Chapter 9 · Whoever's Not in This Room

"Get off me before I break your wrist the other way." Milo's voice comes out flat against the deck plate, but his pulse is going under my palm like something trying to dig out.

I don't get off him. I've got his wrist pinned over his head, my knee wedged between his, and the only reason I'm still winning this is that he let me get here — which means he's letting me stay here, which means neither of us has said that part out loud yet.

"You're not fighting for real," I tell him. My mask's fogged at the edge. I can taste him through it anyway, that hot copper-cedar thing crawling down the back of my throat.

"I'm fighting exactly as real as you are, Captain." He turns his head, bares the line of his throat like it's a dare and not a surrender. There's a gland flush there, dark under the skin, a bruise that isn't a bruise. "You want to check my pulse or you want to smell it?"

"Shut up."

"Make me."

I don't. That's the problem. I lean in instead —