Page 26 of Collision!
There were no snags in her flimsy nightwear or fragile skin.So maybe it had been a waking dream.
Except, for an instant, the ball had shone between them, dazzling him.
Although not as much as her fleeting touch.
“It’s so soft and workable,” she was saying as she gently pried the single filament from the center of the ball.“I can imagine a million and one things to do with this.”When she rolled the thread between her fingertips, tiny sparks danced within the light.“Oooh!It’s sooo pretty.And it matches my toes.I am seriously in love.”
She meant the yarn.He knew that.But his pulse rocketed at distressing speed through every part of him.
Trying to hold onto his self-control, he focused on the yarn.“Lumi-lace works the same as Felicity’s so-called feelings buttons,” he explained.“The filament is powered by movement and bioelectricity, but it isnotsuggestive of any emotion.”
Mariah grinned at him.“If I make you a sweater from it, the only thing anyone needs to know is you feel fabulous, right?”
Fabulous?He felt…
He had no reason to consider that further.Even though her eyes shining with the lumi-lace threatened to kindle all sorts of feelings in him.
Deliberately averting his gaze to his datpad, he recited the memo he’d drafted.“Please accept this yarn ball from the Big Sky Intergalactic Dating Agency in gratitude for your cooperation with our high-priority vessel aesthetics re-optimization project.”
She blinked slowly at him, her lips quirking.“Did you write that all by yourself?”
“No.”He paused.“Lub helped.”
Her laughter sparkled through him like she was braiding his bones with luminous threads.“I really do love it, Chief.And I told you, I’m happy to work with you anytime.”
That was his cue to get up, thank her one last time—with less of that excruciatingly awkward phrasing that he’d cobbled together himself out of the Big Sky employee manuals, although Lubhadbeen next to him, chewing on an imitation larf bone—and return to his engines.
Instead, he said, “To you, I could be just Suvan.”
She gazed at him, the amusement tempering.“That works for me too.Suvan.”
Nowhe should leave.
But he didn’t.
Chapter 9
She wanted to kiss him again.
Or kiss him for the first time, really, since technically he’d kissed her last time.
But considering she’d made it all the way to the Zarnax Zone basically on vibes and visions, taking the penultimate step to kissing an alien was harder than she’d ever imagined.
In the IDA handbooks which she’d studied diligently, it was a given that both—or more—interested parties were…well,interested.Meanwhile, engaging the Chief Engineer of the Love Boat I felt like trying to wind a yarn ball out of some spaghettifying particles falling into a black hole—except the noodles were raw.
But Suvan without his engines…
Maybe he wasn’t such a knotty problem.
Thanks to her—what had Suvan called it?—idiosyncratic organizational accumulation, she’d had more than her share of hanks that seemed impossibly snarled.Unraveling called for patience and clever fingers.
And the way to start was to tug gently and go from there.
“Suvan,” she repeated in her softest tone, waiting for his pale eyes to lift to hers.“May I ask you something?And you needn’t answer if you’d rather not.”
His thorny scales bristled slightly, displaying the surprisingly delicate hues from jade to midnight emerald.“Your phrasing is more unsettling than my official statement of gratitude.”
She smiled.“Unlike my yarn collection, I will stop whenever you say.”
