Her expression went to a very specific place — the controlled, deliberate flatness of someone deciding not to react to a thing. "The efficient kind."
"Or the kind who learned that walls work better than legs for keeping things out."
The flatness cracked.
Not much. A line appeared between her brows. Her hands, resting on the chair's arm panels, pressed slightly harder against the surface.
"You have some nerve," she said, "standing in my mechanism room, holding my best-trained operative like luggage, with your—" Her eyes moved down again, despite herself, and she completed the sentence with visible effort. "—with everything on full display, and deciding to philosophize at me."
Tianlong's attention had moved during this. It had moved to her dress — to the gap where the prosthetic leg met the fabric, to the way the dress fell, to the question his eyes were now posing without any particular urgency.
"Are you wearing panties," he said, "or are you naked underneath?"
