Chain Reaction (6 page)

Facing the man who’d turned her around, she had gotten a quick impression of height and wide shoulders. The stranger’s mask had covered his upper face, but she had seen his mouth and its intriguing full bottom lip. He had stared at her for a moment, and she had smirked up at him, wondering just how far she’d let him take this before she decided to dislocate his thumbs. He had seemed to be steadying himself, as if he had been on the verge of jumping into a fission tank.

And then he’d lowered his head, bringing his mouth to hers. The stranger had kissed her.

If he’d been rough or too aggressive, she would have pushed him away. Shoved her elbow into his throat. Enjoying her freedom did not mean putting up with some nebula toad’s tongue and grabbing hands.

But the stranger had kissed her with…tenderness. As if she was precious to him. Yet he hadn’t been too weak, either. Just the right amount of strength, a balance between his desire and her power. In his kiss, she had felt she wasn’t Stainless Jur, and she wasn’t an anonymous woman perfect for a Night of Masks tryst. She was
her
, and he wanted her.

Desire had hit her, fast and hot. Whoever the stranger had been, she needed to know what it would be like to be his lover, even for a single night.

She’d reached up to thread her fingers through his hair, pull him closer, but as soon as she did, he’d ended the kiss.

He had stared at her, his eyes unreadable behind his mask. She hadn’t been able to even see their color. She had opened her mouth to speak. And then, the crowd around them had shifted. He’d vanished into it, as abruptly as waking from a dream. She had searched for him the rest of the night, but wherever her stranger had gone, he’d hidden himself well in the throng of masked celebrants.

For a few days afterward, she’d been haunted by that kiss. Thinking of what might have been. Walking down the corridors of the base, she’d stared into the faces of dozens of men, stared at their mouths, but none of them seemed right or familiar. She’d stopped looking, and chalked the whole experience as part of the Night of Masks’ mystique. Maybe in another solar year, her stranger might try again. And if he did, she’d pull his mask off.

Now she had her answer.

“It was you,” she said to Nils.

His voice was tight, his expression opaque, though color blazed in his cheeks. “Yes.”

A million questions flooded her mind, but she could not ask any of them. She still resonated with the kiss they’d just shared. It startled her to realize how much the kiss had rattled her, far more so than the combat.

They’d reached Gabela’s ship, and hopefully the smuggler had good intel about the safer routes in this quadrant.

“May the ten demon lords bless you,” Gabela said over the com as Nils returned to his seat.

“How about some reciprocity,” she answered. “Mara said you know this quadrant.”

“Better than I know my bastard children. I can tell you the best places to fly to avoid PRAXIS.”

Nils said, “I can strengthen the Phantom’s sensors to alert us if PRAXIS is anywhere within a parsec. It will make us run a little slower, but we’ll be safer.”

She gave him a clipped nod. If anyone could make the necessary modifications, it would be Nils.

“Transmit the coordinates,” she said to Gabela. “The best routes, the most dangerous ones. Everything you know.”

Immediately, coordinates scrolled through the Phantom’s display screen. Nils began entering them into the navigational systems, and she saw that he cross-checked them against the data records for known hotspots. Thorough, that Lieutenant Calder.

“Got it,” she said.

“May the gods speed your ship,” Gabela answered.

“Better find a port,” Nils advised. “I bought you some time with the repairs, but I wouldn’t take the scenic route.”

The smuggler ship raced off as fast as its antiquated engines could carry it. She didn’t wait to see the last of its hull lights before bringing the Phantom around. They still had a traitor to find and fight.

Nils continued to study the tracking device. They were getting closer to Marek, the signal growing in strength, but they were not close enough. It could be a matter of solar hours or days until he and Celene reached wherever the traitor had situated himself, and Nils burned with impatience to arrive at their destination. He wanted justice. He did
not
want to explain to Celene why he had kissed her at the last Night of Masks, nor why he’d waited so long to kiss her again.

