Page 16

16

T he fizzy wine is flowing, and while some groups are starting to break up, the party is still going strong.

Which only makes Rian jumpier.

He keeps waiting for me to make a break for it. It’s like he still thinks I might try to cram Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s liver into my purse, but he must have realized by now there’s more at play here than that.

“Dessert?” a server says, pausing in front of us with a tray full of delights.

“No, thank you,” I say.

Rian’s eyes grow wide. “Are you okay?” he gasps, incredulous as I watch the tiny plates of chocolate-covered berries walk away. He frowns in concern.

Part of me wants to shove him aside, race to the server, and shovel the chocolate into my mouth by the fistful.

But the part of me that wants to get paid wins out. So, rather than follow the absolutely logical course of action, I turn my back on the food.

He’s watching me even closer now. Maybe he can sense the anticipation coiling in my gut like a snake. He’s always so observant, my Rian.

So, I pick a fight.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?” I ask, eyes flicking down to his jacket.

“Notice?” Rian’s brow creases.

I jab the O-ring he’s used to affix the rose to his lapel. “I told you something real and true, and this is what you choose to make a mockery of?”

It takes him a moment to follow—good; I hope that means he forgot about the dessert thing. But once he finally pieces together my accusation, he blanches.

“You think I’m making fun of an entire family that died due to a ship malfunction?” he asks, reaching for the corsage. He shakes his head, and some of his carefully slicked-back hair breaks free. “No, no, that’s not what this is.”

“Oh, yeah?” I cross my arms, glaring at him, but inside, my heart leaps. I hadn’t actually thought he was making light of such a horrific event, but I had thought he was mocking me . From his tone, though, I can tell I missed whatever point he was truly trying to make.

“It’s to remind me that something small makes all the difference in the world,” he says softly. He’s looking at me, right into my eyes, all earnest and soulful, and it’s making my knees melt like the chocolate I wish was on my tongue.

“Oh?” I say, trying to yank myself back into the here and now.

He nods. “I made a mistake once.”

“Just the once?”

That gets me a smirk. “I saw someone who I knew was trouble.”

“Can’t be me, then.”

“And rather than believe she was as capable as she said, I overlooked just how much damage she could do.”

“She sounds like my type.”

“Ada.”

I mocked him once for the way he said my name, voice deep and serious. And I want to mock him again, now, except—

Except now it’s not just my knees that are melting, it’s all of me going liquid, all of me burning, all of me longing. Wanting.

My name forms on his lips, and it throws me right back into the past, to that moment where I let myself pretend, for one night, that I could have a life like the one he thinks he wants. He told me he liked the idea of knowing where I was in the universe, but he’s a goddamn liar, because I can see the truth painted all over his flushed skin. He says he wants a life that’s stationary? No.

No.

He wants to chase me. He’s practically begging me to run right now. He’s dying for some action.

Problem is, right now? I can’t move, much less run. I put my hand on his chest, not intentionally. Because gravity is melting alongside me, my heart floating miles above my head, and if I don’t touch him, I’ll fall. Except that’s not true, either, because touching him?

Makes me fall even more.

He opens his mouth to speak. “Ada—”

“Oh my god, shut up,” I say, each word soft, each syllable pulling me closer to him, to his lips, until I crush my mouth against his, until I taste the way he says my name.

“Ahem.”

I contemplate murdering stupid fucking Strom Fetor. Instead, I pull back at his stupid fucking voice and only visualize punching his stupid fucking face rather that actually following through on my heart’s desire. Because of course it would be Strom Fucking Fetor that would interrupt me kissing Rian.

I glance at Rian, whose entire expression clearly says: Okay, yes, you were right, I hate him too; we should have let him die in a fiery inferno of death. I might be paraphrasing that look.

When Rian turns to the man, though, he’s plastered on his professional mask.

“You’ve got a little something,” Fetor says before Rian can speak. He touches his own lips, a mirror to where a smear of red stains Rian’s.

So, I’m getting a little sloppy. Who can blame me? Lip gloss looks good on Rian, anyway.

Rian licks the corner of his mouth, his tongue still tasting my kiss. “Can I help you?”

I open my reticule and retouch my lip gloss, using the tiny mirror on the cap to check my face. The stain and protective layer I put on before keeps the red where it’s supposed to be; the gloss smeared on Rian’s skin but stayed in the lines on mine.

Fetor smirks at Rian. “I was going to invite you to the afterparty at my estate, but I can see you have plans.”

“No, I—” Rian starts, but Fetor cuts him off.

“I get it.” Fetor holds his hands up, palms out, as if placating Rian. “I’d make the same call.” He winks at me. “Thanks for the phone.”

“Consider it payment to never have to see you again,” I say brightly as I loop my arm through Rian’s. “He’s just walking me out now. If I can’t seduce him, I’ll send him to your little party.”

“You can come, too,” Fetor offers, speaking about five inches below my chin.

