Chapter Seven #3
Dust clings to his boots. Pale, mineral-fine, nothing like the polished floors of the compound's upper levels.
A scent threads beneath his usual warmth, earthen and old, from somewhere deep.
His shoulders hold a looseness that wasn't there when he left, a quality that vanishes the moment he catches me looking.
I don't ask where he went. The question would require acknowledging too much.
There are levels of this compound I haven't seen. Places he goes that appear on no schematic I've been given. I add the observation to everything else I'm learning about him. I don't let myself wonder what it means.
We work in silence after, side by side in the medical bay, building a picture of conspiracy and betrayal one data point at a time. When I reach for a file at the same moment he does, our fingers brush.
The contact lasts less than a second, skin against skin, and the temperature of him sears through me in a flash of sensation that steals breath. I pull back. He doesn't.
For one suspended heartbeat, his fingers hover near mine, close enough that I can sense them without renewed contact.
His claws are retracted and his hand is steady, but the tips of his fangs press white against his lower lip, extending without his permission, and the sight of that involuntary response sends liquid fire through my veins.
His control is costing him. I can see it in the tension along his forearm, the flex of muscle as he forces himself not to close the distance. His scent reaches me now, something mineral and male and layered with musk that makes me want to press my face to his throat and breathe.
“I need to check the timestamps on the authorization codes.” The words come out thin, scraped raw.
He hands them to me without a word, and his fingers don't touch mine again.
I turn back to the console and pull up the timestamps, but the numbers blur on the screen. My hands aren't steady. My pulse won't slow. He shifts position, putting distance between us that should make breathing easier.
It doesn't.
I cross-reference three more files before I trust myself to glance in his direction, and when I do, he's watching me with an expression I can't read. Not predatory. Not cold. Something closer to the look he wore when his fingers hovered near my jaw yesterday.
I bury myself in data and pretend I don't notice. Pretend I don't track him in my peripheral vision. Pretend my pulse isn't racing with an urgency that isn’t poison or conspiracy or the investigation that gives us reason to occupy the same space.
The pretending doesn't help.
He owns me. By law and by contract. Whatever is building between us exists inside a framework of captivity and debt and power that tilts in his direction alone. I have no leverage here. No protection. If I let myself want him, I'm handing him a weapon he could destroy me with.
I understand hierarchy. The military built that understanding into my bones during two years of combat deployments.
Chain of command. The structures of power that determine who gives orders and who follows.
I survived by knowing my place within those structures, by understanding which rules could bend and which would break you if you pushed.
This isn't hierarchy.
Officers couldn't own enlisted soldiers.
Regulations existed. Rights existed. Recourse existed if someone crossed lines that shouldn't be crossed.
A medic who wanted her commanding officer had options: transfer requests, fraternization policies, the knowledge that the power imbalance came with limits built into the system.
Here, there are no limits. Syndicate law doesn't recognize me as a subordinate with protections. It recognizes me as property with a value attached. The distinction matters more than I want it to.
Wanting a superior officer would be manageable.
Complicated, against regulations, but navigable.
I've seen it happen. I've watched colleagues stumble through the aftermath.
Attraction to someone who owns me is something else entirely.
The desire doesn't erase the imbalance. It tangles with it, threads through every interaction until I can't separate what I want from what I'm allowed to refuse.
I'm a soldier. Soldiers don't surrender to circumstances; they assess and adapt. Attraction is a fact, not an order. I can acknowledge what I feel without letting it command my actions. I can want him and still protect myself. Feeling doesn't require surrender. Desire doesn't demand obedience.
The decision settles somewhere beneath my ribs, fragile but present.
I will not pretend the wanting doesn't exist. That lie would insult us both. I will not hand him my judgment alongside my contract either. I’ve survived worse than wanting the wrong person at the wrong time in the wrong circumstances.
I can survive this.
I keep thinking about his restraint anyway. His hand pulling back when every line of his body screamed forward. The request for help instead of a demand. That silver gaze in the medical bay, holding a hunger that matched the one growing inside me.
He could have touched me. He had every right to touch me, by the laws of this planet, by the terms of my contract. I am his property. He could take whatever he wanted.
He didn't.
That restraint undoes me in ways force never could.