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Kaia had been avoiding him for three days. Spending late nights in the sim rig or the gym after lectures. Anything but be around him after what happened, and his patience was wearing fucking thin.
“That story about people getting worried about something dangerous in X1s, was that bullshit?” Orion splayed an arm over the back of the couch in his cabin. He’d waited up for her past midnight, refusing to put this conversation off any longer.
He'd expected Kaia to come to him sooner. He was going to get it out of her then. But he didn’t have any more time to wait for this particular answer.
The bathroom door was open, affording him flashes of her movements, a small sliver of a view. She dropped the towel she had wrapped around her chest and he cursed himself for telling her he was going to wait for her to beg. He couldn’t let her win by going back on that now. Bare flesh was quickly covered by a large T-shirt. At least it was still his shirt.
If she were anyone else, he’d have fucked her six ways from Sunday by now. But she had his exorin at least four times now, and one of them had to have been a hit. All he had to do was sit back and await her delusions of immunity to be proven wrong. She would be feeling it by now. The cravings. The fact that she clearly had self-control wasn’t about to change that. Any day now, she’d come crawling with that little twitch in her fingers. She’d beg for it, any way he’d give it. Orion rubbed his jaw and smiled as he watched her through the door. Maybe he’d make her work for it a little. Or a lot.
She came out of the bathroom with her hair wrapped in a towel. “I used up all your water.”
Fuck.
“The story,” Orion pressed. “Was it bullshit?”
Slowly, Kaia came to perch on the couch next to him. Something had changed in how she moved around him. He suspected she didn’t even notice, but she existed in his space like it was normal. Was that a sign of the addiction taking hold? When she slumped back into the couch, Orion curled his arm around her and she didn’t move. And when she folded into his side all on her own, a little jolt of something thrummed his nerves. She was now a strong bundle of muscle more than skin and bone, nice and solid against him. The weight of her felt like it belonged there.
But she was going to have to give him an answer.
“Kaia. I don’t want to have to ask you again.”
“Not really… I heard someone say it.”
“Who?”
This wasn’t optional. He’d been spending his days trying to put two and two together, figuring out what drew his mother to X1s. He felt like he had all the pieces, or most of them, anyway. But he was stuck at a dead end with no more data to peruse. He needed any lead he could get.
“Peter, from the course… He blew up at me on the day we took that… valley trip or whatever.”
“Field trip. What do you mean, he blew up on you? What did he do?” Orion sat straighter.
“Nothing, he was just scared. His dad has some theory that there’s somethingbadat X1s. Said his dad’s been trying to warn your mother about it. He tried to get Peter to kill himself and Upload, before you… we… set out. When Peter refused, his dad decided to do it himself.”
“Something bad? Bad like what?”
“I don’t know, we didn’t really get that far into our pleasantchatabout it, Orion,” Kaia propped a foot up on the cushion. The touch of her knee against his leg was faint, but the awareness of yet another channel of contact made him buzz in heady elation.
“But I haven’t seen Peter since that trip down to the lower decks,” Kaia said. “He hasn’t been attending lectures or practicals.”
“I’m gonna find him tomorrow. Could be a lead.”
“I’ll come too.”
“I’m not bringing you down there, Kaia. I told you it’s not safe. Especially now.”
“With you it is, isn’t it?” And goddamn it, she was getting good at manipulating him, because the way she put her hand on his arm and peered up at him made any protest fall away.
He pressed a palm to her cheek, running his thumb across her little lips.
“Yes, princess. With me it is.”
* * *
They went down to the Common Residence Deck early the next day.
“You look like you’re preparing to rob a place,” Orion said when Kaia had emerged from the bathroom in a long-sleeved skintight black bodysuit and her hair pinned back in a clip. The bodysuit’s turtleneck was stretched high over her chin.
She looked over his own outfit: leather boots, khaki jeans, and a white synthsilk sweater.
