“You may not have known me for very long…” Ari started. “Hell, I haven’t known myself for very long.” Face and neck heating, he leaned into her stiff finger. “But it should be obvious I’m nothing like what you accuse me of.” With an impatient glare, he swung around and headed to the refresher unit, locking himself in. It wasn’t until he stepped into the sonic cleanser that he realized he hadn’t brought in any clothes.
Well, too bad. She could just suffer all his naked glory when he strode to his alcove to put clothes on when he was done.
Chapter Seven
Morgancrossedherarmsand frowned. What just happened? She went from melting into the man’s kiss, then…whammo! A stormfront of accusations fly out of her mouth as she charged him with all sorts of heinous things. Her shoulders slumped. Maybe it was for the best. She was getting too caught up in him, letting important things slip through the cracks.
The lights flickered before going steady again. Dammit! She dropped her hands and marched to her workstation. Calling up the floating computer monitor, she accessed the ship’s diagnostics to see what might be going on. Squinting, she found the problem right away. Some idiot had rerouted power from the critical systems to non-essential areas. Diving deeper, she found that life-support, navigation, and communications were failing intermittently.
Thank the goddess, it didn’t take her long to correct everything.
The sound of the refresher unit door opening didn’t catch her attention. But out of the corner of her eye, she zeroed in on the man wearing nothing but a thick, black leather band around his muscular neck. Her eyes widened, watching Ari traipse across the room to his alcove as if he didn’t have a care in the world. She swallowed with a parched throat. Just that one simple act of him traipsing around naked transformed every other man she’d been with into ridiculous triviality. She couldn’t look away as his profile cut a striking figure against the soft light. The line of his jaw was sharp and defined, leading to a strong, regal chin, while his high cheekbones gave him an almost feminine beauty. Her fingers itched to plunge into his thick, dark-blond hair that swayed across his tanned broad shoulders. Even in profile, the intensity of his unwavering gaze was palpable, and it wasn’t on her. He stared straight ahead, not once glancing in her direction.
She pursed her lips as she continued to study him. His powerful, muscular frame exuded a quiet strength, each step deliberate and controlled, as if he held the weight of the world with effortless grace on his broad shoulders. Those shoulders tapered to a trim waist as each step flexed his drool-worthy, firm butt. Morgan clenched her fingers at the memory of caressing and squeezing that ass. Dream state notwithstanding. A man’s firm, rounded derriere was a total weakness of hers. She snorted. Oh yeah, watching him walk around naked all day would never be a hardship. She’d never get anything done.
Morgan sighed, admiring the symmetry and perfection of his form. Putting a fist over her heart, she bit back a moan when he reached his alcove, then bent to pick up a pair of snug briefs from a pile of new clothing she’d made in the replicron for him. She hissed at the sight. Dang, stupid, weak female hormones. It was a complete shame he covered his perfect body with anything.
After putting on a new pair of black jeans, he pulled a black T-shirt over his head.
She blinked and turned her back to him, focusing on a bunch of nothing on the workstation. Last thing she needed was to get caught ogling him like a lovesick idiot.
“How does it look?”
Ari’s masculine voice behind her made her jump. She squealed and put a hand over her throat, glaring at him over her shoulder. “You look fine.”
His blond eyebrows rose. “Well, gee, thanks a bunch. But I wasn’t talking about me.” He nodded to the spider-bot laid out on her workstation. “I was asking about the droid. Figure out what’s wrong with it yet?”
Her face and neck didn’t just flush, the blood under her skin burned like an inferno. She closed her eyes, praying for strength before opening them to focus on the droid’s open abdomen. “Yes…” she coughed to clear her throat. “Yeah, I think I know what’s wrong.” Taking a stylus, she pointed to a missing circuit in its “motherboard”. While its configuration was familiar, using that word was the closest thing she could come up with on how to describe what she saw. “It’s missing vital ah, let’s call it wiring, that allows it to access its memory functions. I’m going to recreate something compatible in the replicron and see if that works.”
Clenching her hands into fists, she threw her shoulders back for courage before turning around to face him. She jerked her head back when her nose practically smushed into his muscular chest. She took a step back.
“Look…”
“Listen…”
When they spoke at the same time, she shut up and stared into his charcoal gray eyes.
Ari put his hand up. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go first.”
Taking a step back, she clasped her hands behind her and gave him a nod. It was only fair since she attacked first without giving the guy a chance to defend himself.
He pushed his hand through the soft waves of his light hair, taking the strands out of his eyes. “Listen, I admit there is some weird stuff going on with me, and it looks bad. But I swear it isn’t what it looks like.”
She cocked her head and hid a smile. Didn’t most guilty people say that?
“I have no idea how or why I leave this room in the middle of the night.” Ari continued, crossing his beefy arms over his wide chest. “And I don’t know how I got back here last night. But I think it’s important for you to know what happened.”
“Okay, take a seat and tell me about it.” She gestured to the other stool next to the workstation platform. Sitting on her own comfy counter chair, she put one of her arms on the bench and leaned in.
He went into a deep explanation of waking up the first night and finding himself in an unknown corridor of the ship. He regaled her with how he barely avoided stumbling into a couple of Ozevroc before finding himself back in the engine room. Then, last night, he ended up in one of the garbage rooms. The most interesting part of that story wasn’t the strange creature he didn’t have time to look at, but how he got out of the doorless room.
Now it was her turn to be honest. “I might know how you got out of there.” She gazed into his troubled gray eyes. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you a little about myself. Once I do, I think you’ll understand when I tell you that you are, as far as I can tell, one of the most powerful psychics who’s ever existed.” She gave a winsome smile. “And believe me, being raised in a city full of them, I know one when I meet one.”
Ari held himself still. Did he hear her right? She might know why these weird things kept happening to him? The rush of relief made him lightheaded. He smiled when she made him a cup of coffee from the food replicator she’d put on her workstation. He couldn’t wait to hear where she was from. Maybe that would give him some unanswered details about her. Taking a grateful sip of the hot beverage, he focused on her. Had to be a big step for her to share some of her history with him. Damn, he was all for it.
Morgan sighed and ran a finger around the rim of her own coffee cup and stared off into the distance. “I’ll try to be as brief as I can, but I think it’s important for you to get a full understanding, so I’d better start from the very beginning.”
She looked up at him, her full lips drawn into a thin line. “Do you know what a rogue planet is? Have you ever heard of a planet called Akurn?”
