She sucked in a sharp breath and answered honestly. “I don’t know.” Because she really didn’t understand what was happening to her—what was happening between them.
The rest of the questions she’d had lined up in her head vanished.
Chapter nineteen
The urge to kiss Iax again kept Wynn’s nerves humming while she analyzed, tagged, and filed the data from the central hub. Each of his slight movements—a tilt of his head here, a step of his feet there—skittered across her awareness, titillating her senses. It took as much energy to focus on what her fingers were doing as it did to ignore the memory of how it felt to taste his lips and have his body pressed against hers.
When it was time to move to the greenhouse, she took Iax’s hand without thinking, tugging him along. He followed, docile, and she resumed their bargain.
“Why do Calypsons live so long?” The door swished closed behind them.
“In the same way we heal: regenerative cells.”
She stepped up to her newly planted seeds when he asked, “How do you achieve contentment?”
The question gave her pause. What made her happy? For so long, nothing had brought her joy. Even before the death of her parents, she’d found it hard to seize happiness for herself. She’d gained her love of spaceball from her father, and her enjoyment of learning and puzzles from her mother.
Now it felt like she only had her work.
“I guess I feel most content when I can turn off my thoughts,” she said after a time. “Here in the greenhouse, or listening to music.” She turned to him. “What about you? How do you achieve contentment?”
“I still search for the feeling.”
His quiet answer shifted something in her chest. Were Calypsons ever happy? Something stopped her from asking the questions aloud.
Wynn moved on to check her saplings, then spent a good section of time tending the one that had taken a tumble the day before. A diagnostic of her mechanical systems followed to make sure it didn’t happen again. All the while, Iax remained close enough for her to feel his body heat. She’d never been one to allow the hovering of another, but with him, it didn’t feel intrusive. In fact, every time he strayed more than a meter, she waited until he caught up before she moved on.
Over lunch, where she reheated the soup from the day before, their game of questions tapered off. Sitting side by side at the counter, she kept watching him and tried not to obsess too much over how much she liked how his thigh pressed against hers.
After cleaning up the dishes, they spent the remainder of the day in her greenhouse, tending to one section at a time. She started showing him what to do, first planting seeds, and examining the saplings, seeing if they needed more fertilizer. Eventually, she would plant some outside too, hoping they could withstand the elements.
She and Foster had gone through so many genetic modifications, so many variations, and she would continue to do so until she, or whoever the CORE sent to take her place, was successful.
The work was only interrupted by their questions.
“Are there plants in Sector Ten?” She pushed another seed into the soil.
“Many.” He copied her movements with his own pot.
She followed up quickly with another. “Are they like these?”
“No. Very different. You will see them when you travel with me.”
Her hands stopped moving, her heart leaping in her throat. “You have yet to convince me.”
He tipped his head slightly in acknowledgement, then asked, “What would have happened if we had gone to your bed together?”
A strained laugh erupted from her mouth, obliterating her fear of his previous answer. She wasn’t sure if his matter-of-fact tone made it harder or easier to answer a question like that. Did Calypsons have sex? They had to if they procreated, and the history logs could attest to that.
“Um,” she began, feeling heat climb up her throat. “I guess it could have gone a few different ways.” She cleared her throat. “It would have depended on how we were feeling and what we both wanted.”
He nodded once, agreeing. Her shoulders relaxed.
After a while, she asked, “If we go to Sector Ten, how are you taking me there?” If he’d arrived in a pod acting like a meteor, then it was unlikely they could leave that way.
“Multiple modes of transportation.”
She faced him fully. “Give me an example,” she demanded, even though she knew she’d asked more than her fair share of questions.
