by Lea Linnett
“Why do you want me to drink this so bad?” she asked, her brow furrowing with suspicion.
Because he wanted to see her relax a little, truthfully. He wanted to see more of what lay beneath her angry exterior, but he didn’t think she’d appreciate him saying so. “Because I saw you down a glass of this earlier without flinching. I want to know if it was just a fluke.”
“I don’t need to prove anything to you,” she snapped, but her eyes lingered on the green liquid, her fingers toying with the glass.
“Must’ve been a fluke, then.” He gave her a challenging look when she glared at him, smiling in the way that he knew infuriated her. It had the desired effect, her nose screwing up and her lips twisting down. Human expressions really were so fascinating.
She snatched up the glass, tipping it back, and before he knew it, the green whiskey had vanished. Her throat worked as she swallowed, and a hot curl of arousal sparked in Kamanek’s belly, his body taking an immediate interest. He was glad, suddenly, for the table blocking the view.
Taz placed the heavy glass back on the table with a solid thunk, raising her eyebrows at him. She hadn’t flinched once.
He raised his glass, knocking his own shot back in one gulp, and he couldn’t help but pop one eye open as he did so. Her gaze was glued to his jaw, studying the line of it while she thought he couldn’t see, and there was an intensity to the look that pleased him greatly.
It was almost enough to make him forget the burn of the whiskey as it traveled down his throat, but not quite, and he coughed. Taz’s eyes brightened, a smirk pulling at her lips. “Too much for you, lizard?”
“The first taste is always the strongest,” he said. His gaze dropped to her parted lips, which were wet from where she’d licked them, glistening in the neon lights.
If this were anyone else, he might have leaned over right then and claimed her mouth. He knew she was interested—from the way her eyes caught on him and the way she hid her flushing face when he teased her. He might not have met many humans in his time, but he understood body language better than he understood anything else.
What he didn’t understand was her coyness. If he wanted something—or someone—he made it clear, but Taz seemed to prefer fighting with herself as fiercely as she’d fought him the day they met. He didn’t understand it, but he accepted it. He wouldn’t push her that hard. Not yet, at least.
So, instead he brushed his foot fleetingly against her leg, just enough to enjoy the way she jumped in her seat without being too obvious to the patrons seated around them. “So how does a human learn to drink Pindarro like that?”
Her eyes narrowed like she might retaliate, but she didn’t move her leg away. “I used to work at a hub. Plenty of drinks to be had in a place like that.”
“You were a waitress?” he asked, rubbing her again. Her lips parted, her eyes darkening.
“No,” she snapped. “I worked the bar.”
“Really?”
“Is that so strange?” The human bristled, finally moving her legs out of reach, Kamanek raised his hands in surrender.
“Is it? I wouldn’t know. Not many humans serving drinks in the rest of the Constellation.”
She hummed, the sound barely audible over the music. “I had to fight for the position, too,” she added, much to his surprise. “No one took me seriously at first.”
“Because you were human?”
“Nah. Well, maybe. Mostly it was because I was still a teenager.” She looked up at him hesitantly. “I think your species calls those, ‘adolescents?’”
“When you’re not yet full-grown, but no longer a child?”
“Yeah, that. It was pretty dumb. I had Cara on one side, limiting how much I could drink in a night, while I’m mixing drinks that could knock out a pindar on the other.”
She smiled fondly at the table as Kamanek thought back to his time in the Lodestar base. He remembered Cara, the icy human who’d been practically bonded to Taz’s side. “Cara…”
“My sister. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“We found each other when I was small. When we were both little kids stealing off visitors at the Space Harbor—our stratosport. She’s my family. I don’t remember anything from before her.”
Taz hunched her shoulders defensively, but she was still leaning forward on the table, open to his questions. “Is she much older?”
“A few years. She was almost of age when we started there, while I was a little while off.”