His face burned at the memory—not just what had happened at the Night of Masks, but his kissing her after the fight with PRAXIS. Even more damning, his body tightened with arousal. Could he explain his actions to her when he himself couldn’t puzzle them out?

Fortunately, in the hours after parting ways with Gabela, she hadn’t spoken of either kiss. In fact, she hadn’t spoken at all. He studied her surreptitiously. She stared straight ahead, her gaze focused on the spread of stars and nebulae that filled the sky. Even though he told himself not to look, his attention drifted down to her mouth.

Heat washed through him, a strange and primal need. To mark her, claim her. Take her mouth once more. Take more than her mouth. He didn’t recognize himself in the depths of this savage hunger. His response to women had always been enthusiastic, but never this fierce, this demanding. It was as if he discovered a vital component missing from his blood, and there was only one way to make himself whole—Celene.

If he took her in his arms now, what might she do? Grip his shoulders and pull him closer? Or break his wrists?

He had to admit, there was something viscerally thrilling about not knowing. He didn’t want to hurt her, nor be hurt, yet when it came to the quantifiable variables of his life and the order to which he liked to assign everything, the unknown element of Celene excited him.

Everything about her excited him.

He couldn’t let himself think of that, of what he wanted.

“That was a surprise.” In the confines of the small cockpit, his voice sounded too low, too gravelly. “The combat, I mean,” he added when she raised a brow.

“Surprise attacks tend to be unexpected,” she said drily.

Oh, hells, of course she would know that.

“We handled the situation well enough,” he said. “But I’m talking about being in an actual fight. The combat was definitely alarming but also…exhilarating. A lot more than SimCom or training.”

“Nothing like live plasma fire to get the heart rate up.” She grinned. “You weren’t scared?”

“Definitely,” he answered.

She chuckled at his ready response. “Didn’t show it.”

He shrugged. “Why should I? Panicking wouldn’t help either of us. Had to direct my concentration toward defeating the enemy and getting us out alive.”

“But you liked it.” A statement, not a question.

“You know, I did.” He was thoughtful. “Operating in pristine harmony with someone else. Fighting side by side. Anticipating each other’s needs and fending off attackers.” His muscles burned just thinking about it again. “Still, I don’t want to go into combat with anyone else but you.”

He fought the urge to close his eyes. Gods, he had not meant to say that. Not out loud, at least.

Her silver eyes widened. “Tell me about the Night of Masks,” she finally said.

“I’d rather not. We could talk about the other kiss.” Much easier for him to rationalize it as the heat of the moment.

But she looked distinctly uneasy at the mention of their most recent kiss. “I’d rather not,” she echoed.

What made her so uncomfortable? Was it the idea of kissing a NerdWorks engineer? Or something else? Something that made her…uncertain.

“Was it spontaneous,” she pressed, her voice gaining confidence, “or did you plan it?”

Prevarication seemed unlikely. Her tone refused argument, and her eyes told him that she’d see through any dissembling.

“Planned,” he answered. “I’d known of you for a long time. Actually, we met almost two solar years ago. I was making some mods to your Wraith after a sortie. We talked about piloting systems for a while, then you went to a squad debriefing.”

“I remember,” she said, then added, “vaguely.”

He battled an automatic wince. Why would a Black Wraith Squad hotshot truly notice NerdWorks?

“I remember you vividly,” he said. “You left an impression.”

Her expression grew distant. “Stainless Jur.”

“Best of the best. An untouchable combat record. And,” he continued, deciding that he might as well be completely candid, “you were—
are
—so beautiful, you stopped my heart.”

Her aloof expression slipped a little. She seemed genuinely surprised that anyone might notice her as a woman rather than a series of combat statistics.

“Should have said something,” she noted.

He gave a rueful chuckle. “Every scenario I ran for that conversation resulted in the same outcome. None of them involved you and I sitting down for a cup of
kahve
, let alone me getting you back to my quarters.”

Her cheeks turned pink, illuminated by the light of the control panel.

