Page 54 of Naughty List Delivery
Outside the observation deck, the stars wheel slowly through space, marking time and distance and all the adventures still waiting for us. But inside this small bubble of warmth and light, two people who thought they’d lost everything discover that sometimes the best Christmas gifts are the ones you give yourself.
The gift of choosing love over fear.
The gift of choosing together over alone.
The gift of choosing a future over a past.
And sometimes, if you’re very lucky and very brave, those gifts keep giving for the rest of your life.
15
Epilogue
Noomi
Iwakeuptothe feel of warm Felaxian hands mapping the curve of my waist and the sound of Ober’s purr rumbling against my back. Outside our quarters aboard the Starbound, Junction One’s morning shift change creates a familiar hum of activity, but inside our private sanctuary, time moves differently.
“Morning, security consultant,” I murmur, stretching against him like the cat he resembles. His enhanced body heat seeps through me, chasing away the last vestiges of sleep and replacing them with something much more interesting.
“Morning, lead courier,” he replies, his mouth finding that spot behind my ear that makes me shiver. “Sleep well?”
“Until someone started wandering hands at oh-dark-thirty,” I accuse, but I’m arching into his touch rather than pulling away. After a year together, we’ve perfected the art of lazy morning intimacy.
“My hands weren’t wandering,” he protests with wounded innocence, his tail snaking around my thigh to prove his point. “They were conducting a very thorough security assessment.”
“And what did your assessment conclude?”
His laugh is pure sin. “That my mate is severely under-protected and requires immediate attention.”
I turn in his arms to face him, taking in the sight of sleep-mussed hair and amber eyes still warm with dreams. A year of legitimate work has been good to him—the constant tension he used to carry has eased, replaced by the confident satisfaction of a man who’s found his place in the universe.
The scar above his left eyebrow, a souvenir from our Christmas adventure, has faded to a thin silver line that I trace with my fingertip. He catches my hand and presses it flat against his chest, where I can feel his twin hearts beating in the steady rhythm that’s become my favorite lullaby.
“Your mate,” I say, enjoying the way the word makes his pupils dilate slightly, “has a supply run to Kepler-442b today. High priority medical supplies for the colony there.”
“Your mate,” he counters, his voice dropping to that possessive register that makes my toes curl, “is assigned as security for that exact mission. Funny how that works out.”
It’s not funny at all—it’s carefully orchestrated. In the year since we joined OOPs officially, we’ve become the go-to team for missions that require both courier expertise and tactical knowledge. Mother claims it’s purely professional efficiency, but I’ve seen her small smile when she assigns us together. I suspect our success rate has less to do with our individual skills and more to do with the way we’ve learned to work as a unit.
Like how Ober anticipates my flight patterns well enough to calculate weapons trajectories without conscious thought. Or how I can read his tactical assessments in the shift of his shoulders and adjust our approach before he even speaks. We’ve become something more effective together than we ever were apart.
“Must be fate,” I say solemnly.
“Must be Mother knowing exactly what she’s doing,” he replies, then rolls us over so I’m pinned beneath him, his weight a delicious pressure against my chest. “But we don’t have to leave for three hours.”
“Three hours,” I repeat thoughtfully, my hands already working at the fastenings of his sleep shirt. The fabric is soft against my palms, worn from countless mornings exactly like this one. “Whatever will we do with all that time?”
“I have some ideas,” he says, his voice dropping to that register that makes my insides clench with anticipation. “Starting with a very thorough pre-mission briefing.”
“What kind of briefing?” I ask, though I’m already breathless from the way his hands are exploring places that have nothing to do with mission parameters.
“The kind that requires complete attention to detail,” he murmurs against my throat, his fangs grazing my pulse point in a way that makes me arch beneath him. “Careful assessment of all potential... vulnerabilities.”
His tail joins the exploration, trailing up my inner thigh with deliberate slowness. After a year of discovery, I know exactly what that appendage is capable of—the precision, the strength, the way it can support my weight or hold me exactly where he wants me. It’s become one of my favorite things about Felaxian biology.
“Vulnerabilities?” I gasp, my nails digging into his shoulders as he finds exactly the right spot. “I don’t have vulnerabilities.”
“You have at least twelve that I’ve identified,” he says with scientific precision, even as his touch makes my thoughts scatter like startled birds. “Would you like a demonstration?”
