The Expanse - J.M. Dillard [73]
She cut him off again. “The doctor injected you with a placebo. He sent you here because he wanted me to persuade you to try Vulcan neuropressure. As I predicted, it was a pointless exercise.” The strange awkwardness had fled her tone, replaced by a flat adamance: she clearly was displeased with herself for misleading someone.
Trip first felt an enormous sense of relief: This was the Vulcan he knew, direct and matter-of-fact, anything but intentionally seductive. His relief was quickly followed by outright anger at Phlox’s subterfuge. What right did the Denobulan have to embarrass him and T’Pol like this (though she would never admit to such an emotion)? “Why didn’t he just ask me?!” Trip demanded heatedly.
“He did,” T’Pol countered. “This morning. You refused.”
Trip had no memory of Phlox mentioning anything about a Vulcan technique—but then, his mind had been utterly elsewhere that morning. He’d been tense, focused on the upcoming mission, obsessing about Lizzie, about the possibility of encountering a Xindi. Maybe he’d been too quick to dismiss the doc’s suggestion—if he’d even registered it—but that still didn’t excuse the elaborate deception.
“So this whole thing”—his bringing T’Pol the padd, her claiming insomnia and asking him to perform the technique on her—“was just a setup!”
No wonder T’Pol had behaved so oddly, so out of character. She made a lousy liar. And here he’d gone and insinuated that she was making a pass at him ...
“The doctor knows how intransigent you can be,” T’Pol remarked.
Trip bristled at the term. “Intransigent?”
The Vulcan missed the outrage in his tone and explained, “Unwilling to try something new.”
“I know what it means,” Trip snapped. “But it just so happens it’s not true. I’m as willing to try new things as anyone else.”
T’Pol took a step toward him. “Then take off your shirt.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, forced into silence, frustrated by the realization that he’d just allowed himself to be backed into a corner.
Damned good negotiator, that T’Pol; he wondered if she’d learned that little trick at the Vulcan Embassy. They both knew he couldn’t argue with her logic. And of course, the question he now had to ask himself was, why would he want to? He’d wanted help sleeping, and here was the method Doctor Phlox thought was best; why was he fighting it?
Trip let go an inaudible sigh of surrender and began to remove his shirt; even so, he shot T’Pol a scathing glance to let her know he wasn’t pleased by her verbal tactics.
He set the shirt on the chair, then knelt with his back toward her, the intimacy of the situation provoking more than a little discomfort in him.
There was a soft rustling of fabric as she knelt behind him; at the sudden touch of her fingers, fever-warm upon his skin, he fought not to shudder. The room became so silent, he could hear the soft, regular sound of her breathing mixed with his own.
She pressed with a strength that was remarkable—greater than his, if not more so, and despite the oddness of the situation, Trip felt his entire body relax suddenly, deeply. The anger he had felt toward Phlox dissolved, replaced by gratitude toward T’Pol.
The Doctor had put her in a very difficult position, and Trip’s accusation that she was flirting with him certainly couldn’t have made things any easier for her. She had every right to throw him out of her quarters, to give up—and yet she had persisted, beyond the point of personal discomfort and humiliating accusations, in order to help him.
She really was an amazing woman ... and apparently unaware of her striking beauty. Trip almost chuckled to himself: What kind of an idiot had he been, thinking she was making a pass at him? Why, any man on board this ship would thank his lucky stars just to have her look his way ... Ever since the first day he’d seen her—
Stop, Trip censored himself silently. Stop