Page 14 of Defiance (The Intersolar Union #7)

Novak clamped his colear? shut hard, taking thin, slow breaths. Charlie looked and smelled like fire and spice. Like him. Her chemia flared strong, laced with a heavy dose of cortisol and arousal hormones that suggested she wanted to punch something. His muzzle tingled where she’d hauled back and done exactly that. She’d been ablaze with fury, her edges singed with a neon aura that overexposed everything around her and made his helices weep.

Now she was exactly the same, stalking down the hall beside him, grumbling under her breath.

“The bloody cheek of that woman…”

Novak’s venom glands throbbed and he lashed his tail between the narrow sides of the hallway. Letting Xata rile him up had been a mistake. She usually stopped quickly if he ignored her, but this time was different. Shilpakaari could taste pheromones in the air and she knew. So like the maestro of manipulation that she was, Xata had conducted a symphony designed to push Charlie over the edge. To make her smell like all the things Novak craved so she’d have something to hold over his head. It didn’t matter if someone was friend or foe, the commander always looked for levers she could pull.

Novak pressed his palm against a glowing white panel by the portal of his quarters and the door slid open.

“After you,”

he said, inclining his head down towards Charlie. She walked in and he captured his tail in his hand before it could claim her ankle when she stopped at the foot of his bed.

Charlie put her hands on her hips, taking in the narrow room with its bare walls and a bed that stretched from end to end.

“I was expecting a bunk, to be honest,”

she said with begrudging thanks, examining the room. She sat on his sheets and his colear? flared greedily.

“Yours are across the hall. This one’s mine,”

he clipped, opening the in-wall wardrobe and withdrawing his duffel. He set it down at her feet and knelt, claws pausing on the latches.

“I’m sorry for Siat. She’s a difficult woman.”

Charlie blew a curl of silk from her forehead.

“Don’t be. She doesn’t owe me anything.”

His ears turned back.

“Perhaps not, but she owes me plenty.”

He opened the latches and sifted through his undershirts and pants.

“When her clients need her, I pick up her off-ship duties.”

“And in exchange, she lets you hitch a ride from place to place? Seems like fair rent.”

Novak grinned, looking up at Charlie from the floor.

“Do I really owe her anything if the pilot pilots and our boss pays for fuel?”

Charlie smirked and Novak’s tail plumes shivered with excitement. It was the first real smile she’d given him all day.

Not that he could blame her. He’d been cold on purpose. Distant out of necessity for both their safety. He had to learn how to let go when they were in public. Now that they were alone though, the muscles that had been as tense as bowstrings were softening up like butter. He watched his tail as it flirted with the arch of her boot, struggling not to follow its lead.

Swallowing hard, he leaned back and drew his tail away.

“About last night…”

“Business is business. I know,”

Charlie said.

It stung to put it that way, but she was right. He’d sold himself for years in the bullpens and auctions. Was this really any different? The privilege of the Hunt, but still shackled. Bought and sold for a play on the war table. It was all an advenan was good for. Novak bore the ache under his plume mail, moving on like it was nothing. Like he always did.

He lifted a large white bag from his duffel and opened it with his claw. The scent of hefi, the Union’s favorite hot beverage, filled the room. Charlie leaned in over his ears to get a look at the orange, earthy powder.

“This is sakharel,”

he explained.

“It’s used to make hefi, a universal version of your kauphee. Potent, served hot, strong aroma. It also has a lot of nitrogen in it that can cover up our mingled scent.”

“We smell like each other?”

Novak looked up at her rosy cheeks and his cock thumped desperately. He licked his fangs, swallowing down venom that had given her a twinge of him in her aroma and that same blissed out expression less than a day ago.

“Hjarna aren’t a scenting species, but they’re not the only ones that will be there. Most hjarna security details are mixed species, and pretty much everyone else will be able to smell us, one way or another.”

He poured a spoonful of the powder into his palm and rubbed them together, then scrubbed around his face and brow, careful to avoid direct contact with his colear?. The powder dropped off him to the floor.

Charlie took some too, rubbing it between her index finger and thumb. She brushed it away and, satisfied that it didn’t stain her pale skin, took more to rub over her hands and arms. Then she smelled her own wrist and hummed.

“Smells like autumn,”

she mused, wriggling her hips. His eyes glued to the crutch of her thighs at level with his snout and stilled, afraid to breathe. Her edges crackled, the magenta tint of her chemia filling the room.

“Rub it… everywhere?”

Charlie stood and waved her hand vaguely over her groin.

“Yes.”

“You got it.”

Novak stood, breathing in as his eyes closed.

“Take the bag,”

he rasped.

“I have another.”

She gave him a cheeky salute, took her bag of ground sakharel, and sidled around him. Novak remained there like a stone, his muzzle angled towards the top of her head as she brushed by.

At the last second, he grabbed her arm, breathing her in like his lungs were a cavern. He filled every nook of his insides with her, until there was no room left.

“I’m not going to disappear on the ship,”

she attempted to tease. It came out breathless, and potent moisture dotted her neck behind her ear. Novak wanted to lick it away.

“You never know,”

he purred, dropping her arm.

As soon as the door whispered shut behind her, Novak rubbed his nose into his sheets with a snarl of frustration.