Page 49

And at least for this moment, hidden away in the quiet of the med bay with her arms around me, I allowed myself to have exactly what I wanted.

Chapter

Thirty-Two

Morgan

My fingers found the fasteners of his environmental suit, fumbling as I tugged at them impatiently. I needed to feel more of him, needed the skin-to-skin contact that had been haunting my thoughts since our first kiss back on the Kronock planet.

He understood instantly, reaching for my suit with the same desperate urgency. He slid the top portion down my shoulders, his warm hand finding its way under my uniform shirt. I gasped as his palm cupped my breast, his thumb brushing over the sensitive peak through the thin lace of my bra.

"Tiv," I moaned, arching into his touch.

My hands explored the hard planes of his chest, marveling at the defined muscles beneath my fingertips. How had I never noticed before how ripped he was? This was not the body of an administrative adjunct. This was the body of a warrior, or to be more accurate, a spy.

Emboldened by his gruff, eager sounds, I slid my hands across the ridges of his abdomen and down to the front of his suit. My breath caught when my palm closed over something impressively hard and long through the fabric. I squeezed gently and was rewarded with a deep, throaty moan that sent liquid heat pooling in my core.

"We shouldn't be doing this," he murmured against my neck, even as his hand moved to my other breast. "Anyone could walk in."

"I don't care," I whispered back, meaning it. In that moment, I wouldn't have cared if the entire crew found us.

But before I could decide just how little I cared, the ship rattled. We broke apart instantly, gaping at each other in shock.

"What was that?" I gasped, my heart now racing for an entirely different reason.

Tivek's gaze had gone from molten to alert in an instant. “It shouldn’t be anything. We’re on a planet.”

Another shake from side to side made me hastily tug my environmental suit back into place as he did the same, cursing under his breath the entire time.

We rushed from the med bay into the main corridor. The ship was eerily silent. There were no alarms, no shouts, nothing to indicate what had caused the sudden movement. Had we imagined it?

Tivek shot me a questioning look, as if asking the same thing. Were we losing our minds?

He led the way to the exit ramp, which was still extended, providing a clear view of the barren planet.

What I saw made my blood run cold.

A massive fissure had opened in the rocky ground between the two ships, jagged and deep. On the other side, I could see our crewmates rushing into the other vessel, their movements frantic as the ground beneath them continued to shake. The planet itself seemed to be breaking apart, and I braced my hands on the ship wall to keep from falling.

"We need to go," Tivek said urgently, pulling me back inside. "The tectonics must be unstable."

But my feet felt rooted to the spot, fear paralyzing me as I watched the gap widen, cutting us off from our friends. "The others?—"

"They're getting to safety," he insisted, physically turning me away from the sight. "We need to do the same."

That snapped me back to reality. He was right. We ran toward the cockpit, expecting to find Admiral Zoran still at the console where we'd left him, but the space was empty.

“Zoran? Zoran?” Tivek’s bellow startled me, but what was more of a shock was the silence that followed it. The admiral was clearly not on the ship anymore.

"Grek," Tivek muttered, sliding into the pilot's seat and activating the controls. "Grek, grek, grek."

The reality of our situation hit me with stunning clarity. The admiral must have left the ship to help the others or debrief Sasha, which meant that everyone else was now on the other ship. We were alone.

I fought down the rising panic as the ship shuddered again, the vibrations traveling up through the floor and into my bones.The communications console crackled to life. Tivek punched the button to accept the incoming transmission.

"Tivek, Morgan—do you copy?" Admiral Zoran's voice filled the cockpit, tight with urgency.

"We copy, Admiral," Tivek responded, his fingers flying over the controls as he initiated startup sequences. "What's happening?"