The Tracker's Dilemma: (A Mandrake Company Science Fiction Romance) by Ruby Lionsdrake Read Free Book Online

he said, choosing the most innocuous words as possible. “I thought that if I was in your study, you might let me do that, and that maybe you would like to get to know me. Or at least my name.” He smiled and stuck his hands in his pockets, trying to look as inoffensive and nonthreatening as possible. Lauren wasn’t saying anything—she looked mildly stunned. He didn’t know if that meant he should change the topic or just keep nervously babbling. “I didn’t know then that you would just give me a number. Not that A27 doesn’t have a nice ring.”
    Her lips pursed. “I know your name, Sergeant.”
    “Oh?” He debated whether he wanted to ask her to prove it. She had never used it within his hearing. Maybe she just didn’t care enough to do so.
    “I don’t think I can say it. It’s unflattering. Do you not find it so?”
    “Well, I suppose. I’ve gotten used to it. I take it as a compliment to my tracking skills. You can call me Heath, if you want. Or Sergeant Hawthorn, if that’s too familiar. But, ah, I’d prefer Heath.” In fact, he wouldn’t mind at all if she used that. His mother and friends had, of course, used his name when he had been growing up, except for his brothers, who’d called him variations of Slug, Baby, and Rat, depending on the occasion. His sister’s favorite name for him had been Get Out of the Way.
    “All right,” Lauren said after some consideration. “Heath. But Heath, I must tell you that I’m not interested in relationships with men.”
    “Oh.” His shoulders slumped. “You prefer women?”
    He remembered speculation he’d heard from the other mercenaries, that Lauren, Ankari, and their pilot, Jamie, had some good times when they flew off together in their shuttle for “business purposes.”
    “No,” Lauren said. “I’m not interested in relationships with women, either.” That faint smile curved her lips upward again, though it had a bemused tinge to it. “Why do people always assume it has to be one or the other?”
    “Uhm, well, what are the other options? Asexuality?”
    “That is an option, though there’s typically a spectrum with sexuality, and a strict label might not work for everybody. I do tend to find the male body more attractive than the female form—” her gaze flickered toward him, “—but I have no urge to engage in coitus with anyone from either sex.”
    “None at all?” He tried not to gape since she would probably consider that rude, but he couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Though maybe it was promising that she found men more attractive than women? “You don’t ever, uhm, feel the urge to...” He kept himself from pointing at her nether regions—that would definitely be rude.
    “I’m perfectly capable of stimulating myself when I have urges.”
    “I—oh.”
    She said it so clinically that he didn’t know what else to say. Tick decided it would also be rude to imagine her stimulating herself and was relieved that she wasn’t the one who was developing mind-reading techniques.
    She smiled and laid a hand on his forearm. “I will call you Heath, though.”
    A few of his wires crossed, and sparks lit up his brain at that touch. Dear Buddha, he did have an itch he needed scratched. He managed not to react outwardly, saying only, “Thank you.”
    She lowered her hand and turned back toward the brain scan.
    He should have dropped the subject, but the thought that she’d simply never experienced sex and therefore didn’t know what she was missing sauntered into his mind, and he couldn’t help but ask, “Have you ever had, er, coitus with someone?”
    “Yes.” She poked at the holodisplay, bringing up a chart.
    “Oh. It wasn’t Striker, was it? Because that would horrify any woman away from sex.”
    She snorted. “No. A professor I had in grad school who convinced me that I needed to experiment, if only for scientific curiosity,” she said, her tone going extremely dry. “He knew me well enough to make the right