If she’d understood correctly, Linao accused Sylvester of ordering her ship destroyed, and she’d barely gotten out alive.Velda remembered her saying she’d spent a week as a prisoner afterward.
And now her father had destroyed a ship with her in it again.
It had obviously stirred up trouble.
And Ritter arriving would stir up more.
Linao didn’t like him, but Sylvester seemed to be looking forward to his arrival.
We need the last four balls, the voices in her head said.It’s good Ritter’s coming if it means he gives them to us. We are tired of being in hibernation.
She turned her head slightly to look at Ethan as he dozed beside her. If he got two more balls, it would be almost impossible to hide the changes.
Her panic spiked, and the balls inside her tried to calm her down.
No, she told them.This is a legitimate worry.
He hadn’t grown in height, but he was so much more muscular, it looked as if he had.
She lifted her arm, turned it one way and then another, and admitted she looked stronger, too, but her muscles had only gotten more defined, she hadn’t put on the same bulk as Ethan.
It was as if the balls had taken a look at their opponents, the much bigger, bulkier Caruso, and had molded Ethan’s new physique to match them.
All the better to fight them, the voices told her.
Let’s be clever about this, she warned them.I don’t want Ethan getting hurt.
She felt a rush of approval and agreement from them, and her fingers tingled where they rested against Ethan’s arm.
He stirred beneath her, and she looked up, found him watching her.
“You thinking good thoughts about me?” he asked, voice husky.
She lifted her brows. “Maybe. Is that what the voices told you?”
“That’s what they told me,” he agreed. “They’re very happy about it.” He bent his head and kissed her, and she moved her legs restlessly as she kissed him back, wishing, as she had many times since this whole thing began, that they had the privacy they’d had in the mountains.
Ethan stilled, his hand gripping her arm as if to stop himself touching her anywhere else.
“I want this ship to ourselves,” he said.
She gave a low chuckle. “You’re going to get rid of them so we can finally have some us time?”
“Yes.” He sounded quite serious. He shifted, pulling her over his body and against the wall, his focus going to the door. She was suddenly glad of the overhead bunk, because it created a pool of shadow beneath it—shadow that could hide Ethan’s changes, because it was clear someone was coming.
“Let me deal with this.” She swung her leg over him before he could sit up, pinning him beneath her, and he grabbed her by the waist and lifted her up, the move so effortless she gaped at him.
“No.”
“Yes.” She glared at him, suspended along his length, as she heard footsteps getting closer. “You can’t see yourself, but you’re just not the same as you were.” She whispered it, in case the lens in the room was sound and vision. “I’m going to sit in front of you and block their view.”
He looked distinctly annoyed as he lifted her completely over his body so she could put her feet on the ground.
She straightened up, standing directly in front of him, as Linao opened the door.
“Good, you’re up.” Linao smiled. “I thought you might like some actual food before Ritter prods and pokes at you again, so I’ve arranged for you to eat breakfast in the mess.”
“We would like that.” But she was panicking as she said it, because then Linao would see Ethan.
