“I’ve decided to put in for a transfer. As soon as we get back.”
That was when he noticed she wasn’t calling him ‘sir’ or ‘skipper.’ In fact, she wasn’t calling him anything. Just talking directly, in an obviously stressed tone. Maybe he was wrong about what was going on here. He’d assumed … the obvious, but maybe he was wrong.
“This isn’t about Chip, is it? Are you still having problems?”
“He’s met someone else. Someone who … fulfills his needs. He told me when I get back, he’s filing for divorce.”
“Oh, Claudia. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t ask her if there was anything he could do, because he knew there wasn’t. No one could do anything for another in that stark time when the one you loved told you it was over, when you realized your plans and dreams were a mug’s game. But he put a hand on her shoulder, to give her a human touch in her pain.
Without saying anything she pulled his head down to hers. So hard and fast their teeth slammed together, and the sea taste of blood mingled with the kiss.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” she whispered. “Don’t worry. I know you’re married. I’m not the clinging kind.”
He took a deep breath, trying to get past wanting to lay her down and let go all the tension and stress and lust he’d buttoned up for months. “I wanted it, too. And I can’t say I don’t want to now. But we can’t. You know that.”
“I guess I do. But, oh, shit, I just needed that kiss so much. I didn’t really think past it when I stopped and knocked. Actually, I was going to the nav shack.” She laughed shakily, almost crazily, and he caught a glimpse of a far less controlled and hardheaded Claudia Hotchkiss than anyone had ever seen aboard
“You can take it, Commander. Or else do a damn good imitation.”
“That’s all it is. A fucking imitation.” She laughed again, shakily. Her hair had come undone and hung over her cheek. “See, I know you don’t want to hear this, but—”
He put a finger over her lips. “Don’t say it, Claudia.”
“You know what I’m going to say?”
“I’ve got a good idea.”
They were whispering, of course. He could smell her breath. Clean, like balsam, or pine scent. An inane voice in his head prattled about pheromones and chemical receptors. He got a breath in and out, but couldn’t look away. In the red light, flushed, eyes wide, with her shirt coming undone, she was as desirable as it was possible for a woman to be. All he had to do was reach out and she was his. And his prick kept popping up out of the buttonless fly of his Uniform Shop yellow-label boxers. Making him fear that any moment she’d bend over and very slowly and delicately slide those parted warm lips down over it.
In which case, he’d be well and truly lost, because his inhibitions were holding forty million years of heartily copulating primates back now only by the barest fingernail.
He cleared his throat again. “Don’t go there, Claudia. We wouldn’t give McCall and Richardson the seal of approval. Or Konow and Hurst, in the paymaster’s office. So how’s it look if we do what we punished them for?”
She didn’t say anything, just adjusted something under her shirt and looked away from him. He felt uneasy, like he always did when women didn’t speak.
“You’re probably right,” she said, almost listlessly. “Anyway, thanks for listening.”
“I’ll take it as a compliment.”
“Not as a lapse of professional conduct?”
“Maybe a misstep,” he said. “But I’m guilty, too. Whatever you want, Claudia, I want, too. And I might have communicated that on some subverbal level. But let’s get one thing straight. You’re finishing your tour, and you’re going on to screen for command and get your own ship and have a sterling career. Is that clear?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” she said, and he honestly couldn’t tell what her tone was actually saying.
She was at the door when he remembered and got up quickly. “Wait a minute.”
“What?”
“Let me look first.”
She stood back as he cracked it, peering out, feeling the insane weirdness of having to check the passageway. But they couldn’t let somebody spot her going out at this time of night. Perceptions mattered, sometimes more than what really happened.
Which had been nothing. Right?
The passageway lay empty, a disturbing scarlet-lit vacancy that always seemed to him like some midnight knife-murderer should be prowling it. “The coast is clear,” he whispered back, feeling like a teenager getting his girlfriend out of the house before his parents heard them.
She was about to go when she turned back. “I guess I’ll read about this, right?”
She meant, on her fitness report. And he saw again her keen hard ambition, and knew this moment would vanish soon enough from her memory. Or maybe that was cruel. But he knew what she meant.
“I already addressed that issue, Claudia. We’re all feeling our way through this thing. Let’s call this a free throw. If it doesn’t happen again.”
She chuckled. “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
