He caught her around the waist as she charged toward the door naked having discarded the idea of finding clothes and still getting into harness. “There is an emergency harness on the bunk.”
“My god! That thing’s ancient! I’ve never used it and it’s only for one!” Chloe gasped as he hauled her back to the bunk.
“Two will fit,” he said grimly. Planting her on the bed and climbing in with her, he placed his back against the wall, grabbed the straps and dragged them over his shoulders. Chloe had managed to get up on her knees and was debating whether to make another attempt to reach the nearest jump seat or not. Grabbing her, Jared settled her astride his lap facing him, adjusted the harness around both of them and clamped it behind her back. He pulled her snugly against his chest then and tightened the harness until she almost had to breathe in sync with him to breathe at all.
“Ten seconds, nine, eight ….”
Bending his knees, he braced his heels against the frame and coiled his arms tightly around her, pressing her head against his shoulder and holding it there with his hand.
Chloe felt the heaviness settle over her and increase until darkness engulfed her and she floated free. She came to as the ship completed the jump and the abrupt deceleration slammed the two of them against the harness.
Relieved that the harness had held, she slumped weakly against him.
It was more than that, though. The protectiveness of his hold felt so good she was in no hurry at all to move.
“You are alright?” he asked finally in a rumbling voice still rough with sleep.
She nodded and, to her vast disappointment, his hold eased on her. She felt him reach for the buckle to release the harness. It occurred to her the moment he did that she’d damned near slept through the jump!
She should’ve been on the bridge! She’d set the computer for the jump the night before, but she shouldstillhave been on the bridge monitoring the ship! Galvanized by that thought, she slid off his lap as he removed the harness. “I need to get to the bridge and run a systems check!” she said, dashing to her locker to retrieve a flight suit. Shoving her legs and then her arms in, she grabbed her boots, hopping on one foot as she pulled on first one and then the other. She’d already headed toward the door, fastening the closure when it occurred to her that she hadn’t even told Jared good morning.
Whirling, she raced back to him. He’d moved to the edge of the bunk, but he looked heavy-eyed—and no wonder! Catching his face between her hands, she kissed him soundly on the lips but eluded him when he made a grab for her. “Later, bud!” she threw at him over her shoulder with a quick grin as she dashed across the cabin and went out.
Jared was halfway to the showers, a bemused smile still curling his lips, when that finally sank in. His smile vanished abruptly and his dark brows descended over the bridge of his nose in a frown of confusion. By the time he’d showered he wasn’t just puzzled. He was pissed.
His mood didn’t improve when he reached the mess hall and discovered it vacant. He glared at the empty room for several moments before it dawned on him that everyone was supposed to report to the bay to work on the shuttles. He hesitated, but he was hungry gods damn it! Stalking across the eating area, he pushed the door to the galley open and searched the cooling unit until he found enough leftovers to appease his appetite and moved to the heating unit with it. He was gulping down a glass of fruit juice when one of Reuel’s crewmen wandered in, his hair standing on end.
He sniffed. “Anything left?”
Jared shrugged. “Help yourself. I have eaten what I wanted.” He paused at the door. “You may want to find a flight suit and do something with the hair before you report to the bay.”
The man nearly choked on his food. “Fuck! I forgot!”
Apparently, that made five of them. He caught up with two more before he reached the bay and Reuel was already dressing down a man when they arrived. Glancing warily at one another, they split up and strode as swiftly as they could toward the workgroups without making it too obvious that they’d just arrived.
Kane greeted Jared with a scowl.
It caught Jared off guard until it dawned on him, when he discovered that all the others looked equally peeved, that he had spent the night with Chloe and they were none too happy about it.
He had mixed feelings about it himself if it came to that. What the fuck was that ‘bud’ shit about, gods damn it!
Hehad pleasured her! He knew absolutely that she had come the second time and she had told him that she had the first. Two climaxes, gods damn it! She did not call that fucking fuck droid ‘bud’!
Still stewing over it, he tried to focus on what was going on around him. After watching the others removing one thing after another from the shuttle for several moments, however, he realized hestilldid not know what the fuck was going on. Following Kane as he stalked up the gang plank, he stopped and asked.
“If you had been at the gods damned meeting this morning, you would know!”
“Well, I was not at the gods damned meeting!”
“Exactly!” Kane snarled. “It was not enough to fuck once or twice? You had to fuck all night?”
“I did not fuck all night, gods damn it! I fell asleep afterwards,” he muttered.
Kane sent him a disbelieving look. “And slept through the jump?”
“I did not sleep through the fucking jump! Chloe woke me when she fell off the bed!”
“You are saying that you were still asleep when the countdown started? You slept through reveille?”
