Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The smell of freshly brewed coffee stirred Evelyn’s senses. Yum. She drew her arms up and gave a languid stretch, immediately met with the awareness of a satisfying soreness between her legs. Her lips twitched, and she cracked an eye open.
Aiden was placing a cup of coffee on the bedside table nearest her. Double yum. She let out an appreciative noise, and he smiled down at her then sat gingerly at the side of the bed.
“Sleep well, dollface?”
“Like a brick. A well fucked brick.” She scooted up on her elbows. He’d managed to get her into one of his T-shirts before she had passed out. She was pleasantly swamped in fabric that smelled like him. She settled back against the headboard.
“I didn’t realize bricks had such fulfilling personal lives.” He handed her the coffee, which she took greedily.
“The secret lives of sentient stationary objects are always far more majestic than they appear to us mere mortals. Ask L.I.N.D.A.”
“I don’t think I want to know what the ship’s computer gets up to in its personal time. I am not open-minded enough to parse that.”
Evelyn shrugged. “Didn’t think you’d be a kink-shamer. You disappoint me.”
He tweaked her nose. “We all have limits.”
She sipped her coffee and studied him over the rim of the cup.
He was in another long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants.
His brown hair was disheveled from sleep, but his beard was still perfectly groomed.
His lips looked slightly kiss swollen. Evelyn flicked her eyes away before her thoughts went too far down that path.
She was entirely too sore to entertain another round of bedroom activities so soon.
She clocked a flannel bathrobe draped over the chair she’d sat in last night and color rose in her chest as memories of the night before flooded her mind.
This whole damn room is going to make me blush.
Evelyn refocused on her coffee. Coffee had never given her a screaming orgasm. Coffee was a blush-free thing to focus on. It had been doctored just right. She tried to think if she’d ever told him how she took her coffee.
She didn’t think she had.
“How are you feeling?” Aiden gently rubbed her foot through the blanket. “How’s the energy level? Do you feel . . . purged?”
She snorted into the coffee cup. “There has to be a better word for that but I can’t think of it right now. I don’t feel all strung out on potential energy anymore. I feel pretty normal. Well rested.”
“Excellent.” He gave a smug smile.
“How do you feel?”
The smile widened, and smug sexual satisfaction radiated off of him. Evelyn could hear the incoming dick joke a mile off. She rolled her eyes, and he laughed at her feigned show of exasperation, both aware of the flush in her cheeks.
“I never asked when you rescued me how the Amplifying made you feel,” she asked.
“To be fair, we were busy.”
“A bit.”
“I feel fine. It’s . . . I’m used to being able to do very fine telekinetic manipulation.
I can play with tumblers in locks. I can juggle small objects.
I can play with buttons.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her, and she laughed.
The perpetual smile lines around his eyes crinkled and made her stomach flip.
“It’s a thrill to be able to move bigger objects around. It makes me want to practice my skills unaided to see if I can progress beyond small objects with help. But more than anything, it’s just fun to get to share myself with you. No one else on the ship really gets it.”
Evelyn nodded. She knew all too well how it felt to be lonely around your own loved ones. She went for another sip of coffee and realized the cup was empty, so she put it on the side table with a small sigh of regret.
“It’s got to be isolating. Even with so many people who love you around.”
“A bit. I mean, we’ve all got some sort of isolating factor. I think it’s why we get along so well.”
“They get it just enough to understand.”
“Up here,” he said, gesturing to his head. “Not so much here.” He waved his hand around his chest. “And they can appreciate the practical application.”
Evelyn grabbed the flitting hand and gave it a squeeze. “It always feels nice to be appreciated.”
Aiden shifted on the bed, moving with swift graceful movements that drew a startled gasp from her. Before she knew it he was hovering above her in a punishing plank. His green eyes twinkled with mischief.
“Speaking of appreciation,” he said, and gave her a gentle kiss. The tenderness of it rocked her off center.
Evelyn could handle flirting. She could handle banter without blinking an eye. She could even handle lust. Carnal desires were some of her favorite things. What was easier to get lost in than an orgasm?
