The traditional obligatory offering to Boss Joss. Love his work, got bored, and decided to to run with it!

This is a story co-written with a very good friend of mine, aka DeanWinchester here at FF.net. Humor, smut, jealousy, with just a dash of angst thrown in later chapters to make things interesting. ;-D Bask in the Mal/Inara-ness!

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The following morning, Inara sat on the silken cushions of her settee, glancing at her view screen as she had for the last few hours. In her efforts to utterly ignore Mal until she felt confident enough to face him, she locked herself away from the crew, browsing through the client registry.

She now had a less than pristine reputation among the higher profile clients in the sector, but Inara’s name still held clout among the aristocracy of many planets. Her cup certainly was not dry. She’d show Mal, she wasn’t just a dependant on this ship, at the mercy of the Captain’s whims and ‘jobs’.

River watched silently from the entrance to Inara’s shuttle as the Companion clicked through the client registry. She stood on her tip toes, spying through the porthole on her locked door. River knew that she had no intention of choosing a client today, or ever for that matter. Inara’s heart simply was not in it.

The girl smirked, sensing the tension that had gone on between Mal and Inara the previous night. The air was thick with it, in fact. Dreams, thoughts hidden, on both their parts, desires repressed for far too long. The two were liable to kill each other if this dance of theirs went on for much longer.

Unexpectedly, a familiar name suddenly flickered on the screen, along with a personal note in place. Inara’s mouth opened slightly in shock, while a smile soon replacing it as she saw that the name in question was now on planet.

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Minutes later, Kaylee stumbled into the main hold of Serenity, leaning drowsily against Simon as the two returned from their romantic getaway. An entire night of