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“You’re a grown woman and in training,” he said. “If you want me out of your room, it’ll take you just one knee and a little leverage to put me out. But you can’t just tell me to go, not this time. I love you. I’m not going to meekly walk away.” He pulled her face to his and kissed her.

He had a glimpse of her widening eyes. Then he was lost in the sweetness of her lips.

He could have tensed against the impact he was sure would follow, but did not. If this was to be the last kiss he was ever to have from her, he wanted to enjoy every millisecond of it.

And the milliseconds stretched into full seconds, and her arms snaked around his neck and held him tight. Finally, it was a need for oxygen that forced him to break their kiss. He held her tight, looking into eyes that were wide but not alarmed, lips that were curved ever so slightly into an enigmatic smile. “If I’m lying in a ball in the corridor,” he said, “I’m doing a tremendous job of hallucinating that I’m not.”

“Now’s not the time to joke,” she said.

“Very well.”

She put her fingers up in his hair, turned his head this way and that, and looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. “So this is the cockpit Wedge,” she said. “The one the enemy has boxed in, and suddenly he snaps and goes off in an unanticipated direction, changing all the rules.”

“That’s me.”

“It’s very becoming. I wish you’d shown him to me before. Why aren’t you like this on the ground?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never been all that comfortable on the ground. But I’m learning.”

“I’d say you were.” She kissed him.

When they broke for air a second time, Wedge noted, without surprise, that they were seated on her sofa again. He hadn’t remembered getting there, but supposed that the sofa legs were not as close to buckling as his were.

“What you said before,” Iella said, a whisper against his mouth, “about being in your life for good, sounded a lot like a proposal.”

“Let me make it formal.” Wedge pulled back, to stand, to adopt a traditional pose, but Iella didn’t release him.

“Later,” she said. “After Adumar. Let’s just say for now that I’m willing to stop making mistakes if you are.”

“It’s a deal.” He supposed she wanted to hear the words in surroundings less alien, in times less stressful.

“But you need to understand something. No matter what a great leader you may be, Intelligence doesn’t take orders from Starfighter Command.”

“Or the other way around.”

“Right. Or the other way around.”

“I can live with that.”

Her expression became worried. “Can you live with this? Wedge, I’m an Intelligence officer. If my superior tells me to, I may end up on the opposite side from you.”

“Just until this Adumar mess is over,” he reminded her.

She nodded. “But will you be able to forgive me? If I have to throw a net over you and ship you offworld because of your damned fool cockpit-jockey antics?”

“I’d forgive you. Though I won’t have to.” He gave her a confident grin. “You wouldn’t be able to catch me.”

Her return smile was that of a well-fed predator. “I have the feeling I can catch you anytime I want.” She kissed him again.

When Wedge finally left Iella’s quarters, Janson moved out from his hiding position to join him. Janson was not graceful going down the stairs; one of his knees tended to pop, and his posture was stiff.

“You’re getting old, Wes.”

“I am not old. I’m stiff from waiting for hours in that stupid corner. With just three pastries off the Allegiance to sustain me. Hiding out from all the other skulker traffic. Did you get what you wanted from Iella?”

Wedge turned a surprised face toward Janson. “What?”

“The holocomm access to General Cracken? Did she say you could?”

“Oh, that. No.” He felt his smile return. Wes was merely baiting him, as usual. “Say, what happened next door, anyway?”

They reached the bottom of the stairs and marched, Janson hobbling, through the foyer toward the street. “The guy we met hit the guy who lived there just as he was going in. They fought for few seconds, and then there was a lot of quiet, and then the guy we talked to came staggering