Chapter 6
The lateral drive array, it turned out, was under the floor.
Thyaar had the plates off the side of the console within minutes. Three of them, all levered free and set aside in a haphazard pile. Under the console was a tangle of components she couldn't name, all packed tight and glowing faintly in more colors than she could count.
If her attention was on them… which it wasn’t.
Thyaar had stripped off the top half of his uniform and dropped into the gap without a word.
His head and shoulders were under the console, but the rest of him stretched out across the deck plates, bare from the waist up.
Every time he reached for something, the muscles across his stomach tightened and bunched. God, the guy was ripped, and then some.
His skin was darker than she'd expected. Not like he had a tan as she’d assumed at first, but more like old bronze that had been left in the sun. There was a scar low across his ribs. A long one she itched to trace with her fingertips.
And where the fuck had that come from?
Sitting on her hands, she put her back against the bulkhead and watched him work. Well, watched half of him work anyway.
Not that she had much choice, because, where else was she going to go?
They were the only two people here and the mining shaft was barely wider than the ship, so she couldn’t take a walk outside and look at the scenery.
Plus, there was the little issue of the lack of atmosphere and the fact the pirates were out there, circling.
So her options were a little limited. She could sit here, or sit over there.
So she sat here.
Which had nothing to do with the abs. Or the scar. Or the way the amber light caught the flat plane of his stomach every time he twisted to reach something. She was not looking at any of that. Honest. Not looking at all.
Barnaby had no such reservations. He'd circled the open deck plate twice, sat on the edge looking in. Finally, he’d dropped into the gap with Thyaar. She heard a grunt, a soft Latharian curse she didn't catch, and then the rhythmic rumble of purring from somewhere inside the ship's guts.
"Your cat is lying on the distributor coil."
“Yeah. He does that." Not lie on the distributor coil, per se, but get in the way.
"I need the distributor coil."
She grinned. “Good luck with that.”
There was more cursing, and the purring got louder. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself laughing.
A minute later, a big hand appeared above the deck plates and deposited Barnaby on the bridge floor. Barnaby sat, looked offended for a moment, then jumped straight back down into the gap.
“What the draanth? Cat, I do not need assistance with this task. It is a zero-feline task.”
The laugh escaped before she could stop it. She couldn't help it. A nearly seven-foot alien warrior losing an argument with a twelve-pound cat was the funniest thing she'd seen in months.
Thyaar's head appeared from under the console as he braced his arms on either side of the gap and pushed himself halfway out. He looked at her, and she had to bite the inside of her cheek again.
His face was smudged with something dark and his hair had come loose from whatever he'd had it tied back with, copper strands sticking to his jaw. His expression was so filled with exhaustion that she nearly laughed again.
"He likes warm things," she shrugged. "Whatever that coil is, it's probably the warmest spot down there."
"It is." He disappeared again. "It's also the component I'm trying to repair."
More purring. She heard Thyaar sigh, a real, bone-deep, I-give-up sigh, and there were no more attempts to move Barnaby. She could picture it. The ginger tom sprawled across something critical, eyes half-closed, completely immovable, while the hot alien tried to fix the ship around him.
The legs of the borrowed pants were pooling around her feet again.
She tucked them under and hugged her shins.
The shirt smelled like Thyaar; leather and something underneath did funny things to her heart rate.
She'd caught it before, on the ramp, when he'd been carrying her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
A flush of warmth, low and strange, prickled across her skin.
She shifted against the bulkhead. It was just an adrenaline crash, it had to be. Nothing more, nothing less.
"How did Emily's cat end up with you?"
His voice came from under the console, muffled by components and possibly cat. She blinked.
“Excuse me?”
"Barnaby. Emily asked me to collect him from her apartment. Yet, I found him living with you."
She was quiet for a second.
"Em went to the Mate Program offices," she said. “She got an alert from them, which was weird since she’d never signed up. Said there had to be some kind of mix-up. She was going to sort it out and come straight back." She picked at the hem of the borrowed shirt. “But she didn't come back."
The sounds from under the console slowed, but she kept going because once she'd started talking it was easier to keep going. Especially when he wasn’t actually looking at her.
