“You misled your friend about us,” he noted as he took the cell, pulled the battery, and pocketed both, one on either hip.
“A demonstration. You can put me back without fear because no one will believe me if I say I was abducted by aliens.”
“The demonstration is not lost on me,” the captain said, his tone grave. “You ceded us thirty days.
Allow us to use that time to thank you properly for your assistance. Commander? Escort Ms Selkirk to her quarters.”
All the words were right. He insinuated that he’d send me home, but something in Grisham’s tone told me he didn’t intend ever to let me go. I swallowed a huge, jagged lump of fear.
“Finlay—” Carrollus said. He took my hand and placed it in the crook of his arm.
My heart nearly tripped over itself. Damn biology.
He ushered me through the doors of the command center, back to the elevators, waved one open, and escorted me inside.
When I attempted to draw away from him, he tightened his grip on my hand. He gave a verbal command I assumed equated to a floor number.
“You’ve put me in a difficult position,” he noted as the elevator began moving.
Guilt lurched through my chest, but I mentally strangled the emotion. I turned to face him.
“Funny,” I said when I could be sure my tone would remain neutral. “I could say the same of you.”
He met my eye with a direct gaze that unnerved me. “Yes.”
“Especially since your captain doesn’t intend ever to let me go home.” I refused to back down, even as my body heated.
His gaze shifted to my lips.
“I’ve been ordered to ensure that when your thirty days are up, you will not want to leave us.”
Liquid fire dumped straight to my lower belly. I clenched my teeth to keep from telling him that his job wouldn’t be so hard.
“I get the impression you’d put me back, if it were up to you,” I persisted, my breath suddenly in short supply, “even though you brought me here in the first place.”
As if unaware of what he did, he smoothed a strand of my hair where it fell over the collar of my jacket. He wound the curl around his finger.
I held my breath. The subtle electricity of his touch smashed into my senses.
Desire darkened his eyes, even as he frowned. “Yes.”
He didn’t like being attracted to me.
Despite his reluctant response, or maybe because of it, arousal slid hot and wet into my lower body. I gasped. Did I really want someone who didn’t want to want me?
“So put me back,” I forced myself to rasp. “You could pick any number of women who’d be less trouble than I am.”
He smiled, but lines that looked like pain creased his forehead. With a gentle tug, he freed himself from my hair. “Not possible. Not now.”
“Why not?”
The elevator stopped. The doors opened. He led me out.
“What you said to your friend on the phone,” he said, glancing at me, “‘I’m nobody’s present.’ What does that mean?”
“You heard her assessment,” I said, pressing my voice flat.
“You’re afraid to care? You have no one?”
I detected no sympathy or pity in his tone, just straightforward curiosity. “No.”
I felt the look he ran over me as a caress, and had to suppress a shiver despite the hurt gripping me.
“Look. I buried my heart a long time ago. That makes me no use to you.”
“Heartless? Is that what you think you are?” Carrollus murmured.
Hot blood flooded my face.
“You aren’t. I’ll prove it,” he said, disengaging his hand from mine. “I’ll be right back.”
He ducked into a door that closed behind him.
Beneath my feet, the vibration of the engines eased to the point that they became undetectable. Orbit achieved, I gathered.
When Carrollus emerged, he carried a rumpled package in one hand. He held out his hand to me.
“Fewer than thirty humans have seen the far side of the moon. If you can keep it a secret, I’ll make you one of them.”
I gasped at the unexpected thrill. I think I bounced as I tucked my hand into his. “Yes!”
Chuckling, he led me through a maze of corridors to a point low on the ship. He unlocked a door. It opened on what looked like a glass bubble.
The pockmarked lunar surface spread out before me, a slender crescent illuminated by the sun, the rest cast in shadow. It looked close enough to touch. For a split second, I hesitated, overwhelmed by the sheer wonder of seeing something only a handful of humans in the history of my world had seen.
Then, like a kid at the zoo, I plastered myself to whatever substance made up the see-thru hull and stared. My breath didn’t even fog the surface of the window.
The door closed. I heard Carrollus lock it, and he pressed in close behind me, trapping me between his heat and the cool hull.
I sucked in a sharp breath at the want twisting my gut. I’d met him not twenty-four hours ago. How could I want him so urgently?
“What I told you about the bio-agent?” His voice vibrated through his chest into mine. The sound and the warmth of his presence curled around the cold, dead space where my heart should have been.
“There’s more.” He threaded one arm around me, as if he needed something to hold. “My parents were among the first to die.”
“Which one of them was your captain’s child?” I asked.
Carrollus stopped breathing for a moment, then his diaphragm kicked in a laugh I couldn’t hear. “How did you guess?”
“When you’re angry, you and Captain Grisham look remarkably alike.”
“My mother was his only child.”
“I’m sorry.” I felt awkward and inadequate saying the words, but they were all I had to offer.
He tugged my shirt tails out of my waistband, and threaded his hands under the fabric to caress my stomach.
The muscles jumped. I gasped at the firestorm his touch ignited in my body. Leaning into him, I breathed, “What are you doing?”
“Something I shouldn’t be doing,” he murmured at my ear. “I need the touch of your skin on mine. Do you mind?”
Sensation shot heat and moisture through me. I dropped my head back against his shoulder. It dawned on me – I could no more avoid him than the moon could escape Earth’s gravity.
“I don’t mind.” I had no idea how I got the words out.
His hand splayed against my ribs just below one breast. The other hand followed the contour of my hip bone.
I felt the hitch in his breathing as my own. With his touch as catalyst, want gathered like a storm in my blood. I’d never felt anything so overwhelming.
It sat right on the edge of scaring the life out of me. My heart couldn’t decide whether to tremble with longing or with terror.
“I—,” he began, and then cleared his throat. “I had a wife.”
“A wife?” I echoed, dread and horror freezing my blood.
“She was pregnant with our first child.”
I closed my eyes as if I could shut out the rest. My heart slid to my toes.
“Ikkari’s only wish was to save the baby. We tried. Nothing worked. I lost them both.”
He fell silent for a minute.
I opened damnably watery eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I choked again. “Why did you tell me this?”
“You deserve to know,” he said against my ear. “Most of this crew has been taught that everyone on board is their family. They were young enough to internalize the change.”
“You weren’t?”
“No. I haven’t taken a partner since Ikkari died.”
“How long?”
“I’ve lost count of the years.”
“She was a lucky woman,” I murmured.
“Finlay. You care,” he prodded. “You care. You care about the people on this ship, and you care about a dead woman and baby you never even met.”