Page 17 of Loaned to the Leonid Knight

“I’m sorry. I know that trick very well, indeed. But perhaps, just in these rooms, we can be soft together?”

Her eyes closed, and her head tilted. Sasha let her cheek burrow into his paw, realizing that it was roughly the size of her face, that Gideon’s paw could cup her from chin to forehead if he wanted.

“Well, seeing as we’re doing some pretty life-changing stuff, I don’t see why not,” she sighed. “It’s been a long, long time since I tried being soft with anyone. That’s why I know I might be ableto give someone a child, but I don’t think I should raise one. A mom should be able to be soft. Loving.”

Gideon said nothing, just slowly let his digits stroke through her hair and up and down her cheek. “I’m sorry it’s been so hard. Tell me why?”

“You don’t need to know all that.”

“Well, maybe I’d like to. Maybe I’d like to know lots of things about a person, not just what I’m ‘permitted’ to know as a servant on the outside, never in the inner circle, despite handling all the problems my employer creates.”

Sasha looked up at him. “When you put it that way... Sit down. I’m suddenly starving.”

HIS SASHA HAD NOT HADeven a tenth of the good experiences he’d had. Her mother had placed her with her grandmother to raise, then disappeared. She knew no one as family except for the dear, sweet, strict Abuela who had died all too young and all too recently. The pain stuck out of his Sasha like knives in her back.

And yes, he knew that thinking of her as “his Sasha” would hurt like hell later, but it was the sweetest form of make-believe tonight, to sit and hold her hand over wine and delicious food, talk about her sorrows first, and then share some of his.

“It’s sort of an intersystemic grief. You ask everyone, anyone, from the richest to the poorest, who they lost during the Queen Fever, and they’ll rattle off so many names. I lost both parents and my sisters to the virus—yes, even my father, who contracted it after two bouts of back-to-back nursing of my mother and sisters. They all had simple funerals. They’re buried at the cemetery at the foot of Imazi Hills. Farhet and Memhet, my employer and his brother, lost their sisters and mother, too. They had a year of mourning, and there is a shrine dedicatedto them behind the Temple of Bastet in the district. We carry on. But servants carry on more quietly, lest our trouble interfere with the troubles of someone better than us.”

Sasha moved her chair closer to him. “That’s not the way it is everywhere in the Felix Orbus Galaxy, right?”

“Not at all.”

“Then why stay?”

“Well, until the virus hit, my family was there. Until about three years ago, everything was still closed off. Quarantines were in place. Even now, rolling quarantines hit without warning, blocking off some planets, shutting down interplanetary travel. And it was familiar. It was irritating, but safe.”

And now she leaned against him, holding her glass. “That’s why I never left the slums where I grew up. Safe, but irritating. Only, no, it was never safe, but I knew those dangers. We have a saying on my planet— ‘better the devil you know.’”

“Wise. But then why come here? These dangers are new.”

Sasha’s hand was on his arm, her head resting on his bicep. She seemed drowsy. Peaceful. He let his eyes close, still listening.

“I got tired of my contracts getting bought by sleazy people. I’d get hired to work as a medical assistant—I had a year of training before my abuela died. I never finished the training, but... Well, I’d get hired to work at an elder care facility and suddenly find myself pushed into a closet with some handsy guy. I’d hit him with a tablet and leave. I had no fear of fighting back. I just got tired of so many things. When I heard about this through a friend of my roommate, I thought I might look into it. She failed, too unreliable to return the communications on time, but I passed. Felid credits are worth three times as much as Sapien-Three credits, too. Once I got paid the first fee for the medical screening and initial survey, I was hooked. Funny, but it was safer. It all felt so much safer, at least until I was actuallyaboard the ship heading to the Milky Way Intergalactic Port,” Sasha sighed.

“And now?”

She hesitated, then snuggled into his side. “It’s much,muchsafer.”

SASHA WOKE UP TO SOMETHINGhulking and dark leaning over her. Placing her on her bed. “Stop!” she let out one hoarse command, fear tearing through her.

“Shhh, my Queen, my Sasha. You fell asleep,” Gideon soothed. “You’re safe, in your own quarters.”

She said nothing, realizing that she was now being tucked in. That Gideon had paused to pat her head and let his paw linger, stroking back her hair from where it had fallen over the side of her face.

She realized that she was shivering without his warmth, the warmth she’d fallen asleep on, cuddled into his strong body that seemed so much hotter than hers. She reached out and snagged his sleeve. “Are you tired?”

“A little. It’s the hypersleep. It doesn’t wear off completely for about a week, or so I hear.”

“You could sleep here. Next to me. If you want.”

“That is a very tempting offer. But—”

“But?”

“You would think less of me, because I would want to curl myself around you. There, that’s me being honest.”

“Do you mean fuck me?” she asked, voice slightly thick and scratchy with sleep.