Page 44 of Into Orbit
‘I’m fine,’ I said, because it was mostly true. ‘But I think you need to work out what you want, Maeve.’
She started pacing again; the arcadias watched her in a rippling rhythm. ‘I don’t want anything. Ican’twant anything. It’s impossible.’
My hearts skipped a beat. ‘What’s impossible?’
She groaned and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. ‘I don’t catch feelings, Elswyth. I don’t, and I can’t.’
‘Never haveisn’tnever will, Maeve,’ I said softly.
‘Tessa,’ she said desperately. I watched as she straightened, her resolve hardening. ‘I’m here to find Tessa. Not anything else.’
I rubbed my hand over my chest. I hadn’t expected anything different, but it still hurt. ‘What will you do if you find Tessa?’
She blinked at me, surprised. ‘Take her home.’
‘And if she doesn’t want to go home?’
She frowned. ‘Of course she’ll want to go home.’
‘Will she?’ I challenged. ‘Did shelooklike she wanted to go home in that still, Maeve? Did she look like she wanted to be rescued?’
Maeve chewed on her bottom lip.
My heartree rustled.Careful, the soft sound said.Don’t push too hard.
The heartree knew Maeve,lovedMaeve. The heartree knew what she’d grown to be to me. Tous. But the heartree also knew that I had to push gently. To go slow. In this – in listening to her heart, instead of the rest of her body – Maeve was like a wood-kit, trembling in the Forest undergrowth, the slightest noise likely to make her bolt.
‘I don’t know what she looked like,’ Maeve said, after a long moment of silence. ‘She looked … comfortable. But a still is just a photo, yeah? A moment in time, captured on a screen.’ She studied my face. ‘A lot can happen outside a moment.’
‘Yes,’ I said, meeting her gaze. ‘It can.’
We stared at each other; our eyes locked. The air went taut between us, like it did every time. It sent a shiver over my entire body, the now-familiar ache blossoming between my legs.
How can she not feel this?I thought mournfully.How can she not know?
She does, the Forest whispered.She will.
‘Those eyes,’ Maeve said huskily. She brought a hand up and cupped her breast through her jumpsuit. ‘Every fucking time.’
The heartree bent its boughs so that we were screened from view by a curtain of leaves, blocking out Poppy and Adair, who stood some distance away beneath a tall laurel.
My breath hitched.
Maeve stalked towards me, her face settling into the intense expression I’d come to know well – the expression that promised pleasure, lots of it, and quickly. She dropped to her knees beside me and took my chin in her hand, rubbing her thumb over my cheek. ‘A lot can happenina moment, too.’
‘Here I was, hoping you’d make it last,’ I murmured.
She laughed, her free hand stroking the vines of my suit until they unwound and it fell open to the waist. ‘I’ll do whatever you want, beautiful.’
Then stay with me, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud. Instead, in a smooth move she’d taught me in the gym, I swapped our places and gently pinned her on the moss between the heartree roots.
She looked up at me in surprise.
‘You always give,’ I told her. ‘Every time. You make me …come, then you makeyourselfcome, and then it’s over, or you make me come again. You never come first, and you never let me try to please you. You’ve never even told me what you like.’
She swallowed. ‘El –’
I shook my head. ‘Please let me try.’
