Chapter 5: All of Him

"Six hours of sleep," Biscuit said. "Then the Tangle."

"I don't sleep before a mine field."

"Then you will die tired, Captain, and I will be forced to report it as negligence."

I was standing in the doorway of my own cabin with a flight cap in one hand and my heart going like a hammer.

We were eleven hours from the mouth of the debris field.

Havrik had taken the cargo hammock, because I'd told him to, and I could hear him through the bulkhead not sleeping either.

I went and stood at his hatch.

He lay in the hammock with his hands behind his head.

His feet hung off the end, because he was a whole man too long for the thing.

His eyes were open and gold in the dark.

"You are meant to be asleep," he said.

"So are you."

"I was counting your breathing."

"That's creepy."

"It was soothing."

I laughed, and then I stopped laughing.

"Tomorrow we might die," I said.

"Yes."

"I've been thinking about that."

"I thought you might."

"I don't want to die with only your mouth on me."

His breath caught.

In the light from the corridor, I watched the gold seams wake on his forearms.

They climbed to his elbows one after another.

"Inez," he said, careful. "You have been through a great deal."

"I'm not asking you to be careful."

"I know what you are asking."

"Then come to my bunk."

He swung down out of the hammock.

He had to turn sideways to come through the hatch.

In my cabin he filled all of it, blue and enormous and quiet, with the ceiling brushing his braids.

My bunk is narrow enough that one person sleeps badly in it.

I sat on the edge, took off my boots and my jacket, and pulled my shirt over my head.

He stood in front of me and didn't touch.

"You are beautiful," he said.

His voice had gone ragged.

"Take the rest off," I said. "Yours. Slowly."

He did.

He took off every piece of clothing.

When he stood bare in front of me, his cock rising against his stomach, hot and gold-seamed, I stopped being able to breathe.

I'd seen it, and held it, and had it in my mouth.