“Is that so?” It was so, and it was frightening how well Mila read her. “That was only a test drive. I had to know if you were worth it.”
Mila’s face brightened. “Was I?”
“You have serious potential.” And just like that, she felt back in control. She’d handle Mila with both humor and an inflated sense of superiority. “Think you could use that potential to file the activity logs while I test tomorrow’s water supply?”
“Should I log that kiss?”
“Do I seriously have to answer that?”
Just when she thought she’d regained the upper hand, she readied for bed with a sponge bath and her body betrayed her once again. Though her back was turned, she could feel Mila’s eyes on her. It aroused her. Even before a much younger woman, she was confident of her sensuality. All the women she’d known had loved her firm thighs and butt, and especially her breasts. Just the thought of Mila watching her made her nipples stand on end, and she flaunted them by stretching her arms high above her head to allow her shirt to fall slowly into place. Taunting, teasing, titillating. Look all you want.
She crawled into the sleeping chamber with her reading tablet, knowing sleep would elude her until her body cooled off and her mind emptied of its lustful thoughts. It was cruel to put on such a show. As though her mouth were saying one thing and her actions another.
Mila joined her without a word, taking up her usual position at the other end of the mattress so they faced one another. She too had washed and put on a freshly laundered T-shirt and shorts.
“You’re all spruced up. What’s the occasion?”
“It’s Saturday…I think. Or maybe it’s only Friday.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
Mila huffed. “Who can tell? I don’t even know if I’m early or late, but I feel better.”
“I suppose that counts for something.” Jancey forced her attention back to her tablet, having read the same page several times already.
Again, she could feel Mila watching her, though it appeared for the moment she’d tabled her desires. She looked relaxed, languid. Sexy. Beneath that thin shirt was taut skin unmarred by age. A flat belly and small breasts that sat high upon her chest.
Jancey couldn’t seem to focus. More than a year had passed since she last made love. Too long. No matter what she told herself about concentrating on their work, her body didn’t want to wait.
“What are you reading?”
The question caught her off guard. “I’m, uh…it’s an old classic, Daughters of a Coral Dawn. I’ve read it half a dozen times. I always find something new.”
“Sounds interesting.” Mila abruptly switched her pillow to Jancey’s end to lie alongside. “What’s it about?”
She was surprised by the move but not bothered. They had kissed, after all. Surely they could sleep side by side instead of head to foot. “A lesbian utopia on another planet.”
“If a certain pair of lesbians I know ends up on another planet, that will be utopia.”
“Hmmm…and if it follows the book, the trouble will start when the men show up.”
“That’s why we need to go first, to establish superiority.” Mila lay on her side, her face only inches away. “Does it bother you for me to be this close?”
“No, you’re fine.” Her words came out with an irritating squeak, not at all the voice of control. “As long as you don’t mind that I keep reading.”
Mila scooted closer, brazenly resting her head on Jancey’s shoulder.
The audacity was astonishing, and yet she had no urge to pull away.
Focus. Book. Utopia.
The words on the page ran together like so much nonsense no matter how many times she read them or how hard she tried to concentrate. Mila’s hand had come to rest on her stomach, and her fingertips danced the way they had when she pretended to play the clarinet.
“A Payrungasmad curse on the neighbors. Can you do that again, dear?”
She’d read that sentence six times and was no closer to understanding who said it or why. The hand was underneath her shirt now, tickling her skin. Why wasn’t she stopping this?
“Is this all right?” Mila asked.
Afraid her voice would squeak again, Jancey managed only something between a grunt and a moan. That’s how she’d handle it. Pretend it didn’t matter, that Mila’s actions were having no effect. The ultimate in self-discipline.
That worked until Mila’s hand worked its way upward, where her knuckles brushed the underside of her breasts.
Still pretending to read, Jancey swung her tablet to the opposite hand, allowing Mila unfettered access to her torso. With her near hand, she began stroking Mila’s hair. It was getting harder by the second to feign disinterest, especially with her nipples now standing erect as though ready to burst through her shirt.
