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  His fingers twitched with the need to unravel the knots, to chafe heat back into her chilled skin.

  He clasped his hands behind him. “Or maybe you could tell me why you are here.”

  “Yeah.” The bounce in her step faltered. “I’m looking for some equipment for my studio, and Delta said he thought you’d recovered data gels from the ship that might do what I need.”

  He frowned. “The gels hold an incredible amount of information, but they aren’t very durable even when kept in the right conditions. The ones we found are old now and were on fire then.”

  Shrugging one shoulder, she glanced around. “Gel recovery and restoration is something I’ve been studying for awhile.”

  “Earthers don’t have gels.”

  “I was working for the Intergalactic Dating Agency when several of their alien mail order brides were taken against their will. The IDA data cores were compromised to hide the perpetrator but I helped repair and retrace enough to track down the missing women.”

  “That scandal is what closed the Big Sky outpost,” he recalled.

  She nodded. “It was…bad, no doubt. But because of it, I wondered if techniques for repairing gels could be applied to human memory. The brain is recording all the time, even when we’re not paying attention; it’s the recall that gets dicey.”

  “Because you wanted to remember the parents who gave you away.” When she shrugged again, he shook his head. “Telling you about my own memory of the experience doesn’t dissuade you? Why not just think whatever you want to remember about your past?”

  She fixed her dark gaze on him. “I’m not interested in lying to myself. I’d think you of all people would appreciate that.”

  “I’m not people,” he reminded her. He spun on his heel. “Some of the storage that Mach and Delta brought is this way, but I never looked specifically for gels.”

  The shuffle of her boots behind him sounded subdued. “My adoptive parents were crooks. They claimed to be do-gooders, but they conned gullible people out of money and time. And faith. I just always wondered…I think they might’ve stolen me too. They guilted me into helping them when they got caught, and I did it because… I don’t know. I guess I thought if I did this last bad thing for them, they’d have to finally do something good for me. Like tell me who they’d taken me from.”

  He led her deeper into the caverns. “But they didn’t.”

  “They didn’t even remember exactly. Somewhere in India.” She laughed, a sound as ragged as ripped metal. “You know how many people live in India?”

  Somehow he knew she wasn’t looking for an exact number. “You hoped your work with memory gels could be used on them.”

  “No. I’ll never see them again, ever.” A streak of natural phosphorescence on the cave wall shone in her dark eyes. “Hacking my way into law enforcement databases to clear them and then wiping my own presence out of the system to escape the repercussions brought me to the attention of the IDA. They are always looking for Earth girls willing to abandon ship, so to speak.”

  Stopping at a pile of crates, he gazed at her. “You never found an alien mate for yourself? Did you want to?” He found himself holding his breath, waiting for her answer.

  “I decided to join them as an employee rather than a client. But then the Earther brides went missing.” She crossed her arms. “And I felt it was partly my fault. I’d put them in the database that was used to single them out and kidnap them. Almost as bad as if I’d stolen them myself.”

  He shook his head. “Not the same at all.”

  “I couldn’t find my biological parents, but I was determined to find those missing women. Except the universe is just so damn big.”

  “Bigger than India?” He blinked at her.

  After a second, the corner of her mouth quirked up. “A bit. When Mach and Lun-mei said I would be freeing your matrix and all the other shrouds…” Untangling her arms, she reached out to touch his hand. “This makes up for all the bad things I’ve done.” She lifted his hand, turning the fresh cut toward the light. “What bad thing did you do here?”

  “Mistakenly believed that a century would dull the broken edges of galactic ruins.” At least an activated Omega never had to face the consequences of his final act.

  “And you’ve lived out here all that time.” She bit her lip. “Like another piece of the wreckage.”

  He hated the little hitch in her voice that meant she thought he was weak. “One of the biggest pieces,” he told her.

  She traced one finger across the silver scar, then over the back of his hand to his knuckles. “Did you make note of Troy’s tattoos?”

