Chapter 85: You Could All Be My Wives...

Aoi stopped breathing.

"Lesson one," Leo said again with his eyes moving slowly over her face as if he had all night to study it. "When a man leans over you like this... you don’t hold your breath."

The breath she’d been holding broke out of her in a shaky rush.

"Good," he murmured, and the warmth in his voice made her toes curl inside the hem of her robe. "Lesson two... You look at him... Not at the ceiling... Not at the wall... At him."

Her eyes had drifted to the light fixture.

She dragged them back to his face with what felt like enormous effort, and found him much closer than she’d expected, close enough that she could see the faint flecks of amber in his brown eyes and feel the warmth of his breath against her lips.

His hair brushed her cheek.

The sun-stone swung on its cord and touched the bare skin at the base of her throat, warm as a fingertip, and she flinched at the contact and then went perfectly still.

"Leo..." she whispered.

"We’re on this ship together, Aoi," He said, and the teasing had gone quieter now, steadier, with something honest underneath it. "We’re heading into the deep end of a very dangerous void, and we might be out here for years... I trust you with my ship and with my life, and I think you’re an incredible woman."

He tilted his head slightly with his hair sliding along her jaw. "If we survive all this... I wouldn’t mind at all if you became something like my wife."

The word detonated in the small cabin like a fusion pulse.

Aoi’s eyes went wider than they’d ever been in her life.

Her lips parted and her breath came in rapid shallow gasps, and the heat pouring off her skin was so intense that it seemed to warm the air trapped between them.

"W-wife?!" she squeaked, her voice shaking so badly she could barely form the word. "You... you’re twenty-one! I’m thirty! I’m your elder, your instructor, your tactical officer...!"

"Out here, none of those old Earth titles mean anything," Leo said smoothly with a slow smirk curving his mouth just above hers. "Out here, I’m the captain, you’re my officer, and you’re the woman who polished a glowing rock for days because she was worried about my heart... Sounds like wife material to me."

Aoi clutched the collar of her robe closed at her throat as if the cotton could shield her from the heat in his gaze.

She looked at his shoulders above her, at the long dark hair falling around her face and the confident set of his jaw, and something warm twisted low in the pit of her stomach then her eyes narrowed.

Her sharp analytical mind, which had abandoned her entirely for the last two minutes, came roaring back online and caught a glaring discrepancy.

"And what about the other girls?" she demanded, her voice trembling with suspicion. "Harper looks at you as if you personally hung the stars... Camila blushes every time you touch a vegetable... Elena wore an evening gown into a machine shop purely to watch your face turn red and Chloe would rip the throat out of anyone who stood between you and her! What about them?!"

Leo didn’t even blink.

He shrugged, as well as a man can shrug while braced over a woman on her own bed, and his smirk turned wicked.

"Well, they could be my wives too... A Master Captain needs a full command staff, right?"

Aoi stared up at him in paralyzed horror. For three full seconds, the only sound in the cabin was the hum of the vent.

"You..." she gasped. "You shameless, insolent, lecherous little monster!"

"It’s a logistical solution!" Leo laughed. "Jin-Ah would appreciate the efficiency!"

Aoi planted both palms flat against his chest and shoved. She was a Level 5, and she put every bit of it into the push.

Leo went sailing backward off the bed with a startled whoop and landed on his feet by the desk, still laughing, while she scrambled upright onto her knees on the mattress with her hair wild and her face blazing hot enough to melt an asteroid.

"Out!" she shouted, snatching the pillow from the head of the bed and brandishing it like a broadsword. "Out of my room this instant! You are too horny for civilized company... Out!"

"I’m going, I’m going!" Leo laughed, backing toward the hatch with both hands raised.

He’d almost reached it when she moved.

Aoi stepped quickly off the mattress and caught him by the sleeve, and the gentle tug stopped him in his tracks.

He turned with the laughter fading, and found her right in front of him in the soft amber light.

Her face was still burning crimson, but the outrage in her eyes had melted into a tender look... Her fingers trembled where they held his sleeve.

Slowly, she rose up onto her toes.

She leaned in with her long hair brushing against his collar, and pressed her soft warm lips to the rough skin of his left cheek.

The kiss was light as a feather and lingered for two breathless heartbeats as it filled his senses with her scent.

She sank back down onto her heels with her lashes lowered and her chest rising in a shallow nervous breath.

"Thank you, Leo," she whispered. "For the necklace... For pulling us out of the dark and for listening to an old woman’s apology."

A small teasing smile touched her lips as her composure slid back into place like a fragile shield.

"Goodnight, Captain." She gave his shoulder a firm decisive shove toward the door. "Now go... Before I have Vela lock you in the brig for conduct unbecoming."

Leo touched his cheek where her lips had been and let out a bright breathless laugh.

"Understood, Officer Tachibana... Goodnight, Aoi."

PSSH!

The hatch slid open, and he stepped out into the dim corridor as it sealed behind him with a quiet click.

He stood there for a moment rubbing his cheek with a broad foolish grin on his face and his heart beating a fast exhilarating rhythm that made the empty ship feel alive then he felt the chill.

Four paces down the runner, swallowed almost entirely by the amber shadows, stood a small silhouette.

Chloe was barefoot in her crimson skirt and oversized black sweater, her hands buried in the long sleeves.

Her dark bangs hung low over her forehead, and her green eyes were wide and unblinking and fixed on his face with absolute focus.

