Maybe he could blame the drink for what he did next.
He leaned the rest of the way through the doorway and kissed the little Earther.
Just lips. No tongue.He kept his grip on the doorway and he kept his eyes open, and so did she, so he watched the dilation of her pupils from an intimate distance.
For all her nippy little teeth, her lips were…soft, yielding. He’d thought about kissing Illya—vrykoly teeth and all—and he’d thought about kissing the other Earther girl, Lishelle, but he hadn’t even considered this one until just this moment. She heldherself utterly still as he eased his mouth over hers with a low rumble of arousal in his throat. His lips were a little sticky from the candy he’d taken from his pocket, and their mouths caught for a heartbeat. The scent of her teased him, something subtle and not sweet at all, enticing him closer to try to figure it out because she was a mystery, and every good pirate knew that the locked boxheld the worthiest treasure.
Once again, instinct and impulse had served him well, pointing out this delectably small and innocent Earther—
Instinct and impulse cleared their throat meaningfully, and he twisted to one side just as the muzzle of a blaster nudged him low in the belly.
The jolt of blinding yellow energy—a stun blast—zinged past the open tab of his fatigue bottoms, and the incompletemetallic seal sizzled electrically in the near-miss. His half-turgid erectionpwanged in the resulting shock.
He yelped and jumped back.
Now that he was no longer blocking the way, the door slid closed with a decisive snick.
He stared at the panel, his pulse slamming in outrage. Slammingunlikethat smooth door which she had closed so quietly in his face. After almost shooting him.
Did sheeven know that the blaster had been set to stun? Did she even know what a blasterwas? And how had she gotten it? A closed-world refugee was wandering the halls of the ducal estate with a blaster.
He slapped his palm over the comm next to the door. “You shot me!”
The estate was too well built to let him yell through the door, and the comm would only let her know she had a message, not deliverit unless she—
“I shotpastyou,” she corrected, her voice through the comm sounding smug. “You weren’t in the way anymore.”
Ah, so she couldn’t resist answering him now that there was a locked door between them.
“The only reason I wasn’t in the way was because I moved,” he snarled back.
“Which is what I’dpolitelyasked you to do before.” A puff of her breathing came through the comm link,as if she was standing very close, closer than she’d been during the kiss. “You told me you are a pirate, Captain. What else was I supposed to do?”
He opened his mouth to fire back—not literally, of course—but nothing came out. What else indeed. It had been a very, very long time since someone had told him to go away. In this very house, actually. It had nearly destroyed him then. He wouldn’tlet that happen again.
After a moment, her tentative voice emerged again. “Uh, Captain? Are you still there?”
So, she felt confident enough to fire a blaster at him but hadn’t quite mastered the comm vid? It would serve her right if he was gut-shot and bleeding against her door.
He leaned into the comm, so she might hear his breath too. “There’s not much in this universe that stops me, mishkeet.Certainly not a locked door. But you made your point, at blaster point, and if there’s anything I know well, it’s fear, violence, and dismissal.” He pulled back a half step, hearing too much truth in his words. But then he drew close again. “Oh, and make sure you set the blaster to ambient recharge. That was a needlessly long release. You could’ve dropped me with a quarter of that energy.”
“CaptainNor, I wasn’t—”
“Good night, Trixie.” He released the comm and forced himself back from the door.
A part of him—the Azthronos half or the pirate half?—wanted to stay to see if she’d open the door. Another part refused to let her watch him lurk, since it wasn’t as if hewantedto stay to see if she’d open the door.
He shook his head hard at his own prevarication. Larfing ghost-mead. He couldn’twait to get back to theGrandiloquencewhere he’d finally made a name for himself that could be spoken in polite company.
Polite like a certain little Earther girlwasn’t.
The smug, sheltered Azthronos nobles like the duke might not see the trouble they’d witlessly brought into their midst—complacent fools hadn’t identifiedhim, had they?—but he’d be keeping a watchful eye on the blaster-totingTrixie.
A watchful eye and a wary distance.
With a quick snap of his fingers, he closed the top tab of his fatigues and walked away, never looking back.
