Page 40 of How to Steal a Galaxy

“Don’t worry,” I say. “You snored through everything exciting, and I don’t take advantage of drunk people. We got back to the docking bay, and you pretty much immediately just fell asleep. You’re welcome, by the way. I slept in the cockpit.”

Disorientation wars with panic inside him, that much is clear, but he also seems pretty relieved that he’s safe and didn’t do anything he’d regret. Which, fair. I’m going to make him work a little harder than this before I let him regret anything he’d do with me. Regrets are more fun when the choices they derive from are made intentionally.

“Wait, drunk?” Rian asks. Those razor eyes are wide awake now. “I wasn’t drunk.”

“Drunk on love?” I suggest.

“What did you do?” Accusation weighs his words down.

“Me?” If I had pearls, I’d clutch them.

“Ada,” he says as he swings his legs over the side of the bed. Feet on the cold metal floor, grounding him, forcing him to focus, to wake up, to realize.

I roll my eyes and tap my lips with my finger. I watch as he looks at my lips, his gaze softening for just a moment. He remembers our kisses.

The first one, when Phoebe noted that no color came off on his skin.

His face pales.

The second one, with red so vivid that even Strom Fetor commented on it.

I reach in my pocket and grab the lip gloss. “Color seal to protect me from the effects,” I say, tossing the tube to him.

He pulls out the wand, looking at the goopy contents. There’s nothing in them to indicate that they’re laced with a Gliese-Earth native plant commonly called “drunk sticks.” The plant looks like a cross between aloe vera and snake plants: thick green stalks that point straight up. Squish the innards and rub them on your skin, and you become highly suggestible. Ingest even a little and you’re walking loopy, cross-eyed and totally blackout drunk for several hours.

Rian’s brow creases as he pulls the applicator out and sniffs the lip gloss. “Drunk sticks?” he guesses.

“Drunk sticks,” I confirm.

“Ada, this shit’s illegal,” Rian says, firmly screwing the tube shut and tossing it back to me.

“Oh dear,” I say flatly. “Illegal. Oh no.”

Rian stands up, shaking his head. “What’s even your end game with this? Fuck me, I thought you were coming to the gala to steal something and—”

“I did,” I say. “I came to steal you.”

He shoots me an exasperated look. You know, it’s nice to see the façade breaking. I didn’t like the way Rian acted at the party, all formal, corsage pinned down with an allegory and jacket buttoned up tight. But now he’s letting his emotions show, even if his emotions are one hundred percent pissed off at me.

“You didn’t have to stage such an elaborate...fiasco just to talk to me in private.”

“Fiasco, nice.”

“As you have pointed outmany times,” he adds through clenched teeth, “what you did atRoundaboutwasn’t technically illegal.”

The best kind of legal: technical.

“You could have literally walked into my office and told me anything. Hell, you could have—”

He stops there, but I can see what he almost said. I could have approached him outside the office. I could be someone who has something more with him than business.

“Yes, but...” I say, trailing off, still half-thinking about what a talk with Rian White outside the office might be, wondering if he envisions a classy bar with expensive wine or an evening walk with twinkling city lights, or maybe his home. His home, like I’ve shown him mine. I would have been more polite about it, though. But I was raised better than he was; I try not to hold that against him.

“Anyway,” I say, standing up. “Would you like a snack?”

“No!” Rian bellows. “I want to know what the fuck is going on!”

“Okay, fine.” I roll my eyes again. “But I’m going to explain with a snack.”

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