Chapter 6

As soon as he held out the kyapa-sho niblet, Luc remembered there were no serving utensils. He’d noticed the lack but it hadn’t been a priority—not like finding some kyapa-sho and comming Rickster for his missing teammate. Now he had both and a trajectory to their first stop.

But no spoons.

Instead, he held the niblet to her mouth, wondering what moon madness was driving him.

But she only smiled a little hesitantly and leaned forward to accept the morsel. The brush of her upper lip against his knuckle, the faint scrape of her lower teeth against the pad of his finger, sent a searing blaze of awareness through him, hot enough to hurt.

And he hadn’t even tasted the kyapa-sho yet.

Shaken, he sat back. “What do you think?”

She chewed thoughtfully, as if the glassy sheen over her dark eyes was nothing. “The touch of heat goes nicely with—what is that?—a sweetness.”

He took one of the niblets for himself and popped it into his mouth.

Was that hint of sweetness a lingering taste of her lips on his fingertip?

He cleared his throat as the kyapa-sho burned. “It’s pixberry. Grows everywhere in the universe, practically. The texture isn’t quite right, but not bad for a food processor.”

She reached for a crisp cane on another platter. “What’s this one?” She held it out to him.

He should not be crunching on innocent closed-worlders… He bit the end off, careful to avoid her skin. The heat of the kyapa-sho was mellowed somewhat by the dense dough. “Bone-bread.”

If he’d have bet that menacing translation might dissuade her from trying it, he would’ve been mistaken. She licked the kyapa-sho off the cane and slid the rest into her mouth.

Fixated, he watched her tongue dart out to swipe the gold flecks from her lips. The beastly depths of him roused uncomfortably.

“Good,” she said.

What was good? The spice or his stunted drakling spirit that seemed to be unfurling around her?

He wasn’t sure the latter was good at all.

While they ate, they talked. As if on autopilot, the orderly, desk-bound accountant he’d always been answered her curious questions about drakling cuisine, earlier seasons of the Great Space Race, and other Earthers in space.

“A cousin of mine mated an Earther female,” he said. “He paired with her when the captain of the mercenary ship where he was stationed sought a bride through the Big Sky outpost of the Intergalactic Dating Agency.”

Amy stiffened. “Big Sky… That’s where I lived, in Montana. I wonder… There’s a resort outside town that had a crazy reputation.” She shook her head. “Now I understand why everything anyone said about it always sounded like nonsense.”

“On closed worlds, any off-worlder outposts have to keep a low profile. The outposts tend to be small and suppress local technologies like communications and surveillance.” He quirked a smile at her. “They have all the stars but they keep the closed worlds in the dark.”

“My boss must’ve been involved somehow too, or at least known about it since he had the trans-dimensional transference. It’s a small universe, isn’t it, if your cousin might’ve married someone from Sunset Falls. How impossible is that?”

“Mathematically…fairly unlikely. But sometimes I think the vastness of the universe means each of us is operating at the equivalent of the quantum level, with all the uncertainty, duality, and entanglement that implies.”

“Riiiiight,” she drawled.

He winced. “That was stuffy of me, wasn’t it? In case you were wondering why I’m the only one of my brothers not getting married.”

“Maybe you could’ve used that Intergalactic Dating Agency.” Her dark eyes widened. “I can’t believe that’s even a thing.”

“It’s not, anymore. They ran into some trouble with Earther brides disappearing.” He sighed with exaggerated drama. “There goes my only chance.”

She patted his hand. “I know you’ll find someone, someday. You’re tall, handsome, and you go after what you want. I mean, look, you’re going to win the Great Space Race. What, er, mate could resist you?”

He looked at the faint, shimmering gold fingerprint that the kyapa-sho had left on his skin, as if she’d marked him. The soul of fire and wind, stunted in him ever since the egg, stirred under her touch. “Maybe I just haven’t looked far enough.”

“That’s the spirit,” she said, raising a small cloud of pepper as she patted him again.

They finished the meal, feeding each other ever spicier bites of the drakling favorites he’d recommended and a few other dishes he didn’t recognize. By the end, they were both gasping and laughing, teary-eyed and burning-tongued. She grabbed the goblet in the center of the table and gulped desperately.

“I give up,” she choked. She wiped one hand across her brow. “You’re too hot for me.”

He reached across the table to wipe the smudge of golden powder from her temple. The feathery softness of her black hair brushed his knuckles, like the cool night air breathing out of the vast desert on the homeworld he hadn’t seen in forever.

She blinked at him, looking a little startled, and he showed her the dust on his fingertip.

“I don’t think I can take another bite without bursting into flame,” he confessed. To counteract the confused look in her eyes, he whisked the goblet from her grasp and chugged down a few mouthfuls.

“Hey, that—”

“Not bad,” he said. “The bitterness cancels the heat. And at least it’s iced. Good choice to finish.”

He forced his gaze off the plushness of her lips, puffed and reddened by the spice. “I declare you the winner of our side challenge,” he said hastily. “I need to check our course one last time, so you can take the bed first.”

He wished he hadn’t thought of that puffy red bed so soon after thinking of her lips…

She propped her elbows on the table. “I thought you locked in our course.”

“Things change.” Like his awareness of her. She was his teammate, his responsibility, not…anything else. No matter what else the waking spirit inside him might feel.

He needed to win the Great Space Race, and—in a strange parallel with his chosen day job behind a desk, clicking through numbers—that had absolutely nothing to do with his feelings.