No Such Thing (18 page)

"I don’t think he was expecting it," Ryelle said with a gloating smile.

"Not even a little. Wonder how often that happens?"

"To Commander Task? Not very. Declan, I’m not going to be able to sleep."

He glanced down at her in surprise at the change in subject. "Why not?"

She slanted him a glance that was full of sultry humor and his body overheated in a flash. "Will you be able to sleep?"

"Not for a long, long time," he answered with a strangled laugh.

"So, since I won’t be sleeping anyway," she said, looking straight ahead, "will you come into my quarters?"

He almost tripped and fell on his face. "That’s a bad idea," he rasped when he’d recovered enough to speak.

"That’s what I thought you’d say," she grumbled.

A bark of slightly hysterical laughter burst from him and he rubbed a rough hand over his face. "God’s mercy, I’m in so much trouble
here."

That seemed to make her feel better. Her faintly sour expression eased into a dimpled smile. "I’m willing to negotiate. One last kiss?"

He thought about it as they moved through the corridors. Thought about it until his breath drew ragged in his throat. He tightened his hand around hers
then on impulse, loosened his grip to winnow his fingers between hers in an intimate clasp that made his heart pound hard in his chest. He held her too
hard, he thought, but she returned the pressure with equal intensity.

When they reached her door, she tipped her head back, looking up at him with calm expectation. She knew his answer already.

"I can’t come in," he said in a low, harsh voice.

"You said that already. I asked about a kiss."

"Out here? People will see."

"Then they’ll see. Could you show me how? To use my teeth, I mean," she whispered.

A full-body shudder wracked his frame and he closed his eyes with a muttered curse. Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes again and took her other hand
grimly. He wasn’t going to take any chances that she’d start touching him and blow apart the measly control he had left.

Bending his head, he kissed her softly, nibbling with his lips, sucking ever so gently on her bottom lip, and trying not to pant like a dog at her taste.
Sweet and luscious, she was like a creamy dessert, delicious and tantalizing. He wanted more of her, all of her. With a rough sound, he ran the tip of his
tongue over her bottom lip then he sank his teeth into her quivering flesh. She made a sound that he was going to hear in his hottest dreams for the rest
of his life and he jerked his head up, gulping for breath.

"Oh, Declan, that felt so—"

"Shh," he interrupted, pressing another quick kiss to her parted lips. "I’ll go crazy." He slid his lips over hers just once
more, lingering achingly, before he lifted his head and whispered, "Goodnight, honey." Then he walked away, leaving pieces of himself scattered
at her feet.

Ryelle watched him go with an ache in her chest and a heavy heat in her body. She didn’t want him to leave. She understood his concerns. She
didn’t know if she was ready for all of it, for…for sex. But she knew she didn’t want him to go away from her. To stop touching her. It
hurt somewhere deep inside to watch him walk away.

"Declan," she sighed, but he was too far away to hear. He turned the corner without looking back and she wobbled into her quarters on shaky
limbs and with a heavy heart. Damn it, she missed him already. And her mouth hadn’t even stopped tingling from his last kiss.

She collapsed into the seat at her work station and stared moodily at the com unit. She knew she needed to contact the Institute. She was surprised she
hadn’t heard from them already. Grieve was going to blast her up one side and down the other for not wearing her snood all day. Well, he could blast
all he liked. She’d be damned if she would wear the thing any longer.

With a flare of rebellion, she sat forward and touched the com, requesting contact with the Institute. The system informed her that it was unable to make a
connection. She blinked at the viewer for a moment then broke into a wide grin as she remembered. She’d scattered the tunnel. No communications could
get through the scatter field, or the nebula for that matter. She’d been on her own, clear of the Institute, since that morning. For the first time
in her life, she was free of them.

Jumping up, she whirled around her living room in a wild dance, laughing breathlessly. The only thing that would make this moment better was Declan. And
her mother. She came to a sudden halt, her heart diving past her feet. She’d never be truly free of them. They had her mother. She went from manic
joy to sobbing tears in seconds, scaring herself in the process. What was wrong with her?

