Inspection done, I boarded the ship, locked us in and joined Abby. She had removed her helmet, her golden hair falling around her shoulders. She’d asked me if the S-Gen machine could produce something called a ‘scrunchy’ for her hair. My blank stare had made her shake her head and tell me to ‘never mind.’ When I’d asked whatthatmeant, she told me to forget about it.
I did not ask more questions but vowed to ask Styx’s human mate, Harper, about it later. If my mate wanted one of these ‘scrunchy’ things, she would have one.
“Are you strapped in?”
Abby patted the shoulder harness, the straps obviously too loose. “Yep.”
Bending over her, I tightened the straps—all of them—despite her protest.
“That’s too tight.”
“No. That will keep you in your seat.”
“Okay, grumpy pants. What’s the matter with you? Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”
“What does the side of a bed have to do with my pants?” I buckled myself into the pilot’s seat, my straps equally as tight. They had saved my life more than once.
“Nothing. But what’s wrong? You seem to be in a very unhappy mood. Are you angry with me?”
“Absolutely not.” The power core and propulsion systems fully operational, I steered us out of the station’s docking bay as I considered what to tell her. I could not tell her the truth, that I had become consumed with worry, with the need to protect her. “The station is not safe for you. I simply want to get us home as quickly as possible.”
Free of the docking bay, I accelerated the ship to move us clear of traffic. When she did not respond I glanced over to see her eyes wide and her knuckles white where her hands curled over the ends of the arms of her seat. “Are you unwell?”
“I’m—I’ve never been on a spaceship before.” She glanced at the side monitor. “Is that a galaxy?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never seen this many stars.” A tear gathered in her eye, swelled and then slid down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly.
“Why are you crying?”
“It’s too much. It’s just overwhelming and beautiful.”
I glanced at the monitors and tried to see things through her eyes. Years ago, when I’d first left the safety of Rogue 5’s star system, I’d been awestruck, as she was now. Countless stars in every direction, planets twinkling, the nearest galaxy a spiral of glowing pink and red. “I suppose it is.” I pointed at a particularly bright star. Close. “That one is home.” And to a pair of large, twinkling planets on the way. “Those two planets are Latiri 4 and Latiri 7. A lot of Coalition battles happen there. We will keep our distance, but they are going to be the only planets close enough to see until we get to Hyperion.”
She tried to lean forward to inspect the planets on the monitor, but the seat’s safety straps did their job. “I am not a fan. I can’t move.”
“That is their purpose.”
“Seems like a bit much.”
“Does it?” For the first time since I could remember something that felt like playfulness burst to life inside me. I grinned and accelerated.
“Ahhhhh!” Abby screamed, then laughed, the sound lighting a warm flame behind my ribs that I’d never felt before. I wanted more.
“That’s worse than riding a rollercoaster.”
“What is a rollercoaster?”
“It’s a—well, it’s a track. We strap ourselves into small seats and ride on the tracks. Sometimes there are huge drops and loops, and they go really fast.”
“They sound terrible. Why would you do that?”
“For fun.”
“Fun?”
“Yes. Fun, you old curmudgeon.” She looked at me, and the sparkle in her eyes, the excited flush on her cheeks, made my cock hard. Gods, she was fucking beautiful. What the fuck was she doing with me? And what, exactly, was a curmudgeon? My IPU struggled to make sense of the word. Surely it did not mean what my language processor had implied?