by Jean Johnson
She regathered her wits and moved closer. She even put her hands on her hips in an attempt to assert some authority over the situation. “Well, if that wasn’t a real kiss, then what is, by your definition?”
Pushing off the edge of the table, he lifted his free hand to her chin. Tilting her head slightly, he tipped his the other way and brought their faces so close, she had to shut her eyes to keep from crossing them. His lips brushed against hers, lingered, and lifted a fraction away. Then they came back, pressed a little more, and nibbled. Just a little.
It was an intriguing feeling, rather than the disgusting one she had been told it was. Curious, Evanna moved her own lips. He nibbled a little more, encouraging her to respond, and startled her by licking her bottom lip. The moment her mouth parted in exclamation, he swept in and claimed it fully. It would have been unnerving in a bad way, if part of what unnerved her wasn’t more of that strange twisting in her nerves. This time, instead of connecting a short, understandable distance, it speared from her mouth all the way down through her groin to her toes. Neither of which were near anything he was actually touching.
Her knees buckled. Victor let go of her chin, though not her mouth, wrapping his free arm around her back. That snugged their bodies together, once more giving her the feeling that the two of them together formed some unknown, exciting, yet somehow stable compound. The kind rife with possibilities. She just had no clue what those possibilities were, other than that he was now sucking on her lower lip and her hands were exploring the warmth of his throat and the texture of his short-cropped hair.
Her nerves were buzzing like an unstable element when he finally ended the kiss. Evanna felt like half of her life was suddenly going into decay, transforming her into something unexpected. She tried to frown at that. Another silly mental image. I’m supposed to be focusing on my . . . Ooh, his thumb again . . .
This time, with the moisture of their kiss still on her lips, his thumb tickled her as it glided across her flesh. “That,” Victor Amariei murmured, “is what I’d call a kiss.”
She blinked, feeling a worrisome urge to lick the pad of his thumb. It was entirely unlike her to think of such things.
Victor smiled. “So . . . are you going to give me one? I’ve given you a good example of a real kiss, but I gave it to you. I want one from you to me, of your own free will.”
Evanna blinked. Not only was he demanding a kiss from her, he was demanding several of them, in a sneaky way. “I’m not sure this is such a good idea . . .”
“Why not? It’s perfectly normal, and perfectly natural, and perfectly not what that brain trust wants you to do. And why not?” Victor asked rhetorically, shrugging as he leaned back against the edge of the table. “Because they want to control you. They want to enslave you. They want every last iota of your life plugged into this institute, so they can suck it out of you. There’s only one problem. You’re not a machine. You’re a Human. And Humans are allowed to have fun. We are supposed to interact in personal ways.
“Anyone who tells you otherwise, who demands that you give up your humanity ‘for the good of humanity’ . . . well, I’d say they’re not Human, but that runs the risk of comparing them to the other races in the Alliance. Even the aliens don’t believe in sucking the joy out of their lives, whatever their versions of joy may be.”
That distracted her. “Have you met an alien?” Evanna asked. “The Lunar Ceramics Institute does a lot of research for the Terran military, so visits from foreign races have always been discouraged for security reasons . . .”
“Have I met an alien?” the copper-clad captain repeated, touching his chest. “Every time I go to Earth, I run across aliens! They’re all over the spaceports! Gatsugi scientists, Solarican ship crews . . . even the occasional K’katta tourist or two. They’re also at Ganymede, and the domes on Mars, and plenty of other places.
“There aren’t many of them, I’ll admit, but they do visit this system.” Victor shook his head slowly, giving her a pitying look. “All those weeks of vacation you were never allowed to take, you could have been rubbing elbows with the other sentient races. You could have been conversing with their scientists. Being inspired by outside ideas as well as your own, bouncing potential theories off of colleagues who have different life experiences and thus different perspectives on a suggested problem.
