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Working on the schedules reminded Victoria that, although they had finally found the work logs, she had left them on the upper level when she discovered that Huggins had departed without them.

Once she’d posted the schedules, she decided to go up to retrieve them so that she could study them. Without a word, Raphael fell into step beside her. Oddly enough, she found it comforting, rather than irritating. Distracted as she was, she would have gone up alone, even knowing that it was not safe for anyone to move about the habitat alone until they knew more about what had happened. Even if she hadn’t been distracted, she would not have liked to demand an escort. It was all very well to point out that, logically, every man and woman was at risk. It still smacked of fear to ask, which translated to weakness, which was something she could not afford if she was to retain control of the situation on Kay.

She didn’t notice Roach until he spoke.

“And there goes Ms. Tory with her faithful watchdog,” he muttered as she and Raphael passed on their way to the stairwell. Victoria stiffened. She would have stopped and confronted him except that Raphael urged her onward.

“Why did you do that?” she snapped as they started up the stairs.

“It’ll be best to ignore him.”

“If you think that, then you’ve no understanding at all of the type of creature he is,” she responded tartly.

“No, I don’t. Enlighten me.”

Victoria felt her irritation vanish. It was difficult to get used to the idea that Raphael had so few experiences to fall back on. “He’s a bully. Ignoring him, or trying to, isn’t going to do any good. He’s spoiling for a fight. He’s not going to be satisfied until he gets one.”

Raphael frowned. “Bullies are generally cowards.”

“Bullies are always cowards,” Victoria responded. “But no two people handle fear the same way, any more than they handle any other emotion the same way. My instincts tell me Roach isn’t going to be satisfied until he’s convinced his fears aren’t unfounded.”

“And what do you perceive as his fears?”

There was a touch of amusement in his voice now. They’d reached the landing on the next level and Victoria paused, turning to look at him. “He’s not certain he’s man enough to control me, but he’s determined to have a try.”

All traces of amusement vanished from Raphael’s expression. His eyes narrowed. “I won’t share you,” he said flatly.

Victoria was taken aback. It was on the tip of her tongue to inform him that it wasn’t his decision to make. Instead, after wrestling with her temper for several moments, she merely shrugged. “Under the circumstances, there seems to be a very good chance that it’ll never be an issue.”

It was obvious from his expression that her comment was neither expected, nor welcome. He frowned. “That’s not an answer.”

“I wasn’t aware that you’d asked a question. You said ‘I won’t’. You didn’t ask me how I felt about it,” Victoria said shortly and pulled the door open, heading for the office where she’d left the documents she sought.

“Because I know you have no desire to go to him.”

“No, I don’t, but that’s beside the point. I make my own decisions, for my own reasons.”

“So—decide.”

Despite her irritation, Victoria felt amusement surface. Having reached the office, she stopped in the doorway. “You are bossy. You know that? Why do I get the feeling that as long as my decision coincides with yours, you’ll allow it?”

His brows rose, but she could see his anger had vanished and amusement once more took its place. “Because it’s true?”

She shook her head and set about retrieving the papers. By the time she’d finished, her brief sense of amusement had completely vanished. “It may still be a moot point,” she said grimly as she started back. “Unless we can figure out what happened here, and how to prevent it from happening to us, we may not be alive in two weeks to make any sort of decisions.”

Chapter Seven

By the time they reached their level once more, the rec room had emptied. Apparently, the crew had primarily been waiting for the schedule to be posted before retiring for the night. The total silence of a complete absence of habitation greeted them the moment they opened the door on the third level.

It hadn’t occurred to Victoria until that very moment that she and Raphael were the only personnel in a position to occupy this level. Immediately tense, Victoria did her best to ignore it and strode purposefully toward their quarters.

Raphael forestalled her intentions, removing the reports from her hands and dropping them on the desk. Victoria looked at him in surprise, but before she could object, he’d pulled her into his arms and lowered his head, brushing his lips lightly against hers.

