Chapter 21

A Night that Lasts Forever

“I’m unhappy, Ryatt. Can it wait until morning?” Jenna asked, trying her hardest not to let her extreme frustration show on her face or in her voice.

“No. It’s about tonight. I don’t feel good about what just happened with the dinner, with Fallcet, with the way he was ejected, or anything else. I just disconnected the Sand Palace and gave instructions for it to be moved away from our main cluster. I’ll go through it in the morning to make sure he didn’t leave us any surprises.”

“But if he was removed so forcefully, I’m sure he didn’t have time…” Jenna trailed off while looking at Ryatt’s expression. “Okay, you’re right. I’m a baby and I was born yesterday. He could have planted all sorts of devices for disrupting signals, recording video and audio, and who knows what else? Since you’re my babysitter, I’ll let you decide what games we should play.”

“Very good,” He said sternly. “I’d like to continue the metaphor as it puts me in charge, but it tastes sour. I’m not your babysitter, I’m your Chief of Security, and I feel uncomfortable with you going to bed tonight on your own. If you want me to sleep on the floor, I’ll sleep on the floor. If you want to sleep in my room, I’ll stay there with you, and sleep on the floor. If you want to sleep in your pod, I’d support that, as long as you let me sleep on the floor next to you.”

Jenna pulled her eyebrows together. “You’re really worried.”

“Yes. I am. That guy was absolutely cut from the same cloth as those dolts who messed you up that terrible night. I can’t leave you alone. I know you don’t want me in your room as part of the status quo, but tonight, my gut is a mess and I have to stay with you.”

Jenna wasn’t sure if Ryatt was using the incident with Fallcet to get his foot back in her bedroom door, but she felt uneasy too. “Come on. You don’t have to sleep on the floor.”

“I see,” he said briskly, clearly not getting where she was going with her concession. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but I’m going to have to play the Sardius card.”

“The Sardius card?” Jenna laughed. “Is that the one where you say that Sardius would have wanted whatever bananas thing you’re asking for and you just borrow his credibility like it’s a shirt?”

He put an angry hand on his hip. “You must know I don’t want to do this sort of thing. If I was going to use his name to get what I wanted, I could have already told you that he set us up.”

Jenna’s eyes went wide. “Did he?”

“No. Other than telling me where I could get a job, he didn’t.”

“Are you saying he wouldn’t be happy thinking of us lying in bed together?” Jenna asked, licking her bottom lip and getting interested.

Ryatt snuffed. “No man in the universe would be happy with the thought of you being in bed with another man. Everyone wants you for themselves. He’s not special in that way, but if I didn’t protect you with every bone in my body, he would rip out my nervous system to use as dental floss.”

“I was just going to say that you don’t have to sleep on the floor because I’ll let you sleep on the bed… next to me,” she said slowly, fixing the misunderstanding.

“Really? You’re going to be that easy?”

Jenna nodded like he was crazy. “Tonight I am. That guy gave me the creeps. I’m not feeling so good. I want you to go check on Smoothie while I get changed. If she’s okay, come join me. If she’s not, you have to find a way to make her comfortable, even if that means we all have a sleepover in her room. Let me know how it goes. I’m going to get changed.”

Jenna left Ryatt in the hall and went to her room by herself.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Things are getting racy tonight,” Ixy sang in her earpiece. “If you wanted to reward me for good behavior, you could let me turn up the heat in the room hot enough so that Ryatt has to sleep with his shirt off.”

“Isn’t Conrad about to come on?” Jenna reminded her PA callously.

“I could have an hour or so to drool over Mr. Boneman before Conrad takes over,” Ixy pleaded.

Alone in her dressing room, Jenna started a different kind of conversation. “Ixy, I’ve been told that this palace is armed. Is that true?”

“Yeah, there’s a gun in each room that fires bullets or tranquilizer darts. Does my lady have a preference?”

“If I wanted to shoot someone, I would talk to you about firing those, wouldn’t I?” Jenna questioned. “Is that a Ryatt thing at all?”