  Her touch triggered a shiver that sank from the wound into his bones and implants, but her words made him pull away. “I saw,” he said diffidently. He did not want to think about the Theta and the connection he’d seen between the shroud and her. “The pigment masked the nanite pathways in his skin.”

  “That’s what I thought too. But it was more than that. The configuration was like a fusion of the decryption formulas I used to, uh, do bad things and the quasi-organic patterning of a data gel.”

  “Shrouds are cyborgs—half organic, half designed. Seems likely that he’d have both.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t something that was done to all of you. I think Troy was hacking himself. I think he might’ve made himself a keyholder.”

  Chapter 7

  Vic watched Cosmo anxiously. Mach and Delta had been intrigued by her revelation, but only Cosmo had seen the marks, though he hadn’t recreated them in his nanite puppetry earlier.

  She knew he had an aversion to the Theta. Which she could understand, considering the shroud dropped trouble vibes like a Christmas tree in July—dry, prickly, and dangerously volatile.

  “Do you think I’m right about those tattoos?”

  He turned away, and for a second, she though he was rejecting the notion. But he started opening crates, rifling through chunks of debris and more intact pieces with equal disregard.

  “I don’t remember seeing any data gels,” he said. “But I haven’t gone through everything that Mach and Delta brought. You think you can make the marks yourself?”

  “Maybe.” She didn’t want to give him too much hope when she still wasn’t sure. “And do you remember Tanner Cross had a black circle on the side of his face.”

  “At his temple. Like a bruise.”

  “Like a nanotech dataport.” She took a breath. “I think the Theta imprinted Cross.”

  Cosmo snorted. “I would not want Cross as a keyholder.”

  “No, I mean Troy forced Cross—an Earther—to imprint on him.”

  Stiffening, Cosmo met her troubled gaze. “Is that possible?”

  “I’ve watched you make your nanites all but dance,” she pointed out. “If those nanites were in someone else, could you make them dance?”

  He paced away from her. “A shroud’s nanites are uniquely designed for us, and they can’t last long without us. They give us power, but they take it too. Dividing that with someone else…” Reaching for a shard of plasteel, he held it to the fresh scar on his hand. The sharp metallic edge glistened against his darker skin. “Shall we see what happens?”

  She recoiled, her heart racing. “What?”

  “Take my nanites and let’s dance.”

  Her mind raced even faster than her pulse as she considered. “I can’t be a cyborg.” Unless she counted her phone, her tablet, her screens, her keyboards…

  “You won’t have the implants, and the nanites aren’t made for you so they won’t last long.” He watched her with a glint of challenge in his wintery blue eyes.

  And she couldn’t help it. She’d seen first hand that even the barn cats weren’t curious enough to let him touch them, but she… Really, what sort of software engineer was she if she wasn’t intrigued?

  Her nerves tingled with anticipation and just a smidgen of fear. But that always made her reckless. “You don’t have to cut yourself to release the nanites.
”

  “I don’t, but that lets them out without wasting any of their energy.” He laid aside the makeshift knife. “There’s another way.”

  He took one long stride toward her and stopped just short of her borrowed boots. Staring down at her, he unfurled his big hand alongside her face. His long fingers blocked the pale silver track lighting that glowed in the cave wall, like the yurk’s wing had blocked out the moonlight when she banked into a curve.

  Vic’s heartbeat hammered in her ears, even fiercer than when she’d been flying on the yurk. Hanging onto Mach for dear life while they swooped over the snowy canyons in the darkness might’ve counted as a highlight of her days on this planet—until she stood almost surrounded by Cosmo.

  It wasn’t his nanites that compelled her, she had to confess. It was him.

  His big, burly body was like a magnet, calling to the tiny flecks of iron in all her cells. The guys she’d dated in community college had been so small, comparatively, and when they’d called to her—well, it had been mostly booty calls, when they got bored of their first-person shooter games. At the time, she hadn’t minded, not looking for anything to last. And once she’d discovered the existence of aliens and a transgalactic community far beyond her little world, everything seemed smaller to her new awareness.

