"Say that again," Milo said, low, right against my jaw, "and see what happens to your hand."
My hand was still on his throat. His hand was still wrapped around my wrist, bone grinding on bone, and neither of us had let go since the patch on my collar went dead. That's the part I couldn't get past — the patch failing, and under it, him. Cedar and gun oil and something under that, something sweeter, something my body wanted before my brain caught up and called it a threat.
"I asked what's behind the grate," I said. "You don't get to just not answer that."
"I don't get to?" He laughed, no humor in it, teeth showing. "Cute. You've got a badge, Rourke. I've got a perimeter and forty men who'd gut you for less than what you just did to my throat."
That's when the floor moved.
Not much. Half an inch, maybe less, a hard mechanical drop and then a lock, gears biting somewhere under the deck plate, and the air pressure in the bio-lock changed so fast my ears popped. Red light bled down the walls. Somewhere overhead a relay clicked twice and went quiet.
"What did you do," Milo said.
"Nothing. That's contamination protocol. Gravity clamp." I could hear my own voice going flat, the way it does when I'm scared and trying not to sound it. "It locks two bio-signatures inside a shared field until decon confirms neither one's compromised."
"So unlock it."
"I can't. Not from in here. That's the whole design."
He swore, short and ugly, and tried to step back from me — and couldn't. His boot didn't move. My boot didn't move. The clamp wasn't just on the floor, it was on us, some field dragging our mass toward a shared center like we were one body the room had decided to keep. He shoved at my chest and I felt the shove land somewhere around my spine instead of knocking me anywhere.
"That's not possible," he said.
"Welcome to Port Providence."
He was close enough now that I could feel his heartbeat through his shirt, hammering fast, faster than a man his size should run even mid-fight. My own pulse had stopped being separate from his about ten seconds ago. Breath for breath, chest against chest, the two of us locked into a foot of shared air and getting smaller by the second. His shirt had torn at the collar somewhere in the last round, and I could see the strap of muscle at his neck moving every time he swallowed, every time that pulse jumped.
"Your patch," he said. "When'd it die."
"Middle of putting you on the ground."
"Great timing."
"You think I planned this?"
"I think your body's been lying to you since the second I walked into your wing, Captain." His mouth was an inch from my ear now, not by his choice, not by mine, just the field dragging us tighter as the clamp cycled again, another half inch, another click from the relay. "You've been tasting me for ten minutes and calling it anger."
"Shut up."
"Make me."
I grabbed a fistful of his collar to shove him back and instead pulled him in, and that's the part I still don't have an excuse for — my mouth ended up at the side of his throat, right over the gland, right where the scent was strongest, cedar and salt and that sweet undertone that had my teeth aching in my own skull, actually aching, like something in me had been waiting years to do exactly this. He went still. Not soft-still. Coiled-still, a held breath, muscle locked under my hand like a man deciding whether to break my jaw or let this happen.
"Cade." First time he'd used my name. It came out wrecked, cracked down the middle. "Don't."
"Then tell me what's on the other side of that grate."
"That's not — " His hand came up, not pushing me off, gripping the back of my neck instead, fingers digging in like he needed something to hold onto that wasn't the floor. His nails bit skin. "That's not how this works."
"It's exactly how this works. You want me off you, you talk."
"And if I don't?"
My teeth were already at his skin. Not biting. Not yet. Close enough that I could feel his pulse jump under my lips, close enough that one wrong move from either of us and there'd be no taking it back — a mark like that doesn't wash off, doesn't get filed under misconduct, doesn't get explained to Command as an accident. He knew it too. I felt him swallow, felt the whole line of his throat move against my mouth.
The relay clicked a third time. Somewhere below us a valve hissed, pressure dumping into a line I couldn't see, and a thin readout on the wall panel started counting numbers I didn't want to read out loud.
"Five seconds," I said. "That's what the clamp gives us before decon calls it a breach and floods this whole lock with foam. Five seconds, Drake. You yield the floor, or I finish this and you wear my mark into that cartel meeting tonight."
"You wouldn't."
"Try me."
His grip on my neck tightened instead of letting go, and for one half-second I couldn't tell if he was pulling me closer or getting ready to break my wrist doing it. His breath went ragged against my ear, hot, uneven, nothing like the calm voice he'd used on me twenty minutes ago through the grate.
"Four," the panel said, flat and mechanical, and neither of us so much as looked at it.
"Fine," he said, and it cost him — I heard it cost him, heard the way the word dragged out of his chest like it hurt worse than the wrist lock had. "Fine, I'll — "
He never finished it.
My teeth were already against his skin, right on the gland, and the clamp field shuddered under us like it was about to let go, or take hold, and there was no way left to tell which one of us had actually won the floor.