“It’s a Ryatt thing in that he would need to reload the guns after their magazines have been discharged, but they’re all at full. I suppose each one of them is due for a test fire. From what I’ve seen, they haven’t been fired since Sardius took a shot at Armen. Darn. I wish I’d been there for that.”

“We need to work out a code between us for when I want you to fire them,” Jenna said, prompting her PA back on track.

“Sure. One code for bullets and another code for tranquilizer darts.”

“What should our codes be?” Jenna asked. “They’ve got to be something that I wouldn’t normally say and something that wouldn’t give the person in the room the hint that they’re about to be fired at.”

“Hang on. Ivy is saying she worked out codes like this with Excelyn. The code for bullets is…” Ixy started laughing. “She tells the person who is about to be shot that she’s on her period, which is hilarious because Excelyn probably hasn’t had a period in thirty years.”

“Uh… I don’t think that will work for me. I still get periods,” Jenna admitted with a frown.

“No problem. Ask the person if they’ve ever painted an entire room red. It sounds natural for you to talk to someone about home decorating because you’ve had renovations done.”

“Yeah. That will work. What about the tranquilizer darts?”

“Ask them if they get woozy when they see a boneman with his shirt off,” Ixy suggested. “You’d never say that normally.”

“And you’d be amused?”

“I would be. But I’m going to quiet down because Ryatt is on his way back. Smoothie and Misha talked it out and Smoothie has just gone to sleep, so he’s free to join you,” Ixy said with a subtle smirk.

“Thanks.” Jenna finished changing out of her dress and she slipped into her idea of the perfect pajama set. It was soft gray leggings that finished just after her knee. Then the top was piles of light fabric that draped over her body with so many natural waves that the locations of any lumps or curves underneath were completely secret. Her perfect pajama set.

She came out of the closet and saw Ryatt. He hadn’t stopped by his room to pull out any nightwear. He was tugging on the remaining buttons of his coat and yawning like her bedroom was his bedroom and he merely needed to drop his clothes where he stood before getting into bed with her.

“Don’t you want some sweatpants or something?” she asked, a little dazed at how good he looked exposing his neck and collarbone.

“Nah. I’m going to keep my boots on. I’ll shed my coat because it’s been too hot to wear it all day.” He took it off and draped it over the edge of a nearby chair. Then he started pacing and snapping his fingers. “I still feel too antsy to sleep. Something is wrong. Getting rid of that guy was too easy. He just walked to the pod and got on? It doesn’t make sense. With all his friends in the AAMC he was able to take a no from you and get on the pod that easily? Nah, something is wrong.”

“Have you been talking to the orbital team?”

Ryatt snorted. “Those guys? Ixy says they improved dramatically after Temptic joined them. He’s got strong reasons to stop his father’s program from looking foolish. I’ll get them on the line. Why don’t you lie down and try to sleep? There’s no point waiting for something that might not happen.”

Jenna did. She felt a wave of disappointment come over her. Had she really wanted to go to bed with Ryatt? Or was she still unsettled by everything that happened? The idea that she needed Ryatt to comfort her made her sick of herself, so she covered herself with her blankets, dimmed the lights, and assumed the position she normally slept in.

“Good grief,” Ryatt huffed in strong disapproval. “You’re sleeping like a shrimp that has its whiskers handcuffed to its flippers. I thought I taught you to stop doing that.”

She felt his hands on her through the blankets moving her limbs to stretch her out. She tried to obey him, but the moment he let go of her and left the room to check the control panel, she reverted back to the shrimp pose.

Jenna thought she fell asleep quite quickly. She tossed, turned, tried to stretch out, and crumpled back in on herself.

When she felt hands on her, she thought it was Ryatt trying to pull her skeleton into straight lines, but when she opened her eyes to look at him, she saw someone wearing a military helmet.

“I could die,” she practically spat in disgust in his face.

But she’d already had a tranquilizer discharged in the muscles of her arm. How much more security did she need?