“So how does a ‘teenager’ end up tending the bar?” he asked, leaning forward himself. They were both fiddling with their empty glasses, Taz’s hand mere inches from his own. He longed to reach for her, but knew it would be risky to do so out in the open, especially on this colony.
She shrugged. “Perseverance? I was a cleaner first, mostly just collecting empty glasses and washing them. Cara got me the job when she started working there. As a waitress,” she added, giving him a challenging look.
He stayed silent, unwilling to fracture her sharing mood.
“I got to see behind the bar a lot doing that, and I found it so… thrilling,” she went on. “The colors of the different types of liquor, the mixing, the endless combinations that could be made. The pindar working there would mix up sweet, non-alcoholic stuff for me, and when Cara wasn’t looking he’d add the stronger stuff. By the time Cara was of age I was already mixing basic drinks myself between shifts. Eventually, the pindar put in a good word for me and got me a promotion.”
“Sounds like a nice guy.”
Her brow twitched as she studied him, a small smile playing at her lips. “He was all right. Anyway, that’s all there was to it, really. I only worked there for a year before joining the Lodestars. But I learned a lot.”
“Why did you stop, if you enjoyed it so much?”
She frowned. “Because there were more important things to be doing,” she said, quiet enough that he almost didn’t catch it over the noise of the hub.
He had nothing to say to that, but it didn’t matter. Their eyes had locked, her irises somehow even darker than outer space as she stared at him. The neon lights played across her face, casting it in shades of red, then blue, then green, and it was mesmerizing. Now would be the time, he thought, when he should kiss her. This moment of vulnerability, when they were both open to the other, soothed by the drink.
But the moment when he was seriously considering it was the moment it was ripped from his grasp, as a large body rocketed into the table, almost upending it. Kamanek’s glass went flying, and Taz pulled hers closer to her chest as the table swayed precariously, held upright by the levekk now clinging to the surface for support.
For a terrifying second, Kamanek thought Niro had found them, but the levekk before him was only a fraction of the size, and the second levekk pulling him away from their table looked more like a panicked friend than a business partner.
“Hey, hey,” said the first levekk, blinking deliberately in Kamanek’s direction. “Is your human, um. Available?”
Taz stiffened in her chair.
“It’s just… the places around here… their merchandise just isn’t up to scratch, you know?” the levekk continued, lifting a palm in some drunken gesture that Kamanek couldn’t begin to read. “I’ll pay you double. Double what you paid for her.”
Taz’s face had turned stony, the whites of her eyes bright under the pulsating lights. She looked less like a bodyguard and more like a wild animal about to strike, and to Kamanek’s surprise, he was tempted to let her. He’d spent plenty of time in the more sordid corners of the Constellation thanks to his line of work, and he was used to the way some levekk with more credits than sense spoke about sub-species. It always inspired a flicker of disgust in him, but he’d learned to push it aside. If he tried to fight every idiot in his line of work, then he’d rapidly run out of clients and colleagues alike.
But now the young levekk’s words inspired more of a flame than a flicker, and he had to concen
trate to keep his tone light as he said, “Pay her all you like, but I think she’ll scare away the kind of attention you’re after.”
Beneath the table, he caught Taz’s leg with his foot, making her pause in her attempt to launch at their new table guests.
The levekk turned an open-mouthed and quizzical look on him, upon which he added, “She’s my bodyguard. Not a whore.”
Taz flinched at the word, and he immediately wished he hadn’t said it.
Behind the levekk, his friend started pulling even harder, having noticed the flinty expression on Kamanek’s face. “Kiin, stop it. Leave them alone.”
But Kiin wasn’t listening. “She’s a bodyguard?” he asked, hanging onto their table like it was a life raft. “They let humans be bodyguards?”
Taz glared at him. “We’re sub-species, not slaves,” she spat, but from the way he waved a hand in her direction, he’d already lost interest.
“Listen, I’ll pay you triple, since I’m interrupting your roleplay, or whatever this is,” Kiin said, and his hand shot out lightning fast despite his obvious intoxication, snapping around Taz’s upper arm and yanking her his way. “Come on.”
