Sail

I baked and cooked the entire rest of the day, trying to work off all my frustrations about Mase, both sexual and not, and every other fucked up thing that powered my life. He had no right to suggest I give up iron just to help the ghosts. Maybe I should’ve kept all my scars like he had so I could wave them under his nose. He didn’t get it, and I could sit and describe it to him all day, but he still wouldn’t. No one could unless they’d seen what the ghosts used to do to me firsthand. Someone like Pop and Ellison.

Their faces flitted through my head in such extreme detail, it felt like they were here with me, in the flesh, offering me comfort as they had every time before now. I would give anything to have them both at my side to tell Mase how reckless and stupid his idea was. That it would end badly without iron.

But one stuffed turkey and a pie crust full of reflection later, I started to feel like a bitch. No, I hadn’t changed my mind about Mase’s idea—it was still insane—but I shouldn’t have told him to leave after he’d given me iron. He was just trying to help us all have one less thing to worry about by offering a suggestion. Anyone would do the same in that situation. And what he’d said on the way out…that he wouldn’t let anything happen to me…well, it couldn’t get much sweeter than that.

So I decided to make him a few sugar cookies out of the leftover pie crust, sort of like a peace offering. I planned to leave one on his stool so no one could see it but him, and hopefully he’d have enough sense not to wave it around and say, “Hey, what’s this cookie doing on my chair?” Because then it would look like the fourteen-year-old boy chef who wasn’t a boy or a chef had a hot pipe for the pilot. I even dusted the cookie with some cinnamon. But I stopped myself before I wrote his initials inside a heart in red, gelled icing. Because I’m enigmatic like that.

My feelings for him were far from explainable. He was doing something to me, like tinkering with my brain with surgical precision even though his hands had been down my pants and not in my head. Just the thought of his flesh sliding against mine gunned my heartbeat and colored a flush over my skin. Was this what it was like for Moon and Franco? If so, how did they ever get anything done?

Nesbit entered the dining room before Mase, and I tried not to let my shoulders sag with disappointment while he sat in his assigned seat. I’d have to distract him with food before Mase came, so I gave him a huge turkey leg to gnaw on and half the bowl of stuffing.

“Um, what if the others want to eat, too?” Nesbit asked through a mouthful of turkey leg.

I twitched my lips to the side, nodding, then unheaped the entire pile back into the bowl.

“Hey, wait. What if I want to eat?” he said with a scowl.

I dolloped more on his plate, but the spoon smacked the glass with much more force than I’d intended.

“The fuck, James? Lemme do it. I’m so much better at this self-service shit than you are.” He snatched the spoon away from me and served himself.

Nesbit reminded me of a dog: he growled over his food bowl and wanted to hump everything in sight.

Captain Glenn came in next, followed closely by Mase. My heart stuttered. Would he be cool about the cookie, or would it make him think I was weird, uh, weirder? I’d skipped the whole stalk-him-if-you-like-him teenage crush phase because I’d been home-schooled, but this seemed pretty juvenile.

Deciding that he’d be creeped out by it, I mirrored his movements to his stool with the hope that I could get there first. He eyed me, a question in his gaze, but his lengthy stride took him there faster. He stopped when he saw it, a small smile playing across his lips.

He liked it. Or at least he thought he did now, but later he’d see how inept I was at apologizing.

With one fluid motion, he took his napkin from beside his plate, swept the cookie up, and stored it in his coat pocket. A full-fledged grin bloomed over my face, and I had to get out of there quick before anyone saw it.

The double doors flipped closed behind me while I stood in the kitchen winded, for some reason, and dazed with the small bundle of warmth rooting through my chest. That man out there—what had he done to me?

When I thought I’d controlled myself enough to function properly, I whisked the corn on the cob out to the dining room. The crew dive-bombed nearly every last morsel on the gurney.

“Oh,” Mase said, sitting back with a hand on his lean belly. “That dinner spoke to me.”

Nesbit paused, a forkful of stuffing halfway to his mouth. “You hearing voices, too?”

Captain Glenn smiled, but it didn’t reach his dark eyes as it usually did. “He means he liked it. Well done, James.”

Before he could slap me on the back or anything, I angled my seat away from him with a nod.

“It spoke to me the same way the ship’s controls speak to me.” Mase let his gaze linger on me, which tumbled my blood faster. I knew what he was talking about. Dinner had been good. I was getting better at this cooking business, and I kind of enjoyed it too.

Nesbit glanced from his fork to Mase and back again. “So…your food spoke to you?”

“Nesbit, it’s an expression. Eat your damn food,” Mase said.

Nesbit shrugged.

“Don’t let Nesbit fool you. He’s actually a genius when it comes to anything mechanical,” the captain said.