She’d seen him walk out of Aoi’s room and she’d probably heard the word "wife" through the door.

Leo’s hand dropped from his cheek, and a single bead of nervous sweat traced down his spine.

"Uh... Chloe? Weren’t you asleep?"

"I woke up," Chloe said. "The bed got cold."

She glided across the runner with that silent S-Rank grace and stopped right in front of him then she took his big hand in both of her sleeves and tugged.

She used barely a fraction of her strength, and the quiet determination in that small grip left no room at all for debate.

She marched him down the hallway and straight into his quarters, kicked the door-close stud with her heel and pushed him backward onto the edge of the mattress.

THUD!

Leo fell back against the pillows and blinked up at her.

"Chloe, what are you..."

She climbed onto the bed, settled astride his waist and threw both arms around his neck, and pressed her soft cool lips firmly against his left cheek, exactly where Aoi had kissed him.

"Smells like tea," she muttered, her brow knotting in displeasure.

She kissed the spot again, harder, and rubbed her small cheek against his skin as if she were scrubbing off a stain.

"... It smells like Aoi."

She kissed it three more times in quick succession then she moved lower, pressing a slow trail of small cool kisses along the line of his jaw and down the warm side of his neck, breathing him in between each one, erasing every last trace of tea with her own scent until Leo’s hands had found her waist and his breath had gone uneven.

"Hey... hey, okay, Chloe," He managed. "Nobody’s taking me anywhere... Calm down."

She lifted her head and looked down at him, and in the dim light her green eyes held a dry unimpressed patience.

"You were going to say yes," she said. "To being her husband... You were smiling."

"...I was teasing her."

"You were smiling," Chloe repeated, and leaned down to kiss the corner of his jaw one final time. "It’s fine. She can have tea. I get the rest."

Having thoroughly reclaimed her territory, she let out a long shuddering sigh of contentment and tucked her face into the crook of his neck.

She hooked her legs around his thighs, locked her arms behind his neck and went completely limp on top of him, as immovable as a small iron safe.

"Mine," she whispered into his skin, her lashes fluttering shut. "Leo is mine..."

Leo let out a quiet helpless laugh and shook his head against the pillows then he wrapped his arms around her slender back, pulled the heavy blanket up over both their shoulders and let his eyes close.

Against his chest, nestled between his shirt and her sleeping cheek, the sun-stone pulsed softly in the dark with every beat of his heart.

The morning cycle arrived with the slow brightening of the overhead strips, and by the time Leo reached the bridge, the smell of breakfast had already chased the night’s chill off the deck plates.

Camila had laid out thick warm slices of roasted root bread dusted with herb salt and steaming cups of peppermint tea.

The six of them had gathered along the edge of the command dais, and the easy quiet of a shared meal lasted exactly as long as it took Leo to stretch his arms over his head and tug his collar loose.

...The movement caught the light.

The sun-stone hung dead center against his collarbones on its braided cord, glowing a soft steady gold.

Harper froze with a slice of bread three centimeters from her mouth. Her grey-blue eyes locked onto the stone, narrowed into slits and snapped straight to Leo’s face.

"Wait a damn second," she said, lowering the bread onto the tray with an ominous clatter. "Where’d you get that?"

Leo glanced down and brushed the warm facet with his fingertips.

"Oh. This? It’s a sun-stone..."

"I can see it’s a shiny rock, Cap." Harper leaned over the rail with her freckled nose wrinkling in suspicion. "I asked where you got it... Yesterday your neck was bare, and we don’t have a jewelry department in the cargo lockers, unless somebody’s been doing metalwork on my bench behind my back."

At the astrogation table, Aoi developed a sudden overwhelming fascination with the rim of her teacup.

She drew her shoulders up with rigid, textbook discipline, but nothing she did could stop the scalding crimson tide that surged up out of her high mandarin collar, swept across her jaw and set the tips of her ears ablaze.

She took a hurried sip, nearly burned her tongue and coughed.

Camila had stopped buttering her bread.

Her knife hung in the air, and her hazel eyes went from the stone to Aoi’s ears to Leo’s face, and the bright smile she’d been wearing all morning thinned then her gaze slid sideways to the secondary combat couch.

Chloe was sitting there with her boots tucked up, holding the mug of hot lemon water Camila made her every morning in both sleeves.

She wasn’t drinking it... She was watching Aoi over the rim with an expression of perfect, serene calm, like a cat watching a bird on the other side of a window it had already decided it could open.

Jin-Ah, who had seen all of it, quietly turned her slate face-down on the console and folded her hands on top of it.

Whatever she’d come to the bridge to announce could clearly wait.

Elena glanced from the glowing teardrop to Aoi’s burning face, and one sharp brow arched upward with devastating precision.

"A hand-cut teardrop with a micro-laser bevel," she murmured, her voice dripping with honeyed malice. "Rather intricate work for a late-night endeavor... One might almost deduce that someone with access to the precision optics on Harper’s bench spent hours polishing away their dignity."

"Elena," Aoi choked out, setting her cup down with a sharp clink and keeping her eyes on the wall. "It’s merely a protective ward... A traditional gift of navigational fortune and nothing more."

"A protective ward," Harper repeated and her fingers had curled tight around the edge of the tray. "At midnight? In his room? While the rest of us were asleep...?"

"He was in my quarters," Aoi blurted out, a split second before her analytical mind caught up with the catastrophic slip.