Grenville Read online

  He scratched into Djehuti’s ruff, bathing in the animal’s satisfaction and affection. “Good workout, mate? It’s not the same as running with the pack, but if you don’t exercise, they’ll think you’ve been slacking and snacking.”

  In response, Djehuti nosed into his hand and licked, looking for any leftover treats. Grenville nuzzled between the wolf’s tufted ears, losing himself in the familiar smell and feel of the warm fur. The wolfbond sang between them, comfort, support, and understanding without a spoken word.

  “I thought I might find you here.” Imee came down the ladder from the bridge and mopped at her face with a brightly colored cloth. “Have a good run?”

  He waited for the discomfort to return. The slight tension in his belly that warned him not to get to casual, that scared him off with ideas of a ruined friendship. Unfortunately, after five days in transit, he’d allowed himself to relax. It had its upsides—the light banter had returned, for one. At times he could imagine she was another member of his fireteam, instead of the attractive, vibrant woman she was. Then he looked up, and his blood found more important places to be than his brain.

  Imee’s flight suit was unzipped several inches—not enough to be scandalous, but more than enough to frame the graceful, burnt-sienna column of her neck and give him a tantalizing glimpse of her cleavage. His gaze dipped into that shadow before he could stop himself. Sweat glistened on her skin. A bead of it trailed from her jaw.

  He swallowed against the wad of cotton that had lodged itself at the back of his mouth. “Clearly we’ve both been working hard. And I thought I worked up a sweat running with this guy.”

  She gracefully extended one middle finger. "Actually, jackass, it's about forty-four degrees on the bridge. Something's gone wrong with environmental controls."

  He wished he could blame failing environmentals for the heat and pressure low in his belly. At the corner of his awareness, he caught a sense of amusement from Djehuti before the wolf padded across the deck to go join her. Traitor.

  He wet his lips. She was an officer, and a zoomie. He should not be wondering about the color of her undergarments. “How can I help?”

  “Glad you asked. This ship was designed by a sadist, and it’s going to take at least two people to fix it. Do you need a crash course in engineering?” The annoyance in her voice told him she didn’t want that to be the case. She was in luck.

  “I scored a ninety percent on that section of my VATs. I’m only in comms because I scored even better on those.” He smiled. “Is that knowledgeable enough for you?”

  "Not really." She smirked. "How about you?" She dropped to one knee, and Djehuti immediately rolled onto his back for a full tummy rub. She dug her fingers into the wolf’s rib cage and shook her head with mock sadness. "No, huh? I get it, though. You’re certainly cute, but that’s not going to fix the temperature. I guess you'll have to do, Grenville."

  He scowled. “My wolf is not cute. He’s big and dangerous.”

  “Mmm-hmm. And a fluffy-wuffy too. Yes, you are.” She spoke in the high-pitched singsong that people reserved for animals and children.

  Despite Grenville’s protests on the wolf’s behalf, Djehuti radiated nothing but ecstatic happiness at being her fluff muffin. Or whatever she’d said. The wolf braced his paws on her shoulders, rubbing his chin and jaw against her face possessively.

  Grenville shoved down the ugly bit of jealousy that reared its head. He stood and dried palms on the thighs of his trousers. “Nice job taking her side, traitor.”

  She gently covered the blur that was the wolf’s ears with her palms. “Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  Possessiveness and hunger warred in his chest as he watched them together. All rangers were protective of their bondmates and could get weird about other people touching their wolves. The animals were practically an extension of their wolf-bonded partner; a better poet than he had described the bond as creating a single soul spread between the two bodies. The pain was compounded by the way his wolf cuddled and snuggled against her in a fashion he couldn’t allow himself to dream of. Or at least not allow himself to take any further than his dreams.

  Two weeks of this might just kill him.

  He shook his head. “Tell you what. I’ll go figure out what’s wrong. You man the bridge and tell me when it’s fixed?”

