Sabine
Ihad felt him through the door. Twenty centimeters of reinforced steel between us, and somehow I had known exactly where he stood, how his hand pressed against the metal, the seventeen breaths he had taken before leaving.
The memory followed me through my morning routine.
Shower, protein paste, dealer uniform. Normal actions that felt anything but normal when my mind kept circling back to last night's kiss.
The heat of his mouth. The careful way he had touched my face, like I might shatter or disappear.
The raw, immediate memory of it was a brand on my thoughts.
Distance. I needed distance. For both our sakes.
Whatever game we were playing had shifted into something neither of us could control. The smart move was to stop. Cut losses. Return to the safety of dealer and gambler, professional boundaries intact.
I took the service lift, like always. Touched my collar in the empty elevator, my nervous tell he had identified. When had someone watching me shifted from threat to comfort?
My shift began with the second rotation. The usual suspects were there. Ambassador Krell, now borrowing credits from increasingly dangerous sources. A new Nexian merchant trying to impress business partners. The Poraki twins, who had found a new scam I shut down without conscious thought.
Varrick did not come.
I had told myself I did not want him there. Too dangerous, too distracting, too much everything. But my eyes tracked every new arrival. Every tall figure with gray skin made my pulse jump. Every time the mezzanine stairs creaked, I looked up.
He did not come.
Good. This was good. Safer. Smarter. The hollow feeling in my chest was just adjustment, nothing more.
Just as the shift hit its second rotation lull, Kreeg appeared. He stood at the maximum professional distance from my table. “Everything running smoothly?” His voice stayed carefully neutral.
“Yes, sir.”
He nodded and left without another word. Varrick had done that. Made my supervisor afraid to even look at me too long. The protection should have felt suffocating. Instead, it felt like armor I had not known I needed.
Mid-shift, security appeared. Two guards, neither of them familiar. “Ms. Reeves? You're needed on Level 17.”
My stomach dropped, but I kept dealing. “I am mid-shift.”
“Floor manager approved the interruption. This is urgent.”
They escorted me through sections of the casino I had never seen. Level 17 was all harsh lighting and institutional walls. Security offices that smelled like fear and industrial disinfectant.
Chief Kellan waited in an interrogation room that was not called an interrogation room. “Sit,” he said. “We have a situation.”
He activated a holo-display. Three guards in medical beds, conscious but wrong. They stared at nothing, occasionally whimpering, rocking in place.
“Found this morning on Level 14,” Kellan said. “Near your quarters. They are traumatized. Cannot say what happened. Will not say what happened. But before they went silent, one kept repeating your room number.”
The blood in my veins turned to ice, then fire. Varrick. He had done this. The thought was terrifying and thrilling all at once.
“I do not know anything about it,” I said, meeting Kellan's eyes steadily.
“No threats? No unusual attention? No one who might… protect your interests?”
That last question carried weight. Kellan knew something. Or suspected.
“I am a dealer,” I said. “I deal cards. I go to my quarters. I sleep. That is my life.”
He studied me for thirty seconds that felt like hours. Then nodded. “If anything comes to mind, you will inform security immediately.”
“Of course.”
They escorted me back to my table. I finished my shift on autopilot, my mind spinning through implications. Three guards. Traumatized, not dead. A message to anyone else who might consider me a target. Varrick had turned psychological warfare into art.
After my shift, I should have gone to my quarters. Should have maintained the distance I had promised myself.
I went to the observation lounge.
He stood at our usual window, silhouette carved from shadow and nebula light. He did not turn when I entered, but his shoulders shifted. Awareness.
“You did not knock,” I said.
“You did not open,” he responded.
I moved to stand beside him. Not touching. Carefully not touching. “Security questioned me about three traumatized guards.”
“Did they.”
“What did you do to them?”
“Made them understand consequences.”
“They were catatonic.”
“They were planning to hurt you.” His voice carried no emotion. Statement of fact. “Now they will not.”
Silence stretched between us. The nebula painted colors across the glass, across his face when he finally turned to look at me.
“I cannot stop thinking about you,” I admitted. The words fell out like stones I had been carrying. “About that kiss. About the way you look at me like I am something worth protecting.”
“You are.”
“I am an indentured dealer with crushing debt and a dead sister.”
“You are brilliant. Observant. Strong enough to survive five years in this place with your soul intact.” He turned fully toward me. “And you are compromising everything I came here for.”
“What did you come for?”
He paused, something shifting in his expression. “What I came for requires access to the restricted levels. I am getting close.”
