“Did you really think you’d fail?”
“I always think I’ll fail.”
Her eyebrows knit slightly, as if she were turning something over in her head. “Do you want to dance?” she asked at last.
Say no, something inside of him said. It’s not safe. She’s not safe. You are glass and paper with her, and she is fire, and you will turn to shards and ash . . .
He put his cup down on the table and got to his feet. She leaned over and put her mug next to his, then straightened, facing him.
He took her left hand in his right, and settled his other hand on her waist, careful, not pulling her close, just dancing. Casual. Unimportant. She put her other hand on his shoulder, and he could feel the warmth of her fingers through his sleeve. A scattering of handshakes in their long acquaintance. Two hugs, from which he had harvested vivid memories of her body, her hips brushing against his, her warm softness against his chest, the scent of her hair. One kiss that she had called a mistake, that had burned through him and still woke him in the night.
Stop it, he thought harshly. Dance.
They began to sway, just a little, to the rhythm of the old song, and he looked into her eyes, trying to listen to the words, to make his feet move to the beat, to think of anything but how close she was standing to him. She was smiling at him, and singing softly, the nonsense syllables of an old pop song, and she had beautiful lips, why had he ever thought they were not beautiful, full and soft and hers and he wanted to kiss her and consume her and swallow her whole, and she had to see it because he could feel nothing else, just the heat of her washing over him, lighting him on fire, and he didn’t care anymore if there was nothing left of him at all.
You need to stop this, said that sensible voice again. He cleared his throat carefully. “Elena,” he began.
She stood on her toes, dropped her eyes closed . . . and brushed her lips against his.
Oh, God.
She let go of his hand and wrapped her arms around his neck, and she moved forward and he crushed her against him, needing to feel her, needing her close to him, around him, everywhere, it could never be enough. She opened her lips to his and kissed him harder, and she pulled his tongue into her mouth, and his hands went into her hair. Her hair. He pulled the elastic from her braid, thinking for an instant of where he could put it where it would be safe; after a moment he slid it over his wrist and combed his fingers through her curls, pulling out the tangles, the blue and brown locks silk and flame against his skin.
She pulled one arm away and slid it around his waist, her fingers pulling at the fabric of his shirt where it was tucked into his trousers. She tugged it free, and he felt her fingertips against his skin, and one last coherent thought went through him—she doesn’t love you—before he let go.
He broke away from her long enough to let her tug his shirt over his head, and then he reached for her again, holding her body against his, kissing her, hard and insistent and insatiable, torn between pulling her clothes off and keeping her close to him, because any space between them was impossible, unbearable. At some point she unlocked her arms from around his back and—still kissing him—yanked her own shirt off, keeping her legs pressed against his, allowing the cold air between them only for an instant before her skin was against his skin, her breasts against his chest, and God, he was burning, and he needed her like his own breath and he wanted to feel this agony, this craving, forever.
She took a step back toward his bed, and he walked with her, tripping over his own feet, and she kissed him and laughed and he buried his face in her neck, inhaling her hair while she whispered Greg in his ear. Trousers. He still had his trousers on, and so did she, and this was a serious problem. “Clothes,” he said as he kissed her neck, tasting sweat and flesh and sweetness.
“Yes,” she said, and her hands were unfastening his trousers and he was pulling hers down and then they were naked, and her hands were on his waist, and she was tugging at him as she fell backward onto his bunk, and he fell on top of her, hands on either side of her head, and all he wanted was to push inside of her and hear her cries of pleasure in his ears, over and over, for hours, as long as he could make it last.
She slid one hand between them and ran a finger down the length of his erection, and he heard the sound of his own pleasure in his ears. “My God,” he said, and she smiled at him, her eyes alight with passion.
“You are so beautiful,” she said to him, and one finger became two, and then she wrapped her hand around him and tugged at him, lifting her knees and locking her ankles behind his back, and there was nothing else, nothing else in this universe beyond her body and his need . . . his need . . . his need for . . .
“Tell me you love me,” he said to her. “I don’t care if it’s a lie.”
“I love you,” she said. Her free hand brushed his forehead, her thumb tracing his lips, and she lifted her head to kiss him again, warm and soft and delicious. She had not hesitated at all. “Greg. I love you.”
Shards and ash.
He drove into her, and she did cry out, the loveliest sound he had ever heard in his life, and with all the women he had known he did not think he had ever touched another who drove him to such an impossible ache of pleasure and pain. Over and over he pounded, and her cries took on a rhythm, and he felt, at one point, the tight wet core of her grab on to him, a great powerful pulse, as she arched her breasts against his chest and her cry became constant, a song in his ear telling him to join her, to pulse with her, but it was too soon and so he kept driving, kissing her and tasting her, lips and neck and breasts and nipples, his hands on her body, in her hair, between them to touch her and make her cry out again, and he would have had it go on forever, desire and release, never relenting, never letting her go . . .
. . . and then he felt it, the knife’s edge, shoving its way to the surface: impossible pleasure, impossible release, and her legs locked more tightly around him and he drove into her more deeply, harder, faster, listening to her gasp in his ear, until everything he was came apart inside of her, over and over, and he was light and heat and joy and flesh and nothing else mattered at all.
