Chapter 2

Truth of it is, I’m glad I’m the

navigator. I’m the one on the bridge with Rion all the time, mostly

alone, and he’s got a bad way of touching my hands and my back when

he passes me. Is it flirting or is he one of those people with a

smaller personal space than everyone else? I don’t know, but I like

it. This is our first day out in the field, and already I’m smiling

at everything he says. He’s got to think I’m a fool.

He asked me what I know of this virus.

I told him not much, but I wish I knew everything there was about

it just so I could talk to him and he’d listen. He listens when I

tell him the coordinates for the map, and he’s pretty good at

listening when I tell him I’ve got bogeys on my screens, but I want

to say something that’s not related to the ship and I want him to

hear me. Me.

Today we landed near what Ansel calls

the “point of contact.” On the bridge, it was just the two of us

with the others on our screens—they were outside the ship,

gathering specimens while Jareth kept watch. Rion had his feet

propped up on the console, hands folded behind his head, looking

like a kid about to doze off. With a sigh, he told me, “This is

gonna be a long mission, I just know it. I can steer through an

asteroid belt without a dent in my ship and here I am, cruising

over Terra looking for a damn plant. What a waste of

talent.”

I laughed. I had my chair turned so I

could watch him from the corner of my eye without him knowing it,

and I liked what I saw. He’s just got this raw sensuality about

him…it’s in his lithe legs, his muscled arms, the shape of his jaw.

There’s thin hair on his chin, just tiny little reddish curls like

he’s trying for a goatee and doesn’t quite make it, and I imagine

the hair at his crotch is probably just as kinked. The hair on his

nape is short and tight, with a mop of wavy fringe combed down over

his forehead. Every now and then he shakes his head to one side and

the hair tumbles over itself to move out of his eyes. When he runs

a hand through it, giving him that carefree, windblown look, my

fingers ache to delve into the same auburn thickness.

At my laughter, Rion tried to sound

indignant. “It’s true!” He glanced over at me and smiled. He’s got

a gorgeous grin. “I’m meant for so much more.”

“Aren’t we all?” I asked. I

smiled back and, for the first time since this mission started, I

swear he looked at me. At me. Not as a navigator but as a

man. His grin faltered, and he let his gaze wander from my face

down over my body. I sat with a writing stylus in hand, the tip of

it against my lower lip, and held my breath because he was finally

looking at me.

After a moment of silence, I prompted,

“Rion?”

I liked the way it made him jump, like

he was thinking things he shouldn’t be thinking. I wanted to ask

him what they were. I’m almost sure they’re the same things I’m

thinking, involving me and him in one of the sleeping bunks, the

little hole-in-the-wall beds we have that I’m thinking might (just

might) fit us both.

He started to say something when a

hollow knocking echoed through the bridge and Paol’s face filled

our screens. He looked stupid in the white biohazard suit Ansel

insists they wear and he was tapping on one of the cameras mounted

on the outside of the ship. “You guys?” he called out, then tapped

the camera lens again. “Is this thing on?”

“God,” I muttered. He’s a

dork.

Rion laughed and clicked on the

intercom. “Standing by, Captain.”

“Just checking up on you

two.” Then he winked into the lens. I could’ve sworn he was winking

at me, like he could read my thoughts and knew what was going on in

my mind right then, picking up those sordid images of Rion and me

together in a lusty embrace.

Rion laughed again and propped his

feet back up on the console. He closed his eyes, and I tried to

think of something to say to get him to talk to me again but

nothing came to mind. Just those images of the two of us in the

bunks and naked and God.I clicked off the screen in front

of me and turned back to my star charts.

* * * *

Log Entry 04.28.3021, 18:52

hours

Three days deeper into the wastelands

and nothing. There are plenty of plants, and we have enough samples

filling the ship to start our own rain forest, but there’s no sign

of the virus. Last night over dinner, I suggested maybe it wasn’t

botanical at all. Shit, you’d have thought I suggested Christ was a

woman come down to save us, from the look Ansel gave me. “This is

why I’mthe scientist,” he said, in that holier than

thouvoice that comes so naturally to him, “and you’re

justthe navigator. Stick to your charts and let me handle

the thinking around here, okay?”

Good thing he has Jareth for

protection because otherwise? I’d deck his scrawny ass.