“But no. Instead, you’re stuck here. A princess on a glass hill, isolated and alone.” He hefted the container manacled to his wrist and twisted his mouth. “According to what I read of that fairy tale, that poor princess wasn’t even allowed to eat her three apples, was she?”
That made Evanna fold her arms across her chest. “No, she wasn’t. She was forced to give up all three of them to whoever could reach her.”
“She wasn’t forced, when one finally did reach out to her. She gave two of them as a gift,” he pointed out.
“And got nothing in return for it,” Evanna pointed out.
Victor shook his head. “She gained something far more precious than mere apples. She gained her freedom.”
“Well, that’s where your analogy breaks down, Captain.” Flipping her hand at him, Evanna indicated his clothes. “You come here all dressed in copper, which if I remember right was the color of the first suit of armor, and you’re asking me to give you my three apples. But a canister of liquid bismuth isn’t equivalent to my freedom. And I’m not buying it for three kisses. Two of which you’ve already had from me.”
“I never said it was the equivalent. And I never said I wanted three kisses from you. Just the one. But it has to be of your own free will; given, not taken or demonstrated. Give me that one kiss and I’ll tell you what the second apple is,” he bartered, tucking the canister under his elbow once more. “And not for a mere can of metal, however rare, but for your freedom from this barren glass hill.”
Amanda’s words came back to her. I know we’re in the business of saving others’ lives. But I think you should take a look at your own life, too . . .
At your own life . . .
Did she mean . . . ? If this man is right, then logic dictates I’m not the only person constricted by LIT’s policies of discouraging “personal distractions” in its members and, by correlation, LUCI’s employees. Evanna frowned in thought. Wait, wasn’t there that scandal about a year ago of some lab worker over in Dr. Priznell’s lab behaving in an unprofessional manner, of her being dismissed and then trying to sue the institute? I wondered about that, because she’d always seemed like such a competent lab assistant . . .
Looking up at the author of her disquiet, she found him once again waiting with silent, statue-like patience. The only things that moved about him were the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed and those tawny brown eyes flicking down over her lab-coat-clad body and back up to her face. Until he licked his lips. The simple act of moistening them, the subtle glide of the tip of his tongue, reminded her of his demonstration kiss.
She wasn’t even touching him, yet she could feel that tingling once again inside her skin. It defied logic and the explanations of science . . . and yet it was chemistry.
Acting on impulse, Evanna swayed forward. She hesitated as their bodies almost brushed together, then daringly closed the fractional gap between their lips. At first, she just pressed her mouth to his. When he didn’t move, she tried an experimental nibble, followed by a tentative lick. He responded by opening his lips just a little and nibbling back. It was encouragement enough to make her try a bolder touch. A deeper taste. An angling of their mouths and a burrowing of her fingers in his crisp, wavy, dark brown hair, until his tongue met hers, helping her to repeat the same excitement as before.
This time, both of his arms wrapped around her, pulling her breathtakingly close. That left the canister dangling awkwardly against her backside, but she didn’t care. All she could do was agree. This was a kiss. It was delicious, it was invigorating, and it was exciting. Full of any number of unknown variables just waiting to be catalogued and expl
ored.
Researcher at heart that she was, Evanna wanted to explore every possible permutation. Unfortunately, the door hissed open. Alarmed by the noise, she pulled back, blushing furiously at having been caught in a very nonprofessional act. It was only Amanda, but the sober look her chief assistant gave her unnerved Evanna.
“I’m sorry, but you’ve run out of time. You have about a minute, maybe two at most, if you’re lucky.”
Frowning, Evanna looked from her assistant to her . . . well, kisser, for lack of a better word. He definitely wasn’t a courier, despite the isotope chained to his wrist. Victor grimaced. “Damn. Okay. Here’s the second request. Come with me to Earth. Right now. Take a leave of absence, go on vacation, and walk on the Motherworld. Walk in a real forest, not in a holographic one. Visit the beach. Gawk at some aliens. But go now. No excuses, no waiting, no prevaricating, and no letting anyone else convince you that your work here is so vital you cannot leave it for a week.”