“How’s your book?” Mila murmured, tugging Jancey’s shirt upward.
“I have no idea.”
The chamber had grown so warm over the last few minutes that she actually welcomed the exposure, and abruptly sat up to pull her shirt over her head and toss it aside, along with her tablet. Her pretense was over.
Her torture, however, had just begun. She’d fully expected Mila to devour her begging breasts immediately, but the woman clearly had her own deliberate schedule, one designed to drive her insane.
After several minutes of lightly stroking the outside of her breasts, Mila finally made it to her areolas. They pebbled, drawing so tight that her nipples stood like soldiers.
Then Mila abruptly broke away. Without a word she pulled off both her shirt and shorts, and burrowed again along Jancey’s side.
Her cool skin was like a mountain stream against Jancey’s rising heat, and she too tugged off her shorts to feel it more completely. With a deep gasp, she inhaled a trace of soap and mint, and a growing essence of Mila’s arousal. Or maybe it was her own arousal. Her legs were open. When had she done that?
Mila was above her now, suspended somehow so that her weight rested elsewhere. Like zero gravity. That enabled her to slide her warm mouth all around…across Jancey’s ribs, up her sternum and all around the curve of her breasts.
Everywhere except where Jancey wanted it most.
When she could stand it no longer, she clutched Mila’s head and guided her to a nipple. Even then, the expected onslaught didn’t come. Mila’s lips grew hard and closed her nipple in a firm vise. Tugging, squeezing, warming with her hot breath. The only moisture came from her tongue lightly flicking the tip. It cooled instantly when she left it to move to the other side.
The torture went on interminably as though Mila were waiting for a signal to proceed. But it likely wasn’t permission she sought. It was surrender, an admission from Jancey that she needed this.
As if her whole body weren’t screaming loud enough.
Then suddenly Mila sucked her nipple deep into her mouth, raking it with her teeth.
A rapturous explosion of pleasure and pain filled her entire body, and she arched upward to ride the wave. Squeezing her eyes tightly, she shut out everything but the sensation of a warm, wet mouth.
Mila chose that moment—the perfect moment—to enter her.
“God, you’re so wet.”
How could she not be after such an unhurried assault? She wanted to feel everything all at once, so badly that it was all she could do not to stroke herself.
For once, Mila seemed to sense her desperation—maybe it was the fingernails digging into her back—and rolled her thumb across the taut bundle of nerves.
Jancey could hear herself making noises—moans, hisses, half-words—but she had no control over their utterance. It didn’t matter. Mila needed no coaching. With every thrust, she ground her thumb, increasing the speed and pressure until Jancey thought she might explode.
Then she did. Bursting pulsing pounding. Her hips high off the bed, with one leg wrapped tightly around Mila’s thigh and her face buried into her neck. Sweating throbbing.
Spent.
/> Mila eased her back to her pillow and finished with a deep kiss.
Still gasping for breath, she tucked Mila’s hair behind her ear and cupped her cheek. “You can’t be trusted, Todorov.”
“Not true, Major Beaumont. My priority is you. Your goals are my goals. Your wants are my wants. And you can always trust me to put you first.”
Jancey pushed her onto her back and straddled her leg. “I’ve decided I want to be your commander after all.”
Chapter Sixteen
From atop the dome, Mila could see a smattering of snow on the peak above. Unusual for September, but not unheard of at nearly fourteen thousand feet. Some people had been known to ski down the slope, if only to brag they’d skied in the morning and sunned on the beach in the afternoon. Neither appealed to her. All the adventure she could ever want was inside the habitat.
Though Jancey had insisted she wouldn’t become the commander, she’d had no problem pulling rank at sunrise.
“Time to turn the solar panels.”
“I did it yesterday,” Mila answered sleepily.
