Page 55 of The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss
She peered up at his expressionless mask. “Did he zing you with that half-blood remark?”
“Maybe.” Another shrug. “Although he was willing to go to prison for his desire to reunite with his commonerconsort. While my father wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence.”
She touched the shoulder he hadn’t shrugged, feeling the tension even through the armor. “Oh, Nor. Never doubt you are a hundred times as noble as the high and mighty old duke or Blackworm.”
They skidded around a corner before he replied. “Plus, as you pointed out, one is dead and the other is crazy. So even the ir half of mecomes out ahead.”
“Speaking of getting zinged, where’d you find that armor?”
“On the corpse I stole it from. It’s quite nice, really. Not the corpse, the armor. It’s internally powered and partially self-directed. It could almost run by itself. Not fast enough to get its original owner away from me, of course.”
An uneasy mixture of horror and relief sludged through her. “So the blood on theboot isn’t yours.”
“Oh, it’s mine. The med kit you left with me could only do so much. And about leaving me…” His accusation was hollow in the tin can armor, and when his mask angled down at her, she swore she could see the frown through it.
“I saved you,” she reminded him, to forestall a lecture. And a prayer in her own head that it was true.
“Don’t do it again.”
The gruff edge to his voicehad nothing to do with the blunting effects of the mask, but she wanted to hug him anyway. They were alive, and they were together.
That was enough for this moment.
“Hopefully you stole a shuttle too,” she said as they raced along another corridor, one she knew didn’t lead to the landing bay.
He shook his head. “Lieutenant Linn took the shuttle out of harm’s way, as I ordered.” With a disgruntledhuff, he added, “And I really need to have a talk with the crew about which orders they should listen to and which ones they should countermand.” He yanked her down a narrower hallway that wasn’t on her mental map. “There weren’t any emergency pods left on the station, thanks to Blackworm. No ships left.”
“So how did you get over here?”
“Took one of the station’s mech exosuits.”
She frowned.“You…strapped a rocket booster to your backside and just spacewalked over here?”
“Two. Two rocket boosters, strapped together and then strapped to my backside. Used to do it all the time when I had to scrub the fleet hulls. Meant I could stay out longer. And harder to accidentally leave me behind.”
Back when he was a slave boy on a pirate ship. She swallowed hard. Injured, alone, braving notjust the perils of deep space but his own awful memories, he had come for her.
No wonder she loved him.
“Anyway,” he said, “it wasn’t that far.”
She almost laughed. How like him, to brag about nothing and then belittle the best parts of himself.
Except when he bragged about what was in his pants. None of that was little…
With a deep, ridiculous, abiding joy, she jolted to a halt, grabbedhim, and kissed the cold, blank, un-Nor-like mask.
“No tongue,” he complained. “Might short out.”
She laughed. “I’m the short one.”
“Good thing, because it’s going to be a tight fit in the mech suit.”
As far as tight fits… She frowned as Nor guided them through a hatch to another hallway so narrow it was more a HVAC vent. Small, harsh pools of illumination automatically lit their way but couldn’tquite keep pace with them as they ran, so each step felt as if they were falling into darkness. “Where are we going?”
“We have to get to the hull access port where I left the mech suit. I disabled all the ship’s internal sensors so we can’t be tracked here—I couldn’t modify the external sensors since they would’ve noticed that immediately while we’re underway and might’ve been able to bypass—buteven so, it won’t stop any of the crew from seeing us with their eyes.”
The prospect of their escape loomed so close she was afraid it was an illusion, like the navigation array. “Good thing you were able to make that change.”