“He’s right, Doctor. Every project you currently have going can be put on hold for a while,” Amanda agreed. She started to say more, then touched her ear with one hand and held up the finger of the other. Evanna believed her assistant must be listening to the same sort of earbud comm piece that Security used. When Amanda rolled her fingers in a hurry-up motion, Evanna knew her guess was right.
“A simple yes or no,” the courier who wasn’t a courier urged her. “Make up your mind. I would have worn silver for this next part, but you haven’t much time.”
Evanna looked between him and Amanda, grasping the conspiracy they had formed. “You have everything all figured out, don’t you? Except, how do I know I can trust you?”
He shrugged. “Your family does. Your assistant does.” Victor paused, smiled, and hefted the canister chained to his left hand. “And your bismuth does.”
The absurdity of that made her laugh. The reaction wasn’t at all what she would have expected, but even more jolting was the realization that she liked laughing at an absurdity. She sobered as she tried to recall the last time someone had joked about her work in her presence, and had to silently confess it had been at least three years.
Because jokes are inappropriate in a serious workplace, she thought, parroting all that she had been told. He’s right. They have stolen my humanity from me. Lifting her chin, Dr. Evanna Motska gave him her reply. “Yes. I’ll need to go back to my quarters first—”
“It’s all taken care of,” her assistant interjected, enduring Evanna’s startled look. She flicked her gaze up toward the dark bubbles of the security cameras in the ceiling, a pointed look much like the one she had given earlier in the holographic lab, and nodded. “If you’ll leave the canister with me, I’ll see that it gets to the lab while Captain Amariei shows you those astro-survey charts of the regions containing the bismuth isotope, so you’ll know the scope of what can be extracted in a potential larger scale production in the future.”
“Yes, I’d bring them into the complex, but they’re proprietary charts,” Victor added smoothly, not showing any sign that the abrupt change in subject had fazed him. “The Liberty Mining Guild has only loaned them to me temporarily. They insist I can’t even take the datapad storing them off of my ship. . . .which I took the liberty to mean my shuttle, which is parked in your hangar,” Victor added.
Evanna caught on to her assistant’s smooth babble of words, and the captain’s equally smooth reply. She’s giving us a cover, an excuse for me to go to his ship. Nodding, she headed toward the door, only to hear him clearing his throat behind her.
“Your thumbprint, Doctor?” he asked, lifting his oval, white burden.
Returning to him, she flipped open the little door covering the sensor panel and pressed her thumb to the scanner. A second panel slid open, revealing a grid of buttons. He punched in the combination . . . which looked like the code she would have used herself. A sharp glance at his face showed his eyes all but gleaming with a lively sense of humor.
“And the third apple?” she couldn’t help but ask under her breath.
“All in good time, Doctor.” Tossing the canister at her assistant, who hastily caught it, Victor rubbed at the reddish marks circling his wrist. “That feels really good.”
“What, lobbing a can of priceless bismuth 209 at my assistant like it was a sofa cushion?” Evanna demanded.
“Freeing myself of a cumbersome, unnecessary restriction. You should try it sometime,” he added, gesturing for her to join him in heading toward the door. “This way to the mineral charts, Doctor.”
Aware that they were being watched by Security—though she would have to interrogate her assistant at a later date as to why she hadn’t been watched before now—Evanna managed a cool, professional nod. “Thank you, Captain. I appreciate the troubles you are taking on my behalf.”
“I hope you do,” he muttered, escorting her out of the conference room.
VICTOR worried about the security guard who had insisted on accompanying them into the shuttle, unsure how to get rid of the other man. It was true he couldn’t be fired for kissing their genius chemist—and what a kisser she was—and he was the captain of this shuttle, but they were still on Lunar Ceramics Institute turf. There was only so much he could do without getting into trouble.
