Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(100)

It worried him. That deer had jumped off wounded and never come back. Surely he and Angela were beyond such things now. They had better than love. They had trust. Also, they were on a plane. She wouldn’t get far.

“I spoke to Fez today,” she said. “My numbers are still polling really high. We’re talking ionospheric, so that’s scary and awesome. Also, Wendy sent me a summons to Denver. It’s possible he means to offer me a ministry post. Education is empty at the moment. What would you think of that, former classmate of mine?”

“I think someday it might be nice you weren’t on pet-name basis with the continental president,” he replied. “But in the meantime, minister of education is perfectly you.”

“I also got a message from Mari, from the island. They’re settling in.” She shrugged. “She said I could visit, and Azul misses you.”

“They need to let that gal back out where she belongs. The vicu?a, not Mari. She wasn’t meant to be trammeled in some little island home. I only kept her temporary. Wild things like her were born for bigger lives.” He met her eyes when he said it, and she knew what he was talking about.

If he had a home on this world, it was probably there with his people and critters. Home was the living creatures that surrounded a soul, not a place or a building. Which made it all so much worse when it existed in more than one piece. One beloved in one place, and another days away and longing.

Angela broke her gaze to the side. She picked at an edge of printed linen sheet and fiddled with it, like she could unwind all those tight wefts if she just kept at it. “Limontour ‘reached out’ to me. That’s how he talks—such a dick. My skin crawls when I think about replying. You know he’ll just take it all back to them, to the consortium. But you know, he’s teaching at the Mustaqbal now, at least part time. If I take this post that Wendy will in all probability offer, I’ll have to interact with him. Meat-meets. Maybe with other consortium members. I don’t know. I’m not sure I can handle it.”

He didn’t move, and neither did she, but she was drifting. Like that deer, sinking back into the treeline, back to where she belonged. He pulled her hand off the sheet, and she followed him down into the bed. He could roll her beneath his body and kiss her till she stopped talking. He’d resorted to that before and wasn’t too proud. But it was Christmas, and she had things needed saying. Turned out he did, too.

“Well, it sounds like folks got a lot of plates spinning on your behalf,” he said slowly. Instead of warming herself along the side of him, she moved over top, straddling his pajama’d hips, hands over his ribs. She had a seat any equestrienne would covet. “What if you just told all them to fuck themselves?”

“What if.” But it wasn’t a question. She looked down at him, and he had no idea what was on her face. She could be thinking anything. “Would you play a game with me instead? I want to guess your truths.”

? ? ?

For a man as smart as he was, it certainly took him time to figure things out. Specifically, things about himself. She’d been keeping a mental log of his reactions each time the former-Pentarc denizens contacted them. He was dying of wistfulness. Worse, he didn’t think she noticed.

Had her gaze really ever been so wide that she couldn’t see what was happening right in front of her? Well, if it had, it wasn’t anymore. She didn’t want to see the mechanical intricacies of the entire world. She just wanted to solve for one variable. This man. Hers.

He raised eyebrows and engaged dimple action, but not with his usual grin in accompaniment. More a one-sided, noncommittal grimace. Still distractingly gorgeous, but she could keep her focus despite it. Practice made perfect.

“Am I going to like this game?” he asked.

Great. He wasn’t going to make this easy. “I think yes.”

“Does it end with you naked?”

“High probability.”

“All right. Bring it.”

Precisely what she wanted to hear. “Okay, let me see. Hmm. It is true that you are wearing only these pajamas because the organics-removal unit is broken and we haven’t used a laundry in a week, and therefore it is also true that there is exactly one layer of synthsilk between my body and heaven at this moment.”

He pushed his head back into the pillow and shut his eyes. Other parts of him responded appropriately as well. She contained an urge to whimper.

“Full points. Go on.”

“Also true that you would love to go to Isla Luz for the new year and haven’t figured out how to tell me.”

His eyes flashed open. “Now hold on—”

“Shhh. Don’t interrupt,” she scolded, shifting her seat just to let him know what happened when he tried to distract her. “Or was that a denial? Did I get that one wrong? You don’t want to go?”

He worked the half grimace again. “No, I don’t. Not unless you come, too.”

Oh. She stopped wiggling. Because this was important. “Kellen, those people are your family. Wherever they are is your home. These things are important to you, and I don’t want to pull you away from them. It was wrong, what our parents did to us, letting us go out there to the MIST and follow other people’s visions for our lives. I’m not going to do that to you. I’m not going to drag you around the world forever and cut you off from everything you love.”