He allowed his control to slip enough to let tears well in his eyes. They were real, the pain of Raine’s sudden rejection still shredding his heart. But they were strategic too. A move on the chessboard. And they worked.
“Hey,” Parker said. “It’s okay. Do you want to talk about it? Is it the chief? Did you two have a fight?”
“It’s over with him. I…I’m…fine. I guess I should get out of your hair.” He made a move toward the elevator, but Parker’s hand on his arm stopped him.
“You’re not in my hair, Kit. If you want to talk…” He made a gesture back down the corridor, toward the officers’ cabins. Kit waited. He counted—one, two—and on three, he spoke.
“Okay.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Sorry to call you all here on short notice,” Dryden said as the senior officers took their seats for an emergency staff meeting right after breakfast. “But you need to hear this immediately.”
Raine had a horrible suspicion he knew what she was about to tell them.
“I’ve had a directive from head office ordering me to comply with the ore company’s request. We’ll be increasing our speed to make our deadline for arrival at Saira.” She waited out the stir of voices and protests around the table, then raised a hand to bring the officers to order. “I know. I feel the same. Commodore Wright has agreed to allow one escort ship to keep pace with us. If we should come under attack, it will buy us time for other escort vessels to arrive.”
“And in the meantime, we’re at the mercy of pirates,” Quinn, the chief engineer, said bitterly.
“Chief Raine is already drawing up plans for our defense against boarding parties.”
“You expect us to fight pirates?” Jalota stared at the captain. “Will you be issuing us cutlasses?”
“You won’t be asked to fight,” Raine said. “All noncombatants will be designated places of safety to hole up in.”
“Anyone with military experience should feel free to volunteer to assist the chief,” the captain said. Raine nodded, not entirely happy at the idea—she’d probably volunteer herself, and how was he supposed to argue with her?
“We’ll be glad of the help.” A
corporate
sort of lie. Kit would be proud of him—if Kit didn’t hate his guts. As it had many times over the last two days, guilt stabbed through him as he remembered the pain on Kit’s face. It had weakened Raine’s resolve, but somehow he’d found his strength. He should be proud of regaining the control he thought he’d lost. He
should
be. But how could he be when he’d caused someone he loved so much pain?
No, not love. Infatuation based on an especially strong sexual attraction. Nothing more. He’d been strong when he broke off with Kit, and he’d stayed strong. He’d even resisted checking out Kit’s tracker data, even though he desperately wanted to know if Kit had been back to officer country, because Jon Parker kept giving Raine a look he could only call triumphant. What if Kit had…? It didn’t matter. Kit could go with whomever he wanted to.
But he might have gone to Parker to extract from him the same offer Raine had made, to help him escape. And so what if he had? Kit wouldn’t try to escape before the hearing; he’d keep his promise to Gracie. After the hearing, he’d stop being Raine’s problem. If Parker wanted to risk arrest for helping a prisoner escape, that was
his
problem. Raine shouldn’t care.
Shouldn’t, but he did. Because the thought Kit and Parker might have slept together made Raine want to drag Parker over the table and beat the shit out of him. He hated himself for such a stupid, vicious reaction, no better than his lack of control around Kit. Worse. Violent impulses were much less acceptable than not being able to rein in his libido around someone as eager as him.
“Chief?” Dryden interrupted his thoughts, and he turned from looking—to be honest, glowering—at Parker and tried to recall what she’d been saying. Parker smirked when the captain frowned at Raine.
“I said, could you please take us through the plans you’ve made so far.”
“Yes, Captain, sorry.” He pulled out his Link and brought up the plans, projecting them onto the meeting room’s video screen.
The Link only increased Raine’s frustration, because he knew he could get at Kit’s tracker data using it. A few taps and he’d know where Kit had gone after he left Raine’s cabin after the breakup and everywhere he’d been since.
But he wouldn’t look. Even after the meeting ended, he
would not look.
* * *
Kit came into the security section for his daily check-in with Warner. He wondered if she’d take long to become suspicious about Raine not doing any of them anymore. All routine and she ran through it quick enough. No questions about the time he spent in officer country. She must assume he was with Raine. She assumed wrong.