“My wants are your wants. That’s what you said. I want you to go out and turn the solar panels.”
Cheeky. The next forty years would probably be filled with conversations like that, a realization that made her smile.
Another hour or three of sleep would have been nice, but she wouldn’t have traded a minute of their night for it. From the moment they’d become lovers two weeks ago, Jancey left all her reservations behind, and they’d made love every night.
Sleep should have come easier for Mila. Even with Jancey beside her, she still struggled to fall asleep. At Jancey’s insistence, she’d taken a sleeping pill the night before after lying awake for over an hour. A practice she’d have to accept. At least they didn’t leave a morning fog.
As she inspected the habitat, she noticed one of the Fagans walking around their dome. Brandon, she guessed, since he was considerably taller than his wife. He appeared to be looking directly at her but she had no compulsion to wave. The guy was an asshole.
She finished her walk-around and noted that Mission Control hadn’t terrorized them in over a week. No broken tiles on their dome, no stripped wires on their panels, no more trouble with their water supply. Only three solar flares in five weeks. With only four days to go, the committee apparently was content to let them limp toward the finish line.
On her second pass around the dome, she called in to Jancey. “I’m happy to report we’re in good shape.”
“Maybe they’ve forgotten we’re here,” she replied sleepily.
“I’m giving it one more look.”
There was danger in becoming complacent, especially now that their relationship was soaking up so much of their attention. She’d promised Jancey becoming lovers wouldn’t affect their work.
Returning to find Jancey still inside the sleeping chamber, she stripped off her spacesuit and stowed it. “I saw Brandon Fagan out there. If they get picked for Mars, would it be socially awkward to have a dinner party and not invite them?”
Jancey emerged already dressed in her flight suit. “Not for me. I never understood what Libby saw in him. He always rubbed me the wrong way. All the women at NASA had a special connection. We weren’t part of the old boys’ club, but that was cool. We had our own club. I remember one night in Houston…a bunch of us went out for a beer. Brandon Fagan showed up at the door and made a big deal about looking at his watch, like he was pissed off at her being late. Couldn’t even be bothered to come over to our table and act like a human being. Libby just got up and followed him out. Left her dinner, stuck us with the bill. It was like she didn’t have his permission to be there. Weird.”
“Creepy is more like it. If she were my friend, I’d have to kick his ass.”
“Same here. We weren’t great friends in those days, but there was a connection. Like a sisterhood.”
Mila liked the idea of NASA’s female astronauts hanging out together at a bar. It was that special brand of camaraderie she’d longed for all her life—brilliant, accomplished women who loved adventure the way she did. “It’s amazing to me to think of so many women together at NASA. I would have given anything to be part of that.”
“It took a long time for us to get there. We didn’t have the right stuff, if you know what I mean.”
Mila cupped her crotch. “This kind of stuff.”
“Exactly. The Russians saw fit to put Valentina Tereshkova in space twenty years before Sally Ride. Seven Mercury astronauts, sixteen Gemini and twenty-four Apollo. All men. But once the shuttle missions opened the ranks to women, our odds were actually better than the men’s because there weren’t as many women competing for the slots.”
Jancey mixed a vanilla protein shake and poured it into Mila’s cup. Then she repeated the process for herself.
“I thought my chances would be better with the ESA,” Mila said. “Except they don’t choose that many women. Thousands of applications and they pick maybe one. Claudie Haigneré is the only European woman who’s ever flown.”
“All the more reason Tenacity should choose us.” Jancey tapped her cup to Mila’s in a toast and downed her drink in several gulps. “Four more days, Todorov.”
“Forty more years, Major Beaumont.”
“I’ll be a very old woman by then.”
Since they’d become lovers, Jancey was quick to smile, easy with the flirtations. Deeply confident.
“I promise I’ll still find you fascinating.”
Their suggestive gaze was broken by a high-pitched signal from their comm.
