Chapter 7
On screen, Raaze pushed off the crate.
She should close the feed. She knew that. Fred was still sulking in whatever digital corner AI units retreated to when they’d been proven wrong, and she was alone with a camera feed she had absolutely no business watching.
Raaze rolled his shoulders as he walked. Loose, easy, like he hadn’t just been sitting there with that bleakness carved into his face. The swagger was coming back, piece by piece, and she watched him rebuild the mask in real time.
Then he changed direction and headed toward the decontamination shower. Her eyes widened.
Oh no. No, no, no—
The decon unit was a basic setup. Open stall, industrial drain, overhead spray head. They used it for cargo handling when something leaked or when a job got messy. It wasn’t private. It wasn’t meant to be private. It was a hose in a corner with a floor grate.
And Raaze was walking straight toward it.
Oh hell, she should close the feed.
But she couldn’t make her hand move.
He stopped in front of the stall and reached for his waistband.
Close the feed. Close the fuc-fudging feed right now, Caitlyn May Rhenn, she lectured herself, the voice in her head sounding a lot like Fred.
The pants hit the deck.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Holy sh—he was put together like nothing she’d ever seen. Not bulky, he was built to move, with long lines of muscle that shifted under scarred skin as he stepped out of the fabric pooled at his feet.
And the scars. Oh my god, they were everywhere.
Scars crossed his ribs, a thick rope of tissue curving around his hip, and some that looked like claw marks down his left thigh.
Not fresh. They looked years old, maybe decades.
The kind of scars that came from a life spent getting hit and getting back up.
He stepped into the stall and turned on the water.
She winced in sympathy. That stuff was cold.
But he barely seemed to notice, standing there with his head back as the water sheeted down over his shoulders, his back, and the hard curve of his ass.
She should look away. She really should look away…
but she still didn’t close the feed. She couldn’t.
Her hand sat on the console six inches from the switch, motionless as her gaze welded itself to the screen.
The camera angle was the normal overhead industrial placement, meant for monitoring cargo and comings and goings in the bay. Which meant it showed everything.
Everything.
He turned under the spray, letting the water run down his chest, and she tracked the path of it without meaning to. Over the flat planes of his stomach and lower. Past the cut of his hips. Down to—
Stop looking. For the love of all that is holy, stop looking at his—
Her face burned like the sun. Any sun you cared to mention.
He was… proportional. That was the word her brain supplied, which was a spectacular understatement given that she was fairly certain human men didn’t come equipped like that.
None of the ones she’d been with, anyway.
Not even close. She bit her lip, turning her head to the side.
If that was it soft, then… She crossed her legs.
He lifted his head and winked at the camera.
Her stomach dropped through the deck plating.
Oh shit, he knew. The bastard knew she was watching.
But he didn’t stop like anyone normal, with morals or ethics, or even a sense of decency would.
Instead, he slid his hands over his body with deliberate, unhurried strokes.
Across his shoulders, then down his arms. His hands splayed out over his chest, across the muscle there before sliding lower.
He wasn’t washing anymore. He wasn’t even pretending to wash anything. This was a performance… or a challenge.
Look at me, the quirk of his full lips said. I know you’re watching. Keep watching.
She should close the feed. She should close the feed, pretend this never happened, and never, ever look him in the eye again. Perhaps she should even jettison herself out of the airlock because there was no way she’d be able to face him after this.
She still didn’t cut the feed.
He leaned back against the shower wall, the water running down his skin. His hand wrapped around his cock, and she forgot how to breathe.
Fuck.
Not fudge. Fuck.
Definitely fuck.
He stroked himself slowly. Long, deliberate pulls that made the muscles in his forearm flex. His head tipped back against the wall, and even from this angle she could see his lips part. She saw the slight hitch in his chest as he worked every inch of his thick length.
She was burning up. The cockpit was a furnace, environmental controls be damned, and her pulse hammered so hard she could feel it in her throat.
This was insane. This was absolutely, certifiably insane, and she was sitting here watching a man she barely knew get himself off in her cargo bay like it was some kind of private show just for her.
Which it was.
That was the part that made her breath come short, and her thighs pressed together against the heat building between them.
