He shook his head, avoiding her gaze by ostensibly watching Austen and Collins wrestle across the floor. “Maybe at first. Not even at you, but at being forced to choose.”
“Choose?”
“When I left Burbidge, I swore I’d never set foot on the planet again. I had a lot of reasons for that. But I also…” His voice trailed off for a long minute. “I promised I’d go with you, and I want to see this through at your side.”
His thumb brushed over her knuckles, the touch light but sure. Meja focused on his caress, losing herself in the point of contact as it blossomed to fill her awareness. Her memory flashed back to the kiss they’d shared two days ago. Had it been that long? Had he been gone at all?
He had, and she was supposed to be mad at him for it.
“I don’t want you to help out of some misplaced sense of obligation, Doctor.” She wanted to punctuate the sentence but couldn’t bring herself to pull her hand away from his.
“It’s not. I’m not.” He dragged his gaze up to hers, as though his head was lifting a great weight. “I’m…bad at this. I don’t connect with people. It’s easier. When you’ve seen enough blood and closed enough pairs of eyes for the last time, being alone hurts less.”
She dragged him closer, and he came willingly, stepping in to fill the space between her thighs. “Alone isn’t something any of us were designed to be. Especially not you.” Temptation finally won, and she smoothed his hair back from his face, then dragged a thumb across his cheekbones. The tension in him felt like a living thing, a hummingbird locked in a cage of blood and bone.
“Kiss me,” he whispered. “Please?”
Meja nodded, half-standing as she pressed her mouth to his, aware of the friction as she rubbed against his hip. His lips were slightly cool, but the temperature difference only made her desire flare hotter. It was as though the time hadn’t passed at all, and the fire roared back into life like it had been waiting for this moment. Teeth grazed her lower lip, and she tightened her fingers in his hair. He hissed, and she loosened her grip, breaking the kiss long enough to murmur an apology.
“No. Harder.” He crushed her to him, his thigh finding the perfect place, delicious pressure as it rubbed over her sensitive nerves. She obliged, her fist clutching his hair as she guided his mouth to her neck. His hands slid up her ribs, pausing below her bust. His voice was rough with need when he spoke, “May I?”
“Yes!” she practically shouted, grinding herself against him as his hand smoothed up the sensitive underside of her breast before thumbing her nipple. She was an overtightened string, each kiss, each lick, each caress winding her tighter still, until she vibrated from the pressure of not coming apart.
Her hands slipped under his shirt, and his stomach trembled beneath her fingertips. She moved to rest a hand on the button placket. “I’d like to open your shirt.”
He pulled back, and she worried briefly that he was leaving, but the heat in his gaze was focused entirely on her. “You first.”
She smiled and tugged her shirt over her head, wishing she’d worn something other than a sports bra underneath. It was physically impossible to remove a sports bra in a sexy way. She tugged the band up and yanked the cursed thing over her head as quickly as possible.
His eyes trailed over her, drinking her in with a thirst that only served to stoke the flame in her blood higher. She squirmed, unable to stay still and fought the urge to cover up. “Come on now, your turn.”
He grinned, hands deft as he unbuttoned the shirt, but instead of shrugging it off, he teased her, turning and showing a shoulder, or a flash of his waist. It was a playful side of him she’d never expected, and she couldn’t stem the flood of emotion that swept through her.
Layth shed the shirt, holding it to his chest as he turned back to her. When he dropped the cloth at last, she traced her hands along the flat plane of his chest. Scars interrupted the smoothness, some clearly accidents, some surgical, but all of them defining moments that made Layth who he was. His battles and his victories. Her eyes were hot with unshed tears, and she felt unworthy of how open he had finally become. She pulled him down with her to the bed, until his weight above her felt just right and his muscular thigh pressed into the vee of her legs. She arched up against him, chasing that wonderful friction, the perfect pressure.
Bennet gave an annoyed yowl and hopped down to the floor, and he laughed huskilly. His hand returned to her breast as he leaned close to her ear. “Now,” he whispered, his voice barely more than a purr itself. “Where were we?”
13
Layth looked around the small berth off the medical bay and tried to decide if he’d forgotten anything. It was hard to believe he’d barely seen his assigned bed for the last two days. Warmth skated across his cheeks. Other members of the crew had to have noticed—Hicks had stopped coming by at the end of her shift to see the kittens without calling down first, and if the pilot knew, then chances were good everyone else did too.
And Meja…when he inhaled, he could still smell her on his skin, permeating his pores in a reflection of how thoroughly she’d filled his mind. He’d already learned so much of her, and yet it felt like he’d never get his fill. The need that burned in his blood surprised him. He hadn’t thought he could care about anyone in that way. Not since…
Jayme.
After five years, the name forced its way back into his consciousness brutally enough to rip a sob out of him. He patted his pockets, hoping he hadn’t left the scrap of nametape lying on the floor in Meja’s quarters. It was in his pocket, of course. Where it always was. He pulled the fabric out and ran his fingers over her name, surprised the embroidery hadn’t been worn away yet.
He shoved aside the pain he’d believed had long since scabbed over and began roughly shoving clothes into a knapsack for the transit to Burbidge. Was that it? Being on the same ground she’d been buried in, dragging her ghost back to haunt him? Or was it the guilt he felt over finding happiness again?
He looked at the clothes he had on and decided against dressing in anything nicer. Meja had said she had a plan for getting into the races, and if he needed to follow along, he could damn well do so in utilitarian clothing. He tossed a packet of hormone maintenance patches onto his folded clothes, then went to the small vanity unit and blushed again as he realized his most common toiletries were in Meja’s quarters already. He’d need to stop by and grab his toothbrush before meeting the team at the shuttle.
He tried not to think about how heading down to the planet meant goodbye.
Zion Sanderson, the Sentinel’s first officer, was leaning against the side of the shuttle when Layth finally made it to the bay. He looked like a fashion model, with his casual beauty displayed so perfectly that Layth half expected the man had checked for the best lighting before picking the spot to stand. His presence set Layth on edge; it wasn’t part of the plan to have him along on the shuttle.
Zion pulled the toothpick from his mouth and flicked it out into the bay. Decompressing the bay would send it out into space, to add to the cloud of debris that surrounded most colonized worlds, and would eventually burn up in the upper atmosphere. “It’s about time, Doctor. I thought you were the one saying we had a schedule to keep.”