Delta Green - [36]

“Amy?”

She opened one eye.

“Sorry to wake you.”

“Kevin?” she said, coming fully awake. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, smiling.

The pupils of her eyes enlarged in the dim light. “Kevin, not here!”

“Ah, honey…”

“Don’t honey me. There’s too many people around.”

“How about my place, then?”

“There’s nothing different about your place.”

“If you give me a kiss, I’ll give you a present,” he said.

She shook her head negatively, then released a strap and stuck her head out far enough to survey the corridor. When she saw they were apparently alone, she kissed him lightly on the lips.

They were soft and warm and slightly moist. They would have been more eager, he thought, if she weren’t so concerned about appearances.

“What’s the present?”

He gave her her promotion and reassignment order.

“What?”

She tried to read it in the darkness of her cubicle, squirming around to shift into the light from the corridor.

He reached across her to the control panel and turned on the interior light.

“My God! Really?”

“Really.”

“Come in here,” she ordered.

McKenna pulled himself into the compartment and zipped the curtain shut.

Chapter Seven

USSC-1

Colonel Amy Pearson… Colonel McKenna… Colonel and Colonel McKenna…

Pearson realized she had awakened. Her mind had been drifting aimlessly, not wanting to acknowledge the necessity of addressing a new day.

She opened her eyes slowly. In the dimness of the cubicle, it took her a moment to recognize the diffused mass of her potato sack floating near her head, against the hatch curtain.

She was sleeping naked.

She never slept in the nude on board Themis.

Never.

And then she realized that her back was warm, McKenna’s chest firmly and comfortably pressed against it. His left arm was wrapped around her waist, his hand flat against her stomach. They were held in place by the restraining straps, but the straps had not been designed to enclose two people, and the Velcro ends barely met.

After a moment’s panicked alarm, Pearson decided she was very content. Another twelve hours in the same place would be pleasant.

And then she glanced at the clock readout on the control panel: 0538. People would be moving around in the corridor soon. The panic returned in force.

Gripping the strap with her right hand, she used it to tug herself around to face McKenna.

“Kevin,” she whispered, “wake up.”

“I’m awake,” he smiled. “I just didn’t want to give up the position.”

“You’ve got to get out of here.”

He kissed her, and though she resisted for a moment, she felt herself falling forward, leaning into it despite the lack of gravity, her mind and body responding to the heat.

No!

She finally broke off, then kissed him again lightly, then released the strap and floated away from him, though not far in the confines of the compartment.

“We don’t have time for this,” she said.

“Did you ever notice how things float in space?” he asked, his eyes running over her. “I did.”

“I’ve noticed,” she said and did. “Come on, now. People will be waking up.”

“I’m awake.”

She grabbed her sleep suit and began pulling it on. In the tight space, her knees and elbows seemed to bump into everything, padded walls, control panel, McKenna.

“You promised me in Aspen,” she said.

“Aspen.”

“You did.”

“I have many fine memories of Aspen”

“You promised.”

“Remind me.”

“We aren’t going to do this where people will see us.”

“I did make that commitment, I suppose. It was in a very weak moment, and I have no willpower, darling.”

He continued to float naked in the corner of her tiny cubicle.

“Get dressed!” she hissed.

“It’s better the other way. Don’t be in such a big rush,” he said.

She zipped up her sleep suit, fished around in the fabric pouch attached to the bulkhead, found his jumpsuit, and shoved it at him. “Get dressed, damn it!”

She was trying to whisper.

“Why would I make a dumb promise like that? The one I made in Aspen?”

“There are three good reasons,” she said. “You don’t want to get married, I don’t want to get married, and I sure as hell don’t want a reputation that will affect my professional life and my career.”

“Oh. Those reasons.”

For all of her ability in analyzing intelligence data, she had never fully evaluated her relationship with McKenna since the time their personal lives had become irreversibly confused on a long weekend in Aspen, Colorado. Or perhaps she was simply avoiding the assessment. On the surface, he was too irreverent with regulations and too infatuated with skirting the edges of danger to qualify as a desirable mate. Slightly below the surface, she had been forced to admit that she liked him a little, but in a more basic, more sensual way. Certainly, he satisfied some of her physical needs, and she supposed that was reciprocal. For the immediate future, however, she didn’t intend to analyze it much further.

Despite his attractiveness, McKenna was just too damned independent to mesh with the other facets of her life, and she wasn’t going to allow trysts like this to dominate her mind or her behavior.

She just wasn’t. She had made that promise to herself the week after Aspen.