They were done. Preston and Sullivan left, and the captain waved Raine back into his chair as he rose too.
“I think you’d better start drawing up some plans and running drills for repelling boarders, Chief.”
“Ma’am, you can’t believe Commodore Wright would agree. He would never go along with something so risky.”
“Even the commodore has a boss. As we do, as Mr. Preston does. If it goes over all our heads to those bosses, they’ll work out a compromise, and we’ll have to do what they say. So let’s hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”
“Yes, Captain, I’ll get to work on it right away.” No harm in preparing. It would keep his people busy.
“Give me a progress report in two days.”
He expected a dismissal then, but instead she put down her Link and sat back in her chair.
“Since I’ve got you here, could I have a few words on a personal note?”
The words were ominous, despite her smile. Hell. She was going to talk about him and Kit. His hands began to sweat inside his gloves, and he took them off.
“Chief.” She leaned on the table, hands locked in front of her. “Generally, I wouldn’t have a word to say about the personal life of one of my crew as long as it wasn’t interfering with their work.”
And his was? Was he distracted? Compromising security by fraternizing with a stowaway? He believed Kit’s story, but what if he was wrong? What if Kit
was
lying and here to make trouble for the ship?
“There’s been a complaint about some inappropriate activity between you and Mr. Miller on the observation deck a couple of nights ago.”
If at that moment the ship had exploded, or the bulkhead had collapsed and ejected him into space, Raine would have considered it a blessed relief. His blush started in his toes and roared up through his body. He feared his hair might catch fire.
“Captain, I’m so sorry. We got carried away and—” He stopped when she raised a hand.
“I understand, Chief. You’re not the first person I’ve had to say this to. Though I never imagined I’d say it to you. I’m not telling you to stop seeing Mr. Miller. Your personal life is your business, and I don’t think he’s up to any mischief.” She stopped, chuckled. “At least not
malicious
mischief. Just try to stay discreet. The obs deck is a public space.”
What the hell had he been thinking? Where had his mind been? It had been nowhere. Lost in a haze of desire for his beautiful Kit, the man he loved. The loss of control had been frightening, not thrilling the way it had been that time in the cooler. It had felt like stepping outside himself and watching a madman in control of his body.
Sex on the obs deck! After all the times he’d laughed about others doing it and pitied them their lack of self-control. He was no better than any of them. Worse. Caught with his pants down with a stowaway, not even a real member of the crew.
“Ma’am, I swear on my honor this will never happen again.”
She looked startled at the strongly worded and forcefully delivered pledge.
“Discretion, Chief. That’s all I’m asking for. You have a perfectly good cabin for your exclusive use.”
Yes, he’d left Kit down there in the bed when he came up here for the meeting. Kit stretching luxuriously, arching his spine, catlike. He’d be gone by the time Raine went back there.
Soon he’d be gone entirely. When they reached Saira, Kit would leave. With the authorities or escaping, he’d be gone. And this madness would fade like a dream. Raine would be back to normal, under control. The thing he’d started to dread—the end of the voyage—suddenly looked like his salvation. But it was weeks away yet. He had to take action before then.
When Dryden dismissed him, he paused in the corridor and brought up the live data from Kit’s tracker. Galley. He’d be doing lunch cleanup. Raine had better wait until Kit finished work before he talked to him. But straight away after that, no shilly-shallying.
So Kit would have time to recover before his next shift—after Raine broke up with him.
* * *
“Your boyfriend’s waiting for you, Kit,” Gracie said with a grin, bringing her broom back in from sweeping the mess deck.
“Raine?” Kit looked up from loading the mug rack of the dishwasher.
“Of course I mean Raine. How many boyfriends do you have?”
“One’s enough work for me. He’ll have to wait. I’ll be another few minutes.”
“He looks kind of funny.”
“Now, Gracie, none of us can help the way we’re made.”
“Oh, you pest.” She stowed the broom in its closet and came to help Kit finish loading. “I mean he looks, I don’t know, rattled about something.”
Kit frowned. He’d wanted to tease Raine by making him wait a few minutes, but her words made him change his mind. Had something upset Raine? Nobody upset his man and got away with it. Kit would…what, exactly, he didn’t know, but he would think of something.