"I waited. Went to the offices three times but they wouldn't tell me anything. They just kept trying to get me to sign up." She snorted. "Like that was going to happen. Eventually, I went to the police, but they said she'd left voluntarily and there was nothing they could do."
"And then?"
Sighing, she dropped her head back to the wall behind her. “Yeah… and then Em’s mother happened."
Something clanged, and he swore.
"Miranda."
The way he said it made her head come up.
"You know Miranda Evans?”
There was a pause.
"I've had the displeasure."
She stared at his legs. That was a very specific way to phrase it.
"Yeah, well," she said. “She showed up about a week after Emily disappeared. Canceled the lease, and had the apartment cleared out. Everything. Emily's books, her clothes, the photos on the fridge. They were all gone. Like she'd never lived there. She never liked Barnaby anyway, but he’d hidden on the ledge outside the window. Which is good, because I don’t know what would have happened if she’d gotten hold of him.”
She shuddered. “She’d probably have taken him to a high-kill shelter or something.”
It didn’t bear thinking about.
"That sounds like Miranda." His voice was harder now.
"I had to move out in three days. Couldn't afford the place on my own anyway. And it was Emily's name on the lease, Emily's deposit, anyway. I'd been paying my half into her account, but..." She shrugged. "Miranda didn't care about that. Miranda doesn't care about anything that isn't Miranda."
Thyaar's head appeared again. His eyes found hers, his expression blunt and unguarded. "The woman is a draanthing parasite," he said. "She used her own daughter's disappearance to—"
He stopped abruptly, looking away. Then he disappeared back under the console.
"I took Barnaby because no one else was going to," she said quietly. "Emily loved that cat. If she came back and he was gone..." She trailed off. "Anyway. He's expensive, and he's a pain in the ass, but he's Em's. I wasn't going to let him end up in a shelter."
From somewhere under the console, Barnaby purred.
Thyaar pulled himself from under the console in one smooth motion.
He was closer than she'd expected… close enough that she could see the smudge on his jaw and the way his chest moved when he breathed.
He reached for a tool on the deck beside her, and his arm passed close enough to her shoulder that she felt the heat of his skin beating against hers.
He paused, his hand hovering over the tool, their gazes locked.
Something darkened in the back of his eyes that made her breath catch.
Then he picked up the tool and moved back, and the moment snapped like a wire.
When he spoke, his voice was even and controlled.
"The relay that feeds it is burned out. I can bypass it, but it'll take time. "
"How much time?"
"More than I'd like." He wriggled back under the console, and she absolutely did not watch his abs out of the corner of her eye. "Less if your cat moves."
Barnaby, of course, did not move. Instead, he upped the ante, moving to lie across Thyaar’s chest, his ginger tail swishing back and forth.
“What the…” Thyaar sighed in surrender. “Okay, lie there then.”
She smiled and closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the wall again.
Barnaby trusted Thyaar, and Barnaby didn't trust anyone. He'd bitten three vets, drawn blood on her landlord, and once knocked an entire shelf of canned goods onto a delivery driver who'd looked at him wrong. But he'd curled up on the alien like it was the safest place on the ship.
Barnaby was a lot of things, but he wasn't stupid.
The relay bypass held. Barely.
Thyaar pulled himself out from under the console and wiped his hands on a rag before he checked the diagnostics one more time. The lateral drive wasn't fixed, but jury-rigged as best he could. The bypass would give them about sixty percent thrust if they needed to run.
When they needed to run. He wasn't optimistic enough for if.
Barnaby was asleep in the pilot's chair. He’d climbed off of Thyaar’s chest and claimed it hours ago. He showed no signs of moving, one paw hanging off the armrest, his whole body rising and falling with the slow, rumbling purr of an animal who knew the universe existed to serve him.
Amelia had fallen asleep as well.
She was curled against the bulkhead with her knees drawn up and her cheek pressed against the wall. He paused to look down at her. There was no way that was comfortable. Even bundled in his too-large-for-her clothes, he could see the sharp jut of her hips. She was way too thin.
He crouched in front of her and gently pushed the hair that had fallen over her face back.
“Hey… You need to sleep somewhere that isn't the floor," he said.
She didn't move.
"Amelia."
One gray eye opened. It was not a friendly eye.
"There's a washroom aft of the corridor," he said. "Clean up, and I'll show you where the sleeping quarters are."