Half blind, she stumbled into her bedroom and changed into her sleepwear, tears still pouring down her cheeks. Crawling onto the bed, she curled up in a
ball under a thermal and wept as if her heart was breaking. A long time later, when she was done, she realized why she had reacted so strongly. She had
never had such emotional freedom before. They said they didn’t watch her at night, but she’d never trusted them. This was the first time since
her mother had been taken away from her that she could fully express her emotions, her grief.

Her tears were spent, but her entire body ached with loneliness. She had needed her mother so badly. They were each other’s only family, only allies
in the face of the Institute’s insidious pressures. They’d called in her mother when she was five, because they couldn’t control her any
other way. But her mother had insisted on staying over their objections and Ryelle had stubbornly refused to let her leave. For years they’d
withstood the pressures of the Institute together and the hostility from other telenetics and gotten through her training together. Her mother had refused
to authorize the snood before her collapse, even though Ryelle’s control had not been seamless. Her mother had always believed in her, told her that
she had enough control and wasn’t a danger to anyone. But then she’d fallen into a coma and everything had changed.

Ryelle curled tighter into herself but found no relief from the emptiness. She was alone. Her mother’s love was gone, her touch, her strength. All
gone. She was so alone. Wait, no. Not completely alone. Not anymore.

She scrambled from the bed and grabbed her portable viewer. Perching on the edge of the bed, she made the call with a thrill of hope and desperate need.

Declan smiled when he saw her, but his smile faded quickly. "Ryelle, what’s the matter?"

She grimaced. "I look that bad?"

He gave his sleep-mussed head an impatient shake, dismissing her words. "You’ve been crying. Are you okay?"

She ignored his question, studying him with greedy eyes. "You went to bed. Your hair’s all messed."

"Yeah," he said with a flicker of confusion. "It’s late."

"Did I wake you?"

His slow smile did wonderful, warm things to her insides. "Not yet. Told you it’d take a long time." He propped his chin on the heel of
his hand and studied her in turn. "Tell me why you were crying."

She lifted one shoulder in a stiff shrug. "I was just thinking about my mother."

Concern darkened his eyes and he reached his fingers out to touch the screen. "Oh, honey. I’m sorry."

She wanted to crawl through the viewer and get as close to him as humanly possible. She’d climb inside him if she could. "Could I play on your
sympathy to wheedle you into my bed?"

He clapped a hand to his forehead in agonized humor. "Woman, you’ll be the death of me."

"Will you stay on the com with me, then? I don’t want to be alone."

His smile was warm and faintly pained. "All night if you need me to."

"Maybe just for a little while," she modified with a flash of guilt. "Then you can go back to bed. I’m sorry I got you up."

"I wasn’t sleeping. I was laying there thinking how much I’d rather be in your bed."

She bit her tongue before she could say,
Why aren’t you, then?
Instead, she slid back up to her pillows and settled down on her side,
propping the portable next to her. "Well, now you are," she said with a quick smile, pulling the thermal over her again and slipping a hand
under her cheek.

He stared with such solemn intensity that she started to wonder what was wrong. "You’re in bed," he said in a husky voice.

"Mm-hmm."

"Now I’m never gonna sleep."

She laughed softly, warmed down to her toes. "It’s not like you can see much," she teased.

He leaned forward, his smile slow and filled with something she was just starting to recognize as hunger. "It’s the thought. And I can see your
hair is down. You don’t wanna know how often I dreamed about your hair on my pillow."

"Actually, I think I do want to know."

"Ryelle," he said in that thick honey voice of his, "are you flirting with me?"

"Is that what I’m doing? I was trying for seduction, but I guess that needs more work."

He laughed, low and husky, his eyes a deep, deep indigo that made her entire body squirm. "Close your eyes, honey. You need your sleep."

"If you think I can sleep now, you really are an idiot," she muttered, but she closed her eyes, smiling to hear him laugh again. "Tell me
more about your mother’s shop."

