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Of course. Because that’s not weird at all.” She sighed and tapped a few commands into the computer. “All right. It’s my turn to run the show. Taking the ship out of auto, on my mark.” In her peripheral vision, she saw Reiyn brace himself. She barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “Three, two, one, mark,” she said, tapping the command. She grabbed the yoke and eased the ship around, getting a feel for it again. It had been at least six months since she’d taken it up. Fuel cells were expensive, and the remnants of Earth’s security forces as well as random Alphan patrols made joyriding dangerous. She was lucky she had a ship at all. If Jaxt and Zoen hadn’t given it to her… She shook her head. No sense speculating on what ifs. “Where to?” she asked Reiyn.
    “Five klicks to starboard,” he said, enlarging the display even more. “There, do you see that?”
    She peered at the screen. “Looks like a rock.”
    “It should. It is camouflaged.” Reiyn unbuckled his restraints. “We will have to dock with it.”
    “Hell to the no, Mr. Crazy,” Cori said, appalled. “I have an EV suit.” She looked him over. “Actually, I have two. One should fit you. This baby doesn’t have docking apparatus. Never did. It’s a courier vessel, not a warship.” She patted the console in front of her. “Plus, that pod isn’t big enough to have an airlock, anyway. We’ll go out and grab him. I doubt it would fit into my minuscule cargo hold, even if we had a way to grapple with it, which we don’t. I have a med-sack we can stuff him into to get him inside.” She adjusted their trajectory to match the floating rock and reset the auto-pilot, then stood up. “I’ll get the monkey suits. We can put them on in the airlock.” Reiyn looked to be the same size as Jaxt, so the larger one ought to fit him. A sudden flashback to Reiyn jerking his hips into her flashed through her, and she flushed, immediately shoving the memory aside. Even so, the sensation of what it’d felt like to have all that male strength pleasuring her lingered. It had been quick and dirty, but he’d made sure she enjoyed it.
    And what does it say about you that the first guy you have sex with in years resembles Sky’s mates? she mused, swallowing hard.
    Reiyn stared at her for a long moment, eyes flicking down to her lips, then back up again. “Very well,” he finally said, standing up, face still blank as ever.
    ****
    Reiyn turned his back as he undressed, not wanting Sky to see his hip. The gems embedded into his flesh would give away his origins faster than anything else, excepting his skin changing color, but his control over that ability was absolute. The tape he’d used to secure his communicator to his abdomen hid the gems, but he had no intentions of risking his identity with careless behavior. He’d played human for twenty years now, with not one slip-up. Perhaps I should have the gems removed, he thought, not for the first time. It would certainly make his life on Earth easier, except, he couldn’t bear to take them out.
    All Xyran males had gems embedded somewhere on their bodies at birth, even slaves. It was status and culture and cruelty, all wrapped up into one barbaric package. A fortuitous oddity of Xyran healing meant that they could embed things into their skin with very little risk of infection. Most Xyrans had gems placed in their flesh as they grew older and gained status, but Reiyn had escaped with his mother at too young an age to acquire the taste for it, or to have it done to him by the male who’d impregnated his mother. Instead, he’d done it himself. The diamonds he’d chosen were very similar to the ones embedded into his childhood friend, Kyuk. Reiyn had placed them in his skin in memory. Diamonds were exceedingly common on Xyran, and all Kyuk’s low-status warrior father could afford were three of them before his untimely death.
    For Reiyn, getting his hands on enough diamonds for this use had meant