“I won’t say you’re wrong,” she muttered back into his smile, and then there followed a few moments of reshuffling that somehow ended up with her on his lap, the rickety chair creaking ominously under its doubled load, and a better angle for exploration that did not risk doing anything bad to his back.
A few…some…more minutes of this, and her eye was drawn as if by magnetism to the tidy bed, made up just a couple of meters away. Oliver followed her glance.
“There happens to be a bed here, I see,” Cordelia remarked.
“I see it, too. Noticed it first thing when we came in. Because an Imperial officer should always be observant.”
“It would probably be more comfortable than this chair. Which is making strange squeaky noises.” As was she, Cordelia supposed. “Not very wide, I admit.”
“Wider than the bottom of the boat, though.”
“Than what?”
“Never mind…”
The personnel transfer between vessels was accomplished without mishap, as Cordelia would have expected under Oliver’s command. The old bed also made squeaky noises, as they settled on its edge, but did not wobble so precariously.
On his next breath-break, Oliver hesitated and said, “God, I am so out of practice. Shouldn’t there be, like…three dates or something? For proper respect? Used to be. They keep changing the rules all the time. Damned kids.”
Cordelia blinked blurrily. “There was the docking bay welcome. And the garden party. And dinner at the officers’ mess. And sailing makes four, actually. Yeah, we’re good. More than good.”
“Ah. Very true.” Brightening, he closed in once more.
“And besides, all my ImpSec duennas are a hundred kilometers away in Kareenburg. How often does that happen?”
“Never waste,” wheezed Oliver, his mouth trailing down her neck, “a tactical opportunity.”
“Damn straight.”
But just before they abandoned the vertical for a better axis, Cordelia held up her hand and tapped her wristcom. Oliver gave her a dismayed look, but she shook her head.
“Rykov? Vorkosigan here. I’m diverting all my incoming calls to your wristcom.” She waved out the recode on the little holographic display. “Got it?”
“Yes, milady,” Rykov’s surprised voice came back.
“If anyone below the level of Volcano wants me, tell them I will be in conference with Admiral Jole for, for some unspecified period of time. No interruptions, please.”
“Right, milady. Understood.”
She wondered if he did. An observant man, Rykov, like all of Aral’s old sworn liegemen, but, like his brothers-in-arms, deeply discreet. They might need to have a long gossip later. Much later.
“Vorkosigan out,” Cordelia gasped, as Oliver did something shivery to her ear with his endlessly talented lips. The kiss that followed this up was as delicious as ever.
“Oh, Oliver,” she murmured when she had her breath back, a little while later. “My body thinks this is the best idea ever. My brain…is not so sure.”
He nuzzled down the other side of her neck, and lower. “Is this to be a Betan ballot? My body votes with yours. My wits…well, call it two against one with one abstaining.”
“Are you asking for a vicereinal veto?”
“You have the power, Your Excellentness.” He hesitated, then rolled up on one elbow to search her face, his lips curved up, his eyes serious. “Though if this goes much further I’ll have to step out to the back for a minute or two.”
“Dark out there, in the rain. Cold.”
“That’s the idea, rather.”
“And lonely.”
“That, too.”
“I’m talking myself into this, aren’t I?”
“Mm.”
“Mm what?”
“That was me not interrupting you.”
She forced her smile back straight and declared, “I’m a grownup. We both are. We can do this.”
“Memorably, yes.”
She went still, and held a finger to his warm lips. “No. No memories. A new start.”
He considered this a moment, nodded, drew breath, and said forthrightly, “How do you do, Cordelia? My name is Oliver. I should like very much to make love to you for the very first time right now, please.”
Her lips twitched up. Big goof—who knew? She considered the bones of his face, the arch of his nose, those amazing sapphire eyes looking back at her in fathomless curiosity, the absolutely centered Oliverness of him, now, at this age, in this place. Where neither of them had ever been before.
“Yes,” she breathed, and, “yes…”
The physicalities were as awkward and absurd as ever, but the touch, oh, she’d so missed touch, and why did, and, oh, “Oh…do more of that…”
“Aye-aye, ma’am,” he mumbled around a mouthful of surprisingly sensitized breast.
And why, “…did we evolve all this bizarre behavior just to swap DNA? Or did the DNA evolve us? Sly molecule. But we hijack the program. Biological pirates.” His mouth found a lower harbor; she…made a rather undignified noise, she was afraid. Dignity need not apply, no, no position open for you here, move along. “Ah! Ship ahoy, Admiral…”
He raised his head and eyed her. “Cordelia…you’re thinking sideways again.”
“Can’t help it,” she gasped. “You’re doing a pretty good job of scrambling my neurons, you know.”
The smile dipped out of sight. “Good,” he said smugly. “I think I need more sideways in my life.”
“Can supply.”
“Right…”
The sun, sliding below the scattering clouds, had touched the horizon outside before they found need for any more words.
Chapter Seven
Jole woke early the next morning in the old bed with Cordelia tucked up under his arm, bonelessly relaxed, her breath moving slowly with a sound too dainty to be called snoring, quite. He inhaled the warm smell of her hair, the slick of her skin, next to his face on the pillow. Elation, he decided, was the name for this emotion, excited and a little scared. In an infinite number of ways, he was glad he wasn’t a teenager anymore, but it was heartening to still find that wild western boy, buried yet alive down under his layers of age and experience.
Without the youthful insecurity, though. He was glad to have lost that part. Yesterday had been good. Far better than his first—in retrospect—highly impractical naughty nautical visions. So often, reality disappointed imagination; not this time. It was going to be all right. Or at least…all right for now. He kissed her awake and set about proving to them both that yesterday hadn’t been a fluke. She was all sleepy little cat noises and welcoming limbs, with the odd practical jink that was so utterly Cordelia.
Quite a good time later, she rolled off him, flopped down with a thump, and muttered, “Hungry.” He wanted to linger on in Shack Number One for, oh, the rest of the year, maybe. But their food cooler had only been stocked for a day, not this unplanned extension. Like an army in the Time of Isolation, this reduced them to scavenging for provisions from the nearby civilian population. Ma Penney, it turned out, was entirely prepared for this incursion, and they ended up picnicking on her front porch with boiled eggs, bread and butter, dried fruit, homemade coffeecakes, and strong, welcome tea with cream.
The morning was warm and windless, the surface of the lake like glass, mirroring the farther shore and the cloudless sky. One last sail before they departed was obviously off the menu. Far from being disappointed, Cordelia eagerly organized an excursion in that bizarre transparent canoe that had so caught her eye yesterday. Rykov and Penney helped them hoist it up off its sawhorses—it was surprisingly lightweight—and carry it to the water. As Rykov handed him down his paddle, Jole tried to read the armsman’s opinion of this new turn in his widowed liege lady’s life, but the man was typically expressionless. Which told its own tale, perhaps—if he’d approved, he might actually have smiled. It was not unknown for him to do so, now and then. On the other hand, if he’d seriously disapproved, there were a dozen ways he could have subtly interrupted or interfered before now. Rykov…well, Rykov was Cordelia’s chain-of-command, not Jole’s. She’d know how to handle him.