He knew she was watching, and he was doing it anyway, and her stupid brain was cataloging every detail. The way his hand twisted at the top of each stroke. The tension climbing through his shoulders. The rhythm building, faster now, less controlled—
His hips jerked.
She watched him come apart against the shower wall, his whole body locking up as he shuddered.
Thick white ropes of his seed exploded from his cock, splattering up against his taut, muscle-hardened stomach.
His hand kept working, even as the water sluiced everything away.
His mouth opened on something she couldn’t hear—a groan, a curse?
—and she pressed her palm flat against her own thigh hard enough to bruise.
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
The water kept running. He stood there for a long moment, head back against the wall, and his eyes closed. Then he straightened up, rolled his shoulders, and stepped out of the stall like nothing had happened.
Casual.
The swagger back in full force.
He toweled off with something he’d pulled from a supply shelf—she didn’t even know there were towels in there—and pulled his pants back on without looking at the camera. Not once. Like she didn’t exist. Like the last five minutes hadn’t just rewired something in her brain.
Then he walked out of frame.
She sat frozen in the pilot’s chair, with her heart trying to punch its way out through her ribs. The screen showed nothing but the empty shower stall, water still dripping from the spray head, steam dissipating into the cargo bay air.
She stabbed the switch, and the feed died. Like it made a difference now.
Her reflection, flushed and wide-eyed, stared back at her from the black screen.
Get it together. Get it together right now.
She pinged Fred. The response came after a pause just long enough to be pointed. Yes? Is there a problem?
“Everything’s fine,” she said. Her voice came out steadier than she expected. Small mercies. “Just checking you’re back online.”
I am operational. Another pause. Your heart rate is elevated.
“I was running diagnostics. Manual ones. It was stressful.”
Your levels suggest—
“Fred.”
He went quiet. She could almost hear him deciding whether to push it. Whether to call her out on the obvious lie and make her explain why her biometrics looked like she’d just run a marathon while sitting perfectly still.
He didn’t.
Fuel calculations are updated, he said instead. We are on track for the slingshot at the relay. ETA nine hours.
“Good. Great. Thank you.”
She pulled up the nav-display and stared at it without seeing a single coordinate. The numbers blurred together into meaningless noise while her brain kept replaying the image of Raaze against that wall, water streaming down, hand wrapped around—
Stop it.
The cockpit door hissed open behind her.
She didn’t turn around. She couldn’t. Her shoulders locked up, and she kept her eyes fixed on the display like the trajectory data was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.
“Shower’s functional,” Raaze said. His voice was easy and relaxed. The voice of a man who hadn’t just put on a show for an audience of one. “Bit cold, though. Thought you’d want to know.”
“Noted.”
She felt him in the doorway, but still didn’t turn.
“You look tense, kelarris.”
Don’t you dare.
“Long shift,” she said flatly.
The silence stretched. She could feel him smiling. She didn’t have to see it to know it was there… that slow, knowing curve that played havoc with every feminine instinct she had. It was the smile of a man who knew exactly what effect he had and enjoyed every second of it.
“Let me know if you need anything,” he said. “I’m told I’m good with my hands.”
The door hissed shut behind him.
She dropped her forehead to the console and let out a breath that shook on the way out.
Fuck. She was in so much trouble.
Two days.
Two draanthing days of her dodging him like he was a live grenade rolling around the deck plates. Raaze leaned against the cargo bay wall and counted the seconds. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen—
The corridor hatch hissed open. The sound of footsteps, quick and light, reached his ears. Then they paused just outside the door.
Twenty-two.
He grinned. She was right on schedule.
He’d mapped her movements by the second day. Cait hit the galley at 0600, 1400, and 2100 ship time, give or take three minutes. Regular as clockwork. She used the port corridor in the mornings, starboard in the afternoons, and alternated at night depending on whether she thought he was asleep.
She thought she was being subtle.
She wasn’t. She really wasn’t.
He was—had been a warball player. Reading movement patterns was literally his job. He could track twelve opponents across a field while calculating intercept trajectories and calling defensive switches. One small human female trying to avoid eye contact? Yeah, that was child’s play.