Intergalactic Dating Agency ~ Black Hole Brides ~ The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss Page 10

  “Well, I’m not some bolk that’s going to jump into your mouth.” She grimaced. “Wait… I meant… Anyway, I’m not going to steal any treasure out from underneath you either. So you don’t have to keep staring at me like I’m your worst enemy.”

  “I got rid of my worst enemies,” he muttered, sidetracked by the idea of her in his mouth, sweeter and hotter than ghost-mead.

  But he didn’t think she was an enemy. She was quite a bit more dangerous than that.

  Ignoring his mumbling, she clenched her hands in her lap. “Maybe what happened between you and me makes things awkward, but searching the station is more important than our…moment. What happened to those other women could’ve—almost—happened to me. Whatever I can do to remember them, I’m going to do it, even if it means feeling awkward.” She fixed him with a clear, steady gaze. “Or terrified enough to run back for my room right now, holding my breath all the way through empty space.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, grudgingly captured by the resolute, righteous set of her lovely lips when all he really wanted to do was ravage her again. And why wasn’t he just doing that? Pirates—and even dreadnaught captains—had the force to take what they wanted. But somehow this little mishkeet had left him daunted.

  Whatever she’d done to him, he wasn’t sure he liked it.

  A chirp from the comm interrupted his brooding. “Approaching the space station,” the pilot announced. “Captain, Jinn’s map suggests the closest port was most often used, so I wonder if we should dock elsewhere to preserve any evidence.”

  “I’ll be right up,” Nor said. He resisted the urge to look at Trixie. It wasn’t as if he needed her permission.

  But as he rose, he glanced down at her anyway. “Will you…?” He wasn’t sure what he wanted to ask.

  Her hands twisted in her lap once, but then she splayed her fingers over her knees. “I’m not going to freak out,” she said. “Find us the best place to dock.”

  Reluctantly, he made his way up to the cockpit and checked the updated map from the neural gel. They identified a seemingly unused resupply port near the secondary life support system and carefully snugged the shuttle up against the hatch. When the link between the two ships was sealed, the crew moved out, dat-pads and collection kits in hand.

  Trixie was the last through, with one of the Grandy’s young ensigns beside her.

  “Thanks, Amanu,” she said quietly. “Catch up with your partner and get those samples. That’s all we can do now.”

  Nor waited impatiently for the young ensign to sidle past him with an eager, wary glance. He gave her and the older lieutenant a nod before they headed off to their appointed area along with the other teams fanning out through the station.

  Trixie looked up at him. “I don’t have a partner.”

  “I assigned everyone already.” That was true. Mostly.

  She huffed out a breath. “I’m not actually useless, you know. I can—”

  He slapped a collection bag into her hand and then added the special scanner attachment to the dat-pad strapped to his wrist. “Let’s go.”

  She fell into step beside him with another soft grumble.

  The station had been in near total shutdown mode when the Grandy had first come upon it and Raz had retrieved Rayna and the others. The women had freed themselves from the stasis chambers where Blackworm had left them while he’d gone off to procure more victims only to be captured himself when he went after the wrong females. Since Raz and Rayna were now touring the Azthronos system and settling on a business plan for the station once it was refurbished, it had been left in hibernation. That meant the gravity was supplied only by the physical spin of the station, atmosphere was maintained at bare minimum, and the corridor lighting was emergency level only.

  The fading echo of footsteps ahead of them sounded eerie and indistinct in the abandoned station, and Trixie shifted half a step closer to him with a shiver. The temperature was low, part of the hibernation setting, but Nor shrugged out of his heavier outer layer and draped it around her shoulders.

  She looked up at him, her eyes darkened and wide in the low light. “I’d like to say I don’t need it and it’s too big for me, but…thank you.”

  He nodded. “I run warmer than you anyway.”

  “I’ve noticed.” She threaded her arms through the sleeves and hugged the edges tight around her body. “Where’d everybody go?”

