Page 27 of Prima
Rendered speechless by her factual rebuttal?
She titters. “How does your uniform look on me, by the way?”
It fits her pretty well since they are similar in height. But there is no mirror to let her know whether she looks dashing.
“It’s an ugly uniform. Be glad you’d look decent even in a burlap sack.”
Goodness, did he just call her pretty? Or maybe even beautiful?
“So you left your boat just this side of the border when you went to spy on the Risshvai in their waters.”
He doesn’t comment and she takes his silence as admission that she is correct in her conjecture.
“If anything happened in Risshva, you’d pretty much have had to swim back to Dawan. Much too dangerous.”
“Yes, but still not as dangerous as you drifting along in these parts.”
“I’m safe and sound.”
He finally turns around, satisfied with his shortened sails. “You, maybe.Iam suddenly involved in a harebrained scheme to capture a submarine.”
She kicks her feet in the water. The enemy sub is closing in on them at the expected rate, the boy’s orca is swanning about a klick out, and a school of anchovies, fifty meters across in dimension, swarms around a coral reef five klicks to the east of the orca—all is well, for the moment.
“Wrong,” she tells him. “You were already concocting a harebrained scheme to capture a submarine; I merely pointed you toward a more obtainable one.”
But has she? They were two people in the open, going up against a crew of four protected by riveted steel.
She has never lacked for physical courage and the battle off the coast of the Southern Continent confirmed that in a situation of actual danger, she acquits herself very well.
At this moment, however, she is victim to a pang of anxiety she’s never experienced before: Earlier she was responsible only for herself, but now she ponders the consequences to him, should their scheme go badly.
She smooths her fingers over her vambraces and smiles at him.
His brows draw together. “Why are you smiling?”
To cover up her fear? She shrugs. “It’s a beautiful day, I’m with a beautiful boy, and I don’t even need to worry that he’ll turn out to be an awful lover.”
Because he refuses to sleep with her.
He snorts again, even though his cheeks color. “You’ve known a lot of those, have you?”
“If I say yes, would you feel more confident?”
“Why should I? Then when you tell me I’m the best lover you’ve ever had, I’ll have no idea whether I’m actually good or merely not as terrible as the rest.”
“All my lovers have been decent.”
“Maybe they are merely equally mediocre.”
“You could prove that to me only by being a sublime lover yourself.”
The enemy sub is twelve kilometers out. Soon it will be close enough to launch torpedoes.
He narrows his eyes—has he sensed her unease? “Why are we talking about such an irrelevant thing when we should be preparing for the enemy vessel?”
“I don’t know. Isn’t this the sort of nonsense people yammer on about when they are waiting for a pitched battle to begin?” She exhales, trying not to betray her nerves in front of this all-too-observant boy. “Shall we review the speed we need to maintain when we pitch in the depth charges so that we escape their effects unscathed?”
“Seven knots. What do we do if the sub pulls into torpedo range and fires at this boat? And are you like this with all boys?”