He didn’t have to worry for long. After the third time the man tried to wedge himself between Victor and Dr. Motska, trying to get a closer look at the datapad she was perusing, the good doctor lost her patience.
“Enough!” she snapped, shoving back on the elbow that had intruded yet again on her shoulder. The sudden, hard act knocked both men back, but she didn’t apologize. Instead, she surged to her feet out of the copilot’s seat and glared at the gray-uniformed man. “Get out!”
“Excuse me?” the guard asked, blinking as he righted himself.
“I said, get out! There isn’t enough room in here for all three of us, and your presence is not necessary!”
“But I’m here for your safety!” the man protested.
“Captain Amariei is not going to do anything to me which I do not wish him to do—isn’t that right, Captain?” Evanna asked.
There was only one safe reply he could make to that. Touching his chest, Victor promised, “You have my word of honor, I will do whatever you wish me to do. All you have to do is tell me.”
“Really? Good. Throw him out.” She kept her hazel eyes on Victor’s face as the security guard spluttered. “I want him off this shuttle, and as you are the captain of this craft and I am his superior, he has no right to object to my wishes, or to your carrying them out in the course of your duties. Will you comply?”
“Whatever you wish, Doctor.” Grabbing the other man by the elbow and the collar, Victor shoved him out of the small confines of the cockpit. The guard struggled, but the captain out-massed him by several kilos of solid muscle. Manhandling him around the corner to the access hatch located between cockpit and cargo hold, Victor shoved the still protesting man through the opening, then blocked it with his own body, folding his arms over his chest.
“You can’t do this! I’ll have a security detail here immediately, and I’ll have you arrested for . . . for . . .”
“For what? Kidnapping? I could hardly be accused of such when Dr. Motska is on board my ship entirely of her own free will,” Victor pointed out. “For throwing a disruptive element off my ship? While on board a ship, all passengers are subject to the decrees of its captain and/or pilot by Terran law. And I happen to concur with Dr. Motska. Your presence is unnecessary and unwanted.”
The thinner man scoffed. “Unwanted?”
“Captain, I cannot concentrate on these mineral charts with all that noise outside! Please seal off the ship against all unwanted intrusions.”
Victor smirked as the guard spluttered again. “You heard the lady. Your presence is most definitely unwanted.”
Jabbing the buttons on the control panel, he closed the hatch, then locked it with a scan of his thumb. Returning to the cockpit, h
e found her seated once more at the copilot’s station, nibbling on her lower lip and staring out the viewports rather than perusing the datapad in her hands. “Are you all right?”
She looked down at the pad, then up at him. “I’ve never done that before—I’ve had, well, tantrum fits from time to time, but . . . that was work-related. This . . .”
“You’re having second thoughts,” Victor summarized. “You’ve always been a good girl, always done what you were told.”
“Well, of course! It was logical. This is . . . this is impulsive, and irrational. Maybe I should—”
Blocking her with a hand on her shoulder as she started to rise, Victor pressed her back down into the well-padded chair. “Read what’s on the datapad, and tell me if leaving really is as irrational as they wanted you to believe. Go to the data menu and look at the other folders, the ones not involving astrogeology. I think you’ll find the eighth one down the most interesting.”
Thumbing the controls, she scrolled through the menu choices, and frowned. “Depositions of known instances involving breaches of contract?”
“Read,” he urged, settling into the pilot’s chair on the left.
She did so, frowning and thumbing through the paragraphs. A couple of times she paled at what she read; other times, she flushed red, brow furrowing in a mixture of shame and aggravation. When she came to the end, Evanna set the datapad in the flat depression of the mid-console projecting out partway between their seats.
“Well. I have been manipulated, haven’t I?” Her tone was flat, somewhere between bleak and angry. “All these people knew my employers were deliberately blocking any interest I might develop in leaving the institute . . . and they never spoke up.”