  “It’s a big place, and we have a lot of ground to cover.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “You scared to be alone with me?”

  As he intended, she scowled up at him. “I have my blaster,” she warned.

  He chuckled. “In the pocket of my pants. But I know you’re good with it.”

  The fierce furrow between her eyebrows smoothed. “I’d probably be even better with your blaster.”

  “Are you thinking of becoming a pirate?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to be.”

  The wistfulness in her voice made him more uncomfortable than the sight of her shivering had. “I think you’re good just the way you are.”

  “You just don’t want to give me your blaster.”

  “I’m greedy that way.” And he was, too. Although he wasn’t sure why he was belittling himself. She already knew he was a bad bet, an ex-pirate, and an exiled bastard. Not to mention a careless lover who crept away in the light of day. If she shot him again, he wouldn’t blame her.

  At a beep from his dat-pad map, they turned down a narrower service corridor. “We’ll be scanning and sampling in the environmental reclamation dome,” he said. “The neural gel estimated a significant chance that identifying fibers might’ve been carried through the ducts and preserved in the recyclo assemblies.”

  Trixie had wrapped his coat almost double around her small frame, but she managed to pull it even tighter at his words. “It’s awful,” she whispered, “to think that the only pieces left of those other women might be some hairs stuck in the vents of this place.” She ducked her chin down behind the high collar with its captaincy insignia. “Sometimes I think…what if that’s all that’s left of me too?”

  He stopped abruptly. It took her another step to turn to face him. Slowly, he reached out and unfurled one finger behind the weight of her braid. He wanted to wrap the blond length around his fist and draw her closer, nearly floating with the indifferent gravity, and lay his mouth over hers until those shadow-ridden eyes drifted closed, short lashes sweeping away her sorrow while he filled her with forgetfulness.

  Instead, he flicked the trapped braid loose from the constricting coat. “I’ve noticed there’s not very much of you,” he said with a deliberate leer. “But there’s more than pretty hair.”

  She tilted her head, and for a heartbeat, he thought she’d rub her cheek on his knuckles. But then she flipped her head the other way, shaking the braid out of his grasp. “You don’t have to keep trying to distract me from a panic attack. This place is creeping me out, but I know we have work to do.”

  His stubborn little mishkeet. Small and guarded though mishkeets were, they were survivors. Maybe because they were small and guarded.

  But every time he saw Trixie, she seemed to be getting a little bigger, a little bolder. He wanted to pull her under his arm, not just under his discarded coat, but she’d probably think he was merely trying to distract her again.

  Instead, he gestured for her to continue down the corridor.

  When they reached one particularly large doorway, both their dat-pads chimed in unison, releasing the latch. The damp-earth smell of the reclamation dome drifted out; the genetically engineered, carbon-scrubbing plantings didn’t stop working just because there was no one around to breathe the air they cleaned.

  As they stepped toward the opening together, Nor glanced down at his add-on sensor. “Schematics show the main filter will be over…” He lifted his head and jerked his chin in the indicated direction, then paused when he realized Trixie was not with him.

  He pivoted o
n his heel to find her frozen in the doorway, one hand white-knuckled on the door jamb.

  “Oh God, I remember,” she whispered. “I was here…”

  With one long step, he rejoined her. He peered down at her pinprick pupils. The shrunken black voids left too much hazel iris behind, as if she’d fled deeper into her own mind. “Trixie?” He frowned when she didn’t respond. “Trixie, look at me.”

  With the muscles of her neck locked tight, her shoulders jerked from one side to the other in a whole-body no. Her lips twisted while her gaze stayed pinned on the open space ahead of them. It wasn’t anguish that added a too-bright glaze to those wide, haunted eyes.

  The spacelight filtering through the dome’s transparent plasteel panes seemed to throb with the eerie light of the black hole.

  The strange dying afterglow of light and matter falling to their doom gleamed on her face, adding uncanny color to the pale highlights and overflowing the shadows with simmering ultraviolet radiance.

