Chapter 15 #2
She had pinned her hair back loosely. One short strand had escaped beside her cheek. He noticed it, the blue at her cuffs, the faint pressure mark on a finger where she had been holding her cup.
Yesterday she had kissed him.
The taste of her still lingered on his lips.
His skin remembered. Heat gathered beneath his collar as she looked up at him. He wanted to lean across the table and kiss her again. Preferably without knocking breakfast into her lap.
“The server said they might clear the hot food before you came,” she said. “I didn't know what you liked.”
He lifted the cover. She had given him a portion of nearly everything.
“This is a comprehensive approach.”
“I thought so.”
“How hungry do you think I am?”
“I have no way to estimate. You could have been living on cold food and disapproval for days.”
“An excellent diet. Very traditional.”
She laughed into her cup.
He wanted a hundred mornings like this. The thought arrived without the least concern for all the reasons that made it unreasonable.
Then Sereya put down the cup.
“How was Roemary?”
“Angry by the time we finished.”
Her face changed.
“At me?”
“Her objections included you. She doesn't like that we're spending time together.”
Sereya's gaze dropped to the edge of the table.
He didn't reach for her immediately. The room was occupied; she might prefer to keep whatever she was feeling out of it.
“She asked about the packet,” he said. “I told her it was held under the screening order. I didn't tell her about your call.”
“Will she believe you?”
“I don't know. I wanted you to hear what happened from me.”
Sereya nodded.
“She'll tell me you were concerned about my behavior.”
“I wasn't.”
“That I made you uncomfortable. Or misunderstood something.”
“You haven't.”
Her mouth moved in a small, unhappy attempt at a smile.
“I know what she says before she says it. You'd think that would help more.”
“Does hearing me say otherwise help at all?”
She looked up.
“Yes.”
“Then I'll be explicit. I asked you to breakfast because I needed to see you. I enjoyed holding your hand yesterday. And that kiss, Sereya—I'm burning for you. I've spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to work while I remember exactly where your mouth touched me.”
The unhappy smile changed.
“How much time?”
“I won't put a figure on it in a public room.”
A little color returned to her cheeks.
“Some of that may have been mutual,” she said.
“Only some?”
“I won't put a figure on it either.”
He held her gaze until she laughed and looked down at her plate.
There was work to do. Calls waiting. A clerk to question and a search he needed to check. He knew all of it. He could still choose to remain in this chair long enough to eat the meal she had saved him.
He took up his fork.
For several minutes they talked about the food. She had mistaken a sharp condiment for a fruit preserve and warned him with considerable feeling. He tried it on the wrong thing deliberately, argued that it improved it, and endured her look of disbelief until the heat made his eyes water.
“That serves you right,” she said, passing him water.
“I was demonstrating courage.”
“You were showing off.”
“An important distinction. I shall remember it.”
She was still smiling when her comm lit beside the plate.
He saw Roemary's name before she turned it over.
Sereya stopped moving.
“You don't have to read it now,” he said.
“If I leave it, I'll spend breakfast wondering.”
She picked it up.
Dhomhes watched her face. The smile disappeared, but she didn't give him the message immediately. She read it again, then set the device on the table between them.
I have just had a very revealing conversation.
We should speak before you allow this to go any further.
You know how damaging misunderstandings can be.
He kept his hands around his water glass.
Sereya rubbed her thumb along the edge of the comm, then stopped.
“I'm not having this conversation in my room,” she said. “If there's something that actually needs settling, I'll ask the office to arrange it.”
“With someone you choose present,” he said.
“Yes.” She looked at the message again. “She'll hate getting that answer.”
Dhomhes waited. Sereya drew herself a little straighter.
Then she picked up the comm and wrote an answer.
I am not available for a private meeting. If there is something necessary to discuss, we can arrange it through the residence office.
She showed him before sending it, but she didn't ask him to approve the words.
“Would you copy the earlier message for the commander?” he asked. “With your permission.”
She sent the copy first. Then the reply.
When she put down the device, her hand trembled. She wrapped it around her cup and took a drink.
Dhomhes offered his across the table.
She took it.
“I dislike how much that cost,” she said.
“I imagine it will cost less with practice.”
She squeezed his hand and held it for a moment, then let go and took another sip of her drink.
He missed her touch almost immediately.
“I would like a very boring life for a while.”
He considered the plate in front of him.
“I was about to ask you which of these you thought I should try next. Would that help?”
Her gaze moved from his face to the food, then back.
“The yellow one.”
“Is that advice or revenge?”
“You'll have to trust me.”
He ate it.
It was sweet. Perfectly harmless. She watched until he swallowed, then laughed at whatever his face had done.
There she was again, across a breakfast table. Frightened and funny and trying. A female who had reasons to guard every answer, offering him what she could anyway.
He wanted to earn the next one.
When breakfast was over, he walked her to the secured wing.
She stopped before the doors and turned toward him.
“You haven't asked what she knows.”
“You've told me enough to take the threat seriously.”
“That isn't what I meant.”
“I know.”
There were people passing at the end of the corridor. A guard checked a staff badge. Someone laughed behind a closed office door.
Dhomhes kept his voice low.
“I am curious, Sereya. I won't pretend otherwise. But I would rather you told me because you wanted me to know than because she frightened you into it.”
She looked down, then back at him.
“There are things I want you to know.”
His chest tightened.
“All right.”
“Not here.”
“No.”
“And perhaps not all at once.”
“Then not all at once.”
She stepped closer and straightened a fold at his cuff that did not need straightening.
He watched her fingers.
“I also want to know things about you,” she said.
“An alarming development.”
“Yes. Tivek has given me a starting point.”
“My own family. Treachery everywhere.”
Her smile came easily this time.
“Come and sit with me again,” she said. “But I want to ask the questions next time.”
“What sort of questions?”
“The sort you can't answer by telling me I'm safe.” Her hand stayed on his arm. “What you like. What you want.”
“At present, rather more time with you.”
Her fingers tightened against his sleeve. “That's a start.”
He covered her hand with his. She was smiling now, waiting to see what else he would offer. He found he wanted to be asked.
When she went through the doors, she turned once and smiled at him.
He waited until the guard had admitted her to the corridor beyond, then looked at the messages his comm had been holding.
One was from his operations lead.
Vessik at the residence office. Asking for the packet. Says his courier hasn't arrived.
Dhomhes called him as he started walking.
“Did he name the courier?”
“Yes, sir. Sereya.”
“Who told him she was coming?”
“He brought an appointment acknowledgment. Sent yesterday, before the packet was collected.”
Before Sereya had agreed to anything.
Before she had even been offered a choice, if the time proved what Dhomhes thought it would.
He felt the first hard stir of armor beneath his sleeves.
“Keep him there. Politely. The commander will want to speak to him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And preserve that acknowledgment.”
He ended the call and sent the commander Sereya's report beside the acknowledgment. Her refusal needed to be part of the record when Vessik explained his arrangement.
Then he contacted the residence office. Sereya was not to be sent to the annex to settle it. Someone had promised her time without asking her. He had promised she would not have to deliver that packet. He could keep his.