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She burst out laughing.

He looked down at her, eyes narrowed. But the expression on her face was so bright that he couldn’t help it. He started laughing too, a low rumble that shook through his chest.

She was so beautiful like this, water beading on her lashes, her whole face lit up with genuine amusement. Not the sharp, defensive humor she used on everyone else. Just... happiness.

“It’s not going to work.” She shook her head, still grinning. “We just don’t fit.”

He growled low in his throat and pulled her closer. “We fit last night.”

“Last night we weren’t trying to do it standing up in a shower built for one.”

“Don’t care.” He ducked to nuzzle at her neck, nipping the wet skin just below her ear. She shivered against him. “I’ll make it fit.”

“Bossy—“

Stevie’s voice crackled over the comm, cutting through the steam. “All hands to engineering. Briefing in ten. Blythe. Rann. If you two lovebirds aren’t out of that room in five minutes, I’m coming down there and dragging you out myself.”

B groaned and dropped her head back against the tiles with a soft thunk.

“Later,” she said.

He pressed one last kiss to her temple, ignoring the ache in his cock and the urge to tell Stevie exactly where she could shove her briefing. “Later.”

Definitely later.

Because he already knew he’d be walking around with blue balls all day.

Trall.

11

It didn’t take them long to reach engineering, but by the time they had, a hard knot had formed in Blythe’s stomach. One that dropped right down into her boots as she saw Stevie, Hope, Callie, and Layla in a tight cluster around something on the deck.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

They stepped aside, and she sighed. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Two drone units lay on their sides in the middle of the floor, their casings blackened and cracked. They weren’t big things, not compared to the cargo loaders. Each was about the size of a small dog, squat and practical, with articulated arms folded tight against their bodies and survey sensors tucked into reinforced housings.

Why the hell had they used the drone? They were supposed to help them build a new life on the colony. They were meant for mapping land to pick out the best area to put their settlement, or for working out where to plant food. Not... whatever the hell this lot of hooligans had done with them.

She crouched beside the nearest one, her gaze sweeping over the buckled chassis and the severed bundle of cables hanging from its underside.

Dammit, the entire sensor array was gone. This one was fucked.

She frowned as she poked at what was left. Okay, maybe this one wasn’t a complete goner. She’d pulled worse things back from the dead. The central processing unit had taken a hit, and the left drive assembly had been crushed inward. Without replacement parts⁠—

Shit.

She sighed. The whole point of them disappearing was to really disappear. That was the whole point of No Contact. Which meant replacement parts were going to be an issue.

The second drone looked a little better than the first. Its outer housing was scorched, one of its arms twisted at a nasty angle, but its main body hadn’t split open. Fixable, assuming she could cannibalize parts from the other one.

Her gaze shifted.

Two unfamiliar devices sat beside the drones. Small, dark, and ugly. Neither belonged anywhere on her ship.

“This one looks like what I saw behind the vent housing.” Rann squatted in front of one, his big body folded into a crouch as he reached out to it.