  “I was here,” she said in a crackling voice. “The one time I woke up, I ran through this whole place and couldn’t find a way out.”

  He grimaced. Just as well his innocent closed-worlder hadn’t found a way out; she would’ve spaced herself.

  “I saw…that.” She let out a rattling breath, as if it were her last. “It was so beautiful, I almost thought it was a dream. It made me stop. And that’s when he caught me. If I’d kept running…”

  He stepped in front of her, breaking her line of sight to the room…and her nightmare. “You’re awake now, and free. Nothing bad is ever going to happen to you again.” Not if he had anything to say about it. Which he knew he didn’t. He had no right to be making her promises like this.

  He’d never minded recklessness and lies before, but now the unlikelihood of his promise loosed a flood of fury in his veins. Damn Blackworm with the righteous curses of every Thorkon god for hurting Trixie and the others, mocking them with how small and unsafe they were in a vast universe.

  He’d been assaulted with that truth himself from his youngling days, but it was different to see it in her stricken gaze.

  He clamped his hands on her shoulders and gave her a none-too-gentle shake, as if he could rattle the shivers right out of her. “Blackworm doesn’t have you anymore,” he said fiercely. “Don’t give yourself back to his ghost.”

  She dragged in a shuddering breath, lifting and dropping her hunched shoulders under his palms. “I guess a blaster and all black doesn’t make me a badass after all. I should’ve stayed on Azthronos.”

  “Then I’d be alone here in this creepy place,” he said, injecting a whining note of complaint into his voice.

  She angled her head to peek up at him. “You are so silly,” she whispered.

  He’d had many epithets lobbed at him over the lightyears, but he had never been called silly. From her, he would take it. But he felt he needed to take back at least a modicum of his ex-pirate dreadnaught captain mystique. “Maybe you just need something else to think about,” he murmured.

  Slowly, he dipped his head to brush his lips over hers, a distraction, yes, and a comfort, he hoped. A reminder that they were not alone.

  With a soft moan, she skimmed her fingers up the back of his neck under the tightly bound club of his hair. The icy caress of her fingertips sent a shiver coursing down his spine, evidence of her cold and her fear, but mostly he felt the instant sleeting pleasure of her touch. How easily she distracted him from this grim mission on this sinister station. When she was in his arms, all that meant nothing.

  He lifted her against his chest, a nearly weightless bundle in the haphazard gravity compared to his strength. So light and fragile and yet she sent a spasm through his heart more unnerving than all the times he’d pushed his unmarked, overcharged cruiser to lightspeed just ahead of enemies or authorities.

  When he swung her a few degrees to starboard before reluctantly letting her slide down to the deck plating, she clung to him for an instant, her eyes closed. The radiant light glinted in the hint of a tear beaded at the corner of her lashes, but when she opened her eyes hesitantly, peeking past his shoulder, only starlight reflected in the blown-wide blackness of her pupils. He’d moved her just enough not to have to see the black hole.

  Her gaze shifted back to his, and a blush of her natural color tinted her cheeks as she let her arms slip down from his biceps. “It’s like an eye,” she said softly. “Judging me.”

  He made a rude gesture behind him, earning him a watery giggle that soothed the spasming in his heart. “That thing steals actual light,” he pointed out, “so it doesn’t get to condemn us for whatever little pleasures we take as our own.”

  Although kissing her was much more than a little pleasure. He forced away the need for much, much more and kept his smile even. “Ready to do this?”

  At her hesitant nod, he stepped to one side.

  She hazarded a quick upward glance but followed him resolutely across the dome. The streaming photons tumbling into the black hole had spawned particularly vigorous growth in the reclamation plantings, and as they delved deeper into the shipboard jungle, Nor admired the cascades of vegetation and flowers.