“Go on,” Gracie said before Kit even spoke. “I’ll finish here. Go see what’s bothering him.”
“He’s probably upset because it’s nearly four hours since he last saw me.” He dried his hands and found himself a fresh apron, tossing the damp and dirty one he wore into the hamper. “He gets jittery if he goes too long without his regular dose of Miller.”
Ducking the sponge Gracie tossed at him, he headed out of the galley into the mess, where Raine sat at one of the tables. Raine didn’t even have a mug of coffee in front of him, just waiting there and looking—as Gracie put it—rattled.
“You okay, sexy?” Kit said, smiling, hoping for a smile in response. He got none. “Did the meeting go badly?” He knew Raine had been attending a meeting with the creeps from the ore plant. “Don’t tell me, Preston said something especially insulting to the captain and you’ve challenged him to single combat.” Still no smile. Raine stood up.
“We need to talk. Come with me.”
Shit. This couldn’t be good. Raine strode out so fast Kit had to run to catch him up.
“What’s wrong? Tell me! Did I do something? Go somewhere I shouldn’t?” His conscience was clear with regard to anything that would bother Raine in his incarnation as security chief. Something personal, then?
“Not here.”
It must be something personal, because Raine led the way toward his quarters, not the security office. Kit racked his brains to think what he could have done to upset Raine. Flirted with someone? Couldn’t be that; Kit flirted with everyone. If Raine got all scowly over it, he’d have developed new permanent frown lines since they met.
They reached the quarters. Raine looked around the room and gave a sigh. Kit had made some effort to clean up before he left, but he’d been running late, and his attempt to make the bed clearly didn’t come up to Raine’s standards. A towel he’d left draped on the back of a chair was picked up in a marked manner and returned to the bathroom.
Kit began to sweat, not from nerves but because he’d at least remembered to turn up the heat to Raine’s preferred setting of “fucking ridiculous” before he’d left. With Raine in this mood, he didn’t even think of starting his usual striptease.
“Tell me,” he demanded when Raine came back out of the bathroom without the offending towel. “What’s this about?”
“We have to stop seeing each other. Right now, I mean. Not after we dock at Saira.”
Kit gaped. The heat must be affecting his brain. He couldn’t have heard that, could he? Raine was going to accuse him of stealing something or accessing some off-limits area or trying to get someplace on the ship’s network. But he couldn’t possibly have said they had to stop seeing each other
right now.
“I don’t think I heard you right.” It was a lame comeback but a desperate one.
Let me be wrong. Let me be mishearing.
“Yes, you did. We have to stop what we’re doing. I’m sorry to spring it on you like this. I don’t know how else to tell you.”
“Don’t tell me at all. Or tell me you’re kidding. What the hell are you talking about?”
“I can’t see you anymore. Our relationship is entirely inappropriate.” He spoke in a horrible, flat, neutral tone.
“Has someone reinserted that stick in your ass?”
He intended to provoke a response, but the question caused no more than a muscle spasm in Raine’s cheek. He’d closed down. Frozen Kit out. Frozen? Some chance. Kit was sweating hard and didn’t know if he could blame only the heat.
“My seeing you is a threat to the safety of this ship,” Raine said.
“I thought we got past all that bullshit.”
“We did. We shouldn’t have.”
“Dammit!” Kit flew at Raine, grabbed his arms, shook him—tried to shake him. “Stop it. Come back outta there, Raine. Dan! Tell me what’s happened.”
“I can’t be around you, Kit. You make me…crazy.”
The smallest touch of a crack in his voice. A crack Kit should try to wriggle into and widen. But the words only made him angry, and he screwed up the tiny chance.
“I make you? Don’t make this my fault.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I don’t blame you. My attraction to you makes me behave unacceptably, and it has to stop.”
“Your
attraction
! You said you loved me.” And he’d said it back. Felt it. Put himself in Raine’s power. And paid the price.
“I will admit I’ve been infatuated. But we have nothing in common. This is only an intense sexual attraction. Nothing more.”
“What the fuck does it matter whether we have anything in common? You know what you feel. You’re lying to yourself.”
“I don’t think so.” He stayed so cold. His arms were at his side, and he seemed to be oblivious to Kit’s hands on them.
