Starflight (Starflight, #1)(17)
“Around here somewhere,” she said, unfastening her braids. “I’ll look tomorrow.”
“I don’t think you’ll find it.” He studied her reaction by the dim glow of the exit light mounted above the door. Her face betrayed nothing, but she couldn’t hide the sudden stillness in her chest. “Because there’s no contract, is there?”
“I wish there wasn’t. More than you know.”
“I remembered something earlier,” he said, tapping an index finger against his head. “I have money. Tons of it.”
“Congratulations.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”
“So why would I indenture myself to you, or anyone else?”
With her back turned, she loosened each plait until her hair hung in waves that curled around her waist. Then she spun to face him and puffed a sigh. “Fine. You caught me. I guess there’s no use pretending anymore.”
Doran settled in and waited for the punch line.
“I lured you onto this ship,” she said, “because I couldn’t get enough of your scintillating personality.”
There it was.
“Kiss me, Doran,” she cried, flopping onto the mattress with one arm slung over her eyes and the other clutched to her breast. “I burn for you, hotter than a thousand hells.”
He cocked his head to the side. “I think there’s an ointment for that.”
“Desire like this can’t be tamed by medicine.”
“I’m glad you think this is funny.”
“Listen,” she said, and pushed onto one elbow. “We’re not friends. You don’t confide in me. So I don’t know why you came on this trip, or what your motives were. Maybe it had something to do with that job on Obsidian. Maybe not. But in case you’ve forgotten, I tried to send you back to Earth.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” It was the one hole in his theory that he didn’t work for her. “But something doesn’t feel right.”
“Nobody held a gun to your head and made you board this ship.” She pulled a blanket over her legs and used its concealment to remove her pants, then tossed them onto the floor along with an extra pillow. “So let’s drop it and get some sleep.”
He didn’t want to let it go, but what could he say? Lara had a point. She hadn’t forced him to tag along. He’d come willingly, and the more he thought about it, the more he believed the Obsidian job was the reason.
A memory teased at him, the barest recollection of a man’s voice urging Doran to visit the beaches and pretend he was on vacation. The job was a secret, and the sudden heaviness in his stomach made him believe it might not be entirely legal. That would explain his odd travel arrangements.
He gathered his blankets and made a pallet on the steely floor. But it wasn’t the cold metal that kept him tossing and turning for an hour. He didn’t want to believe he would do anything criminal. He wasn’t like that, was he?
Doran didn’t know, and that scared him a little.
The next morning he awoke to a sensation of floating, his limbs weightless and free from the hard press of the floor. Yawning, he blinked against the starlight streaming through the porthole, then gasped when he spotted the floor several feet beneath him. He flailed in panic, heart pounding while his muscles tensed to brace for the fall.
But the fall never came.
Soon realization set in, and Doran exhaled in relief. The artificial gravity drive must’ve died during the night. On a clunker like the Banshee, it probably happened all the time. This ship was a death trap. Even something as simple as a gravity drive could be dangerous if it reengaged too suddenly. Anyone who’d drifted above a hard surface might snap his spine when gravity took hold again.
He should wake Lara.
He pushed aside a curtain of floating blankets and saw her suspended above the bed, fast asleep with her lips slightly parted and a fringe of dark lashes resting against her cheeks. The tension that usually hardened her eyes and tightened her mouth was gone, leaving behind nothing but peace. He tipped his head and studied her, struck by how different she looked—almost angelic as a gentle beam of light illuminated her flowing waves of hair.
She glowed. It was sort of mesmerizing.
Because he was only human, he couldn’t help noticing that her covers had drifted away, leaving her exposed in nothing but a fitted T-shirt and cotton briefs that rode low on her hips. Her legs were fair and smooth, with gentle curves that tapered to a delicate set of ankles and tiny pink toes. She wore no holographic nail polish to trap his gaze, and yet he couldn’t look away. It must’ve been a long time since he’d seen a girl’s naked toes, because he’d nearly forgotten what they looked like.
Doran swallowed hard.
He shouldn’t be watching her like this. She was his employer, not some escort on display in the front window of a flesh house. But despite that, it took another minute for him to reach out and tap her on the shoulder.
She came to the same way he had, arms flapping and legs kicking, before she realized there was no force pulling her toward the ground. Then she uttered a curse and said, “Gravity drive.”
He snagged her pants and handed them over. “I was about to wake the crew.”
“No, let them sleep.” She wrestled with the garment, struggling to shove both legs inside without the leverage of her weight. Soon she was floating upside down. “I’ll fix it.”