The Heart of Valour Read Online Free Page B

heading back to the bar muttering notes about ales and lagers and fermentation times into his slate.
    She was just mopping up the last of the gravy when the call came through.
    *I’ve docked. Section 8, slip 17.*
    Pushing her plate away, she tongued an acknowledgment and murmured, “On my way,” just loud enough for the implant to pick up.
    They were naked twenty-two minutes later.

TWO
    P ushing damp hair back out of her eyes, Torin rolled up on one elbow and frowned down at her companion. “I get the impression you missed me.”
    “Funny, because I got the impression I was right on target… OW!” Tugging her fingers out of his chest hair, Craig Ryder wrapped Torin’s hand in his, immobilizing it. Since she wasn’t planning on going anywhere for a while, she allowed him to think he could hold her. “You win,” he said. “I missed you. You’re just lucky I needed to register new salvage tags.”
    “You’re talking like I’m the only one here who got lucky.”
    “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He waggled his brows suggestively. “But you are saying you got lucky, then?”
    She freed her hand, moved it lower on his body, and squeezed. “A couple of times.”
    “Bloody cheek!”
    But this time when he grabbed for her, Torin rolled off the bunk and rose to her feet out of reach. “That thing’s too small for comfort.”
    “You’d better be talking about the bunk, mate. And you are not sitting your bare ass down on my control panel,” he growled as she moved the very small distance to the other side of the cabin.
    Torin snorted. “Not after what happened the last time.” Scooping his discarded shirt off the floor, she tossed it on the pilot’s chair covering the majority of the duct tape and sat. One of the reasons the bunk was too narrow for them both was that Craig Ryder was a big man. Undressed, there was a little softness at his waist, but most of his bulk was muscle, his arms and shoulders so broad and heavy, they distracted from his height.
    “What?”
    All right. Maybe she had been staring. “Rumor has it that this is a romance.”
    “Really?” Craig rolled up on his side, head propped up on one huge hand. He looked amused, the bastard. “Who’s been talking, then?”
    She shrugged a shoulder, suddenly wishing she hadn’t brought it up. “Some of the medical staff off the
Berganitan
are on station. Apparently, I’m a topic of conversation.”
    “Apparently?” When she shrugged again, he laughed. “Fuk, all you’ve done in the last year was convince a race of aggressive lizards to join up right before you outsmarted a big old alien spaceship. Can’t see why they’d be talking about you. Obviously, they’re talking about me.”
    “You?”
    “Don’t mean to skite, but I’m the other half of the romance, aren’t I?”
    Torin scratched at the drying sweat on her stomach. “There is no romance. There’s sex.”
    “Good sex.”
    “Granted.”
    “That’ll do, then.” Blue eyes gleamed. “So what the hell are you doing all the way over there?”
    Later, when she stepped out of his shower—which meant stepping out of his tiny hygiene unit into the main cabin—he handed her a mug of coffee and said, “You ever hear what happened to the escape pod from Big Yellow.”
    Torin took a drink, set the mug on the small, half-circle table folded down from one of the cabin walls, and started dressing. “It’s a piece of unknown alien technology, I expect R&D has it tucked away somewhere, probably somewhere on this station—although there’s always a chance that one of the Elder Races rabbited off with it. All I know is that the whole thing’s been classified Top Secret, and I have orders not to talk about it during my current
the Silsviss are our friends
tour.” Skimming her pants up over her hips, she reached for the mug again. “Why?”
    “I rode it from Big Yellow, yeah?”
    “Yeah.” She knew where this was going.
    “That makes it my salvage, doesn’t it?”
    “Technically,