That chin of hers thrust even higher into the air, and she pointed at him. 'And I want you to stop that.'
'Stop what, exactly?'
'Referring to… you know.'
'Being naked?' he asked, feeling wicked and angry, which didn't make a very good combination. 'Or having sex?'
She whirled and walked away.
Because she was moving along at a good clip, and because he couldn't walk without whimpering, he let her go.
But they still weren't finished, not by a long shot.
The team spent the day in the water simulator, working some of the experiments they'd be taking up with them. Although heavy equipment was weightless in space, it still wasn't easy to move around.
Corrine knew the general public had no idea how strong an astronaut had to be. To relocate a large mass, which described all of their equipment, you had to apply a large force, taking care to exert it precisely or the object would twist and turn uncontrollably. An equally large, well-directed, controlled force was required to stop any motion.
In other words, brute strength.
Even something as simple as trying to screw a bolt into a piece of equipment required finesse. That sort of maneuver couldn't be done while floating in the cabin. Anchors were needed, or footholds, in order to apply force, which required special techniques, special tools, special processes, and often the coordinated efforts of a teammate. Everything, even the easiest of tasks, had to be practiced over and over and over again.
One of the biggest challenges they faced was that a true space environment couldn't be simulated exactly on earth. Hence the 'SIMs' in large bodies of water, with astronauts in scuba gear. It was the closest they could come to the real experience, even with today's vast technological advances.
Corrine climbed into bed that night, thinking things had gone well. That is, if she discounted the dark, questioning looks she'd gotten at every turn from her pilot, Mike Wright.
She still couldn't believe her rotten luck. How was it that she couldn't even manage to have an anonymous affair?
If Mike had his way, it wouldn't be anonymous at all! She couldn't have that, absolutely could not let the others on the team know what she'd done with him in a moment of selfish weakness.
And what she'd done was still interrupting her sleep. She couldn't close her eyes without feeling his body brush hers, without remembering how he tasted, or the incredibly sexy sounds he made when he-
She flopped over in bed yet again and stared at the ceiling, but an almost unbearable sense of loneliness came over her. Why now? This was the life she'd willingly chosen. She'd known it would be a dog-eat-dog world, that she'd be forgoing any indulgence of her femininity to make it. She'd known that, had even craved it-she who'd never quite mastered being…well, a woman. So what was this sudden longing to be just that, to let someone in, to be vulnerable, soft? Giving. Even loving.
With Mike.
Wow, that thought came from nowhere and extinguished any amount of sleepiness she might have mustered. She flipped over again, but the damage had been done, Mike was back in her mind. And all she could think of was how he'd looked coming out of the water simulator earlier, when he'd stripped out of his cumbersome gear down to nothing but a pair of wet, clingy swimming trunks.
Sleek, wet and muscular, that had been Mike, standing there on deck.
She'd taken one look at him and had lost every thought in her head. He'd known it, too, damn him; she could still see the slow, baby-here-I-am smile he'd sent her.
This had to stop. She'd had him once and that should be enough. It should be over.
But it wasn't.
She couldn't even look at him without having that stupid, adolescent, weak-kneed reaction, and it was really making her furious.
She'd read his personnel files, shamelessly soaking up his private information. He had four brothers, all in the military. His father, too, was a military man. His mother, a Russian, had died when Mike had been only four, so it was no wonder he was so incredibly masculine. He'd grown up in a house full of Y chromosomes, and then had gone into an industry overloaded with testosterone.
That was a problem, she decided, rolling over to punch her pillow. Because while Mike definitely knew how to treat a woman-he had, after all, made her purr more than once-he had no idea how to do anything other than pamper a female, much less work for one. To work beneath her command was going to be utterly foreign to him, and with both of them needing their control… well, it wasn't going to go smoothly, this mission, she could see that.
What she couldn't see, exactly, was what to do about it.
She wasn't herself around him. She had a hard time sticking to that cool, icy facade she favored, mostly because he saw right through her.
She hated that.
With a sigh, she heaved herself out of bed for her usual middle of the night run to the bathroom. It was annoying, but then again, if she'd just sleep the night through like normal people, instead of obsessing, she wouldn't have to go at all, would she?
The hall was silent, both when she crept into the bathroom and when she came out two minutes later. Which was why she nearly screamed when she ran into a solid rock wall of a chest.
Even as those big, warm hands came up to steady her, she knew. 'Mike,' she said in a breathless whisper, blinking through the dark.
'Fancy meeting you here.'
'You have a weak bladder, too?'
'I don't have a weak anything.'
'Everyone has a weak something.'
'What I have,' he said softly, reaching up to tug on her ponytail, 'is a weakness for long dark hair flowing wild and free, and dark-blue eyes melting with desire when they look at me, instead of two icicles.'
'I'm going back to bed.'
'Not until we talk.'
'It's late.'
He flicked the light on his watch. 'Actually, it's early. I've been listening for you, Corrine. We need to get this over with.'
'Maybe you'd rather try to beat me at my morning run again.'
He scowled. 'So I underestimated you.'
'You thought me nothing more than a fragile doll.'
'This isn't what I wanted to talk about.'
'I bet. Look, Mike, this is never going to work. Surely you can see that. You have a problem with me being the commander of this mission.'
'What I have a problem with is you pretending you don't know me. You pretending we didn't sleep together, that we didn't make love-'
She slapped his hand over his mouth and whipped her head to the right, then to the left, making sure no one could hear them. 'Damn it,' she breathed. 'Could you stop talking about it? Why do we have to keep talking about it?'
Grabbing her hands away from his mouth, he held them at her sides, slowly backing her up against the wall until she had the cool plaster at her back and his hot, hot body at her front.
She hadn't given much thought to her pajamas-men's flannel shorts and a loose tank top. As they were her favorites, they'd been washed to a thin softness. Thin enough to feel every inch of him, and her body seemed to recognize how much she'd enjoyed those inches, because she closed her eyes in order to better concentrate on the sensations.
'Corrine,' he whispered, his voice low and rough now, as if he, too, couldn't help himself. 'I don't understand you. Help me understand. Why can't we just…be? Why do we have to ignore this?'
Why? He had to ask why? There were a million reasons, starting with the fact that they had to work together
