Chapter 4
APEX DREW back an inch at most, still close enough for his breath to stir the hair at Emmy’s temple.
The kiss had begun soft and searching but deepened until she sensed the tremor of his restraint in the way his hands gripped her shoulders.
When he tried to stop, she followed, refusing the distance, the Valenmark between them a living pulse of heat and need.
His mouth claimed hers again, hungrier now, dominance overtaking the measured calm she had come to expect from him. His tongue slid against hers once, deliberate, a stroke that drew a gasp she couldn’t contain.
He caught the sound and swallowed it, one hand sliding up the line of her neck, the other braced at her waist as if to remind himself that he could end this whenever he chose.
The truth was, neither of them could. The mark burned through constraint until she arched against him, answering need with need, pulse with pulse.
His breath turned ragged against her cheek.
When he broke the kiss, it wasn’t gentle.
His hand stayed firm at her waist, keeping her steady while he dragged air back into his lungs.
His voice came low, a rough scrape of effort.
“You do not understand what you ask.” He brushed his thumb across her lower lip, which trembled faintly.
“I will teach you many things, Emmeline. But not this. Not yet.”
She wanted to argue. To drag him back down and taste the promise in those words. Instead, she forced a shaky laugh that came out more like a challenge. “Fine. Then teach me your ship.”
He shifted from stillness to motion in an instant, the change as clean and quiet as a blade drawn from its sheath. “Very well.” He gestured her toward the pilot seat. “Sit.”
“It looks tight.”
“It will adjust.”
Emmy sank into the chair, the seat reconfiguring around her hips.
Light flowed up from the armrests and formed a translucent band around her midsection, not touching, a visible reminder to stay within the pilot’s position.
Apex took the position at her shoulder rather than the seat beside her.
The choice indicated trust, and that felt precarious and enormous at once.
“Hands here,” he said. He drew her fingers to the twin arcs that rose from the console. “Left for roll, right for yaw. Pitch by heel pressure. Touch is measured, not forceful. This ship listens to intent.”
“It listens to you.”
“It will listen to you also. The mark permits it.”
Heat moved beneath her skin again at the glide of his fingers over hers. The light on the console responded to his touch and then to hers. Lines brightened. A distant tone shifted into a timbre she had not heard before, like a chord resolving.
He continued, voice level. “Navigation stack, upper tier. Flight map, here. Field density renders on this band. Your eyes want to chase bright. Do not. Read the gradients. The smoothest path is rarely the brightest.”
She tried to split focus, to keep her attention on his instruction rather than the awareness of his breath near her ear or the disciplined way he held his own restraint.
The Valenmark didn’t help. It warmed with every brush of his hand, every time his shoulder almost met her temple, every steadying touch on her wrist.
“What happens if I do this,” she asked, angling the right arc three degrees.
The ship responded with a subtle bank. Apex’s palm hovered over the console without touching. “You slide us toward the long path rather than the fast one. Acceptable in my opinion for now.”
“What happens if I do this,” she repeated, pushing the left arc too far in compensation.
He caught her hand before she overcorrected. “You pitch the tail into drift and announce our location to anyone watching. Precision over speed.”
“Aram is watching,” she guessed. The name tasted like rust.
“Affirmative.” He leaned over her shoulder and flicked a toggle she hadn’t noticed. The cabin lights shifted to a softer spectrum that protected night vision. “He scraped a tracker over the hull. I removed it. But he still has your signature. We change that by changing you.”
She turned her head. “Change me how?”
“Change your patterns.” He tapped the arc to show her where to place her thumb for a smoother angle. “To shake a hunter, break habit. Humans cling to habit when frightened. They forget that fear is a pattern also.”
“I am not frightened,” she said.
He did not smile this time. “You are brave. Those are not the same.”
Her throat went tight and she looked back at the stars before he could read more than she wanted him to see. “How long until Aram finds us again?”
“That depends on how well you learn.” He straightened. “And how well I teach.”
She threaded breath through her lungs, willed her hands to steady, and moved through the sequence again.
Smaller correction. Gentler angle. She sensed the difference immediately.
The ship liked precision as much as its master.
