The Cold Between. Elizabeth Bonesteel

went off, and a rowdy cheer rose from the crowd. Elena blinked, disoriented; the dark, while diluted by the bioluminescent sidewalks outside the bar’s windows, was more absolute than anything she ever experienced back home, where the ship’s operational lights were everywhere. She had forgotten to watch the time, and now they had hit the Dead Hour. Everything but emergency systems would be off-line for nearly an hour.

      After a few seconds the bar’s interior was lit with a bank of portable lamps mounted high on the walls; the room was nearly as bright as before, but the light was cooler, and everything was faded to monochrome. Her companion was painted with light and shadow, lending drama to the strong angles of his face. He looked pale in the blue-white glow, and strangely unreal; she found she wanted to reach out just to see if he was really there.

      And then she was startled by a man lurching between the two of them, his hands slapping into the bar as he kept himself from stumbling to the ground. He had bright blue eyes and hair as jet-black as her companion’s, but his eyes were rheumy and unfocused, and he wore a deep scowl. She did not recognize him—he was not part of the entourage that had coalesced around Jessica—but he must have been in the pub for a long time. He was very, very drunk.

      He straightened himself up against the edge of the bar, and turned to look at her. “You do realize what you’re talking to,” he slurred, his voice overloud.

      This one she was less inclined to be nice to. Beyond his attitude, his timing was abysmal. “You do realize who I’m talking to is none of your business,” she snapped.

      It was a tone that had effectively driven away many men over the years. This one was too drunk to listen. “You military types,” he spat bitterly. “You come here and you flood our city and you talk to us because we’re quaint. I’ll bet you think pirates are quaint. But he’s nothing but a thief and a murderer.”

      Her companion cleared his throat. “I believe what she means is that this conversation does not concern you.” His words were polite, but there was ice in his tone. “Perhaps you’d like to return to your table.”

      “Fuck off,” the man shot over his shoulder; and then he took a step closer to Elena, millimeters from touching her. “You like bad boys, little girl? I can be as bad as you want.”

      And at that, her temper flared. “What I like,” she said deliberately, holding her ground, “are people with the brains to get lost when they’re not wanted.”

      At her words his face grew ugly, his brows drawing together, his lips pressing into a thin line. “If you think I’m going to let you walk out of here with this”—he spat out a word in the local dialect that she didn’t understand—“you must be a bigger whore than he is.”

      None of which made any sense, she realized, but then he clamped a hand over her arm, and she got a sense of his strength, even inebriated. He moved toward her, and she felt the heat of his body and smelled the liquor on his breath, and she had just enough time to think Oh, hell, I’m going to have to hit him, before she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and his hand was wrenched off of her, and then he was on the floor.

      Her companion stood over him, arms and legs relaxed, his hands tightened into fists. “This woman,” he said clearly, as the drunk stared up at him, “has made her wishes very clear.” His eyes, so light and amused when talking with her, were full of a dangerous calm. “If you ignore them again, I swear to you, you will not see the sun rise.”

      She took in the two men, saw the drunk shift against the wood floor, and then drop his eyes. He rolled, with more dignity than she would have thought possible, and climbed to his feet; then he brushed past, not looking at either of them, heading toward the exit with some haste. Her companion’s eyes followed him, deadly and dangerous, until he had disappeared.

      The room, which had gone quiet when the drunk had fallen, began to buzz with conversation again, the confrontation already old news. Elena felt heat rising to her face. Holy shit.

      The man watched the door for a moment. “You are unhurt?” he asked.

      She made a small affirmative sound, and he turned, meeting her eyes. The danger in his expression had been replaced by ordinary annoyance—and a shadow of regret. “You believe I have overstepped.”

      He was standing closer to her than he had been. He smelled of spices—cardamom, she thought, and maybe rosemary—and something sweet she could not identify. “Um,” she managed, then took a breath. “No, actually. I would have had to break his arm. Your way, at least he goes home in one piece.”

      “Hm.” He turned back to the door, still frowning. “Now you are making me wish I had let you deal with him.”

      Minutes ago she would have laughed at this, and resumed their light flirting. Now she could do nothing but stare at him, distracted by the way he shifted as he stood, by wondering what his hair felt like or whether he needed to shave. After a moment he looked back at her, his expression still dark. It should have made her shrink away, but she found she could no longer move.

      He seemed to realize then how he looked, because he shook himself, and the last of the irritation fell away. He studied her face, absorbed. “But there is still something wrong,” he observed, and she nodded.

      “It’s just—” This was all so odd, and yet it felt so familiar, as if she had been here before, would be here again. “I came here,” she explained, “thinking I knew what I wanted. I’m not sure I know anymore.”

      He kept studying her, and she felt herself blush more deeply; but she wanted to look back at him, wanted him to see what she was thinking. Something flickered momentarily over his face, fierce and hungry, and it was all she could do not to reach out to him, to fall toward him, just to see what he would do.

      “Perhaps we should discuss it somewhere else,” he suggested.

      She could have left then. She could have told him, honestly, that she was not brave enough. That was true, for a part of her. But that part of her was being shouted down, and she did not want to listen to it anymore.

      She nodded.

      He turned to the bartender and paid his tab, efficiently but not hurriedly. Then he met her eyes again and waited.

      Elena pushed away from the bar and headed for the door. The man in black followed her out.

       CHAPTER 2

      It was foolishness, of course. Trey was clear on that. Even as he followed her out of the bar, distracted by the easy sway of her hips, he knew he should walk her back to the spaceport and send her home.

      He also knew he wouldn’t.

      He had watched her since she arrived at the pub, trailing behind her boisterous friend like a silent and elegant shadow, uncomfortable and out of place and simply breathtakingly lovely. It was her beauty he had dwelled on, at first: her tall, slim figure, elegant and regal in her telltale gray and black uniform; the curve of her jaw; the dark hair tumbling in curls into her wide, expressive brown eyes. It took him longer to recognize the depth of her discomfort, and longer still to detect the intensity of her desire to escape. She was laughing and joking with the others, but she was not drinking liquor, and he realized she was deflecting more than making conversation. When she had come up to the bar he had admired her walk, but he had noticed how careful she was not to touch anyone as she worked her way through the crowd.

      He had not planned on talking to her—during his years with PSI he had learned not to socialize with Central Corps soldiers—but watching her, he had become curious. Listening to her gentle dismissal of the flirtatious young man, intrigued. And upon speaking to her … She was so refreshingly direct, and, much to his astonishment, interested. He tended to dismiss romantic attention as a by-product of his past, but she had said nothing of his former profession, and had not even reacted when that jackass Luvidovich had brought it up.

      Damn