Page 9 of Collision!
Giggling to herself, she got out of bed.If she was not going to sleep—or sleep with someone—she might as well amuse herself some other way.
Padding down to the salon in her socks (things had gotten a bit casual around the ship ever since they’d been stranded; at least she’d put on some heavy knit pajamas that could be clothes, and how would aliens know anyway?) with her tote full of supplies, she paused under the resonark.
“Are you having a good night?”she murmured, studying the softly glowing sphere.“I hope you don’t mind if I sit with you awhile.”
As she understood it, the resonark was not an entity, as such.But she talked to plants, her coffee cup, sparkly rocks, and anything with glued-on googly eyes, so being polite to a love wave-particle wasn’t a big stretch.
She made herself a little nest in the corner booth near the viewport—the moon-face applique on her tote seemed to smile out at the void—and scattered her yarn around her.
Ikaryo had adjusted the screen settings so that even the most distant stars in this empty part of space were revealed.Remy had said it seemed like cheating at first, but Mariah was intrigued by the incontrovertible truth that some realities existed beyond her perception: the infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths of a simple rainbow, elemental emotions, shared pleasure…
As if she’d conjured him with the thought of simultaneous orgasms, the chief engineer appeared in the salon doorway.
Startled by her own witchy power of conjuring, Mariah didn’t speak at once.
And when he paused under the resonark as she’d done, staring up, shy silence froze her tongue in place.
When she’d visited the engine module, it had been too dark to really look at anything.And even after he’d turned up the lighting, she’d been…distracted.
To see all of him now in the plasma glow was a bit overwhelming.
From that glimpse of his profile in the captain’s datpad, she’d imagined “gargoyle”, all stony edges with an overtone of cold moss and malachite greens.But were gargoyles usually so muscular?
He was wearing the silver-gray crew uniform, except in a sleeveless version.His exposed arms were scaled like armor and rippling with strength.Bristling spines down the backs of his biceps extended to his taut forearms, which explained his sleevelessness.
She tightened her hand where the smallest of those spikes on the outer edge of his wrist had pierced her.A double crest of spines arched over his skull above his pointed ears, and the ones across his broad, bulked shoulders were much thicker and twice as long.
Sooo…probably a bit kinky that she wanted to touch those too, right?
Being on the crew of a ship intended for Earther compatibility, it made sense that the chief engineer would be relatively humanoid and adapted to the same environmental conditions and bioelechemical necessities.But did that mean he had to be so sexy?
She had let the silence go too long.When he saw her, it was going to look like she was hiding—and she was—but what should she say?
Wanna poison me again, just a little?
Even the mere chance her mouth might make those sounds in that order—and anything was possible in the infinity of spacetime—made her want to melt into the couch cushions, through the bulkhead, and out into space.
At least in that lethally cold vacuum, her face and body wouldn’t be on fire.Or not for long anyway.
He spun around, tilting his head.His large, pale eyes, translucent as quartz crystal, glimmered beneath the resonark’s light.“Mariah.”
He didn’t see well, she realized.Like his half pit bull, half anglerfish pet, he seemed exquisitely suited to the dark, cold depths of the ship.Although his pet seemed friendlier since the goblhob hadn’t poisoned her.
“I’m here,” she said.An odd hitch to her voice, huskier than usual, made her clear her throat.“It’s just me.”
He didn’t move or speak.
“I thought I’d do some knitting,” she explained awkwardly.
After a long pause, he asked, “Why?”
She pursed her lips at his gruff tone.“Because I like knitting?It’s relaxing, and I couldn’t sleep anyway.”
“Whyhere?”
His demanding questions felt a little rude.“I like the resonark too.It gives me…good vibes, I guess.And it makes me happy to see my knotwork holding it.”
With one last glare at the love light, he stalked past the bar toward her booth.She had one moment to wonder if being caught in the corner was a bad idea, but then he was looming over her.
