Page 21 of Crave
But a good orgasm and a bit of selflessness shouldn’t have the power to change her.
“Your turn,” she said briskly—because a good orgasm did at least deserve turnabout. She reached down between them with the deft dexterity that had always kept her alive.
Except nothing met her questing fingers. His smooth torso, unmarked by the glyph, continued downward in a mysterious blank.
“Maybe you didn’t have a chance to read the IDA handbook on orcs,” he said. “We keep our genitalia contained. A useful evolutionary trait when one is twisting through tight caves. I thought it safer to stay closed since we are not bonded.”
“But…that doesn’t seem fair.” She couldn’t believe she of all people was arguing about fairness. Only because he got to keep himself safely contained while she let it all hang out, she told herself.
He gazed at her. “Did you not enjoy our encounter?”
Close encounters were only supposed to be of the physical kind, not this awkward post-coital chitchat where she questioned her own capacity for reciprocity or whatever. She’d never felt like she had enough to share.
“You know I did,” she growled. “I basically screamed it at you.”
His smile was smug, satisfied, and much too sexy considering the alien tusks. “And that is where I take my pleasure. The sonoscry echoes back at me with your delight.”
What did it say about her that her past “encounters” had been more about stealing than sharing? She didn’t want to think about that. He wasnotgoing to change her with one sex song, no way.
“Initial repairs complete and internal systems recalibrated,” the shuttle informed them, saving their lives and, more importantly, saving her from having to respond to his ridiculous assertion (but no insertion?!) that he was happy just because he’d made her happy. “All working parameters reset to baseline.”
Kinsley couldn’t abandon the bunk fast enough.
Chapter 8
With the shuttle’s assistance, Sil replotted their course accounting for the unexpected problems. He also pinned the wreckage location for possible salvage or at least removal; leaving such debris might impact another ship with more lethal consequences.
More lethal than merely indulging his fascination with the Earther female.
With Kinsley.
Hers was a seething, secretive energy, dimmed and wary, nothing like the quiet, steady stones that called to him, yearning to shine.
She was not his project, he reminded himself. She was not a rock to be remade beneath his hands and his sonoscry, to reveal some inherent beauty and truth.
Also, despite the confines of the shuttle, somehow she’d found a way to hide from him.
Or maybe he just wasn’t looking for her. Their moments together had rattled him harder than the fragment field, piercing him. He was supposed to be searching for a way to save his ship and his people. Instead he wanted to lose himself in her passionate pleasure.
She was dangerous in ways black holes and void-vipers and catastrophic depressurizations could only dream of.
But when he went to look at Roxy in the cargo hold—a reminder to shore up his purpose—somehow he wasn’t surprised when he felt Kinsley behind him.
He tilted his antennae her way without turning. “I was going to make some food,” he offered by way of regaining some distance.
“I was going to tell you that us fucking was a mistake.”
Ah. Apparently she’d had the same impulse to pull back. That hurt like a micrometeor going through his chest, but he forced himself to face her. “Would you like a shot of yezo with lunch? Amma’s fermented algae makes you forget all your cares—makes you forget everything, actually.”
Her jaw jutted a collision course with his heartfelt wish to ignore this conflict. “I don’t want anything from you except my share of the fortune. That’s why fucking was a mistake.”
For a moment, he hesitated. “I promised I wouldn’t give you anything. And I kept my word.”
“But you…” This time, she looked away. “It doesn’t matter. Yeah, let’s just forget it all.” But she didn’t immediately vanish again. Instead, she gestured at Roxy. “The rock was afraid when the power dimmed. It thought we might have left it.”
So she’d come to reassure it? Despite her declaration that she wanted nothing from anyone except her portion of the plunder.
Sil put his hand on the rock, sending a soft, questing ping toward it. “We’re sorry, Roxy,” he murmured. “We’re almost to the coordinates you gave us, and then we’ll go back to theDeepWanderwhere there is more life.”