“I was just thinking not ten minutes ago that it’s been a long time since Mission Control messed with us. What do they want?”
Jancey spun around to study their tablet. “They aren’t kidding around this time. It’s a big one. Super X-class.”
The largest class of solar flare ever recorded. A coronal mass ejection directed toward Earth could potentially—
“CME coming our way. Blackout in three minutes.”
They went into motion instantly packing as many supplies as they could fit into their chamber. Food, water, clean clothing. The dreaded diapers, which they’d managed to avoid so far. An X-class solar flare could last a couple of days—or longer—and wipe out electrical grids on Earth, causing weeks or even months of chaos.
Mila took one last look around the habitat as the seconds ticked off, and then crawled into the chamber opposite Jancey, who had taken up her usual position, back against the wall with her legs stretched out in front. “How long do you think they’ll hold us here?”
Jancey shrugged. “My guess is four days, all the way to the end of the analog. Maybe even longer if they want to twist the knife. We can’t go anywhere without the all clear, so if they play this like the CME knocked out their grid, we’re down for who knows how long.”
Their abundant food supply was encouraging. Plenty of precooked, vacuum-packed casseroles, vegetables and desserts, all of which they’d have to eat at room temperature because they couldn’t use their power packs to warm them. The biggest challenge would be stretching their water supply—ten liters apiece—should they be confined longer to their chamber.
“This is the real test,” Jancey said. “It’s not about survival or self-sufficiency. It’s about how we get along with each other when there’s literally nothing to do for days on end. They’ve got us totally isolated from social stimuli. No books, no challenges, no work to keep us busy. This is how they think we’ll crack.”
Mila chuckled as she tapped her foot against Jancey’s. “Little do they know that alone with you is exactly where I want to be.”
Jancey shook her head. “Don’t give me that look. Despite anything I might have uttered recently in a moment of delirium, I can’t possibly do that for four straight days. Besides, this is supposed to simulate being aboard Tenacity in the radiation chamber. Weightless sex can be awfully frustrating, to say the least.”
“Is that a confession I hea
r?”
“I’m not admitting anything, but it’s a fact that blood behaves differently in zero gravity. Plus there’s lots of sweat and not much friction.”
“It doesn’t matter. There’s a lot more to making love than orgasms.”
Jancey tipped her head to one side. Skepticism. “Convince me.”
“Okay.” Mila leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, leering as she took in every inch of Jancey. “I’m making love to you right now.”
“Sorry. Not feeling it.”
“But you will once you realize you love me. Just being together will be enough. You’ll look at me and feel everything there is between us. All the emotions, all the physical memories. You’ll think of our future together. Things you want from me, ways you can bring me pleasure.”
“I will, huh?” Amused. “What makes you so sure I’m going to love you? I do lust very well. Love…not so much.”
“I don’t believe you.” It was Mila’s turn to laugh as Jancey gave her an incredulous look. “When I fell asleep last night, you were holding me…brushing my hair with your fingers, kissing my ear. That’s not lust. You’ve already begun to love me.”
“I was trying to help you fall asleep. You were keeping me awake.”
“I think you like touching me that way, and it has nothing to do with sex. It makes you feel good. It’s what we do when we love someone. Am I right?”
Jancey glared at her through narrowed eyes, an obviously exaggerated scowl. She wasn’t the sort to let anyone call her a softie.
“You can deny it all you want, Jancey, but I won’t believe you. You think you have control over your feelings. I’ve got news for you. You don’t. Not when it comes to me.”
“You’re awfully sure of yourself, Todorov. In fact, I’d say you were cocky.”
The use of her surname was a defense mechanism. Jancey did that when she needed to assert herself, to regain a sense of authority and self-control. It was almost an endearment.
“I’m not cocky. But I know you’re starting to fall in love with me. I should think that’s a good thing. We’re bound together for life, you and me. Day in and day out forever, hundreds of millions of miles from everyone else.”
T-Minus Two Page 17
