Chapter 37

I need your help to pull off a covert operation.

—Bowen Knight to Scott Reineke

DINNER WAS ALL set up and under way, Malachai gone. He’d made time to visit Kaia and update her on the search for Hugo: “Nothing. No sign of him.”

Smashing out her anger and worry on harmless avocados had gotten the clan an extra helping of guacamole, and then she’d gone ahead and made them fresh corn chips. She’d made so much food, in fact, that people were walking around groaning while trying to stuff in an extra bite of another dish.

The one man who hadn’t appeared to fill a plate was the human who’d gotten under her skin and stuck like a burr. Even the news about Hugo hadn’t dislodged that burr—she knew Bowen too well now, simply couldn’t see him authorizing or taking part in the cowardly abduction of BlackSea’s people.

“The man needs to eat,” she muttered to Tansy when her friend walked in to get dinner.

“You know those dominant types.” Tansy shook her head like a wise old owl. “Have you eaten?”

“No.” Kaia couldn’t eat if he was going hungry. “I’ll take him a plate.” Was it possible the meeting with Malachai had gone badly? Her cousin had said nothing to her on that point and she hadn’t asked.

It had felt wrong.

She and Bowen, they owed each other truths now. She wouldn’t go behind his back to get them; she’d ask him about the meeting.

“Oh.” Tansy bit down on her lower lip. “Um, I don’t think Bowen’s in his room. I saw him . . . and Alden was there.”

“What!” Dropping the empty plate on the counter, Kaia rounded on her friend.

Tansy blurted out the coordinates of a corridor outside a disused warehouse in habitat five. “I’m sorry! I d-didn’t—”

But Kaia was already gone.

What was Bo doing there, she thought as she ran, skirting startled clanmates—including a disapproving Bebe—and pelting along the connecting bridge. Despite her physically fit state, she was out of breath and had a crashing heartbeat by the time she finally reached the corridor. Yes, he could defend himself, but Alden was a berserker when he fought. And Bowen had just had brain surgery!

She braced herself for bloodshed.

And found . . . nothing. The corridor was empty, no drops of blood, no dents in the walls. Pressing a hand over her heart, she walked farther down the otherwise vacant space.

What was that?

She bent down to pick up the delicate white petal, brought it to her nose.

Rose.

How odd. Ryūjin’s gardener did grow rosebushes, but there was no growing area in this habitat. Maybe someone had carried a bouquet through here. Because there was another petal and another . . . She followed the trail of petals with a delighted curiosity that momentarily pushed aside the tumult of pain and anger and confusion that had twisted her up the entire day.

The last petal lay on a folded note with her name on it.

“Tansy,” she said sternly to her absent friend, “no wonder you went bright red and started stuttering.” But her lips were smiling and she was opening the note.

A bold and generous hand, the words shaped in deep blue ink: There’s a dress in the room with the red rose on the door.

That door stood to the right of her.

Walking over on feet that felt winged, she slid it open and entered to discover herself in a small storage room that had been cleaned until it shone. A pretty little white table and chair sat to the right, a rectangular mirror standing on the table, while in solitary splendor in the center of the room stood a clothes rack. On it was a long blue dress from her own closet: one shoulder was formed of three strings of pearls that swooped down her back then up to join the other shoulder, the front a sharp vee and the shape of it slinky.

She’d fallen in love with the gorgeous creation online and bought it in a midnight shopping spree. But she’d never worn it—had been saving it for a mating ceremony when one of her single cousins finally fell and fell hard.

The idea of wearing it for her own lover . . . She sighed, her smile glowing. Because this depth of planning had a certain security chief’s hands all over it.

She ran her fingers over the fabric before looking to the table she’d noticed when she walked in. Laid out on top was her hairbrush, her face cream, and a bottle of her moisturizing lotion, as well as the cosmetics and jewelry she might use when she wanted to dress up.

“Sera.” Only her high school friend would know just what to choose.

The last item on the table, however, hadn’t been chosen by Sera. A tiare flower sat in solitary splendor in an open blue velvet box; it looked like a glowing jewel, its scent a familiar kiss. Bowen must’ve done some fast-talking to get his hands on that. Or he’d used security chief skills to purloin it—because Bebe only gave flowers from her prized bushes to people she liked and who hadn’t annoyed her in the past month.

Smiling with girlish abandon, she was glad she’d had to take a quick shower toward the end of the dinner prep. Scott had stumbled and spilled pasta sauce all over her. “Oh, Kaia”—she shook her head with a soft laugh—“that was your security chief’s doing.” She wondered what he’d said to Scott to get the boy to agree to act the klutz in front of his crush—and how he’d known she’d feel foolish putting on this beautiful dress after getting all sweaty in the kitchen.