“The chefs are doing that lemon-chicken thing you like for lunch.” He forced on a smile. It came hard. “Don’t be late.”
“I won’t. You can go.”
Kit left the office and headed for the bunk room to take a nap—or at least to lie down and brood. He’d see Parker later, probably after dinner, and they’d be up late. Some preemptive rest was a good idea.
Parker had surprised him when he’d taken Kit back to his cabin after the breakup with Raine. Expecting a pass, Kit had been disconcerted when Parker instead made him some soothing herbal tea. Baffled but emotionally wrung out, he’d fallen asleep until Parker woke him in time for dinner mess. He left with an invitation to come back after dinner if he wanted to talk some more.
When he’d arrived late in the galley, Gracie made some teasing comments about Raine keeping him busy. He hadn’t contradicted her. She’d know soon enough. And she’d kill him dead on the spot.
He reached the bunk room, stepped inside, and stopped. Fuck. Raine. What did he want? He was standing talking to a couple of the guys, but he turned to look at Kit. “Look” hardly described it. Death stare might be more accurate. Ignoring him, Kit went back to his bunk and started brushing his hair, frizzy from the heat in the kitchen.
“You need to keep your bunk tidier.”
He froze at the sound of Raine’s voice but didn’t turn. After a moment, he resumed brushing.
“What is this? Inspection?”
“Yes. And I expect you to adhere to the same standards as the rest of your bunkmates.”
The bunk area could be considered a tad messy, but this wasn’t the damn military—a point he’d made to Raine more than once. But what Chief Stick-up-the-ass wanted, he got.
Without a word, Kit swept everything from his shelves or lying on the bunk into a drawer. He dropped the hairbrush in too. A twitch straightened up the bedclothes by a minimal amount. It certainly wouldn’t pass any actual inspection, and Raine frowned at it and appeared to be about to say something. But he stopped when Kit gave a slapdash and mocking salute before marching out of the room.
The door closing cut off the tense silence he left behind him. Shit, that had been tantamount to making an announcement. Everyone on the damn ship would soon know Kit and Raine were broken up. So he’d better go tell Gracie before she heard it from someone else.
Not a good idea to give her a reason to kill him harder.
* * *
Raine could hear them. He felt sure of it. Just as he felt sure he couldn’t hear them. Parker’s cabin was several doors away from Raine’s. No matter how good Raine’s ears were, he couldn’t hear Parker and Kit fucking in there.
But he knew. After Kit had so openly challenged his authority in the bunk room, Raine suddenly couldn’t stop himself checking the tracker data. Over and over, he’d checked it all day. So he knew.
The lack of control made him feel like a massive jerk, even a pervert, lying here in the dark, imagining Kit and Parker together. Again and again, he told himself he had no right to be jealous, no right to complain about Kit seeing someone else—he’d initiated the breakup, after all. He had no right to lie here boiling with jealousy.
This is nuts, he thought, eyes wide open, bed covers thrown off, his usual room temperature feeling too hot tonight. Not being with Kit had started making him as crazy as being with Kit had.
He found his Link in the darkness by feel, and its glow dazzled him when he turned it on. The time was 0048. Again, he couldn’t stop himself. He tapped through to the live tracker data. Kit was indeed still in officer country.
Raine watched for a while. After a few minutes, he decided to turn it off and try again to sleep, when the blue dot on screen began to move. It wasn’t a smooth movement, rather an updating every few seconds. And it had a short delay, so by the time he was seeing Kit leaving, he was probably close to the security bunk room. He hadn’t spent a whole night at Parker’s so far. Hadn’t “moved in” the way he’d come close to doing with Raine, until Raine had come to his senses.
Good joke. He felt more out of control than ever.
If he had come to his senses, he’d be sleeping peacefully, not watching a blue dot and picturing Kit slipping through the quiet corridors, arriving in the bunk room and undressing for bed. He’d tie his hair back out of the way in a long tail down his back. Raine had never tired of stroking his hands through Kit’s hair.
If he’d come to his senses, he certainly wouldn’t get up, don some sweat pants and a T-shirt, and walk on bare feet to Parker’s door and lean on the buzzer.
Parker appeared at the door, wearing a long bathrobe and a grumpy, half-asleep frown.
