Jun gave the pad back to Theo but kept hold of it when Theo tried to tug it free. He wrapped his fingers over Theo’s on the pad, his touch light and warm and reaching all the way down into the center of Theo’s loneliness. “I know you could. I’m beginning to suspect there may be nothing you can’t do. But this isn’t something you want to be involved in; trust me.”
Theo hooked Jun’s pinky with his own and held tight when Jun started to retreat, capturing his gaze with a rare serious expression.
“I think you should let me decide that for myself, Captain.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jun was ready to pace out of his skin.
Three days and no further progress. The first day had been spent in the rare effervescence of building hope, the second in slowly dawning frustration, and the third in a state of impotent rage that left his section of the ship largely unoccupied.
Except for Theo.
Undeterred by Jun’s black mood, Theo simply continued to wander in and out of Jun’s personal space, either maintaining a meandering monologue or studying his translations quietly while every inch of his body jostled with excess energy.
Until very recently, Jun had been unaware that it was even possible for a person to fidget with their elbows.
There did not seem to be a single part of his body that Theo was unable to fidget.
It did not help with Jun’s efforts to pretend he didn’t notice the way Theo had commandeered Jun’s bed and lay sprawled across it like an offering.
Which was, truly, an enormous effort on Jun’s part.
Theo yanked his head up from where he had been staring down at his pad and spat out the lock of hair he’d been noisily sucking. He scrambled onto his knees.
His shirt was rumpled, from where he’d been spread out on his belly across the mattress, and askew, revealing the pale blade of a hip bone jutting up over his trousers.
Jun found it difficult to look away from the scant three inches of unknowingly bared skin.
Which was ridiculous.
He could go to any station and find acres of flesh on display if he wanted, day or night. Could pull up a vid on the stream of anyone willing to do practically anything in the nude. It was easily, readily accessible, at all times. Jun had never bothered with or been particularly interested in any of that. It was cheap and easy and so omnipresent that he’d grown desensitized to it.
There was just something about the combination of Theo’s modest manner of dress and his cavalier attitude toward his own nudity that struck Jun as highly erotic.
Inconveniently so.
Theo’s shirt was buttoned up to the base of his throat. As he tugged at the hem, the top button let loose quietly and unceremoniously, and the placket fell aside, revealing a hint of delicate collarbone.
Jun wanted to press his teeth just there. He wanted to hold Theo down and lick every beautiful inch of skin beneath that prim clothing. He wanted to fuck him deep and slow for hours until he broke down and cried. He just. Wanted.
Hellaciously inconvenient.
Jun didn’t want things. It was always a bad idea, and he knew better than that, now. Wanting led to craving led to needing, and Jun didn’t have time for any of those in his life.
A man on borrowed time didn’t fall in love. That would be incredibly stupid, and incredibly selfish. Jun just needed to try harder to ignore the distant roar of feelings coming for him from the depths of his heart.
Theo’s lips were slick from his distressing habit of chewing on his hair. Jun couldn’t help but compare them to the way they had looked after swallowing him down as though Theo was made for it.
Delicious. They looked delicious.
Kissable.
The most annoying thing was, Jun had never particularly enjoyed kissing.
It was always a means to an end. It could be pleasant enough, with the right partner, but it just hadn’t appealed to him as an act in and of itself.
Until Theo.
Until now.
Now, it was never far from his mind.
Just kissing.
It had been an impulse, to forbid it as a ground rule. A last-ditch effort to protect the heart Theo wore on his delicately embroidered sleeve. A mark of delineation between the trappings of an actual relationship and…this.
Whatever mess this was between them.
The magnetism Jun could not deny, his dragging heels leaving scuffmarks on the floor as he was pulled closer and closer.
There could be no deeper emotions involved, no attachment formed. Jun knew where that ended—with a load of heartbreak for sweet Theo and another gallon of guilt for his own ever-deepening well.
He was doing the right thing, keeping his distance.
Maintaining the walls he’d built around his heart, brick by careful, painful brick.
Walls that shook beneath the impact of every sunny smile and coquettish glance through golden lashes.
Walls that seemed significantly less solid now than they had a week ago.
It was time to fortify them again, reinforce them with stern words and harsh expressions, until Theo stopped trying to chip his way inside.
It was the right thing to do.
So why did Jun want nothing more than to pull the last clinging strands of hair away from those rose-petal lips and kiss Theo until he swooned?
To knock him backward on the bed until he blinked up at him with wide, startled eyes and reached up for him with elegant hands?
Why did Jun want to kiss those pale, unblemished hands like some mythical knight? Shower him with flowers like the Core-based tales of courtly love his mother had told him as a child?
Because Jun was an idiot, apparently.
A fully rusted idiot.
Those rose-petal lips twisted into a frown as Theo planted one hand on his hip, gesturing with the pad.
“—aptain. Jun! It’s all very well to demand results when you have no intention of actually listening to them!”
Jun guiltily released the little wire star he kept in his pocket to roll between his fingers while he was lost in