Taz immediately jerked in his grip, but the levekk held firm. There was a heavy thunk as her glass crashed to the table, her fist winding up now in preparation to strike, but Kamanek was already moving. His muscles worked on autopilot as he launched from his chair and pushed the smaller levekk backwards. Thankfully, he let go of Taz on the way, staggering back into his friend and staring up at Kamanek with wide eyes. He was young, barely older than an adolescent, but that didn’t diminish the hot fury that licked through Kamanek.
“You know, your skills in flirting are really lacking,” he sneered, advancing on the young levekk as they backed away.
“She’s human,” said Kiin, his mouth turned down in dismay. “Look, I’m sorry for touching your property, but—”
“She’s not my property,” Kamanek growled, drawing in close and flashing his claws, “but she is mine.”
The young levekk stared up at him, gaping.
“Now, fuck off and find a female actually willing to babysit you.”
The two levekk almost scrambled over each other in their eagerness to get away from him. Around him, the hubbub of the bar slowly filtered back as the patrons lost interest, the fight averted. He turned back to Taz, who was standing by the table with a conflicted expression on her face.
“Are you all right?” he asked, returning to her side.
“I could have handled that myself.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” he said, and leaned against the table, watching as Taz’s eyes widened.
She hesitated, but recovered quickly. “I’m supposed to be the bodyguard, here.”
“Don’t worry about it. Now, if I’d shot the little shit, we might have a problem, but—”
“Wait.” Taz’s gaze had sharpened, glued to something over Kamanek’s shoulder, and he froze mid-sentence.
“Niro?”
“He’s moving. Heading for the stairs with the others.”
“Has he seen us?”
“I don’t think so.” She glanced at him briefly. “We’re going after them, right?”
“Of course.” He grinned and clasped her shoulder, delighted when she didn’t pull away. “Let’s go.”
11
Taz followed Kamanek through the maze of rooms and corridors, her hand firmly wrapped around the hilt of her knife. It was quieter in this portion of the hub, the hallways dimly lit, and the corners steeped in shadow. Many of the rooms they passed had glowing strips of red neon above the doors, giving Taz the feeling that more than just drinking and business went on back here.
One advantage of the darkness was that they could pass through unnoticed. Most of the drunken patrons they encountered seemed as focused on keeping their heads down as Taz and Kamanek were, so nobody looked too hard at the human who was more heavily armed than the security dotting the dance floor behind them. Not that she couldn’t handle it if someone did cause trouble.
Even though the whiskey sat warm in her belly, dulling the tension she’d felt ever since arriving in Sek Vorek, she knew how to compensate for the new heaviness in her limbs. She used to protect herself from handsy patrons at the hub even after a night of sneaking drinks under Cara’s nose, so she had plenty of practice fighting through dulled senses.
But the alcohol did nothing to dull the blinding streetlights when they finally emerged. She blinked through the spots in her vision, half-expecting Niro to have left an ambush waiting for them. But while the back alley of the hub was bustling with activity—drunken levekk expelling their insides to one side, some cicarians smoking sweet vapor across the street—there was no sign of Niro or his companions.
She searched for Kamanek, who was already striding away with purpose, and he gestured for her to follow him with a quick jab over his shoulder.
Taz immediately tensed as she rounded the corner and spotted three distinctly levekk shapes moving up the alley ahead of them. They were silhouetted by the adjacent main street up ahead, but not even that could mask the sheer size of Niro as he walked with his fellows, or the rumble of his voice as he replied to one of their questions.
They tailed the trio at a distance, stepping carefully over the ragged cement. The levekk continued to talk, one of them exclaiming excitedly every now and then, until they reached the brightly lit main street. They paused there, their plated heads almost blindingly white under the streetlight, and Taz and Kamanek stilled.
