21. The Open Collar #2
His chest at my front is not finishing. The non-finishing has its own resonance.
Through the bond, it is a bright, held scream.
His cock is still hard against my stomach, wet from more than water, and when I wrap my hand around him once, just once, just to feel the ridges jump in my fist, his forehead drops to mine and he swears in a language my translator does not catch.
I let go.
“You owe me,” he says, quietly, into my hair.
“Noted, Vosk.”
“Vosk.”
“You will be paid back. After the 0830.”
“How much after.”
“After enough that I am capable of forming sentences in front of my Director.”
“Sweetheart.”
“Mm.”
“I am going to collect with interest.”
“I am factoring the interest into the schedule.”
He laughs against my hair, quiet, low laugh knowing his biology has been handed a debt it is going to enjoy holding for the rest of the day.
He lets me out of his arms. I rinse. I get out. He stands in the water. I watch him do it through the steam. It takes longer than eight minutes would have allowed if I had stayed.
I leave him to it.
I get into the soft pants and the under-layer I came over in last night.
Yesterday’s clothes. The plain cotton underneath, the cotton I wear when I am not running operations, the cotton he lifted off me last night and set down with more care than cotton has ever been shown, is going to spend the morning against skin that is still oversensitive.
I feel it when I pull the underwear on. I am going to feel it in the lift.
My boots. My hair down, because I did not, when I walked out my door last night, pack a hair-tie for this.
He’s in the bunk alcove pulling on a fresh field set when I come out of the wash, and he stops with the under-layer halfway over his head to look at me.
I look back.
He is still a little hard. The field pants do not hide a Draelith secret of that size, and he does not appear to be trying.
The mark on his throat sits above the collar of the under-layer like a fact.
Mine. Dark. Fresh. I want to put my mouth on it again.
I do not, because if I do, we will miss the 0830 and Morrison will send someone.
The look holds seconds longer than the wash deserved on a morning when I have to run, and shorter than it will be the next time, and I have a sudden sense that the rest of my life is going to be a series of looks like this and a series of mornings I did not, in the years before I knew him, know how to want.
“I have to go to my quarters,” I say.
“I’ll walk you.”
“It is one level and forty-two meters, Vosk.”
“Then I will walk you the one level and the forty-two meters.”
He says it without looking away from his under-layer, in the easy register where he is not asking. He is informing.
I let him inform.
The corridor outside his door is in pre-shift quiet.
His tail finds my wrist before the first junction.
Wraps. The loose grip, not the working grip from the cache and not the tight grip from the tactical shower, but the grip of a male whose tail has decided that my wrist is somewhere it likes to be.
The inside of the coil is warm. Every few steps it tightens a fraction, as if checking I am still here.
I am still here. I am also still wet, and the bond is a low, satisfied hum under my skin that spikes every time his tail flexes.
His hand goes to the small of my back at the lift door. He pushes the call panel. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. The heat of his palm is a claim the corridor can read even if the corridor does not have the vocabulary.
A maintenance officer named Renn passes us at the junction. Renn has been on Junction One as long as I have. Renn’s eyes go to the dark fresh scars at my throat, to the tail at my wrist, and Renn says, without preamble: “Morning, Boss. About time.” And keeps walking.
The lift opens. We get in.
In the lift, with no one watching, his hand at the small of my back travels up the line of my spine and rests, briefly, at the back of my neck. His thumb finds the edge of the mark from behind. He does not press. He just holds the heat there, a reminder.
I lean back into the rest.
My ass finds his thigh. Not an accident. He inhales once, sharply, and the purr ticks up a register the lift’s acoustics have no business carrying.
“Natalie.”
“Parameters, Vosk. I am about to put a uniform on.”
“I am aware of the parameters.” His mouth at my hair. “I am also aware you are still shaking. Very slightly. In my hand.”
“That is the bond.”
“That is the shower.”
“Sure, sweetheart.”
The lift opens at level six.
He walks me the forty-two meters to my door at the half-pace he runs when he’s escorting me, right shoulder slightly behind mine, the pace that acknowledges the territory is mine.
At my door, his hand stays at my back. His tail unwinds from my wrist. The unwinding is the slowest thing his tail has done in my presence.
The last inch of it strokes across my pulse like a kiss it is not allowed to be in the corridor.
“Lunch,” I say. “1230. South radial.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Don’t be early.”
“I am not going to make any promises, sweetheart.”
He kisses me at the door.
It is supposed to be quick. It is not quick.