A flush of warmth went through her. “I really should look at the reports.”

“They’re not going anywhere and neither are we.”

He was right, of course, but it seemed wrong to put off anything so potentially vital to their survival.

“Is there anything you could do, at this very moment, besides study them?”

“I don’t suppose so.”

“Then it’ll wait till morning.”

Victoria looked down at her hands where they rested against his chest. “I’m nervous,” she confessed.

“So am I.”

Startled, Victoria looked up at him.

He smiled wryly. “It’s my first time.”

The comment threw Victoria into complete disorder. “Oh—Oh my God, Raphael! I’m so sorry. It was thoughtless of me.”

Smiling faintly, he reached for her tunic, unfastening it. “Don’t worry. I believe it’ll come to me.” Removing the top, he dropped it to the floor and pulled her against him again, waltzing her backward.

“Where are we going?” Victoria asked, uncertain whether to laugh with him, or cry for him. He was so incredibly sweet it made her heart ache. The thought of all that he’d missed out on, been deprived of, because of what the company had done to him hurt in a way she didn’t entirely understand.

“To the bed. Unless you want to try it standing. I can’t vouch for my prowess, but I’m wide open to suggestion.”

The mattress caught the back of her knees and Victoria fell backward with a little yelp of surprise. Shedding his own tunic, Raphael followed her down, lying half atop her. They gazed at each other for a long moment and then Victoria lifted her arms and draped them around his neck, tilting her face up for his kiss. After a moment, he leaned down, brushing his lips against hers. Victoria gasped at the desire that enveloped her in a hot wave at his first touch, opening her mouth to him. When he did not immediately seize the opportunity she offered him, she thrust her tongue into his mouth, caressing his tongue with her own, tasting him.

Raphael settled closer, focusing completely on the feel and taste of her, fighting the urge to rush, to taste and explore and possess her completely. When she withdrew, he followed her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth to explore her as she had him. She surprised him when she closed her mouth around his tongue and sucked. The sensation sent such a fiery rush through him that his pulse pounded, making rational thought an impossibility. Feeling that he would explode at any moment, he broke the kiss, gasping hoarsely.

Victoria reached for the fastening of his trousers, gnawing a trail along the side of his throat with the edge of her teeth, kissing his shoulders as she fumbled with the resistant fastening. He pushed her hands away and unfastened it himself, then reached for her, searching for the key to removing her bra. Smiling faintly as she kissed her way down his chest, Victoria unsnapped it and shrugged it off, tossing it to the floor beside the bed.

He pushed her onto her back, grasped her trousers and tugged at the fastening. His fingers, clumsy with desire, he succeeded only in binding the closure fast. Victoria gasped when he ripped it open and peeled away her trousers and panties, throwing them to the floor. She was far too anxious herself, however, to spare more than a moment of concern for the ruined clothing and immediately turned her attention to helping him strip away the last of his own clothing.

She ran her hands over his chest when he settled beside her again, but he held her away when she would have moved against him, examining her body with his hands and his gaze. Noticing the contrast between her pale white skin and his darker skin, Victoria felt a little self-conscious, wondering if he found her as attractive as she found him. He glanced up at her, his eyes filled with hunger. “You are so beautiful to me, it makes me ache for you. Always.”

He leaned toward her, kissed her long and lingeringly. Victoria felt a blinding rush of desire the moment his mouth covered hers, felt as if she was falling into a dark chasm. She reached for him, wrapping her fingers around his cock, spreading her thighs. Waiting might make it sweeter, but she found she didn’t want to wait any longer. She was so hot, her sex wet and aching for his touch, she knew instinctively that this time she would find what had always eluded her before, fulfillment.

He moved between her thighs, thrusting his hips as she lifted hers and aligned his cock with her own body. A shudder went through him as he buried himself to the hilt inside of her. When Victoria looked up at him through half closed lids, she saw that he had squeezed his eyes tightly shut, as if he was in pain, his facial muscles taut. He opened his eyes and looked down at her. “My God! I didn’t know it would feel this good to be inside of you....”

