Page 45 of No Strings Attached

Eventually, Vi sat up a little and looked at his face, saying, “Thank you for my new pan-tees and coveralls. I also have a few surprises for you. This was the first one,” she gestured around the room, “no water needed.”

Bahbi was dumbfounded. How could this be possible? Obviously, he knew conclusively that it was possible, Vi had shown him in the best way possible, but why did they lie about it on Trallia? And also, how had Vi known it was a lie?

He just said, “I don’t understand, Vi. Why would they tell us a lie? How did you know?”

She shrugged, “It really didn’t make any sense that water would be required. Seemed like a myth to me, so I thought we’d see if we could dispel it. I think we have some pretty conclusive evidence, don’t you?”

He smiled and nodded.

She smiled back, then bent her head down, and kissed him. He returned the kiss and deepened it, until they were both panting.

Vi pulled back a little to regard him, then simply said, “I missed you,” and put her head back down on his shoulder, breathing her warm little breaths onto his neck and slowly sliding her body up and down to rub against his fur.

“You did?”

“Yes,” she said, into his neck. Then she lifted her head up to look at him again, “Did you miss me?”

He laughed and rolled them both over so that she was under him. “Only like air, water, and food,” he said, as he began to lick her neck and behind her ears.

She wrapped her legs around his, wiggled underneath him, and said, “Do you want your next surprise?”

They had to worm-wiggle over to the far side of the bed so that Vi could open the bedside drawer; inside the drawer, she showed him a little control with a button in the middle.

“That’s surprise number two.”

“What does it do?”

“It drops the bed so we slide down that pipe into the water again.”

“Wait…what? I was in here to take a shower when the security team was working on it. They said you asked them to disable it.”

“Hell yeah, I did, the automatic dump feature. Who the hell wants to be awakened that way? I asked them to secretly build me something that would allow us to control it, so we could drop down when we wanted to. Although,” she said, a little sadly, “I think we’re going to have to turn off the heat down there andfill that pool up with fish pretty soon if we’re going to make the asteroid self-sustaining.” She thought about it for a minute, “That means, if we want a few more times down there, we’re going to have to get them in soon.”

Bahbi didn’t hesitate. He flipped them again, so she was on top, wrapped one arm and both legs around her, then moved to hit the button.

Vi yelled, “Wait!” and Bahbi froze.

She smiled at him sheepishly and said, “Let’s throw the pillows and blankets off to the side of the room first, so we don’t lose them again.”

Bahbi snorted laughter.

Now, they floated in the warm water, Vi on top. She asked, “How can we be floating above the water this high? It seems like we both should be more submerged. I mean, only my arms and legs are trailing in the water, my whole torso is above it.”

Bahbi replied casually, “Hmm? Oh, I can control my buoyancy. I’ve been keeping it high so that you’re not having any trouble keeping your face out of the water when we’re lounging like this.”

“Is it hard?”

“Um…no, it’s automatic. I just think about it, and it adjusts.”

She raised up to look at him before saying, “That’s so cool!”

Bahbi changed the subject, “Uh, Vi? Did you have them install a way for us to get out of here, or are we going to need to be rescued again?”

She laughed and pointed to roughly where the doorway Acken had uncovered was, “There should be a door release over there,and, if they followed all of my instructions, a little shelf to the side of the door with towels on it, so I don’t have to walk through the garden and back upstairs naked.”

“So, you were thinking of a way to come back down here before you left on the ship?”

“Yes.”

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