Page 10 of Naughty List Delivery
The way I’d believed him, right up until believing him became more dangerous than breathing.
“Scan complete,” PIP announces. “The unknown vessels match configurations associated with Krax Korvain’s information network. Noomi, I believe someone may have placed a significant bounty on data regarding your survival status.”
Ice and fire chase each other down my spine. Krax Korvain—information broker, occasional pirate, and someone with a very long memory for perceived slights. If he’s tracking OOPS Christmas routes, it’s because someone’s paying premium rates for proof that Nova Jaxson didn’t die in that transport explosion.
“Time to intercept?”
“If they maintain current heading and velocity, approximately four hours. However, Nova, I’m also detecting some unusual energy signatures from the outer docking bays.”
“Define unusual.”
“Elevated ambient temperature readings, trace pheromone signatures, and what appears to be active cloaking field fluctuations. I believe someone may be attempting to mask their presence in the station.”
My heart slams against my ribs like it’s trying to escape. Elevated temperature. Pheromones. Someone who can afford military-grade cloaking and has reason to hide from station sensors.
The tracking beacon still shows him three systems away, but I’d bet my ship’s engines he’s modified it to give false readings while he hunts me through the station’s corridors like some twisted game of cat and mouse.
Except this mouse learned a few tricks during their partnership.
“PIP, begin pre-flight preparations but keep it quiet. No engine cycling, no external communications. Make it look like we’re settling in for an extended stay.”
“Are we expecting trouble, Noomi?”
“We’re about to go hunting.” I stand, checking my sidearm out of old habit. “And when I find that predatory bastard, he’s going to answer some very pointed questions about who fed him my delivery route.”
The maintenance corridors of Meridian Station are a maze of service tunnels, ventilation shafts, and emergency access panels that most visitors never see. But I spent three years learning to think like a pirate, which means knowing every possible route through any structure you might need to escape from.
Or in this case, use for an ambush.
I move through the cramped passages with practiced silence, following the station’s thermal readings toward the source of those elevated temperature signatures. My heart hammers against my ribs, but there’s something else building beneath the adrenaline—anticipation. The same rush I used to get when we’dplan raids together, moving through space like twin shadows, thinking three steps ahead of everyone else.
The kind of rush that always ended with us burning up the oxygen in our quarters afterward.
Professional courier, I remind myself. But my body doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. Heat pools low in my stomach, muscle memory responding to the thrill of the hunt despite two years of going straight.
Some addictions live in your bones.
The thermal signature leads me to a maintenance alcove overlooking Docking Bay Seven—exactly where my ship sits like bait in a trap. From here, I have a perfect view of the cargo containers stacked around the bay’s perimeter, the shadows between fuel conduits, and the airlock that leads to the Wandering Star.
And there, moving through those shadows with liquid grace that makes my breath catch, is the most dangerous man I’ve ever loved.
Ober stalks between the cargo containers like the predator he is, every movement controlled and purposeful. He’s dressed in dark clothing that blends with the shadows, but I’d recognize that feline grace anywhere. The way he moves his head, testing the air for scents. The careful placement of each step to avoid making noise. The patient way he circles closer to his target.
To me.
Watching him hunt sends an unwelcome thrill through my nervous system, the kind of visceral response that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with recognizing an apex predator in his element. This is how he used to look when we’d plan boarding operations—focused, deadly, beautiful in the way that sharp things are beautiful right before they cut you.
The way he’d look at me afterward, pupils dilated with adrenaline and want, before backing me against the nearestbulkhead and reminding me that some hunts end with the prey exactly where they want to be.
My skin goes hot and cold simultaneously, phantom sensations that remember what it felt like to be the exclusive focus of that intensity. When those dark eyes would track my every movement like I was the most fascinating creature in the galaxy. When his enhanced senses would catalog my heartbeat, my breathing, the micro-expressions that betrayed what I was thinking.
I used to love being hunted by him. Used to make a game of staying one step ahead until he’d corner me somewhere private and remind me exactly who I belonged to.
Now I’m about to remind him that this prey has learned to bite back.
I wait until he’s positioned himself near the main cargo stack—close enough to my ship to intercept any escape attempt, far enough from the airlocks to think he’s unobserved. Then I drop through the maintenance hatch directly behind him.
“Hello, Ober.”