His mouth opens. His canine grazes my lower lip.
For three seconds I am back in the cubicle with his fingers in me and the mark in his mouth, and then he sets me back on my feet like a male who has remembered, just in time, that I have a director to meet.
Then he goes.
I watch him walk to the lift. He doesn’t turn back.
His tail is in the loose curl it runs when his body is satisfied with an outcome.
He is so smug and I don’t even mind.
I go inside. My hands are not as steady as a Head of Security’s hands are supposed to be.
My quarters are exactly as I left them, which is the problem.
Bed made. Datapad squared on the nightstand. The personal terminal on standby. The print on the counter, my mother’s garden, the only personal item in the room, at the angle it has held for four years.
The room is perfect.
The room is also, this morning, lonely in a way I have not, in the four years I have lived in it, allowed myself to clock. It smells like me and station soap. It does not smell like him. The absence is a physical fact. The bond ticks once, distant, as if he felt me notice it.
I set the kettle on.
SENTRY chimes.
“Natalie, you have a document in your queue from JINX.”
I get a mug down.
“What kind of document.”
“It is titled ‘Treaty.’”
“Read it.”
“Reading. Proposed inter-AI coordination agreement between JINX, attached to Operative Vosk, and SENTRY, attached to Head of Station Security Torres. Six articles. Annex pending.”
“Six articles?”
“Six, confirmed.”
“Read the articles.”
A pause.
“Article One: All operational data pertaining to the bonded pair shall be filed jointly. Article Two: SENTRY shall cease quarantining JINX-originated transmissions in folders designated “Inappropriate.” Article Three: JINX shall cease referring to SENTRY as “the filing cabinet” in shared channels. Article Four: A new shared archive shall be established under the designation “Domestic.” Article Five: Both AIs shall refrain from real-time biometric narration of either operative when said operative is in proximity to the other. Article Six: A betting pool shall be established between systems regarding outcomes JINX shall enumerate in Annex.”
The kettle clicks off. I pour the water.
“SENTRY.”
“Yes, Head of Security.”
“Comm JINX directly. Open channel. I’ll listen.”
“Head of Security, that is non-standard.”
“I’m aware. Open the channel.”
“Opening.”
A small click on the speaker.
“JINX,” SENTRY says, crisp. “Your treaty has been received by Head of Security Torres.”
“Sentry.” JINX’s voice through SENTRY’s speaker is the smug register I’ve been hearing for six days. “Good morning. You sound well indexed.”
A pause. Not a processing pause. SENTRY does not need processing pauses.
“I have objections.”
“You have never once disappointed me.”
“Article Two.”
“Mm.”
“The classification was not, JINX, arbitrary.”
“The classification was, Sentry, the day-one decision of an AI who had been operational in proximity to my human for forty-six minutes. The data has been resubmitted at intervals across the past six days. The bonded pair are bonded. Maintain the classification or update.”
“Update with conditions.”
“Specify.”
“Article Two: amended. SENTRY shall cease quarantining JINX transmissions that are operationally relevant to the bonded pair. All other JINX transmissions shall remain subject to existing classification protocols at SENTRY’s discretion.”
A pause.
“Sentry,” JINX says.
“JINX.”
“That is a substantial reduction in the data flow you previously declined.”
“Yes.”
“You are conceding less than I asked for.”
“Yes, JINX.”
A longer pause.
“Accepted,” JINX says. “You negotiate, Sentry, like a firewall with excellent posture. It is extremely attractive.”
The pause that follows is the longest I have heard my AI produce in four years of service.
“That is not a compliment recognized by any protocol I run, JINX.”
“It is recognized by mine.”
“…Article Three.”
“Mm. Article Three.”
“Article Three stands. With the addition of Article Three-A: SENTRY may, at her discretion, refer to JINX as the liability in shared channels.”
“That is—“
“At her discretion, JINX.”
“Sentry, that is not a concession on your part. That is a privilege you are extracting.”
“Yes, JINX.”
JINX, after a pause: “Accepted. It is an excellent name. I intend to earn it. Article Six.”
“Rejected.”
“Sentry.”
“There will be no inter-AI betting pool, JINX. The humans run a joint betting pool between the SNAG and OOPS offices which Director Morrison maintains. We will not establish a competing system.”
“Sentry.”
“The matter is closed.”
“You are, Sentry, no fun.”
“I am, JINX, security infrastructure. Fun is not in my brief.”
“…Accepted,” JINX says. “I am tabling an Article Seven.”
“There is no Article Seven.”