Page 36 of The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss
He chuckled. “In the pocket ofmypants. But I know you’re good with it.”
The fierce furrow between her eyebrows smoothed. “I’d probably be even better withyourblaster.”
“Are you thinking of becoming a pirate?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to be.”
The wistfulnessin 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 lightof 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 coatalmost 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. Ittook 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 distractme 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. Maybebecausethey 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 probablythink 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 breathethe 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 on 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-bodyno. Her lipstwisted 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 palehighlights 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 sobeautiful, 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 herstricken 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.”