He came to himself in stages, first noticing the cool air on his back. He had broken a sweat, and the air circulating in the room tickled his skin. But he was still warm where her arms were around him, her hands stroking his shoulder blades, her fingers brushing the nape of his neck; and her legs were still locked around him, her hips pressed against his, and they were still connected, warm and one, and he kissed her under her ear.
“Greg,” she whispered, not a question, not a statement, just a quiet sigh, his name, warm in her mouth.
He shifted off of her, and they parted, and he felt a pang of loss as they became two people again. He rolled onto his side, facing her, one arm under her neck, and she looked at him, her dark eyes contented, and reached out to touch his cheek. “You are, you know,” she said softly. “Beautiful.”
Her fingers left trails of fire on his skin. He wondered how long he ought to wait before suggesting they start again. “I think I’m supposed to say that to you,” he said, and she laughed again.
“I watch you,” she told him, and her fingers traced into the short curls of his hair. “You know when people are looking at you. You know when they’re reacting to you, when they’re making assumptions because of that face.” Her fingers traced over his skull and down his jaw; once again, her thumb found his lip, and the heat started building inside of him again. “Why does it bother you so much?”
“Because my face isn’t me,” he told her. If she was touching him, perhaps it was all right for him to touch her. He settled his hand on her waist, smoothed his fingers over her hip. “People look at me and they think they know what drives me, because they see how I look. They’re wrong.”
“What does drive you, Greg?”
“You do.” He reached up, smoothed her hair off of her forehead. “You always have.”
He tugged back the covers and they climbed un
derneath, protecting themselves from the cool room. She lay facing him, one leg over his, her arm over his shoulder, the tips of her breasts brushing his chest. She stared at him, and he caught that odd look in her eyes again, as if she were about to dissolve into tears. He stroked her hair, and leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Stay,” he said to her. “Sleep, if you want.”
“I never wanted to leave you, you know,” she told him.
So many regrets. “I know that, Elena.”
“I don’t ever want to leave you again.”
There was something in her voice. Sorrow, he thought. Lost opportunity. All that time apart, and all those years before that, friends and not lovers. If his life had been different—if he had been different—could he have known this sooner? Could all their years together have been filled with lust and passion and touch and sex and this bone-deep sense of belonging?
The past doesn’t matter, he thought. Now matters. And maybe tomorrow. But mostly now.
“Then don’t leave me,” he told her.
She smiled, and then her expression broke, and she shifted closer to him and burrowed against his chest, and he held her, and she cried for a long time, still wrapped around him like the perfect gift. He said nothing and just held her, kissing her head, rubbing her back, keeping her close to him, offering the only comfort he knew how to give.
After a while he heard her breathing settle, and he thought she was asleep, and the sensible part of himself began thinking again.
You do not know what this is, the voice said. What she said to you—you asked her for that. You asked and she gave, which is what she does. It doesn’t mean anything.
But did it matter, he thought, whether or not she loved him, if wanting him was real?
That was his loneliness talking, he knew. He was fairly certain he would do anything she asked of him as long as she kept returning to his bed. For Elena, he’d make a fool of himself, anywhere and everywhere, and he’d do it willingly, all for the privilege of being able to touch her again.
You do not know what this is, the voice said again.
I do not care what this is, he told the voice, his own eyes dropping closed, as long as I can keep it forever.
Chapter 31
Her comm woke her, vibrating silently against her skull, gently nudging her out of a deep sleep. She opened her eyes, careful not to move. Sometime after she had fallen asleep Greg had let go of her; he was lying on his side, facing away from her, his breathing deep and steady. His back was rising and falling just a little, and it took an act of supreme will to keep from laying her palm against it. Why had she slept? She should have taken more time. She should have held on and held on and squeezed her eyes shut against all of this.
It would have changed nothing, but she thought, for a while, she could have pretended.
Carefully she pulled the sheet to one side, puddling it between the two of them, alert for any movement. He slept on, and she slipped out of the bed, breathing a sigh of relief when she got to her feet. She found her hastily discarded clothes and shook them out. His undershirt was bunched with hers, and she took a moment to bury her face in it, inhaling his scent. She wanted to take it with her, to carry it like a tactile memory, so it could give her the strength she would need; but he would miss it too quickly.
She put her hands to her face. Her hands smelled of him, too: his soap, his shampoo, his skin, distinctly Greg. One way or another, he would be with her through all of this. She would not be alone.
She pulled on her clothes, then ran her fingers through her hair. She scanned the floor for the elastic she used to tie it back, and frowned. It was missing. It was an older talisman, but not one she wanted to be without. She lifted his clothes again, and scanned the top of his dresser and his bookshelves. It wasn’t until she thought back that it occurred to her to look at Greg himself. Sure enough, there it was, stretched around his wrist.
Her throat closed, and she blinked to clear her vision. Somehow, that seemed the right place to leave it.
