Page 57 of Mutant Mine

He fetches a drink for me, and sits on the bed by my side, stroking my leg through the covers while I take a few sips. Then he disappears into the bathroom for a while. By the time he returns, I’m almost asleep.

“Computer, turn the lights off,” Roth says.

I hear him moving — the rustling of fabric. He lies down, and pulls me into his embrace.

He’s naked,I realize drowsily.

Despite everything else that Roth has done to me tonight, lying skin to skin with him may be my favorite feeling. He wraps me up in his arms, the hair on his chest rubbing against my breasts. Our thighs are tangled together. He’s not hard anymore. His nakedness doesn’t demand anything from me. It just is.

Roth finds my mouth and kisses me. I’m glowing in the dark.

Eventually, still holding him, I fall asleep.

27

Roth

WHEN RORYsleeps, she talks to me. Not much that makes any sense — just a word or phrase from time to time, spilling out of her dreams and onto her lips.

I want to stay awake all night, listening. What does she see behind her eyelids? Am I there? Is she happy?

The feel of her bare skin against mine is another reason to lie here wide awake. I can allow myself to enjoy this, now that she is sleepy and sated.

She is so very, very soft. Everywhere.

This cannot be real. Holding her in my arms, knowing the feel of her, the taste of her… It is as if I am dreaming myself. Perhaps the reason I don’t want to close my eyes is not in case I fall asleep, but in case I wake up.

The thought makes my brow furrow. Instinctively, I pull Rory closer to me. She buries her face in the crook of my neck, nosing until she is comfortable, and breathes against my throat. She is real. She is here.

I have come to think of my need for her as a separate being: a creature which lives beside my heart. It grew and grew, until it was pressed against my sternum, my ribs — rustling its feathers and twisting its claws every time she walked away from me or closed a door between us.

When she kissed me for the first time, it went wild. I thought it might burst out of my chest and fly across theroom, stretching its wings at last. But now, lying here, holding her, it is quiet and calm for the first time in weeks.

This is what it has wanted all along.

* * *

I DO GETa few hours of sleep, in the end. But I wake early. My body knows that it is dawn, although we are far from any sun.

Rory and I are tangled together, just as we were when we fell asleep. I savor it for one more moment — then, reluctantly, I begin to remove myself from her embrace. I would prefer her not to wake up and find us like this. I replace my arm under her head with a pillow, careful not to disturb her.

Once I am dressed and ready, I head directly to the flight deck. I need to re-check the readings. The little bird… distracted me, yesterday. A very welcome distraction, of course. But nonetheless, I want to make sure that the course I set was entirely correct.

The asteroids in our previous course only required me to make a minor adjustment — but I repeat my navigational calculations, just to be certain that I have not made any errors. At the speeds and distances we are traveling, every degree counts.

I move around the instrument panel, adjusting a few settings and reading the displays. They are not yet showing anything of promise; no message from my brothers, no signals from approaching ships. Nothing. We are alone out here.

I begin to feel a flicker of doubt. My first impulse is to force that doubt aside — but that would be the wrong thing to do. My faith in my brothers is not religious. I cannot,shouldnot keep it up without some evidence.

Every life on this ship is in my hands. The path I choose, I choose for us all; Rory included. I must be certain that these decisions are not blinkered by my own emotions and biases.

When this all began, I set myself a deadline: two weeks of waiting for my brothers to contact me. Twelve days have already passed, and there is no sign of them. It is beginning to seem more likely that the Hades suffered a true malfunction, rather than being sabotaged. If that is the case, and they are not coming, then I need to decide: what am I going to do next?

Yes, I will fly the ship to the Caster-391 system, just as I told Rory. That was no lie. But what about after that?

The creature curled around my heart has its own ideas.Stay by her side, go wherever she wants to go, devour every speck of time that she will give you.

But I hope that I can find it within me to rise above these urges. Because Rory should not stay with me. Not for a moment longer than it takes to deliver her to safety.

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