After comming, with a body-wide shudder, she left me alone while I snuck out from behind the curtain with as little fanfare as possible. I didn’t dare a single glance at Freddie even though I could feel him staring at me, like a hand on my lower back, fingers grazing across my neck. While a shiver tried to race down my spine, I strode with purpose across the ballroom and took the seat Raphe slid out beside him.
“Are you finally mine?” he asked, brushing his knuckles over my cheek.
“Yes,” I replied, leaning into him, ignoring the restless ache in my heart, the magnetic pull tugging me behind the stage, back to where Freddie sat between a gap in the curtains, running a hand through his hair, laughing at something someone must have said, happier now that I was gone. “I’m all yours.”
Although I collectedhang-ups the way Morgath collected comic books, uncertainty had never been one of them. When faced with a dilemma, I followed my instincts,made my choice, put my head down, and never looked back. Tonight, however—after the Fire Ball unraveled into warple cake and ambrosia cocktail–infused mayhem, and we had to shut it down—there it was, slinking over my skin like mist off a mountain. Uncertainty. And I did not care for it one bit.
As Raphael led me from the ballroom, I glanced over my shoulder, spying the crew making use of the dregs from the bar, the music, and the now empty dance floor to have their own party. Chan tilted his hoverchair from side to side with Tig in hysterics riding on his lap. Rax and Morgath stomped around in whatever bizarre moves passed for dancing in the ranks of the Aquilinian military. And Freddie laughed, his necktie looped around his head, Elanie holding the ends in her hand as she led him around the dance floor like a little lost puppy. A puppy I hadn’t had the courage to say good night to.
“Sunny.” Raphael winced. “You’re squeezing my hand.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said. I hadn’t noticed I’d been gripping him so tightly. The same way Freddie hadn’t noticed me leaving.
Exiting the ballroom, uncertainty hanging heavily over my shoulders, I followed behind Raphael. Each step was slow, labored. Like trudging through the marshy depths of a Gorbulon-7 bog while it tried to suck you under. In the elevator up to the Afterglow suite, the sinking sensation intensified.
Raphael and I stood far enough away to fit at least two Blurvans between us. And as the decks ticked by, I couldn’t stop thinking about a different elevator. A different man. When I stood as close to him as physics would allow. So close our hips touched, our shoulders. When his thumb brushed so softly over mine that I felt the ghost of it even now. When my body had needed his, ached for it. When I thought I might have screamed if he didn’t?—
“The captains are looking well,” Raphe said, yanking me out of one elevator and into another. “I still can’t fathom what brought them to theIgnisar. Did you know they were both New Earth Space Administration astronauts before they jumped to the private sector?”
I gave him a stilted nod. “Mm-hmm.”
“Combined, those two have more space-walk time under their belts than any other New Earthers who’ve ever stepped foot into the big black. That they’ve settled for life as captain and co-captain of this ship is?—”
“A bit of a head scratcher,” I admitted.
Small talk. I was forcing Raphael—a brilliant, gorgeous, and entirely too-busy-to-make-small-talk man—to make small talk.What iswrongwith me?
While panic rushed in, while my palmsandmy armpits started to sweat, the answer popped into my head. There was nothing wrong with me. I was fine. Totally fine. It had just been far too long since I’d gotten laid. That was all. Once I did, everything would make sense again. Everything would click back into place.
Edging close to Raphael, I skated my hands under the lapel of his suit coat. While his pecs tensed under my fingertips, I said, “It is good to see you, Raphe.”There. That was normal.
With a glint in his eye, he purred, “It will be good to do something other than only see you.” But then he closed the remaining distance between us, lowering his lips to mine, hovering only a breath away. And,okay, there was definitely something wrong with me, because I flinched, leaned back, contemplated faking a sneeze just to get out of kissing him. And I would have, one hundred percent, if the elevator doors hadn’t chosen that moment to slide open.
“After you,” Raphe said smoothly, waving me through.
Maybe he hadn’t noticed the way I’d frozen up. Maybe I could swerve my weird mental block into some sort of kinky role play. The shy, inexperienced ingénue…or whatever.
The walk to the Afterglow suite took a planet’s full rotation around its sun amount of time. Raphael followed a few steps behind me, but when I reached his door, he caught up, pressing the hard length of his body into mine.
Reaching his hand around me to place his thumb on the suite’s security panel, he touched his lips to the back of my neck and said, “I’ve missed you, Sunastara.”
When the door slid open, I practically did a dive roll away from him, racing to the bar like it was a raft bobbing in shark-infested waters.
“Sunny?” he asked, walking into his suite at a perfectly normal speed. “Is everything all right?”
“Oh, yeah.” I gave him a dismissive wrist flick before pulling the cork from a bottle of dark Portisan rum some benevolent god had stocked his bar with. “Just thirsty.”
“Okay.” His brows slid together while I brought the bottle to my lips and started chugging. “Do you want a glass?”
Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I said, “I’m good.”
He loosened his tie, undid his cuff links. “Give me a moment?”
Yes, absolutely, take all the moments. “Of course,” I said before downing another swig.
While he disappeared into his bathroom, I spun around, sank onto one of the couches facing the flexGlass wall, buried my head in my hands, and groaned, “Fuck.”
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know why—am I getting sick? PMSing? Exhausted beyond all rational thought?—but forsome unknowable reason, I couldn’t be with him. I just couldn’t.