“What the hell? Do you know it’s the middle of the night?”
“We need to talk.”
“Not at this time we don’t. Are you crazy?”
“Now.” He didn’t threaten, but he made it clear he wasn’t leaving. After a moment, Parker sighed and stepped back, letting Raine in. Perhaps he didn’t want a scene in the corridor. Raine shouldn’t want one either, but he had to say his piece. Goose bumps rose on his arms and shoulders, the room much too cold, especially for his feet, even on the carpet. He ignored it.
The rumpled sheets of the bed Kit had so recently quit enraged Raine, and he fought to maintain his control. He hadn’t come here to assault Parker.
“Spit it out, for God’s sake,” Parker said. “I want to get some sleep.”
“You have to stop seeing Kit.”
“Oh, do I?”
“I’m saying this as the security chief.” Parker snorted, but Raine went on. “He intends to escape after the Taylor hearing, and he’s trying to recruit you to help him.”
“You know, you’d think you’d at least try a different story this time. I’m not falling for that again. You wanted him for yourself the first time you said this, and nothing has changed.” He poured himself a glass of water and drank it all. “It won’t work, Chief. Even if I stopped seeing him, he won’t go back to you. You screwed up. He’d never take you back.”
“If he thinks he could persuade me to help him escape, then he’d take me back.”
“Lovely sentiment. You certainly have a low opinion of someone you’re supposedly in love with.”
“I’m not in love with him!” His shout made Parker flinch ever so slightly, and Raine stepped back, increasing the distance between them, ashamed of even an implied threat to a fellow officer.
“So I guess you were using him, then.”
“And you aren’t? You moved pretty fast to get him into your cabin after I split up with him.”
“That’s none of your business. And I haven’t made him any promises. I don’t know what his plans are when we get to Saira, but I haven’t told him I’ll help him escape. And I haven’t told him I love him, because I’m not a liar.”
Raine left, unable to stay another second—otherwise he’d have knocked Parker out and then gone and thrown himself in the brig. Parker must have been watching him, because Raine didn’t hear the door close right away. But he resisted the temptation to look back and in a second heard the sound of the door swishing closed.
It took him three attempts to enter his door code correctly, between his whirling brain and his shaking hands. Inside, he dropped onto his bunk in the dark and groaned. He’d have to request a transfer when they got to Saira. He couldn’t be around Parker any more. Couldn’t trust himself. Parker had every right to make a complaint to the captain about Raine going to his cabin at an ungodly hour and threatening him over sexual rivalry. It didn’t get any more unprofessional.
Still cold from Parker’s cabin and the corridor and from the drying sweat of his surging, wasted rage, he wrapped himself tight in his blankets and wondered if he could be losing his mind. Love screwed with your head. But he couldn’t be in love with Kit, or he’d have defied even the captain for him. That’s what the stories said; with your lover at your side, you had the strength to defy the whole world, and nothing could make you part willingly.
Nothing. Not even an order from your commanding officer.
She hadn’t
ordered
him to break up with Kit, though. But he’d seen his duty plainly and chosen it over Kit. Which proved it wasn’t love, because love conquered all, made you abandon all you held dear if you had to. Raine hadn’t abandoned his duty or his honor for Kit, which logically meant he didn’t love Kit.
Logic couldn’t keep him from wanting to pound his head into the wall.
Chapter Seventeen
“The chief came to see me last night.”
Kit raised his head from its comfortable spot on Parker’s shoulder.
“What? When?”
“After you left. I say last night, it was this morning. Just after one. What an asshole.”
Kit laid his head down again and sighed. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to put up with his crap.”
“Not your fault.” Parker pulled him closer, naked bodies pressed together, no problems of one of them being too hot or too cold.
“What did he say?”
“Told me I should break up with you because you’re only using me. Same as before. I guess I can understand how much he regrets letting you get away.”
Kit smiled at the flattery and trailed his fingers along Parker’s collarbones, raising goose bumps. But the smile hid a bitter taste in his mouth. Parker didn’t believe Raine; he chose to trust Kit. But he didn’t understand Kit the way Raine did. Kit
had
only come to him for help escaping. Done what he always did—found a more powerful and influential man than himself who could help his cause. Raine knew it. The bastard.