He shook his head. “I can hardly believe I’m saying these things now.”

“You just survived a firefight with PRAXIS.”

“So it should be easy to get through this…confession.” Would her dismissal hurt more than a plasma blast to the chest?

“Without actually testing your theory, that’s all it remains—theory. You’ll never know unless you try.”

“Let’s not mislead ourselves,” he said. “Honestly, if I’d suggested we watch a vid together and have dinner by simu-candlelight, you would’ve said yes?”

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Her gaze became thoughtful.

“Your silence is my answer.” Nils returned his gaze to the tracking device.

“There are different kinds of engagements.” Her voice was weighted with experience. “Not just combat, but engagements between people. And I’ve learned from all of them. Including the fact that when a man looks at me with stars in his eyes, he’s going to be disenchanted when the daylight comes and the stars fade.”

“It would have been different with me.”

“Maybe, but I’d seen that look too many times to want to see it again.”

The weariness in her voice made him look up from the display. Her eyes gleamed with a rare vulnerability. How had no one seen her isolation? A reputation like hers had its benefits, yet it must also keep her in seclusion. How frequently she had been disappointed by her lovers? He didn’t particularly want to dwell on the image of Celene in bed with another man, but however often she encountered that disappointment, it had most assuredly left a lingering mark.

She wore her reputation like armor, shielding her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She shrugged, though the gesture was not as careless as she likely intended. “I fly forward. I’m very good at it.” Turning a curious gaze toward him, she said, “So you meet me once, lose your nerve to ask me out and then…kiss me on the Night of Masks years later. A long stretch of time for you to formulate a plan.”

“Not all of it was spent contemplating how to kiss you.” For much of the intervening months, Nils had tried to put her from his mind. Compartmentalization came easily to him, as well as the logical means by which he could resolve dilemmas. “I went about my duties in Engineering. Trained. Studied.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Went on a few dates.”

“Here I was, thinking you were some kind of Llinanian monk.”

He gave a self-deprecating snort. “I wasn’t a priest of the love goddess Oshun, either.” He hesitated. “But when you’d come back from missions, I’d run extra diagnostics on your Wraith. Even if I wasn’t assigned to do so. Making sure your ship wasn’t harmed.” It was the closest he would ever come to looking after her.

Beautiful, strong, capable. He would go over her Wraith carefully, and thoughts had filled his mind as his hands were busy running the tests. What would it be like to get close to her? To feel the lean length of her body against his? To taste her mouth? Or, gods, even simply
talk
with her?

He could say that the scientist in him wanted to know—the spirit of intellectual inquiry compelling him to pose a question and then answer it. That would be a lie. He was a man, and it was with a man’s desire that he dreamed of her, distant and brilliant as a star.

“Even if you weren’t thinking about kissing me all that time,” she pointed out now, “you certainly picked a prime opportunity to do so.”

“It’s foolish to waste a promising prospect.”

A corner of her mouth turned up. “That’s either very rational, or a supreme example of justification.” Her smile turned into a frown. “But everyone was wearing masks. How’d you know it was me? There are plenty of women in 8
^th
Wing with hair the same color and length as mine, whose height and build matches mine.”

“Maybe I kissed them too,” he countered.

“No, you didn’t.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I didn’t.” He hoped she might let the question pass, but she continued to hold him with her incisive gaze. Her reputation for tenacity was also well earned. “I just…recognized you.”

“Recognized me,” she said, her voice heavy with irony. Clearly, she did not believe him.

He sighed roughly. “Something about you…I could always find you in a crowded room. Even if I wasn’t looking for you, even if I didn’t know you’d be somewhere in particular, my gaze…went straight to you. Instinctively.”

Frustrating to attempt to explain something for which he had no explanation. He, who dealt in specifics and known quantities, found himself utterly at a loss. Because the truth was that he truly didn’t understand how it was he could find or recognize Celene in a crowded room full of people wearing masks. He simply saw her and
knew
.

