Chapter 3 #3
His body was definitely not gym-built. That was not the kind of body that came from lifting weights in a climate-controlled room three times a week.
It was the kind that came from years of actual use, the kind where every muscle had a job and did it, where there wasn't a spare inch of fat like… anywhere.
Her brain immediately went to whether the rest of him was proportional, and she told her brain to shut the entire fuck up.
He reached for his trousers.
She spun around so fast she nearly went through the wall.
Behind her, a laugh rumbled through the air.
"Sorry, little kelarris." He absolutely was not; the amusement in his voice told her that. Whatever kelarris meant. It had sounded soft, almost fond, and she didn't trust that one bit. "I'm used to barracks. You can change behind the screen if you like."
She hadn't seen the screen. She saw it now, standing in the far corner, floor-length with three folded panels and amber cloth stretched across it. Ornate. Of course, it was ornate; everything on this ship was ornate. She could probably have used the screen as a down payment on an apartment.
She walked to it with her chin up and did not look behind her once.
Behind the screen, she stripped off fast. The under layer went on, and the warmth hit immediately. She sighed in relief as she rolled the pants waistband twice, knotting the drawcord until it held, then pulled the shirt down over the top.
Then she looked down.
Okay… She looked like she was wearing a tent. A warm one, though, so she wasn't going to complain. It smelled like him too, leather and something warm underneath. Great. Now she was wearing the kidnapper's underwear. Fantastic.
She edged out from behind the screen to find him dragging a damp cloth over his chest and throat, scrubbing the last of the sinkhole grime off bare skin.
The clean leathers were folded on the trunk, waiting.
Right. She was absolutely going to look at the wall behind him.
The wall was great. A good wall. She liked walls. Looked at them all the time.
“You can look now.”
When she turned around again, he was dressed in clean leathers, identical to the ones he'd taken off.
Standing at the wall opposite, he was feeding the ruined uniform into a panel she hadn't noticed was there before. When the panel closed, it disappeared. No seam, no edge, nothing. She stared at where it had been. Whoa, an invisible laundry chute… unless it just led to the furnace or the engines or something, and that’s how they got rid of their dirty clothes.
He turned and held his hand out to her.
"The ship will deal with them," he said, nodding at her things.
"Right…” She looked at the wall. “What does that mean, exactly?"
He looked at her as if she'd asked what gravity was.
“The ship will wash and dry your clothes?”
"Right. Yes, of course,” she said, feeling silly. "Good ship."
Bundling her wet things, she handed them over. He shoved them through the panel as well.
He turned and brought his hand up slowly, pressing two careful fingers to the bridge of his nose. The wince was small and controlled, but it was still there.
"I need to get this sorted." He scooped Barnaby off the bed one-handed. Barnaby made the sound of a creature deeply wronged and then went boneless and cooperative because being carried was still being carried. "Come."
She followed him back into the corridor, padding along behind him in bare feet on warm carpet.
The door at the end of a shorter corridor opened onto white. All of it, sharply, uncompromisingly white — walls, floor, some pale composite that had the sheen of marble and the practicality of metal, the ceiling blazing under harsher lights than the rest of the ship.
She knew what it was immediately. Medical. The smell wasn't quite the same as a human clinic, but it had the same aggressive cleanness, the same nothing-organic-lives-here energy. A wide bed sat in the center of the room, and around it, suspended from the ceiling, hung a ring of white metal.
Thyaar set Barnaby on the bed. That was his first mistake.
Well, no, his first mistake had been having the audacity to wake Barnaby from a nap.
The big ginger tom looked at the ring of metal overhead, then at Thyaar with an expression she’d seen many times before.
It was the expression he used when she put his bowl in the wrong spot, or bought the off-brand food.
It was the expression of a cat who felt he had been personally insulted and wanted that on record.
Barnaby jumped off the bed and stalked away.
Thyaar sighed and picked him up, dropping him back on the bed.
She hid her grin. Bless him, he actually thought that was going to work?
Barnaby turned to glare at the big alien, jumped off the bed again, and walked away.
Not in a huff—Barnaby didn't do huffs because huffs implied the other party's opinion mattered—he was just done.
He stalked to the other side of the small room and sat with his back to Thyaar, washing the fur where Thyaar had touched him with venomous swipes of his tongue.
"You're just pissing him off, you know?" She leaned against the wall and folded her arms as Thyaar approached Barnaby again. “But by all means, carry on. This is the best entertainment I’ve had in months.”