Seven Days - A Space Romance (7 page)

No sign of him. Odd. This had to be done if his plan was going to work. Didn’t he
want
this to work? If so, they needed to practice. Zero-G changed how your muscles responded, and you had to work through the motions, practice with equipment before heading out into the actual environment. A twinge of annoyance flared through her, and she tapped in her identification number, then pressed her thumb to the bio-pad to pull up her sim hours.

102 hours logged in simulator during mission
, the computer noted helpfully.
Would you like to log this session?

She selected “no,” since there wasn’t really a point to it. Zero-G was something she excelled at. All astro-archaeologists had to become proficient in it, but Zoey liked the Zero-G for exercise as well as meditation. She did her drills when she was bored or restless because they calmed her and because she liked to be ready.

She’d been bored and restless a lot on the flight here, since Dr. Nevis had been more interested in working alone rather than showing her how things were done. She’d chalked it up to a quirk, but since he’d been so quick to abandon them?

Guess it hadn’t been a quirk.

On a whim, she punched in a request to look at all the sim hours logged for the trip.

102: Zoey Maldonado

27: Ian Nevis

13: Jorge Garcia

She did a query on Kaden’s name, but nothing came up. Had he been shirking his practice duties? Everyone had to have Zero-G practice, since a damaged ship would have to be repaired at some point. But she didn’t see anything for Kaden.

Zoey looked up as he came down the hall, dressed in his uniform. The corners of his mouth looked hard and there was a pale cast to his skin. “You okay?”

“I’ll live. Let’s get this over with.”

She frowned at his cold response but followed him into the Zero-G room.

The simulator was a small part of every science ship. A room no more than twenty feet by twenty feet in the belly of the ship, it was essential for crew to log in hours and ensure that they could handle themselves in deep space. Even though she loved Zero-G, she knew Dr. Nevis had found it boring and time consuming.

The room itself was plain, a large cube with a very high ceiling, the walls smooth gray panels. Strategic handles for participants to anchor themselves lay along the ceiling and halfway up each wall.

Kaden strode into the room, his body tense. She could practically see the muscle in his neck jumping. “Do you have a favorite setting?” she asked in a mild voice.

“Don’t care,” he said. “Just pick something.”

She nodded and moved to the wall panel, frowning inwardly. Was he mad for her suggesting it? That didn’t make sense. She still couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d somehow done something wrong, offended him in some way. Nothing she could do about it, either, if he wasn’t willing to talk to her.

She punched in her favorite setting—Rings of Saturn—and waited for the program to begin.

A soft, subtle beep echoed in the chamber and then a warning. “Unit will lose gravity in thirty seconds.”

Zoey did a few stretches, waiting as the computer counted down. She noticed Kaden simply stood there, stiff and unhappy. It bothered her.

“Unit’s gravity has been disabled. Please return gravity to normal conditions when exiting the room.”

At once, her ears popped and she felt her heels begin to lift off the ground. She bounded away from the floor, letting the air carry her forward, and she dove around Kaden’s side, turning to smile at him.

He raked a hand through his hair and pushed off the ground, raising a hand to brace himself against the ceiling when he bounced off it.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Just tired,” he said, and still looked uncomfortable even as she drifted past him.

“We can do training exercises tomorrow, if you want—”

“No, let’s just get this done,” he said, glancing at the panels with a frown.

As if on cue, they darkened and transformed. The Zero-G room’s main purpose, after all, was to get space travelers comfortable with the concept of being in deep space. In addition to the anti-grav boosters, the room’s walls and floor were made entirely of LED panels that mimicked the feeling of space. When they darkened, distant stars appeared, and drifting asteroids scattered on the screens. A ringed planet hung in the distance. If she reached out to touch the planet, she’d encounter nothing but screen, of course, but it added to the soothing mood of the simulation.

Perfect. She stretched her arms over her head, enjoying the sensation of rocketing through the zero-gravity air. “We could start with a few easy exercises before moving on to the strenuous stuff,” Zoey told him. “Unless you want to move straight to the hard stuff?”

No response.

She looked over at Kaden again once the screens had darkened.

He clutched a chicken bar, his face gone entirely white. His body was stiff, unmoving, his eyes closed.

“Kaden?” Zoey drifted toward him and grasped the front of his jumper with her fingers, snagging her fingers on one of the patches and pulling herself close. “Kaden, what’s wrong?”

His didn’t respond, didn’t look at her. His mouth was pressed into a hard, tight line.

And she understood at once. It was a common fear—astrophobia. Lots of travelers (and scientists) experienced utter paranoia when in deep space. She’d just never thought she’d see it in a meathead.

He’d logged no practice hours. Of course. If the ship needed repairs, she’d imagined he’d delegated that task to Garcia whenever possible, hiding his fear. And now he was stuck, since Garcia was dead.

Her fingers brushed over his cheek, drawing his attention. The Zero-G made it hard for her to remain in place, and her legs kept drifting away even as she tried to keep close to him. “Kaden, talk to me.”