Heat suffused her, the muscles in her sex clenching in response to the desire his words evoked. Victoria moved her hips against him. He uttered a low, growling groan and began to move, slowly at first and then increasing the tempo, thrusting his cock inside of her and then pulling away in a rhythm that built the ache inside her to a fever pitch so that she was moaning incessantly, gasping, could feel her body hovering on the brink of release.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss, suckling hard on his tongue as he thrust it into her mouth. It was the impetus that sent them both over the edge into blissful ecstasy. Victoria broke the kiss, crying out as waves of intense pleasure pounded through her, feeling the muscles inside her contracting and releasing his cock.

Raphael groaned, shuttering, his hips jerking as his hot seed spilled inside of her.

Slowly, when the spasms finally abated, he withdrew, wincing as the movement sent fresh needles of sensation through him. With an effort, he dragged himself off of her and collapsed against the bed, staring up at the ceiling through half closed eyes. “I thought melding minds with you was the closest I would ever come to heaven—I was wrong,” he murmured.

“Mmm. Mind boggling. I always wondered why everybody was so preoccupied with sex. Now I know.”

Chuckling, Raphael rolled onto his side and propped his head on his bent arm, studying her. It might have made her uncomfortable under other circumstances, but she was too wiped out to care at the moment. The only two thoughts that drifted through her sluggish brain was whether or not she felt like getting up again and having a look at the work logs, or if she was too tired to try to make sense of them. After a moment, she decided she didn’t and curled up on her side, putting her back to Raphael and felt around for cover.

She remembered then that they’d fell into the bed fully made and she was lying on top of the cover, wondered, briefly, if she felt like getting up and pulling it down and finally decided she didn’t.

The thought had barely drifted through her mind when she felt a tug as Raphael pulled the cover back and grasped her around the waist. Pulling her against him, he spread the cover he tugged loose over both of them. Victoria snuggled her butt against his crotch and settled again as Raphael slid a heavy arm around her waist.

Something long and hard insinuated itself between her thighs. Victoria couldn’t decide whether to be irritated or amused. “We have to get up early in the morning,” she murmured.

She felt the warmth of Raphael’s breath as he leaned over and kissed her shoulder. It sent a flock of goose bumps chasing down her arm and made her nipples stand erect. A hand the size of a dinner plate slid upward and covered one breast, pinching the erect nipple between two fingers. It sent currents of pleasure through her, but Victoria decided to ignore it.

“What are these for?” Raphael murmured in her ear.

A smile tugged at her lips. “Holding my tunic out in the front—not that they do much of a job of it.”

He squeezed the breast he held experimentally. “I like the way it feels in my hand.”

“If it fit your hand I’d have a hunchback,” Victoria said tartly.

“Prickly,” Raphael observed, nuzzling her neck. “They’re perfect, just like the rest of you.”

She felt the curve of his lips and knew he was smiling.

“What are they good for, besides holding your tunic out, and feeding our baby?”

Victoria shrugged sleepily. “Nobody does that....” Her eyes popped wide open and she twisted around to look at him. “What did you say?”

“Feeding our baby?”

Victoria stared at him blankly while her mind sorted a hundred conflicting thoughts, finally those uppermost emerged into coherence. “It was just sex ... very good sex, but we didn’t make a baby. I’m on birth control. Besides, I don’t have a permit.”

Raphael frowned. “You have to have a permit?”

“Of course you have to have a permit! You can’t spit without a permit!” Victoria relaxed again, yawning. “Anyway, I don’t plan to have any.”

Raphael was silent for some moments. Victoria might have gone to sleep except she could tell from the tension in his body that he was debating with himself over something. The ‘something’ that might pertain to made her uneasy. He’d spoken before about ‘their’ plans and she couldn’t help but worry that he might be working on other plans for the two of them.

“Is it difficult to get a permit?”

Victoria shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. Nothing in this life is ever easy, or uncomplicated.”