Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [143]
"I've seen vids." She frowned introspectively. "They usually start with kisses, but . . ." a vague gesture toward her misshapen mouth, "maybe you don't want to."
Miles tried not to think about the late rat. She'd been systematically starved, after all. "Vids can be very misleading. For women—especially the first time—it takes practice to learn your own body responses, woman friends have told me. I'm afraid I might hurt you." And then you'll disembowel me.
She gazed into his eyes. "That's all right. I have a very high pain threshold."
But I don't.
This was mad. She was mad. He was mad. Yet he could feel a creeping fascination for the—proposition—rising from his belly to his brain like a fey fog. No doubt about it, she was the tallest female thing he was ever likely to meet. More than one woman of his acquaintance had accused him of wanting to go mountain-climbing. He could get that out of his system once for all. . . .
Damn, I do believe she'd clean up good. She was not without a certain . . . charm was not the word—whatever beauty there was to be found in the strong, the swift, the leanly athletic, the functioning form. Once you got used to the scale of it. She radiated a smooth heat he could feel from here—animal magnetism? the suppressed observer in the back of his brain supplied. Power? Whatever else it was, it would certainly be astonishing.
One of his mother's favorite aphorisms drifted through his head. Anything worth doing, she always said, is worth doing well.
Dizzy as a drunkard, he abandoned the crutch of logic for the wings of inspiration. "Well then, doctor," he heard himself muttering insanely, "let us experiment."
Kissing a woman with fangs was indeed a novel sensation. Being kissed back—she was clearly a fast learner—was even more novel. Her arms circled him ecstatically, and from that point on he lost control of the situation, somehow. Though some time later, coming up for air, he did look up to ask, "Nine, have you ever heard of the black widow spider?"
"No . . . what is it?"
"Never mind," he said airily.
It was all very awkward and clumsy, but sincere, and when he was done the water in her eyes was from joy, not pain. She seemed enormously (how else?) pleased with him. He was so unstrung he actually fell asleep for a few minutes, pillowed on her body.
He woke up laughing.
"You really do have the most elegant cheekbones," he told her, tracing their line with one finger. She leaned into his touch, cuddled up equally to him and the water pipe. "There's a woman on my ship who wears her hair in a sort of woven braid in the back—it would look just great on you. Maybe she could teach you how."
She pulled a wad of her hair forward and looked cross-eyed at it, as if trying to see past the coarse tangles and filth. She touched his face in turn. "You are very handsome, Admiral."
"Huh? Me?" He ran a hand over the night's beard stubble, sharp features, the old pain lines . . . she must be blinded by my putative rank, eh?
"Your face is very . . . alive. And your eyes see what they're looking at."
"Nine . . ." He cleared his throat, paused. "Dammit, that's not a name, that's a number. What happened to Ten?"
"He died." Maybe I will too, her strange-colored eyes added silently, before her lids shuttered them.
"Is Nine all they ever called you?"
"There's a long biocomputer code-string that's my actual designation."
"Well, we all have serial numbers," Miles had two, now that he thought about it, "but this is absurd. I can't call you Nine, like some robot. You need a proper name, a name that fits you." He leaned back onto her warm bare shoulder—she was like a furnace; they had spoken truly about her metabolism—and his lips drew back on a slow grin. "Taura."
"Taura?" Her long mouth gave it a skewed and lilting accent. " . . . it's too beautiful for me!"
"Taura," he repeated firmly. "Beautiful but strong. Full of secret meaning.