He walked away and I sat on the bench again, staring blankly at the flowers surrounding the waterfall. It’d been almost two weeks since I’d seen Ellis and I had hoped my obsession with her would have ended. Instead, it was worse. I was barely sleeping or eating and my need to see her, to touch her, was a fire inside me that couldn’t be doused.
I rubbed my hand through my hair. How many times had I almost gone to her in the night? Too many to count. Her apartment next to mine was an exercise in agony and self-control, but the idea of moving her to a different apartment further away made me unsettled and almost angry. I liked knowing she was right beside me, liked knowing that if she needed me, I was close. Even if I spent my nights staring at the wall separating us like a teenage Draax with his first crush. I’d even had a few fantasies where Ellis had broken into my apartment again and joined me in my bed.
She cannot. You have her tools, remember?
That was true. They were still sitting on my nightstand and as the head of the King’s Guard, I was ashamed to admit that more than once I’d been tempted to return them to her in hopes she would use them to enter my apartment again.
My job was to protect Quill and Sabrina and Jovie and if anyone knew that I was considering giving Ellis back her tools of escape, they would think I’d gone mad.
You know she will not hurt anyone.
No, she wouldn’t. It made me a real froden to believe that – I hardly knew her – but it did not quell my belief that she would never hurt anyone at the castle. She might be a thief but that didn’t make her dangerous to us.
I stood up and headed toward the entrance of the garden. I was glad that Ellis was doing well in the docking bay. Perhaps if she continued to prove herself useful, I could approach Melu about speaking on her behalf to Quill to allow her to join the work program permanently. The gallberry juice she had stolen was barely a drop in our supply and what did Earth care if they had one less human in their prisons?
Cheered by the possibility that Ellis might stay permanently at the castle, I felt the first rumbling of hunger in days. A smile on my face, I headed back to my apartment.
* * *
Ellis
The knock on my door had me bouncing up off the couch with an excited grin. For the last two weeks, Inara or Candy stopped by my apartment every evening for a visit. I suspected that it would be Inara tonight, and my smile widened when the door opened and Inara walked in.
I liked Candy a lot and her son Roden was cute and polite and fun to play the flight simulator with, but I felt a real connection to Inara. Maybe even best friend connection.
What are you, twelve?
I flushed a little, but it didn’t stop me from grinning like a fool at the redhead. “Hey!”
“Hi, Ellis.” Inara dropped onto my couch as Adrix closed the door behind her.
I grabbed us both bottles of gallberry juice and joined her. The Draax had stopped posting a guy outside my door after they chipped me like a stray dog, which meant that Adrix had walked Inara to my room. I grinned at Inara. “Is Adrix still accidentally running into you in the hallways?”
She smiled a little. “Sometimes. Not as much as he was. Honestly, I’m kind of impressed at how patient the Draax are being. I don’t think there’s a single woman in the program who’s interested in dating them right now. We all just want to make money, you know?”
“That’s what they get for hiring lowers to work,” I said. “We’re all desperate for money.”
“True.” She paused. “I met your boss in the garden earlier.”
“Melu?” I said. “He was in the garden?”
“Yes. He was sitting with Galan.”
I instantly forgot my surprise that cranky old Melu went to the garden. “How is he?”
“He seems as grumpy as you told me he is. He barely looked or talked to us.”
“Not Melu,” I said. “Galan.”
“He looked the same as always, I think,” Inara said. “I don’t usually see him around the castle.”
“Right,” I said.
“Melu didn’t look as old as you described him,” Inara said. “He was kind of good looking,