Yan looked up as the door chime signaled a visitor. He thought about simply telling the system to open it, but he wasn’t expecting anyone. Most people would have called ahead to make sure he was here, even if it was late in ship’s day and he was normally in his cabin by now.
Instead, Yan saved everything he was working on and slid his lightpen into a pocket on his tunic where he wouldn’t forget it. He rose and crossed the four steps to the hatch, pressing the button to open it from this side.
She was standing there, all long and lanky and crude and sarcastic, but she had an inscrutable look on her face tonight.
Ainsley Rakel Barret.
da Vinci.
“Hi,” she said in a voice that seemed to lack something.
“Hi,” Yan replied, stepping slightly to one side. “Come in?”
In the past, it hadn’t been a question, but something about the woman was off. Not right.
Fragile.
Yan didn’t think she was going to break up with him. This was da Vinci. That would be a much louder and more passionate thing, if that were to happen.
Angry words and possibly thrown coffee mugs.
She was fidgeting as she stood in the passageway, and finally stepped forward. Stepped close.
Arms went around his back and held on like she was drowning.
Yan had the presence of mind to close the hatch before wrapping himself around the tall woman, luxuriating in her smell, the feel of her up against him. He could feel her heart going like a rabbit, pitter-patter, so he just held her.
Long moments passed in silence.
Something changed. It was like parts of her melted, or at least relaxed. He was no longer holding a statue of the woman, but the woman herself. Perhaps Galatea come to life.
Yan leaned back just enough to kiss her on the cheek and notice her eyes were closed, but red.
“What can I do to help?” he whispered.
“Not hate me,” she whispered back, so faint that he almost had to read her lips to understand.
“Not possible, Ainsley,” Yan murmured.
Her eyes opened and he got a good look into the woman’s soul.
She had been raging, or perhaps crying. Emotionally unsettled, in a woman who was normally calmness incarnate. Off, and only now coming back to herself.
“Don’t be so sure,” da Vinci said in a slightly louder voice. “I talked with Jessica. Told her that if she allowed you to fly with the wing, I would quit and she would have to find someone else to command.”
He could tell she expected him to rage now. Yell. Maybe break things.
How little she really understood.
“I know,” Yan said. “She told me.”
Yan felt Ainsley tense up suddenly. Hopefully, she wasn’t about to punch him.
“I respect your decision,” Yan continued. “Both of you. What I would like to know is why. For flying a P-6 Vanguard, I’m probably the best pilot you have in the entire fleet, after you. And you’re flying an E-2 now with the heavy team.”
“It’s not professional, Yan,” she said, gaining strength, perhaps drawing it out of him like a vampire or something. “It’s personal. I can’t command if I’m worried about something happening to you. Can’t order you to do stupidly suicidal things. It will compromise me, when I need to be steady.”
He squeezed her harder. That seemed to be what Ainsley needed. Some of the ice slipped off her back. More of her weight settled against his chest.
“You think I don’t worry about you?” he asked. “Worry that every time you launch, something will go wrong with your fighter, something I missed when I designed it, and you won’t come back?”
“That’s different,” Ainsley countered. “You have two other wives.”
“And you think I love you any less than them?” he said.
It was cute, the utter shock on her face. The way her eyes got big, until the hazel vanished into the black pupils. The heartrate suddenly accelerating again, just as it had started to calm down.
Yan kissed her. Just because. And again.
Yup. Vampire. Seemed to draw heat and strength from his kisses. Squeezed him so hard it was like she was trying to crack his ribs, or squish herself flat against his chest.
Necking ensued.
Finally, she seemed mollified. Yan stole one last kiss and then leaned back to study her face.
Color had returned. Hazel filled her eyes again. Her heart still pounded, but to a different kind of rhythm now.
“I was afraid you’d be mad at me,” she finally offered. “Throw me out, or something.”
“For doing your job?” he countered.
They hadn’t made it more than a step into his cabin. Yan broke the deathgrip just enough to turn and guide her to the couch where he entertained visitors. Then he changed his mind and sat in the big, puffy chair, pulling her down onto his lap like a giant cat. She curled up like one, too.
“Why is it my job?” Ainsley asked, snuggled up against his chest, where she could listen to his heart yammer.
“You and Vlahovic are in charge of the pilots, da Vinci,” he said, suddenly regretting that his highball of whiskey was out of reach on the workbench, across the room. “I was offering to make life easier, not harder.”
“Easier is here, with the door closed,” she said. “Out there is hard.”
He could see that. Outside, Ainsley had to be da Vinci. Probe pilot extraordinaire. Magician with sensors and jammers. Commander of an unruly mob of flight-jockeys.
High-functioning.
Here, she could be the introverted maths nerd with a brunette pony tail and fingers that seemed to be snakes, all long and skinny and bendy, like the woman herself.
At least the cabin’s remote control was within reach.
Yan dialed the room lights down to a dimness reminiscent of sunset, and powered down his design board so it wouldn’t be lighting up the room. For the hell of it, he kicked the heat up a couple of degrees from the coolness he was used to.
“You aren’t mad?” she asked.
“No.”
“Good.”
She squirmed a little, settling more and more into his lap and chest, like Kali-ma’s Ship’s Cat. Hopefully with less clawing and kneading to settle.
Yan leaned back and relaxed. Not the evening he had planned, but the design could wait. And this was far better.
Ainsley’s breath relaxed. He sat perfectly still as she dozed, afraid to wake her. She must have worked herself to a frenzy if she thought her command decision would cause a break with him.
da Vinci had said he was the first person to make her smile in more than a decade.
After a while, Yan leaned down to smell her, and kiss the woman on the top of her head.
She stirred. Twisted in place until she was still curled up like a cat, but could look him directly in the face.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Yan brushed the back of a hand on her cheek. She closed her eyes and he thought she was going to start purring.
Those eyes opened, all hazel now.
“As much as your other wives?” she asked, out of the blue, the hint of a grin on her face.
“At least,” he said simply.
“Prove it.”
Yan grinned back at her. At forty-five, he had nearly a decade on this woman. And he was smart enough not to try and stand up from this chair with her weight on him. Good way to pull something, bad time to do it.
Instead, he slid her forward until her feet touched the ground, then pushed her upright, before standing himself. She hadn’t moved, so he stood up against her.
Ainsley was all grins now. It seemed infectious.
Yan considered picking her up and carrying the long woman across the threshold into his sleeping chamber. Too awkward.
He bent forward, placed a shoulder into her stomach, and flipped her over his shoulder, fireman-carry, and stood up. For all her height, she weighed next to nothing.
She laughed. Yan grinned. She swatted him on the bottom a few times with profane curses and threats, but he was not dissuaded.
There was enough light in the sleeping chamber to navigate. He tossed her bodily onto the bed and then slid in beside her, getting all tangled up in legs, arms, and other parts.
Oh, the sacrifices he was willing to make for this woman.