“I would rather evacuate myself from an airlock without a suit, giving myself over to the cold embrace of death,” I say cheerily, smiling brilliantly.

Fetor laughs as if I’d told him a joke, but I’m already pulling Rian toward the exit, my heels clacking on the stone floor.

“So, I do actually trust you enough to believe that you’re not working with the Jarra,” Rian says as we maneuver around drunk rich people. “But I have to admit I’m a little surprised you didn’t let Fetor’s hover stage crash down in a blaze of glory.”

I swallow down the distaste on my tongue. “Please, let us never speak of that again. I am mortally embarrassed to have missed that opportunity.”

I feel Rian’s pace slowing as we get closer to the big doors. The security has removed the scanners; they don’t care what we leave with. Rian knew this would happen; he helped set up security. And even as we get closer to the exit, I can see the gears turning in his mind, wondering what I’ve been able to steal right out from under his nose.

Sure enough, he pulls me to a stop in the little alcove where the guards had watched the prepaid pretense of a protest play out. “I’ve trailed you all day,” he says.

Except when you left me in Phoebe’s hands or had your goons watch me, I think.

“And you’ve not even attempted to steal anything,” Rian says. “At first, I thought it was that red Mission Control phone, but you just rejected going to Fetor’s afterparty, and if you were going to steal the phone...” His brow creases as he tries to wrangle his mind around logical thought. “You said before the trick was to move something you couldn’t steal. And you got Fetor to move the phone, but then you didn’t care about going to his party...”

“I don’t want to steal the phone,” I say. Truth.

He looks like he wants to argue, but he’s not sure which pieces to fit together to form the image in a jigsaw puzzle.

“Red phone, red herring.” I giggle, then I lean over and touch the smear of my gloss still on Rian’s lips. “Red stain.”

His head bends close to mine conspiratorially as his shoulders shake with almost-silent laughter. “Fetor’s face when he caught us,” Rian gasps out, and I almost feel bad for him, because when the drunken levity of this night leaves him, I’m pretty sure he’s going to be embarrassed about this. So, I kiss him again, an apology, and when I pull away, his eyes are dazed.

I tuck a lock of his disheveled hair behind his ear.

“You’ve not even attempted to steal anything,” Rian says slowly, as if he has to pull every word through fog before he can focus on them. “You’ve not only committed no violence—”

“A record for me.”

“—but you also prevented violence.”

“I asked you not to remind me of that.”

“I knew—I knew —you’d come tonight, though.” Rian shakes his head again, not even aware that he is doing it, I think. Trying to clear his mind. His gaze focuses on my left ear. “You’re missing an earring.” He giggles, like there’s been nothing funnier than my lost earring, then he sobers, a little frown line between his two usually sharp eyes, and I can almost see him questioning why he would find a missing earring funny.

We start walking through the big front doors out toward the steps. I veer Rian to the tread ramps to the sides. My feet are killing me in these heels, and he’s already stumbling.

“I knew you were going to come tonight,” Rian mutters, his voice wobbly when the ramp grips his feet and the rubber tread below starts moving him toward the street.

“And I did,” I say. Despite the city lights, I can still spot some stars peeking through the night sky, silver clouds hiding the big moon, and the little one a sliver of a crescent, a sharp-edged bowl about to tip the stars out, letting them sprinkle down on us.

“But you didn’t steal anything,” Rian says, a hint of a whine in his voice.

I was right. This one lives for the chase.

Good thing I like running.

I pull him against me as the tread under our feet smoothly glides us around the curve of the ramp. “I told you,” I whis per in his ear, reveling in the way my breath makes him unravel. “I only came here for you.”

Okay, that’s not entirely true, but he deserves my full attention right now. Besides? My other gamble? I’ll have to wait a little while longer to see if that pays off.

But tonight? Tonight belongs to Rian. Me.

Us.

He pulls back, suspicion giving him a searing beam of light through the fogginess clouding his mind. “Why? To gain my trust? To deliver a message? From who?”

We step off the treads of the ramp, and I stumble a little on the hard concrete sidewalk. Dumb shoes.

“Can’t a girl just want a romantic date?” I ask.

Above, at the top of the imposing white steps, a flash of red. Phoebe scans the departing crowd, her gown a fiery streak, the electric lights in her braided buns a demonic halo. I tip my face toward her, and when she notices Rian, me, us, she just nods and steps back into the museum.

“A date?” Rian laughs. “Maybe it’s just the relief of all this being over...”

Or maybe it’s the psychotropic drug in my lip gloss that I’ve been purposefully planting all over him, so strong that only the color seal on my lips keeps it from bleeding into my bloodstream, so powerful that I resisted chocolate-covered strawberries just to make sure I didn’t risk coming under its intoxicating effects.

I steer him toward the corner and the ride I’ve already arranged. A good hunter, after all, knows not only how to secure her prey but how to transport it.

“Oh, Rian,” I say gently, pouring him into the backseat of the rental self-drive. “This night is far from over.”