18. Home #2
"I will keep him moderately alive," Sprout confirms. "I make no guarantees about his dignity."
"Drask." I shift in his lap — a practical adjustment that produces an impractical friction, and his fingers grip my thighs and his pupils dilate.
I press on. Logistics. "His deadline is a station-day from the corridor exit.
That gives us tonight after we dock — maybe less.
We need to know what's in the container — actually know, not Drask's version.
We need to understand who his buyer is. And we need to decide whether we hand it over, deliver it to Tessaro as contracted, or find a third option. "
"A third option being?"
"Whatever option keeps us alive and doesn't involve giving a dangerous broker what he wants.
" I lean forward. My mouth close to his.
Not kissing — the proximity is strategy and desire in equal measure.
"I have been running cargo in contested space for twelve years. I know how to find a third option."
"I do not doubt this." His voice has dropped. The proximity doing its work. "Your competence is not in question. Your proximity to my mouth while discussing tactical options is the current challenge."
"Focus, lovey."
"I am focused. I am focused on several things simultaneously, not all of which are tactical." His thumb traces a circle on my inner thigh and I bite the inside of my cheek. Fair. I started it.
"And Trell." I say it gently, watching his shoulders. "Whatever he said to you last night is yours until you want it to be ours. I'm not asking. I'm just saying I know the shape of a male who's been somewhere bad, and when the somewhere wants company, I'm three feet away."
His hands go still on my thighs. His jaw works.
"The margin," he says finally, "did not move."
"I know, lovey." I press my palm flat over his sternum, over the purr. "Why do you think I'm not asking."
"And you." The serious part. My hands frame his face. Small palms on his jaw. "You have no job, no home, no legal identity outside SRS records. You are, by any metric, a fugitive with a bonded mate and a ship AI who has adopted you and absolutely nothing else."
"An accurate summary." His voice is dry but his hands on my thighs are not dry — they are warm and large and his thumbs are tracing patterns that are not conducive to strategic planning.
"The Petal has a co-pilot's chair." I run my fingers along the cracked armrest. His claw marks.
"OOPS needs operatives. Morrison's been trying to partner me up for ten years and I've refused every candidate.
The pay is awful compared to SRS. The equipment is —" I gesture at the cockpit.
Fairy lights. Tea stains. "— characterful. "
"You are offering me a job."
"I'm offering you a life." The distinction matters.
I lean forward. My hands on his chest, feeling the purr.
"SRS gave you a function. I'm offering contested-space runs and triple-rate pay and Sprout insulting you every day and a ship that's held together by stubbornness.
And me." Small word. Terrified word. "If you want me. "
"If I —" His jaw works. "I am knotted-bonded to you. The biology —"
"I don't want the biology's decision." Sharp.
His hands tighten on my thighs. "I know your cells chose me.
I'm not asking your cells. I'm asking the male.
Do you want to be here? Not because the purr tells you to.
Because you looked at a woman with a notebook and a blaster and thought: her. That life."
His hands slide from my thighs to my waist. Lift me — an inch, a shift, repositioning me against him so we are face to face. Eye to eye. His strength doing the thing it always does with me: moving me gently inside a grip that could crush.
"I chose you before the bonding." Low. The voice from beneath the weapon casing. "Before the kiss. Before the biology had a name. I chose you when you wrote down lost things nobody asked you to keep and the writing was the bravest thing I had seen in thirty years."
"Xor —"
“I chose you when you shot a mercenary over my shoulder at two and a half inches and didn’t hesitate.
When you offered me tea while I was robbing you.
When you called me beautiful and the word didn’t have a file and I couldn’t —“ His voice fractures.
“I am still building a place large enough to hold that word and your face when you said it.”
One tear. I wipe it with my thumb and he watches the tear the way he watches everything — total attention, the face that is the only navigational reference he needs.
"So yes. The male, not the biology. Yes to the Petal and the fairy lights and the terrible pay and Sprout and the woman who looked at a weapon and saw a person." His thumb traces the bite mark on my shoulder through the cardigan. "Yes. Her. That life."