She looked at him now across the cockpit, her eyebrows raised in surprise. It seemed that had not been the answer she had expected.

“I never knew.”

“Why would you? A sun isn’t aware of orbiting planets, especially the ones furthest away.” He looked at the stars surrounding them now, distant and shimmering. “I hadn’t planned on finding and kissing you on the Night of Masks. Wasn’t even intending on going to the celebration.”

“Everyone loves the Night of Masks.”

He shook his head. “Too noisy, too chaotic. I only went that night because some of my Engineering colleagues dragged me from my quarters. They shoved a mask into my hands, insisting I come with them.”

“And you had a great time.”

“Had a terrible time.” He sighed, recalling that night. “The evening played out pretty much as I’d anticipated. Hovering at the periphery of the festivities, feeling tense and ill at ease. It’s just…not an environment I enjoy.”

“Why didn’t you leave?”

“I almost did. I was moments away from retreating back to the shelter of my quarters—when I saw you. Dancing.” With three men.

He’d been profoundly aroused, as well as raked with jealousy. Then he didn’t know himself or his actions. Only that he had been standing at the edge of the dancers one moment, and the next, he had moved through the crowd with the intent and precision of an ion knife.

He had seen his hands on his shoulders, felt the curve and warmth of her, watched himself turn her around. She, of course, hadn’t recognized him. But she had stared up at him with a smirk, challenging him. He’d been unable to resist the challenge.

Five solar months had passed, yet the memory of her kiss hadn’t faded. She’d been hot, spiced and sweet, guarded at first and then, at careful coaxing, lushly responsive. Her kiss had lit something within him, a long-buried charge that exploded at the feel of her. The deepest hunger had ripped through him. Within moments, he’d wanted to drag her away from the dancers, learn every part of her and explore her body with his own.

The need had been so strong, it had alarmed him. He’d been unable to recognize himself. Not Lieutenant Nils Veit-Rigel Calder, author of five digitablet monographs about high-velocity guidance systems, who spent all his hours either in Engineering or in the training chambers.

He had felt himself transforming into something basic and instinctive, something radically different from the cautious, rational man he believed himself to be.

So he’d run.

But not far enough, because here he was, sitting in a small cockpit with Celene, and instead of feeling embarrassment about his past actions, he only wanted to do them all over again. Let them spin out to their natural conclusion—he and Celene, naked, their bodies fitted close as interlocking parts. No, that wasn’t right, for he couldn’t think of them as predictable, controllable machines. They were made of flesh and muscle and need.

“When you came into the briefing chamber a few solar days ago,” she said, staring at him, “we
shook hands
.”

“You’d prefer if I’d I pulled you into my arms? Kissed you until our uniforms burst into flames?” He raised a brow. “Not precisely protocol, especially in front of Admiral Gamlyn.”

“The Admiral has done ten combat tours. I’m sure she’s seen it all.”

“Not two officers making love on a briefing chamber table.”

She pursed her lips. “Pretty bold assertion. That one kiss would lead to making love.”

“We can test that hypothesis.” Another shock from his own mouth. Only a solar week earlier, he never would’ve spoken so boldly, or with such naked hunger. And yet the words came from him naturally now, coaxed forth by a new confidence. “Just a few minutes ago, we kissed again. No one was wearing a mask. It was only you and me, undisguised. Let’s try again, see where it leads us. What we learn about ourselves.”

Heat flared in her gaze, and her cheeks turned pink as a
hanaflower
. But then a look he would almost describe as apprehension crossed her face. She looked away.

“I…can’t.”

“Because I’m NerdWorks and you’re Black Wraith Squad.” His sudden anger startled him, but, damn it, he wanted to believe that he and Celene had moved past the designations keeping them frozen in place.

“That’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Illuminate me.”

“It’s…” She tried to speak, but nothing came out. Her hand curled into a fist, and she knocked it against the bulkhead. Then she spoke in a rush. “I’m scared, all right?”