She left her hair loose and pulled her shoes on, then stopped to look down at the bed. So peaceful, when he was asleep. He must have looked like that as a boy, before everything began to happen to him, before his mother’s death and his career and everyone expecting things. She wondered if he had been happy back then, or if he had, like so many children, ached for the amorphous adulthood that he could not yet understand.
Be happy, she thought at him. Somewhere inside of him, he must still remember how.
She slipped out the door. As it slid shut behind her, she felt it cut off the line between them, leaving her standing alone.
I will do this, she thought. I will do this, and he will survive, and we will win.
It was mid-shift, and the hallways were mostly deserted again. She passed a few people she knew well enough for a nod and a smile; no one seemed particularly surprised to see her, and no one wanted to stop for a long chat. She was having an ordinary wander through the hallways—the same thing many of them did if they couldn’t sleep, or had a few hours of downtime. Wandering was good for thinking, especially after a particularly busy day, and they had all had a particularly busy day.
Bob Hastings was on duty in the infirmary, and looked up when she walked in. “You’re up late,” he said, unconcerned.
“Couldn’t sleep.” It was the truth. “I don’t suppose Arin’s up.”
Bob shook his head. “Kid’s finally getting some decent sleep. But Yuri’s in there. If you’re quiet, you can say hello.” He frowned. “What’s the matter?”
She had been staring. Smiling, she looked away. “Just thinking you haven’t changed much,” she said. It was a partial truth. In the nine years she had known him, his appearance had changed very little. He did not look like a young man, but he looked twenty years younger than Admiral Herrod, and she knew the two were close in age. There were so many things she had always wondered about Bob—the root of his loyalty to Greg, how well he had known Greg’s mother—but she had never asked. It had never been her business, and it still wasn’t, but she couldn’t shake the conviction that she should have asked. She looked back at him. “Thanks for taking care of Arin,” she said. “And thanks for taking care of this lot while I was gone.”
“They’re the same pains in the ass they were when you were here,” he told her, but she knew there was fondness in the gibe.
She slipped quietly into Arin’s room. Yuri was seated in an overstuffed chair, skimming a book; he smiled at her as she entered. She looked down at Arin, who was soundly asleep, lying on his side. Curled up behind his knees was Mehitabel, as at home in Galileo’s infirmary as she had been on Budapest. Somehow Elena was not surprised Bob had given in to Arin. The cat was awake and fixed Elena with her usual expression of feline dislike for anyone not bearing food. Elena reached out and scratched the cat on the head, and was rewarded with a faint rumble.
“Doctor Hastings is annoyed about the cat,” Yuri whispered, “but Bear wouldn’t take him with him back to Budapest. With all the disruptions, it didn’t seem fair.”
“If Bob wanted the cat out, the cat would be out,” she assured him. “How’s Arin?”
“Bored. Annoyed. Wants to get up and do something.” He smiled. “I expect Doctor Hastings will eject him soon just because he’s an irritant.”
“And how is Bear?”
Yuri stood and moved next to her. “Bear is coming around,” he told her gently. “It’s hard for him. Arin’s his only child.”
“Yours, too.”
Yuri shrugged. “I had different role models. My parents were different than Bear’s. Better and worse, of course. I think Bear has always felt more in control of the world around him, and it makes it hard for him when he can’t take care of the people he loves.” He gave her a look. “A little like you, I think.”
“I’m not in control of anything.”
“Of course you’re not. But that doesn’t stop you thinking you should be.”
She looked down at Arin
, young and brash and brave and appallingly stupid. “I would take it all away from him,” she said quietly. “All the pain and disappointment. All the lessons he needs to learn. And if I did . . . he’d have nothing, would he? No joy, no accomplishment, no life.”
Yuri said nothing.
“I can’t stay,” she said at last. She had left it too long already. “But when he wakes up, could you . . . tell him I’m proud to serve with him?”
Yuri smiled, and reached out to pat her arm. “You tell him yourself,” he said.
At that, she had to flee.
She resisted the temptation to swing by engineering. When they noticed she was gone Ted would analyze anything she might have said, and she couldn’t risk it. She would have to settle for the scent of recycled air in the corridor, the muted sound of the environmental systems. Not that she needed help remembering Galileo’s sounds. She had been hearing them in her sleep for more than a year.
Azevedo had been assigned infantry duty alongside the comms officer, and she murmured a quiet prayer of thanks. He had never been the friendliest person, but he knew her well, and it would not occur to him to question what she was doing. He would be focused on infiltrators, or people behaving oddly. He would not find her behavior odd at all.
“Hey, Azevedo,” she said, giving him a smile. “Can you clear for me? I’m going flying.”
Azevedo frowned. “In what?”
Before she left, when she was a commander, he would have said the same thing in the same tone, adding only her rank. I am nostalgic for rudeness, she realized. “Admiral Herrod has given me permission to try his shuttle,” she told him. “It’s an 860. Brand-new.”
Azevedo sniffed. “Rich person’s boat,” he said. “Can’t maneuver for shit.”
“Maybe not,” she acknowledged. “But it’ll blow the socks off of anything Galileo has sitting around right now.” She thought a silent apology at her ship.
“I’ll need to double-check your access,” he told her.
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