Page 32 of Kien's Kindred

“Is it time to leave?”

Her voice was throaty, low and so damn sexy. He clamped down on the rising sexual tension building in the pit of his stomach.

“Not yet. It’s still the middle of the night.”

She yawned and smacked her lips. “Why are you getting out of bed?”

“I have to finish the last of the calculations and transfer the medicine compound to the portable replicator.”

She stretched then rolled to face the wall, taking most of the blanket with her. “Okay.”

He stole a glance over his shoulder. His stark white blanket draped seductively across her naked body. There was no tamping down his libido. He wanted her and wanted her bad.

Again, he told himself no. There was no point of it. Any of it. No future. Nothing.

Kien rose, stuffed himself into the jumpsuit he normally wore onboard and left his room. He had work to do and he couldn’t—wouldn’tlet Nisha distract him from his mission.

* * *

NISHA ROLLED OVER,reaching her arm out. What she’d wanted to touch was Kien’s hard rock body. What she touched instead was the cool sheet on the empty space where his body should’ve been.

Right. He’s in his lab finishing up the replicator for Solgre’s medicine.

Instead of bringing her hand back, she ran it over the empty spot as if he were still there. She missed him even though she was sure he’d only been gone a few hours. But it was hard to tell exactly how long he’d been gone since there was no sun or moon to let her know exactly when in the day it was.

Yawning, she finally brought her hand back and checked her smart watch. Eight in the morning. She was normally a sleep-in kind of girl, especially when she didn’t have to work, but here she was, circadian rhythm all off because her body couldn’t figure out day or night. How did Kien and those guys get used to living on a spaceship? Could she ever get used to living here?

She could, if it meant being with Kien.

Nisha shook that thought from her head. She couldn’t live on Kien’s spaceship because he hadn’t asked her to leave with him, and she would never leave her mom alone. With her dad gone and her mom’s only living relative, she couldn’t leave her. Not for anyone. Not even for Kien.

So, stop it.

Nisha sat up, bringing the blanket with her to cover up her chest. “Lights,” she said loud enough for the ship’s computer system to pick up her voice. The lights immediately flicked on, illuminating Kien’s sparse room. One thing she would changeifshe decided to leave with him was their living accommodations. They needed a larger bed, maybe some artwork on the walls, some knickknacks displayed to give the empty space some pizzazz...

STOP!

“Just stop it,” she muttered.

What was she doing with herself?

She didn’t know.

She pushed the blanket from her body and shifted to stand. There was a button by the side of the bed that when pushed, automatically pulled the coverings from the bed with a zip and vacuumed them into a compartment on the side. There was a whirl as the mattress was disinfected by whatever alien tech was built into this contraption and the bed raised, titled to the side and disappeared into the wall.

“Alien technology,” she smirked.

After showering and changing into clean clothes, she made her way to Kien’s lab. She’d gotten turned around a few times and had to ask the ship’s computer to display the directions more than once, but she’d made it. She found him at his workbench, hunched over the portable replicator. It was in one piece which seemed to be good news. Solgre had given Kien a million little pieces.

He didn’t raise his head when the automatic doors opened or when they closed at her back. She crossed the distance in silence and stopped to stand over his shoulder. “Did you figure it out?”

“There’s nothing to figure out.”

“I take that as a, yes?”

Kien paused his work and took a deep breath. “Take it however you want to take it.”

Nisha snapped her mouth shut. There was no mistaking it, Kien had an attitude. “Was it hard?”

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