Page 16 of Hijack! (Cosmic Connections Cruise #1)

“My therapist asked me that too. And if I could’ve answered it, maybe I wouldn’t have left.” She let out a long breath. “And now there seems to be a question whether I’ll have the chance to figure it out.”

“I’ve been in worse situations than this.”

He couldn’t believe he’d said that either. Because of course it made her look at him, her Earther blue eyes wide with a sort of hope. “You have?”

Now he had to tell her or risk extinguishing that shine. “You already know about the pirates.”

“You didn’t say much about it.”

He never had, not even to Suvan who’d been there.

“The chief engineer and I were the only crew on a long-haul freighter. We’d done the same run numerous times, until it was rote.

Until the time it wasn’t.” He looked down at their hands, noting vaguely that despite the terrible memories, his claws had retracted.

Being next to her was…calming. “We intercepted a distress signal. On those distance runs, there aren’t many other ships, so receiving any message was rare and suspect.

But we were there too, so it wasn’t completely impossible that it was a legitimate call. Suvan thought it was a trap.”

“For once I agree with him,” she muttered.

Ellix snorted out a breath. “I didn’t disagree either, but it is part of the interstellar code to respond to such calls. So I sent a message back to corporate that we were rendering aid.”

She clutched his hand. “Spoiler alert: I know you survived. Obviously. But I am still very worried for you.”

Suvan had been cursing him the whole time, his goblhob shrieking a counterpoint.

It was nice to know that someone would’ve cared.

“The distance off course was a slow traverse, so I had time to regret. Before we arrived at the coordinates, we were attacked by pirates. The call had been just a diversion.”

She winced. “And there you were in a slow, awkward freighter.”

“Not optimal,” he agreed. “Our ship was equipped with some basic tools for in-flight repairs. As the pirates were staging a forcible entry, we launched a magnetized welder and partly sealed one of their plasma cannons. When we attempted to escape, they fired on us—and blew off one of their own nacelles. Suvan falsified a message that local authorities were inbound, and the pirates fled. We powered down completely and hid in the background radiation of a nearby quasar until a cruiser responding to the false distress found us instead.”

She let out a muffled cheer. “Captain Never-Smiles and his mysterious engine gnome, saving the day.”

He cocked his head at her. “Is that what they call us?”

She clamped her other hand over her mouth. “Oops, no,” she mumbled. “Just me when I’m being rude.”

“My people don’t have the same facial muscles.”

“It was more that you seem a bit…grumpy all the time.”

He wrinkled his nose. He had the muscles for that, and he’d seen her do it, usually when she didn’t think he was watching her. “In my defense, I never expected to be captain of a dating cruise ship, not even for a three-sunset tour.”

She leaned sideways to bump her shoulder into him again. “Probably you wish you’d taken a different job. But I’m glad you are captain of this ship right now.”

“Captain of a hijacked ship doesn’t mean much,” he grumbled.

But some part of him relaxed that had been taut with dread ever since he’d heard her whisper into the comm that she was making contact with the anomaly.

“Anyway, if we didn’t save the day, we at least saved ourselves.

But I lost part the freight due to the power-down and so I lost my command. ”

She made a fierce face, almost a Kufzasin snarl. “That’s not fair. You did your duty—and the right thing.” In her righteous outrage on his behalf, she angled toward him, her knee nudging into his thigh. “I’d tell that freight company—”

Intrigued though he was by her protective snarl, when the light shifted on her face, he shot to his feet, putting himself between her and the anomaly.

The shadowy fingers had returned, flaring and grasping at nothing, and he understood why she’d reached back. The impression of a living thing in desperate need triggered the same reaction as the distress call in the depths of empty space.

Hadn’t he learned not to respond to such hazards?

“It did that before,” Felicity whispered. “We were all here, having fun, and the night was going so well. I wondered if we’d conjured it, all together. But now it’s just us two.” She rose to stand beside him. “I think it’s responding to our emotional state.”

“Feelings again,” he said skeptically. Even as he said it, the shadowy anomaly faded.

Felicity wrapped her arms around herself, as if holding on. “It’s just a different kind of energy, or so I’m told.”

“You think it’s sentient?”

“Or a message or reflection? I don’t know. If we figure out how to access or guide it or control it, maybe we get the ship back.”

He wanted to scoff. But it wasn’t like he had any other answers. “And how do we test your proposition?”

“Bigger feelings.” She pivoted to face him. “Kiss me.”

Despite her much smaller size, he leaned back. “That is your idea for rousing emotion?”

“Or blow up the ship.”

Certainly there were other options? But by the infinite stars, he couldn’t bother thinking of any, not when he was already thinking about tasting her again.

“Bite or no bite?” He tried to keep the question light, even if he couldn’t smile.

To his delight, she laughed, blue eyes widening. When she gave her head a toss, a few more strands drifted down from the clip. “You are teasing me,” she accused.

“A little,” he admitted.

“Then maybe a little bite.”

She was a fragile Earther, and they were colleagues, with him her commanding officer.

And yet he felt strangely the more vulnerable, as they turned toward each other, their relative heights meaning their mouths were awkwardly far apart.

This would be so much easier if they were floating in zero gravity.

Or at least lying down…

He leaned forward to brush his mouth over hers as she’d taught him, but this time he didn’t stop there.

He cupped her cheek—the heat of her flush inexplicably scalding through the thick skin of his paw—and when she tilted her head to rest in his open palm, he nuzzled the rapid thrum of her pulse in her neck.

She let out a sound, not quite a growl, and he answered with a groan of his own. He would not leave the devotion mark, but he could at least give her a taste of the alien adventure she had sought.

And take a taste of his own.