"Cause it’ll put you under?"

She opened one eye with a frown of reproach. "Because I love hearing about it."

"Oh, sure you do," he said with a little scoff then held up his hands when she opened the other eye to glare at him. "All right.
You’ve wheedled me into your bed. Least I can do is put you to sleep."

She snickered, closing her eyes again. "Thank you for keeping me company, Declan."

"My pleasure, sweetheart," he said in a husky voice. Then he began a story about a dock worker named Pick who had a weakness for big women and
a robust female client who’d come into his mother’s shop for a repair of her little cutter. She smiled her way through their first catastrophic
encounter, but as he was telling her how his mother had calmed the irate female down, she drifted off to sleep, a smile still curving her lips.

Declan never told her how long he watched her, before laying his head down and going to sleep with her.

Chapter 9

The entry to the nebula was smoother than anticipated, but it was still unpleasant to feel the
Odyssey
shiver and occasionally buck under foot.
Declan seemed fascinated with the view of the violent star nursery from the observation deck, but Ryelle concluded that he just had no sense of
self-preservation and did her level best to distract him away from it. It gave her a shudder of horror every time she saw him standing in that menacing
bright cloud.

As the ship’s telenetic, she was on alert for any serious danger from the nebula, but the commander gave her most of each day off, since they were
basically status quo until they passed through the noxious cloud. She spent a great deal of her time in engineering, helping Declan and the other crew with
their work. The nebula stressed the engines, which kept the engineering crew on its toes. Whenever they could do it without shirking their duties, Ryelle
and Declan found time to be alone. They talked, laughed, teased, touched, kissed, and generally blissed out on one another.

Her giddy joy at being free from the Institute had morphed into an intense need to experience all she could before they reined her back in again. She
enjoyed her new friends, the Sheridans, her commander, the rest of the engineering crew, but most especially she enjoyed Declan. Everything about him made
her deliriously happy and utterly entranced.

Also incredibly frustrated. He refused to rush their physical relationship along. She wanted to tell him that they needed get a move on, since she only had
a couple more days of freedom left, but that seemed terribly unromantic. They were still only kissing, and though they were amazing, long, slow, deep
kisses that melted her into a quivering mass of longing, he refused to take it further. A situation that had her on the fast track to insanity.

Part of her problem was that she knew nothing about seduction. She watched vids, holos, VRs, read books, but none of them seemed specific enough to her
situation. She found plenty of ideas but not how to implement them.

Their nightly conversations over the portable viewer helped sooth her heated, ragged edges. He’d gotten one, too, so they could talk to one another
in bed. This was the part of the day she liked the best, though she couldn’t touch him. There was an intimacy to it that was deeply touching,
comforting her in ways she couldn’t describe. They spoke of everything, talking each other to sleep. Something about that drowsy warmth made it easy
for her to tease him, to practice her seduction-in-progress. He was much less reserved, not holding back his desire. She assumed it was because she was
safely out of reach.

Then she got an idea, one that was so completely against all of her training that she rejected it a million times before she considered it as a serious
possibility. She thought of discussing it with Declan a million more times before she worked up the courage to approach him. He wasn’t going to like
it. Well, actually he was and she supposed that was the problem.

Then she had to work on where and when. Seductions did not have good conclusions in places like the engineering alcoves or the Chief’s office. She
would prefer her room, but she hadn’t yet managed to get him across her threshold. It was going to have to be his quarters, but what to do about the
roommate? She asked Frankie.

It was scary how enthusiastically the woman threw herself into the conspiracy. Declan’s roommate Carny seemed a little scared, too, but unable to
refuse the veritable feast of female flesh that was Frankie. Once she had him under her spell, Frankie informed Ryelle that Carny would be thoroughly
occupied for the next several days and Declan would have their quarters to himself. All she had to do was surprise him there.

Which she did that very evening.

Declan smiled with delighted surprise when he opened the door to find her standing there, but then his smile slipped into a frown of concern.
"Ryelle, what’s the matter? Is everything okay?"