Varrick
Her skin still carried the flush of sex, marked with my mouth, my hands, my desperate need to claim her in every way but the one that mattered most.
My fangs ached. Actually ached. The claiming instinct—this thing I'd never felt before her—roared through my blood. Bite. Mark. Keep. Mine.
But she'd asked for truth, and truth was harder than any claiming bite.
“I'm here to steal something called the Regalia.” The words scraped out raw. They were a confession. A failure.
She didn't move, but I felt her attention sharpen. That brilliant mind that had cataloged every tell at every table for five years now focused entirely on me. On what I was about to admit.
“Tell me.”
I looked down at her, this brilliant, defiant woman in my arms. To tell her the truth was to hand her a weapon—one she could use against me with devastating precision.
But looking into her eyes, I knew she, of all people, would understand betrayal.
The risk was enormous. But the thought of lying to her was worse.
So I told her everything. And with every word, I felt more naked than our bodies had made us.
“It's a crystalline key. Looks like someone compressed starlight into something the size of my fist. Pretty, until you know what it unlocks—a vault containing everything the Sovereign hid before the Conclave murdered him. Weapons that could level stations. Wealth that could buy systems. Information that could destroy half the criminal enterprises from here to the Outer Rim.”
The lines on my chest were stark and clear, a reaction to her touch. Making me hers as much as I was making her mine.
“Why does a casino owner have it?”
Here it came. The part that made me a fool. The part that still woke me at night, fury and shame a knot in my chest, tight and sharp.
“Qeth was my mentor.” The words tasted of copper, of blood—of trust turned to poison.
“Eight years ago, I was young. Brilliant with numbers, stupid with people. He found me running probability scams in the lower sectors, saw my work with algorithms—probability matrices that could predict anything, behavioral models that could map anyone—and he made me feel... seen.”
Her hand stilled on my chest. Waiting.
“He said I was wasted on small scams. Said my mind could build empires. Fed me expensive dinners and talked about legacy and succession. Made me feel...” I stopped.
Swallowed past the tightness in my throat.
“...that I mattered. That I was more than just another grey-skinned thug with a talent for math.”
“Varrick.” Just my name, but the way she said it made something in my chest crack.
“I built him an empire. Every algorithm running this station, every predictive model managing the games, every mathematical framework keeping the credits flowing—I created them. Handed them over as gifts because I thought—” The words stuck.
Even now, years later, the betrayal burned.
“I thought he saw me as a successor. Maybe even as a son.”
She pushed herself up on one elbow, looking down at me. In the dim light, I could see something fierce in her eyes. Not pity—thank the void, not pity. Fury. Raw, protective fury. For me.
“He didn't.”
“No.” The word came out bitter. “He saw me as a commodity. When my work was complete, when the algorithms were perfect and self-running, he sold me.”
She sat up fully then, her expression sharp. “What? He wanted to sell you to who?”
“The Conclave. As if I were livestock. As if everything between us had been training me for sale.”
She made a sound—small, hurt, furious. Her hand found the scar along my ribs, the one she'd traced earlier.
“You escaped.”
“Barely. He had me drugged at what I thought was a celebration dinner.
Woke up in restraints with Conclave buyers examining me with a buyer's cold assessment. Had to tear through three guards and leave half my blood on the floor to get out.” I touched the scar.
“But the algorithms stayed. And without my skills to maintain them, they're dying. Degrading by the day. Taking his empire with them.” A dark laugh echoed through the room.
“Qeth thought he could maintain them with neural enhancers.
That's why he's dying—he's been jury-rigging my algorithms through his own brain, and it's destroying him.”
“So he leaked the Regalia's location.” Her quick mind was already there, already understanding. “He knew you'd come.”
“It's bait. This whole thing is bait. He knows I need the Regalia to honor the Sovereign's legacy, to fund my crew's war against the Conclave. Knows my pride would demand I take back something from him after he took everything from me.” I met her eyes, needing her to understand this next part.
“I walked into this trap with my eyes open because I needed to prove he hadn't broken me.”
She studied my face for a long moment. Then she said, “You used me.”
Not an accusation. Just truth between us.
“Initially.”
“My knowledge of the casino. My position. My—” She paused, and I saw her throat work. “My reaction to you.”
“Yes.”
“When did it change?”
“The moment you decoded my message and felt curiosity instead of fear. When you looked at me like I was a puzzle worth solving instead of just another threat.” I pulled her down, needing her weight on me, needing to feel her heartbeat against mine.