Because mechanical things spoke to him. Just like ships spoke to Mase. So what spoke to the captain? Captain-like things?

As if he could read my mind, he said, “Being a captain doesn’t speak to me. I’ve been captain of a ship for fifteen, almost sixteen years, and it’s always felt comfortable to me. Leading people, making sure jobs are done, completing the mission—all of it was easy until three months ago when I bought this ship.” He leaned back in his chair, his gaze seemingly focused inward at the memory. “It was cheap, much lower priced than it should have been, and now I know the reason why, but…it ran. It was built for long-range missions, and those are where the real money is, which is something I desperately need more of.”

I looked at him expectantly as he jabbed at a black plastic bracelet cuffed around his wrist that I recognized as a photo album. A small digital picture of a little girl of about three sprang out with the captain’s exact same smile, then flickered to another of a beautiful dark-toned woman, and then back to the first. These must be the only two pictures he owned.

“This is what speaks to me,” Captain Glenn said, his voice thick with emotion. “Being a father and a husband—that’s what I’m good at.” He leaned toward me and fixed me with a look that shot sadness straight to my soul. “If we don’t make this delivery on time, then I won’t get paid, and the hospital won’t be able to take care of them anymore. I don’t have any spare money to buy another ship. This one’s it. I need you to understand that, James. Even with whatever happened with Daryl and Randolph’s disappearance and anything else, we have to make this delivery.”

I could only nod. Of course I understood. His connection to his family was just as strong as mine from the sound of it. He would do anything to keep them safe, and if anyone would understand why I’d done what I had for Ellison, he would. Better than anyone. But now was not the time to unload all my woes on him. Especially since I didn’t know how he’d react to the whole fugitive thing.

After dinner, Nesbit settled in to watch Esmerelda and tinker with the Mind-I so it could do more while the captain kept flipping through his photo album. I cleared the table as Mase strode into the kitchen. He was waiting for me by the sink when I entered.

I grinned when I saw him. I couldn’t help it. “Nesbit’s in there looking for tiny mouths on his leftovers because of you.”

He chuckled and I quickly stifled it with the sound of rushing water.

“Relax,” he said, taking me by the elbow. “Esmerelda has Nesbit in a tit trance.”

“A tit trance? Really?”

“Excuse me. A breast trance.”

“Did you know all that about the captain?” I asked.

“I’m his daughter’s godfather.” He gave a curt nod, his jaw muscles pulsing. “So yeah, I know.”

“You are? Why is his family in a hospital?” I asked, but the cords popping out on his tightened neck clued me in to change the subject. I cleared my throat and tipped my mouth into a smile. “Aren’t you going to eat your cookie?”

He searched through his coat pocket, unwrapped the cookie, and bit into it with an exaggerated groan.

“What’s it saying?” I asked.

“That you forgive me,” he said and winked, all the fierceness in his expression draining away with each bite. “That you’ll consider what I said even though you hate the idea of it. And that you like me.”

“You’re good,” I said with a lifted eyebrow.

He slid a hand behind my back and up my sweatshirt to pull me closer. “Oh, I’m better than good.”

“Eat your cookie. I have more for you if you answer a couple hard questions.”

He took another big bite, eyeing me while he flicked his tongue out to catch stray crumbs. Oh Feozva, I could help him with that and lick him sparkling clean.

“I’ll give them to you anyway,” I said. “Just play along. Do you have a girlfriend?”

He grinned. “No.”

Awesome. I gave myself a mental high-five and let his answer linger in the air, hoping he’d take the hint to explain so I wouldn’t have to waste a question. After all, I only had four cookies left after this one.

“Yes, I’ve had a few before, but none of them lasted.” A strange glint sparked in his eyes, and I had no idea what it meant. A few. Was that some kind of man-code for a hundred? He wiggled his fingers. “Cookie.”

I handed it over. “Next question.” And this one was a big one. “What happened to your eye?”

He’d been about to take a bite, but he stopped, the cloud-laced eye in question trained on me. The scar slicing down it puckered with his frown. “It happened during the Byrian conflict on Wix.”

I nodded. I’d been aboard the Nebulous when it happened, but I was familiar with the Byrians. They were descendants of the man who invented the space-bending rings, even before Earth was destroyed. One Byrian, a man named Felix, decided that distinction gave him the right to hand-pick who stayed on Wix and who was sent to the neighboring planet Mayvel. Somehow he’d gained followers, and they resorted to violence to get their way. It was Felix’s own sister who’d ended it all by shooting him in the head.