"Good." Same word. Same weight. "Good."
I kiss him. Soft. His hand cups the back of my head — his palm larger than my skull — and he holds me against his mouth and the purr vibrates through both of us and the co-pilot's chair creaks under our combined weight.
"However," he says against my lips. The arrogance sliding back. "My tea is objectively superior to —"
"Don't."
"Your water temperature varies by three degrees between preparations. This is not artistry. This is chaos."
"Chaos is a style."
"Chaos is a failure of methodology."
"Your methodology produced tea that Sprout classified as a biohazard."
"I would like it noted," Sprout says, "that both of you are wrong and the mattress still needs replacing."
We are bickering about tea in a co-pilot's chair that fits neither of us while I'm straddling a bonded Xarthian and his hand is on my hip and his tail is on my ankle and Junction One is closing fast and Morrison is going to kill me and I am happier than I have been in ten years.
I pull the notebook from the cardigan. Open it on his chest — using him as a desk because he is large enough and convenient.
"Twelve years of entries. Lost shipments.
Missing persons flagged as errors. Person-shaped gaps in systems designed not to notice.
" I tap the Drask page — the transaction code, scared of the courier.
Why? "Someone should be doing something about these.
Not the systems. The systems are the problem.
Someone outside. Someone small enough to slip through the gaps. "
His eyes are on the notebook. His hand is on my thigh. The attention he gives tactical briefings, combined with the warmth he only shows me.
"What are you proposing?" His voice has shifted — not clinical, not soft. Interested. The sound of a male hearing an idea that fits a shape he didn't know he had.
"Something with more teeth." The old phrase.
The protector instinct Morrison calls crusading.
"A ship and a crew and cases nobody else takes.
We've got a Tier 1 operative with SRS clearance knowledge, a courier with twelve years of sector experience, an AI with the best tactical processing in the Reach, and a notebook full of evidence.
" I close it. "Salvage work. Retrieval. The things other people write off. "
"Salvage and retrieval solutions," he says. Dry. Then his markings flush as he hears the initials.
I stare at him. "You did not just accidentally name our company after your ex-employer."
"The coincidence is —"
"SNAG," Sprout announces. "Salvage, Navigational Assistance, and General — I'm still workshopping the G. I have registered the name. You're welcome."
"Sprout, that doesn't —"
"It does. It's mine. Moving on."
I look at him. He looks at me. And the smile arrives — the fourth. Small, lopsided, unpracticed, and his eyes change shape when he smiles. The gold warms. The hard lines ease. For one unguarded second he is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
"Beautiful," I say. Because someone should keep saying it until the word has a home.
He presses his face into my neck. Hides there.
The purr rattling through my collarbone.
His fuzz against my jaw. The male who does not know how to be called beautiful learning, one repetition at a time.
His arms wrap my waist — both arms, both hands flat on my back, pulling me tight against his chest. The embrace of a body that takes up most of a cockpit, folding itself around a woman who takes up almost none of it.
I hold him back. My arms around his neck. My fingers in the fuzz at his nape. The size of him and the smallness of me and the way we fit anyway — not because the geometry makes sense but because we have decided it will.
"Drink your tea, lovey." Against his horn. "Junction One soon. Morrison to survive. A villain to beat. A company to build."
He lifts his head. Kisses me. The slow, thorough kiss of a male who has learned what his mouth can do and is quietly pleased about it.
"I would like it noted," he says against my lips, "that SNAG is a terrible name."
"I would like it noted that you accidentally created it."
"This is slander."
"This is the truth and Sprout has it on record."
"Confirmed," Sprout says. "Archived. Backed up to three separate servers. Proceed."
We have until approach control starts squawking. I know exactly how I want to spend it.
He is still beneath me in the chair. The strategy is done.
The company is named. The tea is cold. And he has been hard under me for the better part of the morning — polite about it, disciplined about it, his hands respectful on my thighs while the ridges pressed against me through the fabric every time I shifted — and I have decided his discipline has had enough exercise for one day.
I set the notebook on the console. Deliberate. His eyes track the movement.