Kit wanted to pinch him or scratch him, anything to make him react. But that would be undignified. So would kissing him or grabbing his cock. Fear swept over Kit. Raine wasn’t backing down. He meant this. At least, he meant to break up with Kit. Whether he meant any of the rest, who could say? Kit didn’t believe it, but he couldn’t shake the truth out of Raine.
But Raine did love him; he felt sure of it. He’d got some kind of bug up his ass about something. Kit lost the fear and felt the anger surging in him. What had made him change like this?
“Why? Why now? What’s made you suddenly decide this? We’ve been acting unacceptably for weeks. Why are you only just trying to end it?”
“Because it’s gone too far.”
Because he was falling in love, he must mean. Falling in love with someone who couldn’t stay with him. He was ending it today to take the pain sooner rather than later, when it would be worse.
“Dan, please, I know there’s no long-term future for us. But we can enjoy the time we have. Make some good memories. Don’t end it now because you’re scared of how much it will hurt later. Please give us this time.”
Raine reached up and put his hands on Kit’s arms. Gently, firmly, he pushed Kit away.
“No.”
Just “no.” Not even a sorry. The heat struck Kit, and suddenly he couldn’t get a breath. He swayed and saw concern appear on Raine’s face.
“Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not fucking okay!” But he wouldn’t let Raine think he was about to swoon over him, prostrate with despair because he didn’t get to screw the stupid bastard anymore. “It’s like a fucking furnace in here; I can’t breathe.”
Raine reached for him, but Kit stepped back. “Don’t touch me! You never get to touch me again. And Warner does all the check-ins, or someone else. Anyone but you.” His voice came close to hysterical. His head spun.
“That’s a good idea anyway,” Raine said, his voice calm, cool, infuriating. “For both of us.”
“Fuck you all the way to Hades, you cold-blooded bastard.” Kit could have screamed it. He felt close to doing so, but his voice barely rose above a whisper, and it matched Raine’s for ice.
Raine nodded as if Kit had confirmed something for him. He spoke again, even calmer, even more infuriating.
“I think you should go.”
Kit went. The cool air of the corridors felt icy after the heat of Raine’s cabin. He walked, barely looking where he was going, taking corners randomly, not caring if he went someplace he shouldn’t. It didn’t matter. He didn’t care. Let them toss him in the brig. Force Raine to look at him every day. Unable to avoid him, but unable to touch him either.
His eyes were hot, his throat choked, and he despised the weakness in himself. He wouldn’t cry. He would not cry. Because Raine wouldn’t be crying. Too macho and too cold-blooded.
He reached the end of a corridor and found himself at the door to an elevator. He didn’t touch the call button, just stood looking at the closed door. Remembering. The elevator. The kiss. Infatuation, Raine had called it. Attraction. And nothing more. It had started with the elevator kiss, turned into more, and they’d tried to convince themselves it would pass. Would burn out in a few days. Weeks. Months. So far it hadn’t, not for Kit. What if it had for Raine? What if the whole exchange of
I love you
had made him take a step back and realize there wasn’t any more to this than sex?
Kit gasped when the elevator let out a
ping
, and the doors opened. Jon Parker stopped when he saw Kit. He faltered for a second and then came out of the elevator and reached back to keep the doors from closing.
“Are you getting on?”
“I…no. Sorry. Just.” Words choked off, and Parker looked at him with concern. He let the door go and moved to touch Kit’s arm.
“Are you okay?”
One of those coded questions, Kit thought. It meant “I know you’re not okay, want to tell me why?”
Did he want to tell Parker why? Why not? The guy was nice enough, and he wanted Kit. He’d be…easy. Easy, perhaps, to talk into helping Kit figure a way to escape from Saira. Clearly Raine’s offer of help had been withdrawn, but they were weeks away from the end of their voyage; more than enough time to wrap Parker around his little finger. Kit could be very persuasive. He could start right away. Parker wore civvies, gym clothes, so he must be off duty. Kit had hours before he had to go back to the galley.
He gave Parker a weak smile, and Parker returned it with an encouraging one. His hand on Kit’s arm felt reassuring, not intrusive, and his expression of concern seemed genuine. The guy clearly had the kind of warm heart Raine lacked. A man with a warm heart who also wanted to get into his pants? Kit could make him a slave.