“I was seventeen and sleeping late,” Mase continued. “The rest of my family was about to sit down to breakfast, when the Byrians started throwing firebombs through windows. I heard screaming, but the heat building behind my bedroom door was too intense, so I had to break out the window and jump. It was chaos outside. And so much screaming. I ran. I was a kid and I couldn’t think straight, but somehow I got behind the controls of a Byrian space cruiser and got out of there even though I didn’t know how to fly. My face was covered in blood. I guess a piece of debris hit me. But all I remember is the screaming.”

Oh. Feozva. A tangle of emotion gripped the back of my throat. Tears brimmed my eyes. I curled my fingers into the zipper of his coat to assure myself he was okay, to feel his strong heart under my knuckles, to grasp the full meaning of what he’d said.

“Your family?” I choked out.

He grazed his thumb over mine, his eyes closed tight.

That was enough of an answer. His whole family had been killed, and he’d just been a scared kid who’d been lucky enough to get away. I couldn’t imagine the horror he’d gone through, the screaming he’d heard right outside his bedroom. His own family. Gone. If our situations had been reversed, if I’d lost Pop and Ellison, I knew I’d never be able to function after that. Yet, here he stood, scarred, sure, but still able to carry on his life the best he could.

I reached up to touch the scar cutting down his forehead to his cheek bone, the fan of his long eyelashes tickling my fingertips.

“Before you waste a question about appearance modification, I would never do that. The scars, all of it, made me into the person I am today. It’s a constant reminder of the day my life changed forever and I was forced to grow up and be a man, and I’m tougher, better, because of it. This is who the universe wants me to be. Otherwise it wouldn’t have happened.”

I gazed at him, completely amazed. Instead of erasing those physical memories, he embraced them. Without them, he’d be a different man, and he might not be standing with me right here, right now. He was who the universe wanted him to be. And unlike me, he wasn’t fighting it.

“You don’t need appearance modification,” I whispered. “You’re perfect.”

His breath slid against my palm while I hoped to ease some of the painful memories from his scars with each stroke of my hand. He leaned into my touch and opened his eyes, gazing at me with a clear blue eye and one the color of my steely fixation.

“Beautiful.” I slid my other hand up behind his neck, steadying myself against him while electrical pulses sparked everywhere I touched him.

He brought his head closer to feather kisses down my cheek to my jaw, so light I almost couldn’t feel them if not for his warm breath. His intoxicating mix of soap and spicy musk charged my senses, and I breathed him in deep while he dipped lower to my neck.

“I don’t know about beautiful,” he said, the glide of his lips teasing the hollow of my collar bone. “But if you’ll stop talking for a second, I can show you perfection.” The second his teeth nipped at my skin, my body roared with need.

I wrapped my arms around his back and pulled myself closer to him, the growing heat between my legs pressed against his thigh. He captured my lips with his, pushing me back into the edge of the sink, and explored my entire mouth with his kisses. One of the washers stored in my cheek came loose, and I pushed it into his mouth just so he could give it back to me between our tangling tongues. My hips moved of their own free will against his thigh, stirring the fire hotter within me. A wonderful friction drew a moan from my lips.

“Mase, please,” I whispered.

He pulled away, and I could see my plea mirrored in his smoldering gaze. “They’ll hear.”

“We’ll be quiet.” I flicked my tongue over his lower lip, ready to do whatever he wanted, as long as he would ease the painful ache between my legs. “Please.”

With a groan, he pushed me back against the sink, bracing his fists on the counter on either side of me. A hard, heated bulge pushed into my belly. He leaned down to my ear and whispered, “When I fuck you, everyone will hear. That’s a guarantee.”

I gasped, almost coming apart at his promise. I took hold of his waist band, pitched my ass up on the sink, and dragged him closer. “I’m begging you, Mase.”

“The captain will know you’re not a girl if he walks in,” he said in a rough growl. “He’ll ask questions and find out about you. You have no idea how much I want to, but there’s too much at risk.”

“Mason?” the captain called from the dining room. “We need to plot a course to take us as far as possible around The Black.”

“We can go in the stasis pantry and shut the door,” I said in a rush, my voice pleading, while my fingers fumbled at the button on his pants.

“Absidy…” His forehead touched mine, his uneven breaths gusting across my mouth. Then his lips found mine again, and my entire being lifted in a storm of wings. He ground into the V between my legs as his hands gripped my ass tight. I urged him on, meeting each thrust of hips and tongue, still trying to get his damn button undone. And just when I managed to unfasten it, he broke away with a gasp.

“We can’t,” he said.

I was too wound up to understand him right away. My hand hovered in the air, reaching for him.

“I have to go.” Avoiding my gaze, he fastened his button again and moved to the double doors.

All the lustful fire he’d built up inside me morphed into streaks of white-hot anger through my veins. “You’re a fucking asshole,” I hissed.

He just hung his head, his chest heaving. He could’ve given the captain any number of excuses, from using the small bathroom by the stasis pantry to searching for a bottle of firewater, but he chose not to. Did he not want me, the only girl around for light years?

