Page 15 of Collision!
He tried to pass her the arranged skeins—but one snagged on his knuckle spines.
She hid a grin at the low, dismayed rumble in his throat.Careful not to touch him, she plucked the threads free and smoothed the yarn into her tote, keeping the colors as he’d arrayed them.“Why did you come here tonight?Did you have a dream too?”
“You mentioned a dream after…” He nudged the knitting needles and scissors closer to her with another suspicious glance at the resonark.
“After you kissed me.”She nodded.“Not that I recognized you in my dream, since I hadn’t met you yet.It was…an impression.”She shrugged, feeling her cheeks heat.“It was only a dream, you know?Or do Szauralithyn not dream?”
“We have an equivalent sleep state with phantasmagorical elements, but I don’t remember mine.”Even though everything was packed, he didn’t stand.
“I’ve gotten good at holding onto them long enough to wake up and write them down.”
His pale eyes were fixed on her face.“Why do you want to remember them?”
Suddenly, his attention across the table, empty except for their bottles, reminded her the Love Boat I had launched as an alien speed-dating cruise.
Previously when she’d attempted dating, questions like these had led to answers that resulted in no future dates.
But what else was she supposed to say?A lie?“I want to know what I’m thinking about when I’m not awake to judge it.Even if my brain is just firing off random connections at night, trying to stitch together experiences and feelings and the sensory inputs of the day—even if it’s more a scrap quilt than a coherent pattern—that might still tell me something.”
“And what did this particular dream tell you?”
Had he finally found enough sense of humor to mock her?She lifted her chin.“It’s why I came to see you earlier in the engine module.Although I didn’t have a chance to ask you about it.”
“Because you ran away.”
Because she’d been overcome by the exquisite effects of his venom.
She wasn’t telling himthat.But did he sound a little disgruntled that she’d left?
“You seemed angry at my interruption,” she suggested.
“I was…startled.No one comes to the engines.Even when there are problems, I usually deal with the screams through comms.”
He must’ve correctly interpreted her expression, because he quickly added, “I prefer it that way.”
“Screaming?”
After a moment, he slowly exposed his teeth.
Was that a smile?Um, and were those fangs glinting at either corner?
“If they scream from far away, at least I can mute those frequencies.”
“How very sensible,” she said dryly.
And yet when he’d thought the resonark was attacking her, he’d chosen the most up close and personal—and, frankly, irrational—way to break that dangerous connection.
By making one between him and her instead.
Maybe itdidmake a kind of sense, the way a nocturnal reflection could signal a truth even if the dream wasn’t factual.
And he was lingering with her now in the very rainbow light he’d tried to nullify.
“In my dream,” she said slowly, “I was surrounded by darkness.I wasn’t afraid, or not exactly, but I was lost.Then I saw a face and…and I think it was yours.”
“But you hadn’t met me yet.”
“I’d never seen you before,” she confirmed.“But when you cued up the presentation on the anomaly, you appeared in the captain’s datpad for just a second.And I knew I had to talk to you.”