She could almost perceive it loosening, like a tense animal reassured by a skilled touch. Pride lifted, bright and unexpected.
“Good,” he said, with a note in his voice she hadn’t heard before. “Again.”
They ran the sequence three, then five, then ten times. He added steps. She absorbed them. He corrected posture with a glancing touch between her shoulders. She found a better line and held it until the mark pulsed steady and warm and the ship had learned the shape of her hands.
At last he said, “Enough,” and touched her wrist with two fingers, a light command to lift her hands from the arcs. The heat of the Valenmark reached for the contact and flared. She couldn’t stop the small sound that rose at the spike of sensation.
His breath checked. The sound that answered from him landed low and rough in her ears. He removed his hand first.
“Water,” he said. It sounded like an order and a rescue.
She rose on shaking knees, crossed to the galley drawer, and took the black mug. The metal was cool and heavy. She filled it and drank, aware of his presence as if he stood with a palm pressed to her spine.
“Eat,” he said. He had moved without her hearing it and held out the scored protein bar. “You will crash otherwise.”
“I’m not a child.” Still, she broke a square and let it soften on her tongue. Grease and salt spread across her palate, ugly and welcome at the same time. She took another square and held the remaining half out. “Share.”
“I do not require it.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He studied her, took the half, and ate it without comment. The normal act steadied something inside her in a way no order could have.
She set the mug aside. “What do your people call this,” she asked, turning her wrist so the Valenmark caught the cabin light. “When it does this.”
“Heat.”
“That isn’t helpful.”
“Accurate,” he said.
She huffed and slid onto the edge of the sleeping shelf because her legs refused to trust the floor. “Is it always like this?”
“I do not believe so,” he said. His gaze cut over her, sharp and assessing again. “It is stronger at first. My hope is that it will find equilibrium.”
“When?”
“When we learn each other.” His tone stayed even, but something in his eyes darkened. “When we stop fighting it.”
She stared at him, not blinking. “I’m not ready to stop fighting it.”
He took a step closer, the space between them shrinking until the heat radiated from his body to hers. “Then fight,” he said, the words quiet but edged in something dangerous. “Fight as long as you must. I will hold the line until you choose.”
The mark pulsed between them, bright and alive, every beat pressing against the distance he was trying to maintain. Her breath hitched. “What if I never choose?”
His jaw tightened. He leaned in just enough that the faint brush of his breath stroked along her cheek. “Then I will still hold it,” he said, his words a low promise. “Even if it tears me apart to do so.”
The air changed with those words. It was not warmth. It was something quieter that carried the same gravity. She was suddenly exposed in a way that had nothing to do with skin. She spoke to deflect it.
“You said the mark unlocks access. What does it do for you?”
“It steadies my control,” he said. “Improves reaction time. Narrows the window between thought and act. It sharpens focus under pressure. It also degrades that restraint when we stand too close for too long.”
“So it can make you better and make you reckless.”
“Affirmative.” He watched her closely. “It is why I choose distance. Not because I do not want your nearness. Because I do.”
Her breath slid out in a shaky laugh. “That’s the first honest admission you’ve made that didn’t sound like a mission brief.”
He surprised her again by answering without deflection.
“Then let me be more honest.” His gaze didn’t waver, though his voice dropped into something darker, intimate.
“The Valenmark doesn’t only give you access to my ship, my instincts, and my reflexes.
It opens paths both ways.” He hesitated a beat, then continued, each word deliberate.
“I can perceive pieces of you—your adrenaline when you’re afraid, the rise of heat when you’re angry, or when you…
” His mouth curved slightly, grim and restrained. “When you want.”
She stared at him, horrified. “You can read my mind?”
He looked away for half a breath before meeting her eyes again. “Negative. I don’t read thoughts. I sense states. Echoes. It is not mind to mind, but nerve to nerve. You have become a presence inside me, and you will begin to feel the same.”
“I already do,” she whispered.
They stood inside that brief confession for a full minute. The hum of the ship filled the space between two people who were no longer strangers and not yet anything else.
Her eyes went to the tiny utility locker near the head of the sleeping shelf. “I need a shower or a sink or a miracle.”