  Not Cosmo, though.

  More than his sheer personal gravity, his innocence enticed her. Maybe that was the grifter in her; she could blame her parents for their cynical fleecing of trusting souls, but she’d become a hacker in her own right. She liked finding a way into places that had never been breached, unraveling guard chains meant to keep others away.

  And no being in the universe was as trapped as Cosmo Halley.

  She wasn’t conning him—she was freeing him.

  Canting toward him, she set her hands on his hips. He’d left his heavy drifter coat somewhere, exposing the skin-tight layer of black material that felt cool and silky under her palms. Achingly aware of the dense bulk of his obliques under the armor (didn’t get those from video games) she took a deep breath. “Okay. Do it.”

  His icy eyes burned into her, almost as hot as his hand still suspended beside her face. “I won’t lie to you. This might hurt for a moment.”

  “I’m a coward,” she said. “Just ignore any whining from me.”

  “Would a coward be standing here?”

  “A curious one.”

  His lips curled faintly. “Like a cat.”

  Could he read her mind? Maybe he could since he’d downloaded her tablet which was linked to her cloud storage which was basically her second brain.

  She trembled. “So you have heard the phrase ‘curiosity killed the cat’?”

  “The cat didn’t die,” he said with great seriousness. “It got on a ship and traveled among the stars.”

  He’d said he wouldn’t lie to her, and this was such a lie, and yet… Maybe there was a deeper truth?

  Oh hell, this was how innocents ended up giving everything to grifters.

  She bit her lower lip. “Do it before I chicken out.”

  “You’re not a cat or a chicken. You are…just you.” Leaning forward and down, he touched his lips to hers.

  Oh. Oh. She’d thought he was going to put his finger on her temple, like she’d seen the dataport mark on Tanner Cross, or something like that. But a kiss…

  It made sense, really. Touch—contact of any sort—was a classic way of establishing communication. Even in the vacuum of outer space, astronauts could touch their helmets together to let the vibrations of sound carry between them.

  She made a little noise of her own. It sounded kind of like a moan.

  Cosmo lifted his head. “You like kisses.”

  A flush of embarrassment—and excitement—rushed through her. “Well, I can see how it’s a reasonable method of transmission for anything viral, including nanites—”

  “No, you like kissing,” he emphasized. “I read it in your Intergalactic Dating Agency profile.”

  “What?” She squeaked. “Where did you…?”

  “Your profile was on the device you gave me,” he reminded her. “It was saved in your ‘scary movies’ folder.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I forgot about that,” she muttered. “Seemed like the right place for it.”

  His hand, which had been hovering this whole time, finally settled against her cheek. “Would it be so bad, to date an alien?”

  She couldn’t help but lean her head into the caress of his fingers. “When I realized I was more interested in running away from Earth rather than running to anyone, alien or no, I withdrew my profile.” Giving him a wry smile, she added, “I knew I was bringing too much extra baggage, even for a spaceship. I would’ve crashed us for sure.” Then she winced. “Sorry, that was a bad example to use with you.”

  “Shrouds don’t have any baggage, and we still crashed,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe being baggage-free shouldn’t be included in your parameters for dating an alien.”

  She gazed up at him. Was it just her imagination or was he getting better at this? Maybe just having access to the extra data Mach and Delta hadn’t realized he needed was adding depth to his programming.

  Or maybe he always had the depth and she’d just been too busy twisting in her own chains of guilt and lies and wistfulness to really listen.

  Reaching out, she laid her hand over his against her cheek. Though she was definitely the little spoon to his big spoon, his touch was anything but metallic or cold.

  “I don’t feel any different,” she told him. That wasn’t quite true, but she didn’t feel any nanites.

  “I haven’t done it yet,” he said.

  “Then why did you kiss me?”