But I wanted him. That truth wobbled my chin, so I spun around to face the sink to hide it. I’d never met anyone who could ignite me into a hungry inferno, who could challenge me, who made me laugh, who gave me iron in exchange for answers to get to know me better. He gave me fucking iron.

“Please go,” I said over my shoulder, very aware that I’d been begging him to screw me with one of those same words just minutes before.

He swept through the double doors without a word.

* * *

By the time I worked up enough nerve to go back inside the dining room, loud snores drifted into the kitchen. The captain and Nesbit were sound asleep, curled up with blankets and pillows on the floor behind their chairs. Mase lay awake underneath Esmerelda’s poster, his gaze pointed at me, his expression tense.

I really didn’t want to be in the same room with him, but I didn’t have much of a choice. Captain Glenn and Nesbit hadn’t jerked me around. The least I could do was to protect them from the ghosts while shoving nails into an imaginary Mase voodoo doll.

I settled myself onto the mattress I’d dragged in just inside the double doors when something stirred to my left. A warm breath on my cheek tightened my chest.

“You’ve been crying,” Mase whispered.

I let my eyes sink closed at the faux concern in his voice, and more tears leaked out. Apparently I wasn’t done crying. “It’s what I do after something upsetting. Then I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine,” he breathed into my ear.

“Careful or you’ll wake the captain.”

“I’m not worried about the captain right now.” He flicked his gaze at where the captain lay, his eyebrows drawn together in a thick line, then at the door to the hallway. “I’m more worried about what Ellison knows.”

I jolted upright. “What?”

He pointed at his ear, then the door, and then put his finger to his lips. I stared hard at the door through the bars of the underside of the gurney. My heart beat so wildly, I didn’t think I’d be able to hear anything else. What in Feozva’s hell was Mase talking about?

Heavy footsteps outside the door. Thud. Thud. Thud. Scratching up and down it in long, slow strokes.

I locked my gaze on the handle, readying myself in case it turned, but with no idea what I’d actually do if it did. Throw myself in front of it? Or rip it open and hopefully repel whatever was outside? Because I wasn’t doing a very good job of repelling it from right here like I should have. I flicked my tongue over the nail, its tartness rushing a zing to the back of my throat.

Ellllison knooows. The voice sounded like rocks rubbing together.

I gasped and jumped up. Mase stood at my side, his gaze ticking from me to the door. I stepped around the gurney, a tremble quivering through my bones, but stopped before I reached the door.

“Knows what?” I whispered because as much as I wanted nothing to do with the ghosts, I had to know.

More scratching, harder and more frenzied.

On the opposite side of the room, Nesbit rolled over and pulled his blanket over his head. Captain Glenn slept on the floor behind his chair. Mase’s cold breath skimmed over the top of my ear as he reached for my hand, but I shook him off.

“What does Ellison know?” I asked without bothering to whisper.

The door shook violently in its hinges. I lunged back and threw my arm across Mase. Nesbit and Captain Glenn jerked awake and scrambled into corners, both staring wild-eyed at the door. The lever jumped up and down, each turn charging terror through my blood.

It wanted in. Iron wasn’t repelling it. It seemed totally useless now. Unless the nail wasn’t enough. I shoved my hand into my pocket for another and brought it to my mouth.

Two nails might be enough to drive it away, but I wanted, needed to know what it was talking about. I stepped toward the quaking door, every muscle in my body pulled tight.

“James, stay back,” the captain warned.

I’d risked my life for Ellison. I had to know what she knew so I could find her. Another step and I reached for the bouncing lever.

It stopped. The door, the scratching, all of it stopped. Silence pressed in, and I squeezed my eyes shut at how loud quiet could be. Breath held, I turned the lever. The door swung open and crashed against the wall.

From where I stood, the hallway was empty except for the smell of bad tobacco. Vapor puffed from my lips as if I was smoking it myself.

“Is it gone?” Nesbit whispered.

I swiped my palms down my pant legs and gripped the doorframe. Despite the cold, sweat trickled down my back.

“A—James. Let me look,” Mase said and brushed at my elbow.

“No.” The strength in my voice surprised me, yet filled me with a sense of resolution. I’d boarded this ship as a fugitive; I could stick my head into a hallway, too. Sucking hard on the iron, I inhaled, exhaled, then leaned out.

Nothing to the right. Just an empty hallway. Nothing to the left.

My skin prickled.

I whirled to the right again, my heart in my throat. The light at the end of the hallway snapped and smashed again and again against the door marked Vicio. Dark shadows scattered behind it and bounced against the walls with loud booms.

Above it all, a crackling voice shouted ELLLISSSON KNOWSSSS!