“I told myself I was being strategic when I broke that first wrist for you.
Told myself it was calculated when I threatened Kreeg.
But the truth? I stopped thinking tactically the moment I saw you counting cards with your left hand while smiling at some ambassador like he mattered.
You were so alone. So brilliant. So wasted on this place.
Just like I'd been wasted before Qeth found me.”
“You saw yourself.”
“Every protection, every threat, every broken bone—it wasn't strategy. It was recognition. Every time I protected you, I was protecting the part of myself I thought was long dead—the part that still fought back. You weren't hollow or angry. You were waiting. And I couldn't let Qeth break that.”
She was quiet against my chest, her breath warm on my skin. I could practically feel her mind working, that beautiful brain processing everything I'd admitted. Then she laughed, a bitter, startling sound.
“Five years I've been memorizing every security blind spot in this station. I volunteered for every miserable maintenance shift they offered, just for the chance to map another corridor. Every camera angle. Every guard rotation. Every maintenance shaft, emergency exit, and forgotten corridor. All that time, I was a corpse dealing cards—safe and dead. I want dangerous and alive.”
My hands tightened on her waist. “You've been planning something.”
“I gathered data obsessively because it was the only control I had.
But gathering isn't the same as committing. I never had enough hope to actually do anything with it.” She sat up, straddling my hips.
The move was confident and powerful, and my body responded immediately, but she didn't seem to notice.
Too lost in her own confession. “I had all this knowledge. Every detail perfect in my head. I could tell you which guard takes his coffee break at 3:47, which camera has a two-second lag, where the maintenance tunnels connect to the high-security levels. But I never used any of it because... because what was the point? Escape to where? To what? To more nothing?”
“Sabine—”
“Then you arrived.” Her voice cracked. “You looked at me and saw something worth protecting. Made me feel valuable beyond my function. Made me feel—” She pressed her hand to her chest like she was trying to hold something in.
“I was dead, Varrick. You brought me back to life. Do you understand what that means? You made me want things again. Made me remember what hoping felt like.”
The weight of that admission nearly stopped my hearts.
“The vault,” I said carefully, “I can't get to it without…”
“Without someone who knows every weakness in this station's security.” Her smile turned predatory. “And I can't escape without someone strong enough to handle the physical obstacles.”
“You need my strength.”
“And you need my knowledge.”
“Partners.”
“Together we might actually pull this off,” she said, then leaned down to kiss me. Not with the desperate hunger of before, but with something deeper. Promise. Partnership.
When we broke apart, she started talking. Five years of perfect observation poured out of her. She drew invisible maps on my chest, showing me routes I'd never have found. Her memory was flawless—she forgot nothing, cataloged everything, filed it all away for a someday that had finally come.
“The vault has biometric locks, but they're connected to the main system. When the algorithms fail completely—”
“The locks fail too.” I saw it immediately. “Qeth's paranoia becomes his weakness.”
“Soon. The system failure is accelerating.” She traced patterns on my chest, and I realized she was drawing the route we'd take. “He's already deteriorating—I've watched his public appearances. He forgets names, repeats himself, sometimes stops mid-sentence like he's lost.”
“Dangerous.”
“More dangerous than two people attempting to rob him?” She smiled again, and I wanted to worship her. “We're already past dangerous, Varrick. We're in the realm of insane.”
“You could stay safe. I could do this alone.”
“No.” The word came out firm. Final. “I want dangerous and alive.”
My fangs ached again, the claiming instinct roaring through me. She must have seen something in my face because her hand came up to touch my jaw, thumb brushing over where my fang pressed against my lip.
“Not yet,” she whispered. “After. When we're free. When I can choose you without desperation. When you can claim me without it being about possession.”
“You understand what that means? The bite?”
“Forever.” She kissed me soft and deep. “I understand forever.”
We spent another hour planning, still naked, still intertwined.
Every detail she shared was trust. Every weakness I admitted was vulnerability.
By the time we finally dressed—her in my ruined jacket that hung to her knees, me in pants that might not survive the walk back—we weren't just lovers who'd had desperate sex in a casino's private room.
We were something more dangerous. Two broken people who'd found their missing pieces in each other. Who were about to risk everything on an impossible heist that might kill them both.
She left first, wearing my jacket and her dignity and nothing else. I waited, thinking about what had just happened. Not just the sex, or the partnership, but the connection. The feeling that I'd been walking through life incomplete until her.