  His eyes glinted. “To establish a baseline, of course.”

  “Right.” She took a deep breath. “I’m ready. Go.”

  This time, when he crashed his mouth down on hers, it was no baseline, no test. This was full-throttle into uncharted territory. He slipped his hand farther behind her head, gripping her nape with a sureness that sizzled down her spine in a jolt of unease—and pleasure. He tilted her head, slanting his mouth hard across hers, just so.

  How could he know what turned her on… Except of course he could. He had her favorite movies—good and bad—and all her porn, not to mention her IDA profile. Collating that data, he probably knew her better than she knew herself, since the uncurated data couldn’t lie.

  With another breathless moan, she leaned into him, into the kiss, touching her tongue to his.

  He stiffened. That hidden moment of intimacy—tongue to tongue, breath to breath—probably didn’t show up very well in a dirty movie or even the dirty thoughts she’d shared in her profile. But yeah, she did love kissing.

  Every creature known in the universe had to take in energy of some sort to survive. Most intelligent species had some version of the kiss. To open one’s mouth or other sustenance-taking orifice to another meant sharing one of the most primitive drives of life itself: to eat or be eaten. A kiss was danger and trust endlessly intertwined: I taste you and you taste me. I might eat you or you might eat me. I steal your breath while you steal mine. And give it back, with pleasure.

  The tingle of arousal ghosted across her skin, and deeper, following pathways more complex and confusing than any synthetic code. The scent/taste of him flooded her senses, like ocean air or the moments after a lightning strike. Ions, she thought hazily, he tasted of ions, simple but powerful.

  With a low rumble in his chest that reverberated through her, he stepped closer, bringing her snug up against his big body, trapping her legs between his. He matched her kiss, his tongue plunging and igniting the tingles to shivers.

  His other arm anchored at the small of her back, bending her into his hold. She gripped his arms, thrilling as the same shiver went through him, so perfectly aligned with her own.

  When she was gasping, her whole body clenched and needy, ready for something more, he lifted his head to look down at her with solid silver
eyes. “Now,” he murmured.

  On the third kiss, he blew his cloud into her.

  She gasped, but then her lungs locked, negating any further noise. And she would’ve screamed, not from pain, exactly, but from the shock of the invasion.

  From her lungs, the microscopic robots flooded into her blood and through her body, spreading with every pump of her heart. Like shaking a two-liter of Mountain Dew in her younger, irresponsible days and trying to swallow the geyser of sugar and caffeine, her blood seemed to freak and fizz. Her fingers locked on the thin black material over his chest as she hung on.

  Did he feel like this every moment? No wonder he was always on the verge of blowing up.

  All that power in his big body and yet he seemed to walk the world as lost as she was sometimes.

  This awareness, this link had to be just the nanites. They weren’t so alike, him and her. Although she knew that shrouds and Earthers were compatible in some ways…

  Her fingers tightened again, with more purpose this time. To her shock, the tough alien fabric unsealed at her touch, splitting open neatly down the middle to reveal the broad, smooth musculature of his chest where the nanite pathways traced arcane hieroglyphics across his dark skin.

  Even as every other part of her struggled with the microscopic onslaught, her hand splayed wide across his chest, like a five-rayed star to mark her way. “More,” she whispered. “Show me the source.”

  “Vic,” he groaned. “I feel you…”

  “Yes, yes, I want to feel it too. Give me more. I can take all of you.”

  Crushing her against his chest, he kissed her hard and deep. She spread both hands across his chest, and the silver whorls over his heart pulsed in a mesmerizing pinwheel under her fingertips. Skin to skin with him, she wasn’t caught in the geyser—she was the explosion.

  The rush seemed to come from the deepest marrow of her bones, stroking her from within. She wavered and this time he did too. They went to their knees among the alien salvage, their hands full of each other, their tongues tangling, a closed loop, their arousal feeding on itself, building to an inevitable conclusion.