She was just opening her mouth to discuss where they should go from here when there was a shout from behind them, somewhere near the hub, and Niro’s head snapped up.
But Taz didn’t have much time to panic; a strong arm hooked around her waist, yanking her sideways into a darkness so complete that for a moment she was unsure what direction she was facing. She felt a solid wall at her back, and a large body pressing her into said wall, and immediately struggled against the grip.
A hand grabbed her wrist as it snaked towards her knife, but she froze when a familiar voice hissed in her ear, “Hold up a second, he almost saw us.”
It was Kamanek. Of course it was Kamanek. She froze, ears straining to hear the sound of heavy footsteps approaching, but there was nothing.
The hand on her wrist abruptly released her, but she could still feel Kamanek’s body hovering mere inches from her skin. Soft breaths ruffled her hair, and an arm brushed her shoulder as he peeked around the corner. They’d taken refuge in the mouth of a short, squat alleyway, lit only by what light filtered in from outside. But as her eyes acclimated to the dim conditions, his tall form swam into view.
He was close, their chests almost touching. Or, her chest almost touching his ribcage might be more accurate, with how he towered over her. Thick arms bracketed her on either side, locking her in against the wall. She thought that she should feel trapped, that she should be pushing him away on instinct, but when she glanced up at his hands, she found that his fingers were just barely scraping the weatherbeaten wall, his shoulders tensed as he held himself away, giving her space.
Maybe it was the whiskey, but Taz didn’t feel unsafe. His hold on her would be easy enough to break if she wanted to.
And for some reason, she didn’t want to.
“What do you see?” she murmured, trying to focus.
He hummed, his body close enough that she felt it in the air between them. “A transport’s turned up, and they’re getting inside. Looks like a private driver rather than a taxi.”
“How will we follow them now?”
“The tracker works over short and long distances, so we won’t lose them. It just might take us a while to catch up.”
“Right,” she breathed, suddenly preoccupied with not knowing where to put her hands. She flattened them on the wall behind her.
“And… they’re… gone,” said Kamanek as the whir of a hover engine taking off filtered down the alley. The tension in his shoulde
rs relaxed a little, and he drew his head back into their safe haven, his gaze dropping to hers.
Her breath caught in her chest. Even in the near-darkness, his eyes glinted, twinkling slightly as he looked her up and down. It made her feel hot in a different way from the whiskey, like a low flame had ignited deep in her belly and was proceeding to lick through her. On either side of her head, Kamanek’s palms flattened, his arms bending as he leaned in.
She should move, said a voice in the back of her mind, but the rest was focused entirely on his plated head as it dipped toward her, and the wet glint of a tongue darting out to moisten his lips. Her booted feet felt heavy, glued to the ground, and it must have been the whiskey because now she was wondering about that tongue. Would it feel like hers? Soft and wet and gentle? Or would it be entirely alien, covered in barbs or growths or other terrifying things?
At that moment, a vehicle shrieked down the alley beside them, flying in low from the main street and eliciting frightened screams from the patrons still hanging around the back of the hub nearby. The sound made Kamanek freeze above her, and all at once Taz was too aware of him, of the levekk who was far too close, and she stiffened against the wall.
The arms bracketing her vanished as Kamanek stepped back. Air flooded back into Taz’s lungs, as if his proximity alone had been suffocating her.
“He’s gone?” she asked, trying to keep her tone steady while her heart thundered in her chest. Her cheeks felt hot, and she thanked the darkness for hiding the flush she was sure she sported.
“Yeah.”
Did he sound… breathless?
Taz shook her head, dispelling the thought. “We need to follow him,” she said, willing her pulse to calm.
“We have the tracker.”
“I don’t want to fall too far behind,” she insisted. “It’ll take us hours to catch up.”
“Not necessarily.” Kamanek had pulled out the tracker and was studying it now, the screen illuminating his face. “They’re heading south-east of here. I think if we take a public transport to that part of the city and go on foot from there, we’ll be fine.”