  “The duke has been taking business proposals for rebuilding this station into a refueling depot and shipyard or maybe a mining waystation if its moved in-system,” he mused, “but I’m thinking with some redecorating, it could be a destination resort.”

  Trixie snorted. “Right. It’s quite the getaway from everything. Just don’t get too close to the singularity or you’ll be torn away from ev-er-y-thing ever forever.”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Yes, well. There’d have to be some precautionary measures.”

  She peered at him. “Seriously?”

  “You might have noticed that Azthronos is a bit uptight. They could use a resort. And there’re a half dozen other systems within easy travel that would bring in tourism credits.”

  She gave him an assessing stare that made him shift uneasily in his boots. “Actually,” she said at last, “I could totally see you as a fantasy space station tropical cruise captain. You should tell Raz about your idea.”

  He narrowed his eyes back at her, fairly certain she wasn’t being serious. “I don’t need another job. I already have the Grandy.”

  “And we have this task first.” She paused underneath a particularly lush fall of kyapa-sho vines. “One of the main filters should be back here.” She nudged at the vines, knocking loose a few small golden orbs.

  “Careful,” he said. “Those berries are a rare drakling pepper spice, very hot. I didn’t know they’d fruit anywhere besides their homeworld.”

  “Great,” she muttered. “Everything loves it here besides me.” She gave the vines another shove. “Here’s the access hatch.”

  Nor reached past her to anchor the trailing greenery out of her way. “According to the schematics, the filter should just slide out. We can scan and scrape it and then replace it.”

  Side by side, they wrestled the large, thin panel out where they could get at it. He aimed the dat-pad sensor across the filter and started the scan. The pad beeped softly with each hit. “Plenty of bio markers,” he murmured. “But nothing Earther.”

  Trixie shifted impatiently. “Are we sure it works?”

  He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her hand under the scanner. It chirped in triumph.

  She grimaced. “Oh yay, it found me. Better late than never, I guess.”

  At least she seemed to have gotten past the horror that had gripped her earlier. He let her go reluctantly. “Let’s try the next filter.”

  The reclamation dome—future site of a unique vacation destination?—had six other filters. In the second and third, they found degraded samples that had to be collected for resequencing by Doctor Boshil back on Azthronos. The sensor chimed on a pass over the fourth filter, and the dat-pad quickly returned a response.

  “It’s a complete sample,” Nor said. “But it’s a hair from Rayna.”


  Trixie sighed. “I think she’s the only one of us who isn’t lost anymore.”

  He frowned. Did Trixie really consider herself still lost? When he was right here with her?

  Disgruntled, he finished the scan and they replaced the filter. While he replaced the brackets holding the panel, she straightened, turning to look around the dome.

  “It needs a water slide,” she murmured.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The next filter had nothing as well. But on the last one, the sensor pealed.

  Trixie jumped. “Is it…?”

  He checked the scan. “Earther DNA. Doesn’t match anything currently on record.” Meaning any of the other women who’d been rescued from the station. “It’ll take a little while to compare against the Intergalactic Dating Agency files that Jinn appropriated.”

  She stared down at the filter panel where a small area was illuminated by the pad’s scanner. He carefully excised the section in question and placed it in a specimen bag she held out to him.

  “All that’s left is a hair or a bit of skin,” she murmured. “You know, in Sunset Falls, I was a nail artist.”

  “You…painted construction fasteners?” He squinted uncertainly.

  She waggled her hand at him. “Fingernails. In pretty colors. Hard to believe now.” She rotated her hand back toward herself to stare down at the ragged cuticles. “I’ve bitten them down to nothing. If I had some nail polish, that would help me stop.”

  “Maybe we can find you something similar on Azthronos that would work.” He tilted his own hands, intrigued. “What kind of colors?”

  She laughed, as if he was teasing her again. “If any guy can make it look good, it would be you.”

  He pursed his lips, uncertain why other males wouldn’t look good, although he was glad he would. They sealed up the collection bag and checked their task list.