“We should be professional,” I said. “During shifts. Keep boundaries.”
“We should.”
“We will not.”
“No.”
Neither of us moved closer. Neither of us moved away. The space between us hummed with possibility and terrible ideas.
“Walk me to my quarters?” I asked.
He offered his arm, formal, old-fashioned, careful. I took it, feeling the solid strength through his shirt, the way his body heat ran hotter than human normal.
We walked in silence through the station's corridors. Staff members saw us and quickly looked away. Word had spread. The Vinduthi who dealt with threats to the human dealer. The clear claim that had not been formally made but everyone recognized.
At my door, I turned to face him. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
But I did not go inside. Could not. My hand stayed on the door control, not pressing it, while he stood there looking at me with those red eyes that saw too much.
“Sabine.” My name came out rough, like he had been holding it back.
“Do not go,” I heard myself say. “Not yet.”
Something flared in his eyes. Heat. Want. The same thing that had been building between us since day one. He stepped closer, forcing me to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact.
“If I stay—”
“I know.” I pressed the door control. It slid open behind me. “Come inside.”
He followed me in, and the door sealed behind us. My quarters had never felt smaller. He filled the space, not just physically but with his presence, his heat, the weight of what we were about to do.
“This is—”
I stopped his words by pulling him down to me. No careful questioning this time. I kissed him like I had been wanting to for days, hungry, desperate, done with pretending I did not want this.
He made a sound low in his throat and his control shattered. His hands tangled in my hair, his mouth claiming mine with an intensity that should have frightened me. Instead, I pressed closer, needing more, needing everything.
He backed me against the wall, his body caging mine.
I could feel every hard line of him, the strength he had been holding back, the want he had been hiding behind mathematical games.
His mouth moved to my neck, and I gasped at the scrape of teeth, not his fangs, he kept those carefully away, but enough to make me shiver.
“I have wanted this since the first day,” he admitted against my skin. “Since you looked at me like I was just another gambler and dealt my cards with those perfect hands.”
My fingers found the fastening of his shirt, needing to touch skin.
He helped, pulling the fabric off with impatient movements.
The green traceries on his chest were a roadmap of his lineage, stark and unmoving, but the muscles beneath them coiled tight as spring steel.
I traced them with my fingers, feeling him shudder.
“So controlled,” I whispered. “Always so controlled. Let go.”
“If I let go—” His hands gripped my waist, thumbs pressing into hip bones. “Sabine, if I let go, I will—”
“I am not fragile.” I pulled him down for another kiss, biting his lower lip hard enough to make him growl. “Stop treating me like I am.”
That did it. He lifted me like I weighed nothing, carrying me the three steps to my narrow bed.
My dealer's uniform was gone in moments, his hands and mouth exploring newly exposed skin with focused intensity.
Every touch felt like fire, like awakening, like coming back to life after years of numbness.
When his mouth found my breast, I arched off the bed, fingers digging into his shoulders. He was careful with his fangs, always careful, but everything else was pure need. His hand slid between my thighs and I nearly came apart at the first touch.
“Look at me,” he commanded, and I opened my eyes to see his red gaze burning into mine as his fingers moved, watching every reaction, cataloging every gasp and shudder like he had cataloged my tells at the gaming table.
I was close, so close, when reality crashed in. The weight of what we were doing. The danger. The way this would change everything. My body tensed, and he felt it immediately.
He stopped, hand still but not withdrawing. “Sabine?”
“I—” Fear and want tangled in my chest. “I cannot. I am sorry, I thought I could, but—”
He moved up to cradle my face, his touch gentle now. “It is alright.”
“It is not. I want this. I want you. But—”
“But you are scared.” No judgment in his voice. Just understanding. “So am I.”
That admission made me look at him. Really look. And I saw it, the same fear beneath the want. The same recognition that this was bigger than either of us had planned for.
He kissed my forehead, then rolled to lie beside me, pulling me against his chest. I could feel his heart, hearts, plural, the dual rhythm all Vinduthi had, racing against my cheek.
“We do not have to do anything you are not ready for,” he said into my hair.
“Stay anyway?” I hated how small my voice sounded. “Just… stay?”
His arms tightened around me. “Yes.”
We lay there in the dark, bodies cooling, breathing synchronizing. I was half naked in bed with an alien warrior who had terrorized guards for thinking about me. He was holding me like I was precious, like I was worth protecting, like I mattered.
Tomorrow everything would be complicated.
But tonight, I fell asleep feeling something I had not in five years: safe. He had stayed, and for the first time, the silence in my quarters did not feel like loneliness.