Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [81]
She laughed and slapped him again. “Are you trying to be a jerk, or does it really come that naturally to you?”
“I’m just trying to figure out why I’m here,” he said.
“You’re here because I find you attractive. Because I thought we could bring each other pleasure, and once again, I was right. I told you I trust in my own judgment. Is that too complicated for you?”
“Maybe too simple,” Kyle replied. “I’m a pretty complicated guy.”
Michelle turned and boosted herself up on her elbows, looking at him. Her lips were soft and pink and the way they felt beneath his was one of his very favorite recent memories. “None of us are here because we’re easy cases,” she said. “In The End, I mean. The ones who can just go along and get along don’t wind up here. Only the interesting ones do. The ones with stories to tell. You’ve got a story, don’t you?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “I’ve got a story, all right. It’s a doozy. But I’m not telling it, not here, not tonight. Some of us have to go to work in the morning.”
“Why do you live here? You work pretty regularly, you must get paid okay.”
“I guess because I’m not an easy case either,” he answered.
“Must be a good story, then.”
“Oh, it is.”
“Full of love and hate and betrayal and passion? Those are the best stories.”
“I think it’s safe to say all those elements are present in mine,” he said. “What about yours?”
“I don’t have a story,” Michelle said, closing her eyes. Her lashes were long and thick and, like the rest of her face, perfectly formed. “I’m the exception that proves the rule.”
Kyle reached out and touched her perfect chin. “I don’t believe you.” As he held it, she opened her eyes and it was like staring into the sky on the clearest summer day imaginable. He felt lost, as if he were falling into the vortex of their blue.
“I guess you’ll have to stay around for a while,” she said. “So you can find out if you’re right or not.”
“I can think of worse things to do,” Kyle said.
“I can think of better things.” She pushed herself forward, so that her face was closer, and tilted her chin, bringing her lips against his again. “Much better things.”
Chapter 19
There was, Will had always believed, some kind of mystical connection between the night sky and romance. And because he had romance on his mind, he found himself looking forward to a scheduled trip to the moon with more eagerness than he had previously expected. Various squadrons would be going to stay for a few days in Tycho City there and to work on some flying exercises. He was going, which was great, and Felicia was going, which was even better. He figured there would be a chance to get her out under the starry lunar sky and really find out what he meant to her. And to let her know what she had come to mean to him, which seemed to become, with every passing day, all the more urgent. Besides, it was a chance to get off-world, and that in itself was reason to celebrate.
Probably because he was so excited about the trip, the days before it seemed to drag along interminably. He went to classes, he did homework, he played strategema and racquet-ball and poker and parrises squares. From time to time he went out with friends, but much as he wanted to be alone with Felicia he really wanted to save that until the Tycho trip. It all seemed so numbingly routine. During quiet moments, when he was eating or lying in bed waiting for sleep to claim him, he ran through different scenarios in his head, but they all included him and Felicia.
Tycho City, Will knew, was a populous place-so big that it could be seen from Earth on a very clear night. But he’d been there once before and he knew there were some spots on its outskirts-not far away from the Starfleet base they’d be staying in-that were still within its atmospheric and gravity fields but were otherwise traditional lunar landscape, as it had existed even before Neil Armstrong had left the first human footprint there. He would take Felicia out there, alone, and they’d sit close together, looking out at the Earth and the stars. He would take her