  "It's woman the bridge." She beamed, and his heart did a stutter step. After another quick ruffle through Djehuti’s fur, she stood up. She took the colored cloth out of her pocket and mopped the back of her neck and under the open collar of her suit. A tiny flash of pink fabric hinted at the color of her bra, and his brain raced to fill in the details.

  She let out a loud sigh. “God. I hoped I’ve cooled down enough to go back up there.”

  Grenville started down the ladder. “In that case it’s a matter of self-preservation that I get this repaired.” He paused on the ladder, waiting for the raised eyebrow that told him she was expecting him to say something awful, and he didn’t disappoint. “My heart couldn't take it if you got any hotter."

  She was still chuckling as he headed down to the next deck.

  GRENVILLE NEEDED EXACTLY fifteen minutes in the roasting pan that was engineering’s access tunnel to realize he was completely out of his element. The space was barely big enough to be called a crawlway, and he’d wormed down the distance only to discover that nothing was where it belonged.

  Correction—the ship’s toolset was in the right place, but it might as well have been designed by an alien civilization. The tools it contained were old, corroded, and some of them were marked with the names of different vessels.

  At least he wasn’t superstitious enough to consider that bad omen to be behind the failing environmental systems. Though if he couldn’t figure out what was wrong soon, he’d consider jettisoning the offending tools in hope it might please the ship’s animus.

  Fixing things meant finding the right panel, first. And if the tools were bad, the supposedly modular panels for the ship’s systems were even worse. Nothing had been labeled. Half of them didn’t seem to be connected, and most of them were impossible to identify. After another five minutes of poking and prodding into the open hatch, he surrendered and swallowed his pride.

  He flipped the switch on the crawlway’s intercom. “Imee? You should probably come on down here.” Despite the tight quarters, he was thankful for the intercom. It took too damn long to get in the space. Getting back out would be a pain in the ass. He barely had room to change his mind.

  Five minutes later, Imee was squeezing down the crawlway toward him. Like most pilots, she was small and thin, which made her look considerably more comfortable in the small space. She pressed up alongside him, making him painfully aware of every place her body touched his. Of the way her skin heated his through their clothes.

  She shone a flashlight around inside the hatch in the crawlway’s ceiling. “Where’s the damn environmental controls panel?"

  Grenville let his breath out with a whoosh. "Thank God. I was afraid it was just me." Relief tinged his chuckle more than it should. "For a moment, I thought I'd forgotten everything I knew about engineering. It would have been really embarrassing if you’d looked in there and immediately fixed it."

  Imee scoffed and poked his nose with one finger. "Ah yes, the fragile male ego. Of all the baggage we should have left on Old Earth.” She shined a light farther up the crawlspace. “Hang on. I need to get by you.”

  She pushed past him, body tight against his in the narrow hallway. This close, he couldn’t avoid thinking about her—there was no place he could look where she wasn’t, the smell of her sweat enticing. Her hips passed his head, and he willed himself not to visualize all the ways the position would be more delightful if they were naked, but it was a losing battle.

  “If it helps, I still think you’re a lousy engineer."

  “It’s one of the many things you love about me,” he quipped. Immediately, the sweat on his
back went chill. He couldn’t believe he’d said something like that out loud.

  She smiled quietly and wiped the sweat from her face before tugging a multi-tool out of her pocket and prying open another panel halfway down the tunnel.

  "That wasn't marked as an access panel." He’d checked. Twice. Just to be certain he hadn’t missed anything on the first pass.

  "You’re right, it wasn’t. But the screwheads are all worn, and there are scratches around the edge of the panel where it's been removed and replaced repeatedly." She removed the panel and shoved it up the crawlspace ahead of her. “The last owners must have replaced the original panel and just trusted their memory to— There you are!" She scooted herself to the far side of the tunnel, pulling out a panel rack with her.

  Even from a distance, Grenville could see where the circuit had overloaded and fried the environmentals. “Is it fixable?”

  Imee nodded without looking up and extended a hand toward him. "Should be. Slide me that tap bypass, would you?"