His gaze focused on her, the whites of his eyes so stark in his tanned face. “Zoey—”

“I’m here,” she soothed. “It’s just a sim.”

“Just a sim,” he echoed, then gave a jerky nod, releasing the chicken bar slowly. “Right.”

She let go of him and drifted away a slight distance, bouncing off the soft walls again.

He followed after her immediately, grasping her hands and dragging her back against him, face tense. “Don’t,” he said quickly. “I... don’t let go of me. I just... need to adjust.”

He was going to need to do more than that if he had a crippling fear of space-walking. Part of their rescue mission depended on it.

He must have seen her expression, because he gave her a half-hearted smile. “Sorry. I’m trying.”

Immediately, she felt like an asshole. “I know you are,” she said, leaning in and kissing him quickly on the mouth in encouragement. “I’m sorry to put you through this.”

“Has to be done,” he gritted.

“You’ll get used to it,” she said, not knowing if she lied. “You just need time and practice.”

He grabbed her free-floating ponytail and pulled her close. “Kiss me again.”

But she slid away from him, locking her fingers around his belt and sliding down a little in a suggestive move that even zero gravity couldn’t ruin. “If you do a few exercises, I promise to make it worth your while.”

And she tugged at the belt in a suggestive manner, grinning at him. She was pleased when his eyes focused on her, his gaze losing that panic, replaced by lust. “You ever made love in Zero-G?” he asked her, the words jerky.

“Once,” she said with a purr. “It’s fun. I think you’ll like it.” And she grabbed at his uniform, climbing up his body and grinning when their twined forms bounced into one of the walls again. “Want to give it a go?”

His hand moved to the zipper of her jumper. “Take this off. I want your legs around my neck.”

“Now you’re talking,” she said, a shiver of pleasure moving through her body. “But first... basic exercises.” Zoey slid around his back and then twined her arms around him from behind. “Think you can work with me crawling all over you?”

“I’ll give it a try,” he said, a low laugh forced from his throat when she reached out and tweaked one of his nipples through the uniform.

Good. If she was distracting him, then he wouldn’t be thinking about how freaked out he was. She dug her nails into Kaden’s uniform absently as he began to slowly move through a series of basic drills—movement drills, stretches, and reflex coordination. Their interlocked bodies tended to bounce around the room a bit more than usual, but she didn’t mind—the walls of the Zero-G room were thickly padded in anticipation of such bounces, and Kaden seemed to be moving through the exercises, even if he was a bit stiff. That was fine. He was doing it, and that was all that counted.

When he’d finished a set of drills and she noticed his movements becoming a bit more erratic—a sure sign that he was thinking too much about their surroundings, she grasped his belt. When he lifted into the air, she flipped under him and slid up to the front of him between his legs, her head resting close to his crotch, her ponytail dancing in midair.

He gave her a startled look, and she rewarded him with a catlike grin. “You’re doing great. This calls for a reward.”

“I get to leave early?” he said, but there was no accompanying chuckle this time.

“Not exactly,” she said, and began to unbuckle his belt with an impish grin on her face. “I had something else in mind.”

Their bodies began to spin in the anti-grav and Kaden instinctively reached out for her head, bracing himself. As soon as he realized what he was doing, he moved his hands to her shoulders.

“You had the right idea,” she teased, swishing her ponytail in his direction before tossing his belt aside. It flipped through the air in slow motion, moving sensuously through the air like an old earth sidewinder. Once it was free, she moved her hand over the zip of his uniform and dragged it downward.

His uniform fell away, revealing that broad, tattooed chest she found so incredibly lickable. She tugged the zipper down farther, to his briefs. As she tugged them down to expose his now-straining cock, she felt his other hand twine into her ponytail. That was more like it.

Zoey moved forward, nuzzling at his erection. “Your cock is even more gorgeous in Zero-G, Kaden.”

He gave a snort of disbelief, but when she put her hands around it and gave the tip a swipe with the tip of her tongue, he groaned low in his throat. “Are you instituting a reward system here, Science Officer Maldonado?”

She rubbed the tip of his cock between her lips, purring low in her throat. “Maybe. Is it working?”

The hand fisted in her ponytail pushed her head forward, pushing his cock between her lips and into her mouth. “You have my full cooperation.”

Excellent.

She pulled him deep into her mouth, sucking at the thick length of him. Kaden’s cock was large enough to stretch her lips, but not so large that she’d gag at his size. Perfect. Even as she took him deep into her mouth, her fist curled around the base and she pumped in time with the stroke of her mouth, which elicited a soft curse from Kaden’s lips. He liked that. He liked that very much.

She liked the view of him from here, too, his big body looming over her, just a hint of tattooed chest up above. She could glance up and see the exquisite tension on his face. It also put her so close to that flat plane of muscle just below his belly button—the one with the tiny trail of dark hair. With her other hand, she raked her nails over that patch of flesh possessively. It was sinful and decadent how much she enjoyed touching him.

Her legs began to float away and she wrapped her leg around his ankle, even as their twined bodies began to spin slowly in the air through the force of their motions. “Zoey,” Kaden warned, his voice strained. “Maybe we should—”