Chapter 8: Break the Rule

I did not sleep.

I lay in my narrow bunk and listened to Odette's whisper go around and around.

He loves you, you know.

That's what they'll use.

I did not know if it was a warning or a threat, and I hated that I could not tell.

The wall comm clicked at the fourth hour of the night.

"Vesper." It was Dax, and his voice was tight. "Are you awake?"

"Yes."

"He went to his quarters after the dinner. He won't open the door, and the readout's gone red."

I was already pulling on my boots.

"He told me to keep you out," Dax said. "He said it twice."

"I know."

"He also said, if the red goes past eighty, to let you in anyway."

"What's it at?"

"Eighty-four."

I ran.

The door to his quarters was unlocked, and Dax stood back from it with his hands up.

I went in and shut it behind me.

The room was dark except for the light of his arm.

He was on the floor with his back against the bed and his knees drawn up.

The table was overturned, and a chair lay in pieces against the wall.

His whole left side burned white.

"Get out," he said, without looking up.

"No."

"This is the rule. You sleep in your own bunk."

"I'm not sleeping."

I crossed the room and knelt in front of him and put my wrist against his.

The heat went through my skin, and I held on.

For a long while neither of us spoke.

The white dimmed.

Slowly his breathing came down, and he lifted his head.

His face was wet.

I had not known he could.

"I didn't want you to see this," he said.

"I've seen worse. I saw you on the bridge."

"That was a fight." He swallowed. "This is just me. Alone, with it, every night."

"You aren't alone."

"Vesper."

"Say it again."

"Vesper," he said, rough, and he took my face in his hands.

He kissed me.

It was slower than the medbay.

It was deep and open, and neither of us was holding anything back.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Called Me Defective, Until I Tamed the Interstellar Commander from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.