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Kaia’s docility on the way back to his suite unsettled him.
They’d slept in the same bed for two weeks already, yet that night somehow felt like it would be the first. He had her clothes brought by from her old cabin, but when she emerged from her shower, it was his old tee she wore, and he liked that.
They stood on either side of his—their—bed, loitering like awkward teenagers. Kaia moved to action first, peeling off the bedspread and picking at the blanket underneath. She didn’t look at him as he stripped off his sweats and got into bed next to her. For a moment he watched her bundling herself in, pulling the thin cover to her chin.
Orion blinked at her, considering a suspicion for the first time.
“Have you been freezing this entire time?” he demanded.
Kaia stared at him, bewildered. “I thought you knew…”
“Goddamn it, Kaia, you fucking tell me if you’re not comfortable. Why are you rolling your eyes?”
“Comfortable? After how I ended up in your damn cabins in the first place, you wanted me to assume you cared about how comfortable I was?”
He could argue. Tell her not only did she get her payback for that, but that if it weren’t for him doing what he did, she’d still be cooped up in her cabin, resisting her fate for no good reason. Didn’t she see how much better things had gotten since he put his foot down?
But sometimes Kaia was stubborn. And sometimes he’d let her have that.
Orion got out of bed, pulled his sweats on, and stalked out of the suite.
He returned ten minutes later with a heavy blanket. He billowed it out over the bed, and the relief on Kaia’s face as it covered her made his gut wrench. Yes, she should’ve told him she was cold. But she was supposed to be his responsibility, in some ways even more so than anyone else on this ship.
“I forgot you’re normal,” he muttered when he was lying under the blanket next to her, with the suite lights already dimmed into nothingness. It was way too warm. His skin was already overheating under the textile. He had every intention of kicking it off himself later.
Kaia made a sound that had him do a double-take. Was that a fucking giggle? He’d never heard one from her before.
“I think you’re more normal than you let on, Orion.” He picked up the grin in her voice. “Even if you are a furnace.”
What did that even mean? But it didn’t matter; just hearing amusement replace her usual wariness made him relax.
“Thanks for taking me up there today,” she murmured. “It really… I mean, I get it now. The scale of it all. What you’re trying to do.”
He believed her. He knew she thought the whole colony thing was stupid when they met. Hell, he thought it was stupid too. Not because he didn’t think it was possible, but because he didn’t want to have that responsibility forced on him. Seeing the H2O tanker pump their lifeblood intoColossal’shull affected him too. Sharing it with Kaia, to his surprise, had made it even better.
She sobered a little when he turned to his side and put a hand on her shoulder. He liked the feel of her beneath the fabric of his shirt, having her wearing his scent.
He inhaled slowly, closing his eyes against the visions at the edges of his mind. He thought instead of the forest—pine needles crackling underfoot, craggy bark beneath his hand. He pictured hills and valleys as he traversed his palm down her side, grazing the outside of her breast. He couldn’t feel her ribs so much anymore, not the way he could when he first pushed her against the wall in that hallway on Riker 109. She shifted slightly, but not away. Her breath came shallow. It made him harden. She was nervous, and he fought the urge to pick at it, agitate that disquiet.
He leaned forward and dipped his mouth to her collarbone, exposed under the oversized neckline of his shirt. Her skin was salty on his tongue. Would there be an ocean on their New Earth? What would it smell like? Books said it was salty. Was it like this?
When his hand came to the edge of the shirt and fell against her bare thigh, the burning of her skin was incongruent with the goosebumps he felt there. The muscle of her leg shifted under his touch. She was stronger now. Much stronger. The other night she put a knife to his throat, and she’d do it again. He didn’t take it away from her. She needed it. But now he needed something too.
His hand trailed over the top of her leg, strafing toward her inner thigh, gravitating to the heat there. Orion was on thin ice. He knew that. Its thickness was building, but gradually. Soon it may even be enough for him to stomp around on. But for now, he had to be careful with the fragility of it. He couldn’t take her the way he wanted, the way he throbbed for just yet.
Orion never realized he had so much self-control. Enough to prevent himself from pinning her down and shoving himself right inside. But not enough to give it up completely. The way her breath hitched cinched the deal.
He rolled and plied her legs apart, kneeling between them. There was a bit of resistance at first, but no fight. He couldn’t see her expression, but he heard the uncertain whimper catch in her throat when he raked his nails none too gently down her sides, over the bones of her hips, along her thighs.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
He meant it that time.
The augmented NS outline of her face granted him the tiniest nod. He lowered himself between her legs, fingers sliding against the flat plane of her belly down to her center. The wetness he felt there made him doubt for a moment whether he could keep his promise.
How many moons would their New Earth have? How long would the nights be, to take and own and do all the hidden things that people did at night?
There was a groan, and it was his own—he only realized it after it left his throat. He brought his lips to her inner thigh, and it shook under his hand. There was that whine again. The glowing outline of her hand fisted the sheet next to her hip.
