Page 26 of Escape Velocity

“Why do you care?”

“It is . . . I mean it’s the one thing that made me normal on Naxion.”

“Okay. Let’s try some other stuff.” He got out the makeup kit he sometimes used when he was going into what might be hostile territory. Studying her, he said, we can do something about your nose.”

She looked alarmed. “Cut it off?”

“No. Make it a little bigger.”

He pulled out a tube of facial putty and squeezed some of it into his hand, then mashed it into a paste. Before applying it to her nose, he added tint that looked like it would match her skin color. Proceeding carefully, he built up the sides, then the tip, so that it was not so small and delicate looking. She closed her eyes as he worked, and he admired her long, dark lashes, but he was also aware of the way her soft skin felt under his fingertips. It was hard to stay focused on the task as stroked her, and he saw from the faint quiver of her lips that she was reacting to him as well. He wanted to stop touching her. No, that was a lie. He wanted to keep touching her, and not just her face. Instead he doggedly kept to the task at hand. There was one more change that could make a big difference. He added some water to the putty, thinning it out, then applied it to the edges of her full lips, narrowing them so that they were much less enticing.

When he finished, he stepped back and inspected his work.

Her eyes blinked open. “How does it look?”

“Pretty effective,” he answered, trying for objectivity. “It’s good but it doesn’t go overboard.”

“Let me see.”

He handed her a mirror, and she gasped as she took in her own image. “I look . . . different.”

“Yeah.”

“You said I am attractive woman. You changed that, didn’t you?”

“Well, you are still good-looking, but I toned it down.”

She dropped her gaze to her feet. “I can’t go out there barefoot.”

“No.” He returned to his cabin and got a pair of sandals that a long-ago bedmate had left.

When he handed them over, she asked, “Who do these belong to?”

“A woman who once forgot them here.”

“She left barefoot?”

“No, she had another pair of shoes.”

“She was your lover?”

“Briefly.”

“Why briefly?”

“My life isn’t set up for permanent relationships.”

“Okay,” she said in a small voice, and he wondered if she’d been thinking she could persuade him otherwise.

“Stay close to me,” he said as he checked the charge in his beamer, then slipped it into a belt holster.

“Men here carry weapons?”

“Yeah.” And a lot of women, too. But he wasn’t going to give her a beamer she had never used before—or any weapon for that matter.

“Try not to act like you just kicked slat off your heels,” he said as he stepped to the air lock.

“What?”

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