls back a fraction. Barely. His breathing is ragged, his markings running wild in those erratic patterns, his pupils nearly swallowing the gold of his irises.
His lips move against mine and a word comes out that I don’t understand—guttural, resonant, in a language I’ve never heard him speak.
Lividian. The raw sound of it rolls through me like a physical touch.
He catches himself. Switches back to Standard. But his voice is wrecked.
“After this is over.” His hands frame my face. Shaking. His—shaking. “After we survive. I’m not going to be able to—I need—”
“I know.” My voice is barely a whisper. My hands cover his, holding them against my face. “I know. Me too.”
“I want—” he starts.
“PAPA!” Tavia’s voice explodes from the corridor speakers. “Papa, the PDC team! They jumped into the system early! Pickles says they’re six hours out!”
We don’t spring apart. We can’t. My legs are locked around his hips like my body has made a decision my brain hasn’t caught up with, and for three full seconds neither of us moves.
Just breathing. Foreheads pressed together.
His hands on my face. My hands on his hands.
Both of us vibrating with the effort of not ignoring his daughter and finishing what we started.
Then reality floods back like cold water.
“Confirmed,” Pickles says, and if an AI can sound smugly apologetic, he’s nailing it. “The PDC inspection vessel has entered the Kepler system. Revised ETA: six hours, twelve minutes.”
Six hours. Not thirty. Six.
I unlock my legs. He steps back. The loss of his warmth hits me like atmosphere venting—sudden and disorienting and wrong.
We stare at each other across two feet of charged air. His shirt is rucked halfway up his torso where my hands were. My hair is loose and tangled where he pulled the tie out. His markings cycle through those wild patterns, and I can see his chest heaving, and lower—
I look away. My mouth is swollen. My hands are useless. There’s a tenderness at my throat where his teeth grazed that’s going to bruise, and I’m going to press my fingers against it later like the absolute disaster I am.
“That’s—they’re early,” I manage. My voice sounds like I’ve been gargling gravel. “They’re really early.”
“Mother Morrison’s expedited processing appears to have been remarkably effective,” Pickles observes. “I suggest immediate preparation activities, as the station currently achieves sixty-three percent compliance readiness.”
Cetus hasn’t stopped looking at me. His eyes are molten. His hands clenched at his sides like he’s physically restraining himself from crossing those two feet and putting me back on that filing cabinet.
I’m not sure I’d stop him if he did.
We are not putting this back in the box. The thought lands with the force of a hull breach. Whatever we almost did on government paperwork storage—it didn’t scratch an itch. It ripped the lid off. And we both know it.
He runs both hands through his hair. His markings haven’t dimmed—blazing, broadcasting everything—and when he finally meets my eyes again, the look isn’t sheepish or embarrassed. It’s a promise.
“Six hours,” he says. Voice rough. Layered with those deeper harmonics that haven’t fully receded.
“Six hours,” I confirm. “We can do a lot in six hours.”
“I can think of several things I’d rather do in six hours.” He holds up a hand before I can respond. “Inspection preparation. I’m aware.”
He buttons his shirt correctly. Slowly. Deliberately. Like he’s reconstructing his composure one fastening at a time. I retie my hair with fingers that fumble the elastic twice.
We don’t mention the Lividian word he said against my mouth. The one I couldn’t translate. The one that felt like a claim.
“Pickles, updated compliance checklist. Priority items only.”
“Compiling. And Specialist Storm? Captain Foxton?”
“What?”
“I calculate a seventy-eight percent probability of suboptimal decision-making due to combined stress and unresolved sexual tension. I recommend maintaining a minimum three-meter distance during all remaining preparation activities.”
“Three meters,” Cetus repeats flatly.
“Within arm’s reach, you lose nearly sixty percent of your combined cognitive efficiency to what I can only characterize as ‘mutual pining.’”
Tavia appears in the doorway, breathless, badge askew. “Also, the collectors! Pickles, what about the collectors?”
“The Blackstar vessel’s ETA remains uncertain. Latest intercept suggests eighteen to twenty-four hours. However, their acceleration patterns indicate they may be attempting to close the gap.”
“So PDC in six hours,” I say, pulling my composure around me like armor. “Collectors in eighteen to twenty-four. Commerce Authority raid in forty-eight.”
“And the storm is weakening,” Cetus adds quietly. “Projected to break within the next twelve hours.”
Which means ships can land. Which means the shield of impossible weather is dropping right when we need it most.
“Then let’s get to work.” I pull my hair tighter, grab the compliance checklist from the screen, and channel every ounce of frustrated energy into the one thing I can control.
“Cetus, environmental systems. Tavia, you’re on signage inspection—bilingual check on every posted notice.
Pickles, real-time compliance tracking. I want a percentage score updated every thirty minutes. ”
“Captain, your cortisol levels suggest—”
“I’ll sleep when we survive this. Move.”
Tavia darts off toward Corridor B, badge bouncing. Pickles begins rattling compliance metrics. The station hums with renewed purpose.
Cetus holds my gaze across the operations center. Six hours of work ahead. Collectors closing in. An inspection that will determine whether his station survives. And between us, the wreckage of a kiss that rewrote everything we thought we knew about self-control.
My fingers drift to my throat. To the tender spot where his teeth grazed. I press. The ache blooms warm and bright, and something low in my stomach clenches.
He watches me do it. His markings flare once—sharp, involuntary—before he forces them steady.
“For the record,” he says, his voice low enough that only I can hear, “after we survive this—I intend to finish what we started. All of it.”
“For the record,” I answer, matching his volume, “I’m counting on it.”
His markings burn once. Bright. Certain. A promise in bioluminescent gold.
That word he growled against my mouth—guttural, Lividian, untranslated. Whatever it meant, I want to hear it again. Properly. With nothing between us.
Then we get to work.