Page 46 of Radiant Exception
Chief Eng. L. Serling
Jealousy doesn’t look good on you, Captain. He told me. That’s how. You can put your dick away. Everyone knows you’d win anyway.
Damn right I would.
Capt. D. Vaughn
Why are you still in engineering? Your shift ended over an hour ago.
This had been another unfortunate side effect of the new routine we’d fallen into. When Lark wasn’t overhauling the engineering systems to check for wear on parts, she was poring over the coding I’d managed to capture and studying it, trying to find any sort of pattern that could reveal the encryption key.
As a result, I’d quickly noticed that she was burning the candle at both ends, and skipping meals when she was too focused to realizehow much time had passed. So I’d taken to making her meals and bringing them to her either down in engineering, or in our room, depending on if we were on or off shift.
Natalie gushed over what she deemed a romantic gesture, although I found it more pragmatic than anything. Ethan gave me shit about it any chance he got, and thankfully, the rest of the crew kept their opinions to themselves.
Capt. D. Vaughn
Meet me up in our quarters. I have dinner. Make Chadwick clean up his own mess.
Chief Eng. L. Serling
Bossy
“I’m surprised you haven’t gone cross-eyed from staring at that code for hours on end,” I chided Lark.
“Huh?” She glanced up from the offline comm I’d given her, where I’d been storing the bits and pieces of code I’d managed to find before they were gone. What I’d gathered was an odd hodgepodge, but it was better than nothing.
“I said, I think you need a break.”
She set the comm down on the desk and leaned back in the chair. “There’s just something so familiar about the cipher. I can’tfigure it out, but I just keep hoping I’ll see some line of code that sparks recognition.”
I was impressed by Lark’s strategic acumen and out-of-the-box thinking when it came to how she was studying and experimenting with the code in an attempt to break the cipher. If she could crack it and we discovered what information was being siphoned through the ship, it could change everything.
I regretted not confiding in her earlier, especially if she did end up figuring it out. I’d let my pride get in the way, and when it came to the Phoenix, I couldn’t afford to let that happen again. Certainly not with Lark, who had made many strides in gaining my trust. The fact that Darren appeared to trust her implicitly should have told me all I needed to know, but I was too stubborn to admit that I needed help before.
“We need to talk about Jordan.” Lark sighed, folding her arms over her chest, no doubt anticipating a battle. And she’d get one.
“Why?”
“I can’t verify half of her documented work history, Vaughn.”
“She worked black ops like me. My resume has similar holes, but you haven’t used it against me and added me to your suspect list,” I argued. I knew I was being unreasonable, but I felt so strongly about Jordan not having anything to do with Meridian. I didn’t have solid evidence to point to, but I’d worked with her for long enough to have seen it if she wasn’t what she’d presented herself to be.
She remained dead set on Jordan and Rion being at the top of her list, and as much as I wanted to argue, Lark was right that I had found myself in a position where I was too close to each ofthem, and none of my crew made sense to me as the Phoenix or a Meridian operative. The points she raised on each of them were uncomfortable truths I wasn’t ready to face.
“That’s not fair. Darren vouched for you. It’s not the same, and you know it.” Lark’s bottom lip jutted out in a pout. I felt my cock stir at the thought of biting it.
“It’s late, we should go to bed.” I didn’t want to rehash Jordan’s potential as a suspect for the umpteenth time. “Come over here.” My voice came out a bit more gruff than I’d intended.
Lark’s eyes darkened upon hearing the command. For as obstinate as she insisted on being, the woman appeared to like it when I bossed her around a little in the privacy of our room. And nothing made me harder than calling the shots and being rewarded with her petulant compliance.
I stood from the bed and lifted the edge of the blanket to allow her to slip under the covers, situating herself against the wall of the bed nook, where she preferred to sleep.
The moment I turned off the last light in the room, bathing us in darkness, she was on me. Her legs tangled with mine as she positioned herself over my thigh, pulling my face to hers in a frantic kiss.
“I want you inside,” she moaned, rocking the apex of her hips against my thigh.
“Well, I want all of you, but we don’t always get what we want.” I nipped at her bottom lip, like I’d fantasized about only a moment before. “Unless you’ve changed your mind.”