  He crawled forward to pass it up past her feet, and their fingers brushed as she took it from him. The heat that surged in his blood had nothing to do with the tiny space.

  She hummed quietly as she worked, and a few moments later she slid the repaired rack into place. The comforting sound of the air scrubbers coming on line was music to his ears.

  She crawled back down the length of his body, pausing to press the multi-tool into his palm. "Be a dear, would you, and put these hatches back on? Thanks."

  "What will you be doing?"

  She stopped, nose level with his. Despite himself, his gaze dropped to her mouth. She noticed, and pink blossomed over her cheek bones. Without thinking, he reached out and traced a finger over the graceful curve of her ear. The touch was electric, coursing up the nerves of his arm and heading straight south where she pressed against him and was bound to notice.

  Her pupils dilated. Mouth opened. He couldn’t help but be aware of her, of every place they touched. She was literally everywhere.

  Their lips crashed together before he could think better of it, and everywhere suddenly included inside him as well. He inhaled her, consumed her, as she did the same to him. Her hips ground down against his, the heat of her contact merciless as she plundered his mouth.

  She broke away with a gasp, and he nipped at her beautiful throat, drawing a musical groan from her that made him want to play her body like an instrument of sighs. The sweet smell of her skin and the salty taste of her sent his mouth lower, tracing over her collarbone toward the delicious swell of her breasts.

  She shivered and shoved herself back, as though suddenly aware of what they’d been doing. Her parted lips were swollen from their kiss, enticing and inviting.

  “We...can’t,” she said at last. She crawled the rest of the way past him and out the end of the tunnel. A few brief seconds after she stood, he heard the sound of her boots on the ladder.

  Grenville groaned and smacked the back of his head against the floor repeatedly. That had been damn stupid. Worse than stupid. But he would carry that memory with him to his grave, and whatever hell awaited after.

  Six

  Imee unhooked her safety strap when she woke up. She didn’t expect forward thrust to have ended yet, but old habits die hard and her instructors at the Academy had drilled preparedness into her until it was reflex. Besides, she’d slept with a gravity strap for so long, it felt alien not having one.

  A heavy weight pinned the sheets around her feet, though in the dim light of the room there was nothing there. A brief panic cut through her post-waking fog until she realized the origins, sat up, and rubbed along the wolf’s body. Black pits yawned in the distortion field of the wolf’s camouflage as Djehuti opened his eyes to watch her. After a moment, he twisted and licked at her hands carefully.

  She smiled and ruffled the fur between his ears. At least that explained why she hadn’t gotten chilled during the night, despite the ship having moved from too hot to almost too cold. The wolf radiated a welcome body heat, as well as a psychological warmth that made her feel watched over and protected.

  That made him a damn sight safer than her other options for bed warmers.

  The kiss—though it was barely fair to call it that since she’d wanted nothing more at the time than to grind herself to release against him—had wormed under her skin, and she couldn’t shake free of the images. The memories.

  Changing clothes hadn't helped. Washing up hadn't cooled her down. Instead, she couldn’t stop wondering how it would feel to have Grenville's long-fingered hands directing the rough washcloth over her skin, instead of her own.

  She shook her head to banish the images and drive out the warm ache in her belly. Too easy by half to give in to that temptation. Hell, his fingertip on her ear had nearly undone her.

  An icy nose pushed into her palm. She smiled at the affection in the gesture and rubbed small circles into the wolf’s cheek fur with her fingers. No, Djehuti was definitely the safer option. She kissed between his ears, losing herself in the smell; like forests and moss, which made no sense, since the wolves mostly lived on starships. By all rights, they should smell like astringent cleanser and deck polish.

  “I figured you’d want to be in Grenville’s bunk.”

  The wolf made a noise somewhere between a chirp and purr.

  "Good point. I don't snore.” She scooted her feet back and planted them on the cold metal of the deck plates, sending a shiver from her feet to the base of her skull. “Well, you’re welcome to warm my bed anytime.”

