When the vid they’d been watching ended, Keirth and Ariana sat awkwardly on the couch, staring at the blank screen. Neither said anything for a long time.
Finally, Keirth just blurted it out. “I don’t know if I want to live in one place like this.”
Ariana seemed startled and confused by his words. “Like Gordic and Winda do?”
“Yes,” said Keirth. “I’ve always been on the move. I like that.” He found himself glaring at her, as if daring her to contradict him or force him to do something different.
But Ariana shrugged. “Well, I agree with you. My family had different estates on different planets, and staying in one place, when you’ve got the whole galaxy at your fingertips, seems kind of silly.”
He let out a breath. She didn’t want to tie him to one place, did she? Well... Keirth felt himself deflating. All his worry was for nothing, in other words. He stood up from the couch. “Would you like me to stay with you again tonight?”
She nodded.
And soon they were tucked under the covers together again. She was in his arms, and she felt impossibly soft and impossibly fragile. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever wanted to keep someone safe quite so much, if he’d ever enjoyed being close to someone so much. “We’d need to make money somehow,” he whispered into her hair.
“When?” she asked.
“While we’re traveling the galaxy,” he said.
She wriggled in his arms to face him. “You want me with you?”
“Would I be sleeping in your bed and kissing you if I didn’t want you with me?”
“Possibly,” said Ariana quietly.
And he squeezed her tighter. “I am not one of those men.”
“How did you make money before?”
“Different things,” said Keirth. “Smuggling. Odd jobs.”
“I think we should be smugglers,” pronounced Ariana. “The stories you and Gordic were telling sounded exciting.”
“Exciting, but dangerous,” said Keirth.
“That seems to be the way things work for us,” she said.
He laughed and kissed her again. “Let’s think about some other options before we become criminals.”
“We already are criminals. Aren’t we?”
She was right, of course. They were quiet for several minutes.
Then Ariana spoke up. “If we’re going to be together, do you want to make love now?”
And Keirth felt himself pulling away.
“It’s just that you’re sort of...poking me, and I thought...”
Yes, being close to her aroused him. But... “Not yet.”
“Because you’re worried about me being confused?”
“Because...” he floundered. The thought of having intercourse with any woman, even Ariana, terrified him. He wasn’t sure what to do, for one thing, and he felt that his brush with Risciter was recent in his memory. He flashed on the man with Ariana, and his erection immediately disappeared. He squeezed his eyes shut, banishing the image. He pulled Ariana close and kissed her forehead. “When it’s time for us to make love,” he said, “we’ll know.”
* * *
They spent nearly three weeks with Gordic and Winda, and Ariana found the time relaxing and recuperative, just as Keirth had told her she would. She helped Winda around the space station and Winda taught her a little about cooking, which Ariana had no experience with. She found that she actually quite liked it. It was like creating a painting or a work of art, picking spices instead of colors. The best part was that when you were done, you got to eat it. She watched Winda quilt as well, but found she had little desire to learn to do it. It seemed so difficult. But she assisted by cutting out pieces of fabric and doing some pinning. While she and Winda worked, they talked. Sometimes, they had long conversations about the things that Risciter had done to her and Winda’s sister’s experience that left them both in tears. Sometimes, they had giggling conversations about men. With each passing day, Ariana felt more whole. She gained confidence about her ability to handle life away from the sector and to fulfill her plans with Keirth.
She and Keirth spent every night in the same bed, staying awake in the darkness and talking about what they would do. Keirth felt they would need to get rid of the ship they were currently using in case it had been identified. He seemed optimistic that with a different ship and a steady stream of various kinds of work, they could spend their time evading the authorities and roaming around the galaxy. To Ariana, it sounded like every day would be an adventure. And she wanted to be with Keirth as well.
They still hadn’t gone much farther than kissing, and sometimes it filled Ariana with an ache for something more as she lay in the circle of his arms. But sometimes she was grateful. While she rarely thought of Risciter when she was with Keirth, one night, as they’d been furiously kissing, his hands had roamed over her body, and the way he’d caressed her breast had reminded her of Risciter’s running a knife over it. She’d felt completely frozen with fear and pushed Keirth away. He’d been sweet about it but seemed to take it as further evidence that they should take things even slower, which both relieved Ariana and frustrated her.