Summary: Runa’s tendency to ensure she always remains one step ahead of him infuriates Heinrix to no end, especially whilst he’s just trying to do his job.
“You intrigue me,” she began, just loud enough for him to be able to recognise that she was addressing him, and not the plant she was considering so fondly. “You skulk around the engineering decks and interrogate my people. Then, when they don’t give you what you want, you place pict-recorders around their quarters and their workstations. You demand their secrets. And you didn’t expect me to find out?”
A muscle ticked in Heinrix’s tightly wired jaw.
“I have never once subjected a member of your crew to an interrogation, Your Ladyship.”
Runa narrowed her eyes as she glanced back up at him, her gaze alarmingly cold. “You and I have a very different understanding of the word interrogate.”
She turned, and the severe steel heels of her boots came down remarkably softly, cushioned against the carpet runner. She rounded the corner of her desk leisurely, the glove of her left hand still held within her right. Heinrix’s gaze wavered unintentionally, dropping to the black leather of her tall, over-the-knee boots, lingering on the silver Aquilas that adorned the front of her ankles.
He glanced back up to meet her eye, stupidly hoping that she hadn’t noticed him observing her yet knowing that she most certainly had noticed it all the same.