  She stood and dressed, still unused to the cut and fit of her civilian clothes. She didn’t take a lot of leave, and her uniform was as much her home as her ship was. That was why she’d remained in her flight suit for as long as she had. The idea of putting it back on reminded her of Grenville’s hungry eyes. The burning trail of his mouth...

  No way she could put it on until after the mission was complete. Even then, she might be better to burn it and get a new one.

  She slid open the door to her quarters and checked her omni. By her calculations, they should be reaching Kronus’s ring in the next four or five hours. The instruments indicated that the two decelerations she’d programmed in before going to bed had triggered without a hitch, though the change in gravity was imperceptible to her.

  Djehuti padded after her as she walked to the ladder up. She put a hand on the rail and called out, “Ahoy the bridge!"

  A moment later Grenville's face appeared at the hatch. “All clear." He leaned out of the way so she could climb up.

  On the bridge, an epic view of Kronus dominated the viewscreens. Bands of pink, yellow, and brown cut across the gas giant’s surface, while the angle of their approach allowed the meager ring system to catch the distant red light of the central star and glittered like a mirage. Beyond the ring, she could see the bright reflected light pinpointing two of the planet’s colonized moons—Sagan and Diarra if the ship was where she expected it to be, but she wouldn’t commit without checking her instruments.

  Which could be done later. For now, she wanted nothing more than to bask in the view.

  “Magnificent, isn't it?" Grenville kept his voice soft, like talking in a temple. “I’ve been up here for an hour, staring.” He stood up and held his arm out in a dangerous invitation.

  She’d never been one to shy from danger. Imee stepped into the circle of his arm, rested her cheek against the soft chambray of his civilian shirt, and let reflected light wash over them. "It's the whole reason I fly."

  "I can understand why."

  He couldn't, not really. But it was nice of him to say so. Her smile went bittersweet. “No, I mean I had to get away. Had to get some perspective.” She laughed harshly at her own naïveté. “Needed to realize my problems were one person’s. On one moon. In one system. Nothing helps with that like seeing the bigger picture.”

  He squeezed her wrist lightly, his three-fingered grip warm and comforting. Her entire being focused on the point o
f contact between them, willing him to linger, but he pulled away a moment later. “I can understand running away from things too, you know.”

  She snorted softly. “I caught my fiancé, who cheated on me while we were dating, having sex with another woman a week before our wedding. You really think you can beat that?”

  Grenville leaned his cheek against the top of her hair. “If he cheated on you, he was a fucking idiot. Speaking plainly.”

  Imee chuckled. “So says good-time Grenville.” He stiffened—not violently, but enough that she noticed it where she leaned against him. Regret seeped into her skin. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

  “Fair though.” The sorrow in his voice was unnatural to her. “The nickname isn’t exactly unearned. Good enough for a quick hookup, but not the sort you’d want to keep around long term.”

  “Doesn’t make it fair of me to pillory you for your choices.”

  His lips tightened, eyes closed before he let out a resigned sigh. “I lost my fingers when my brother died.”

  The words came out quiet, even compared to the hushed tones he’d used before, and Imee wasn’t entirely sure she’d heard them at first. There were plenty of rumors about how the ranger had lost the digits, many of which he’d propagated, and a fair number of them obscene.

  He held out his right hand, the shorn remnants of his pinky and ring fingers silhouetted against Kronus’s bright orb. “It was stupid, really. We were disobedient, had run off into the valley against our parents’ wishes. We knew better. The rockfall crushed my hand and his chest.”

  “You were kids,” she said. “You couldn’t have kno—”

  “My parents didn’t see it that way,” he replied flatly. “When they weren’t blaming me, they were blaming each other. And everyone got to use my fingers as the reminder. You know how some parents use the kids as a weapon to attack each other? Mine used me as the surrogate.

  “When it finally got to be too much for them, they made their separation official. They demanded I choose who I’d come live with, each secretly wanting me to pick the other. Instead I sued for independence.