her, the way they had been earlier, when they were interrupted. But the door was closed, now, and Teka was fast asleep in some other part of the ship.
They were alone. Finally.
The chemical-floral smell of the ship was replaced with the smell of her, of the herbal shampoo she’d last used in the ship’s shower, and sweat and sendes leaf. He ran potion-stained fingertips down the side of her throat and across the faint curve of her collarbone.
She pushed him over, so she was straddling him, and pinned his hips down for a tick, just to tug his shirt out from under his waistband. Her hands were so warm against him he could hardly breathe. They found the soft give of flesh around his middle, the taut muscle wrapped around his ribs. She undid buttons all the way up to his throat.
He’d thought of this when he helped her take her clothes off before that bath in the renegade safehouse, how it might be to take off their clothes when they weren’t injured and fighting for their lives. He’d imagined something frantic, but she was taking her time, running her fingers over the bumps of his ribs, the tendons on the inside of his wrists as she freed the buttons on his cuffs, the bones that stuck out of his shoulders.
When he tried to touch her back, she pressed him away. That wasn’t how she wanted it just then, it seemed like, and he was happy to give her what she wanted. She was the girl who couldn’t touch people, after all. It sparked something inside him to know that he was the only one she’d done this with—not excitement, but something softer. Tender.
She was his only—and fate said she would be his last.
She pulled back to look at him, and he tugged at the hem of her shirt.
“May I?” he said.
She nodded.
He felt suddenly tentative as he started undoing her shirt buttons, from throat to waist. He sat up just enough to kiss the skin he revealed, izit by izit. Soft skin, for someone so strong, soft over hard muscle and bone and steely nerve.
He tipped them over, so he was leaning over her, leaving just enough space between them to feel her warmth without touching her. He stripped his shirt from his shoulders, and kissed her stomach again. He’d run out of shirt to unbutton.
He touched his nose to the inside of her hip and looked up at her.
“Yes?” he said.
“Yes,” she said roughly.
His hands closed over her waistband, and he ran parted lips over the skin he exposed, izit by izit.
CHAPTER 7: CISI
THE ASSEMBLY SHIP IS the size of a small planet, wide and round as a floater but so much bigger it’s downright alarming. It fills the windows of the little patrol ship that picked up our escape pod, made of glass and smooth, pale metal.
“You’ve never seen it before?” Isae asks me.
“Only images,” I say.
Its clear glass panels reflect the currentstream where it burns pink, and emptiness where it doesn’t. Little red lights along the ship’s borders blink on and off like inhales and exhales. Its movements around the sun are so slight it looks still.
“It’s different in images,” I say. “Much less impressive.”
“I spent three seasons here as a child.” Isae’s knuckles skim the glass. “Learning how to be proper. I had that brim accent—they didn’t like that.”
I smile. “You still do, sometimes, when you forget to care. I like it.”
“You like it because the brim accent is so much like your Hessan one.” She pokes her fingertip into my dimple, and I smack it away.
“Come on,” she says. “Time to dock.”
The ship’s captain, a squat little man with sweat dotting his forehead, noses his little ship toward the massive Assembly one—to secure entrance B, I’d heard him say. The letter was painted above the doors, reflective. Two metal panels pull apart under the B, and an enclosed walkway reaches for our ship’s hatch. Hatch and walkway lock together with a hiss. Another crew member seals the connection with the pull of a lever.
We all stand by the hatch doors as they open, making way for Isae to stand at the fore. It’s a skeleton patrol crew that picked us up, meant to cruise around the middle band of the solar system in case someone’s in trouble—or making it. There’s just a captain, a first officer, and two others on board with us, and they don’t talk much. Likely because their Othyrian isn’t strong—they