Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [206]
"Making sure you came out of the sleepgas without complications," Sev said. His voice sounded thin and strained, as if he were trying to reach her from a great distance. "Some people have a convulsive reaction. It looked for a while like you were going to be one of them."
And that had worried him? Perhaps he still cared for her a little, then. Perhaps her experiment of taking him aboard the Xanadu hadn't been a total failure, after all. Fassa stretched, experimentally, and saw the way his eyes followed her movements. Perhaps something could yet be salvaged from this catastrophe. After all, they were alone on the droneship . . .
"Not convulsions," she said, languorously wriggling her toes and proceeding upward, muscle by muscle, to make certain that every inch of her own amazing body was back under her command again. "Just bad dreams."
"What sort of dreams?" Sev inquired.
Fassa sat up, rather more quickly than she had intended, and fell back against the cabin wall. "The sort that make you afraid to die."
"Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all," Sev agreed with no change of tone, and Fassa felt a stab of regret. She could have liked this man who so quickly picked up on her thoughts, capping her unvoiced quotations. If only he weren't so obstinately on the wrong side! Ah, well, perhaps that could be changed. It would damn well have to be changed if she hoped to get out of this, she reminded herself.
"Speak for yourself," she told him. "My conscience isn't all that troubled; I've done nothing more than what everybody does, just trying to get ahead by my own efforts." Wrong tone, wrong tone. She didn't want to argue with Bryley; she wanted to seduce him. No. Needed to seduce him. That was all.
And she wasn't going to get anywhere in her present condition. Fassa pushed sweaty, matted dark hair away from her forehead with a genuine moan of pain. "God, I must look like hell," she said. "Would you mind very much getting out of here so I can clean up?"
"Yes," said Sev, "I would. You're not to be left unguarded until we return to Central. Orders from CenDip."
Fassa moaned again. If CenDip was interesting itself in her case, she was worse off than she'd thought. Never mind. Central was a long way off. For the present she was alone on a droneship with this gorgeous hunk, and with any luck at all she'd make him change his allegiances before the official transports arrived to carry her to trial.
After only a little pouting and posing she managed to persuade Sev that propping himself against the wall outside her cabin would be adequate to fulfill his guard duty. It was, Fassa thought with satisfaction, a beginning. Now he would feel that this cabin was her territory. When he came in again, it would be at her invitation . . . and invitations could lead to all sorts of interesting things. She washed from head to foot, kicked her stained and crumpled clothes in a corner under the bunk, splashed a little extra cool water over her face, and wrapped a sheet around herself in lieu of fresh clothes. This would be a real test of her abilities. No cosmetics, hair combed straight with no styling, a scratchy Service-issue sheet instead of a clinging gown, and this bare cabin for a romantic setting!
"Fossa baby, you're so sweet, I just can't resist you," Faul del Parma used to moan when he came into her room and buried himself in her. And she'd been an awkward, sullen little girl then, with her black hair in thin tight braids. She'd worn the ugliest, plainest clothes she could find, but that didn't put Faul off.
For the first time Fassa deliberately summoned up the memories she'd tried for so long to bury, seeking the confidence she needed to go on. She really was irresistible to men. Faul del Parma had proved that, hadn't he? Even knowing it was wrong, even knowing she hated it, he'd still refused to let her alone.
"It's everything about you, the way you walk, the way you smile up at me with those big sooty lashes half covering your eyes."
Instead of giving her confidence, the memories made Fassa feel grimy. She must