“Because he listens, he watches, he cares.”

And he was so, so dangerous to her. But Kaia didn’t have it in her to turn away from a gift this sweet, this wonderful. Even if the future was a burn at the back of her eyes and the past a heavy weight on her shoulders, her worry thick with guilt.

She still couldn’t step away. This moment would never come again.

Reaching back, she tugged down the zipper of her knee-length dress with its skirt just full enough to allow her to move with freedom and the fabric light and floral. It fell to the floor in airy grace. Now clothed in lace panties and a matching bra, she picked up her dress to hang it on the clothes stand, then went to the table.

The first thing she did was remove the beaded wooden bracelet from around her wrist. Pain speared her as she put it gently aside, but she thought Hugo with his laughing eyes and outgoing ways wouldn’t begrudge her this—not if he knew Bowen as she knew him. Her friend was not a man who held grudges.

After inhaling a long, shaky breath, Kaia gently rubbed in her face cream, then stroked the tiare-scented lotion over her body. The bottle of foundation was the next thing she picked up. She took her time doing her makeup and brushing her hair until it shone. A man should wait for his lover. Bowen would wait for her.

The bra had to come off at the end—the dress didn’t allow for it.

Skin soft from the moisturizing lotion, she pulled on the dress. It moved over her body like a lover’s hands, hugging her curves and flowing in a fall as liquid as water.

That was when she realized: “No shoes.” Laughing as the being inside her twisted in an exhilarated dive, she wondered what else the security chief had noticed.

The last thing she did was tuck the tiare flower behind her ear.

Ready, she opened the door and walked out barefoot.

The man who leaned on the wall on the other side was wearing an old-fashioned tuxedo, his hair neatly combed and his face lean. “Where did you get this?” She ran her hand covetously over his lapel, sensing the tensile strength of him.

“Dex borrowed it from another clanmate.” He stood still as she stroked the smooth line of his jaw, then buried her nose in his throat and took a deep breath.

“I like the smell of you, Bowen Knight.”

He shivered and raised his fingers to the tiare flower. “You’re wearing it behind your left ear.”

Kaia’s lips curved. “I am.”

His own smile was young and possessive and a little smug. Oh, he noticed everything, this man—even the silent language of flowers spoken by those on Ryūjin.

“Come on, Siren,” he said with a touch of the flower that told the world she was taken. “I have plans for you.”

Refusing to acknowledge the dark shadows that awaited in the corners on wings of night, Kaia took his elbow and he escorted her to the door of the old warehouse.

She thought she was ready, but she wasn’t. “Bowen.” Releasing his arm, she walked into a dream. She’d forgotten this warehouse was right at the top of the habitat and had a seaward wall above. The warehouse was currently unused because the station team was discussing how to turn it into living quarters.

Streamers of white fabric fell from the support beams below the seaward sky to pool on the floor. Those gauzy curtains were held back by ropes of tiny lights that glittered like stars under the simulated moonlight, turning this room into a cocooned piece of the night sky.

More rose petals covered the floor, and in the center of the splendor was a Persian rug in hues of midnight blue and gold. On that rug stood a table covered with a tablecloth as white as snow, and two upholstered chairs in white with black swirls. More streamers of twinkling golden lights ran across the tablecloth.

The only other thing on there was a metal bucket of ice that held a bottle of champagne.

Bowen’s hand on her lower back, his mouth kissing the curve of her throat. “No tears,” he whispered, kissing away the hot wet that rolled down her cheeks. “No sadness tonight.”

He was breaking her heart with the gentleness with which he kissed her tears into his own mouth. “I know life can’t stop,” she found herself whispering, “but it feels wrong to experience any kind of joy while Hugo and the others are out there, lost and hurt.”

“I get it, Siren.” Bowen’s cheekbones sliced into his skin. “I carry the same guilt inside me every single day.” Hard words, a tender touch. “The chip protects my thoughts, but there are millions of humans who can’t say the same. They wake up knowing that today might be the day an invisible hand reaches in and rapes their mind.”

Her gut lurched at the idea of it. “I’m sorry.” She couldn’t imagine being so without moral boundaries that she’d violate another’s mind. Her parents hadn’t had to teach her that; she’d known right from wrong even as a small girl. Other people’s minds were private places unless they invited you in.

“You have no reason to be sorry.” He rubbed his thumbs gently over her cheeks to capture the final remnants of her tears. “Take this night with me, Kaia. Live this dream.”

Unspoken was the bleak reality hanging over his head.

She held on to the passionate life of his eyes. “No tears tonight.” It was a pact that shut out the world: the chip in his head, the compound, the inevitable end of this dance, the accusations against the Alliance, Hugo, the other vanished . . . all of it.

Tonight was their impossible dream.