She didn’t know if she could manage being the focus of such tenderness.
Her eyes welled with tears, threatening to spill over.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he whispered. “What’s this?” He collapsed next to her on the bed, pulling her into his arms until she was securely tucked up against his side.
What is this? Well, Aiden, I’m a psychic disaster waiting to happen.
I have no actionable control over a talent I should have mastered decades ago, but I was both too important and too unimportant to my family to bother dealing with training properly.
I’m a dirty little secret weapon. Oh, and I’m on the run from a megalomaniacal fascist. I’m supposed to be staging a coup when I don’t know how to stage shit.
I have no idea what you see in me, and I’m slightly worried that you’ll figure out that I’m a complete and total fuck-up.
“I just have so much baggage,” she whispered into his chest. That sums things up nicely.
“I don’t know if you knew this, dollface, but this boat has a fuck-ton of storage.”
She laughed, the sound thick with the tightness of threatening tears in her throat.
He stroked her hair and held her. The pressure in her sinuses cleared.
Her breathing returned to normal. She tilted her head back and looked up at him.
The tenderness in his gaze was disconcerting.
She was willing to work on getting used to it.
Evelyn indulged in the comfort of Aiden’s arms until she could no longer put off the necessities of being awake. Stupid bladder. She nuzzled closer to his chest, taking one last deep inhale of his cedar and rosemary scent before disentangling herself.
“You must have a bathroom somewhere in here,” she said.
“Just through there.” He pointed to a discreet sliding door panel behind the conversation area. “I grabbed some of your stuff when I went to make coffee. I figured you would want your own toothbrush.”
“Toothbrushes are sacred to my people.”
“I’ll have L.I.N.D.A. update the data entry on Tanalia.”
Chuckling, and with great reluctance, she left Aiden’s bed and wandered to the bathroom.
The floor was covered in triangular tiles in a scattering of green and cream shades.
The deepest green was picked up in long, vertical subway tiles in the shower.
And I thought my shower was big. This one’s massive.
The fixtures were all a brushed gold tone, and there was a neat cluster of her toiletries on the bench.
Evelyn turned to the sleek double sinks and located not only her toothbrush, but all of her skincare items and hairbrush.
She couldn’t stop the smile from spreading on her face.
She often grinned like an idiot when she thought about Aiden, and the evidence of his thoughtfulness strewn around his bathroom was one more thing that brought it on.
She tended to her morning necessities and exited the bathroom. Her bathrobe, the one she’d initially fled the medivessel in, was draped across the back of one of the chairs. There was a plate of artfully cut apples and a small dish of peanut butter on the coffee table.
Aiden was pulling a pair of trousers off a hanger. She hadn’t even noticed the panels in the wall that held his closet. He nodded to the fruit on the table.
“We should be getting to the rendezvous with Vinnie’s contact in an hour or so. Hopefully he’ll be able to help you with the tricks he learned keeping his talent under wraps.”
“Was this meeting planned before or after you called her up to chew her out?” Evelyn picked up an apple slice and dunked it in the peanut butter. Honey-roasted salty sweet goodness battled for dominance with the crisp, tart apple in her mouth.
“Before, but I didn’t know how important the contact would be. I’d have pushed for a quicker route here had I known he might be able to help you.”
She munched her snack, content to watch Aiden dress. He’d selected a button down shirt, and Evelyn watched his deft fingers swiftly secure the buttons. He tucked it into the trousers and went searching for a tie.
“It shouldn’t be sexy watching you put clothes on.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “You’re just fixated on my hands.”
She felt the blush creeping up her cheeks. Busted. “Irrelevant.”
He flashed that grin at her, the one that made her stomach flip, as he selected a tie and swiftly had it knotted at his throat. The silk was a shining green shade that brought out the highlights in his eyes.
“Maybe I want to see how badly I can make your fingers shake when you unbutton this shirt later.”
Evelyn swallowed the chunk of apple she was chewing harder than she’d intended. There was absolutely no hiding the flush in her cheeks now.
Never play poker with this man. You’ll spontaneously combust.
“Be careful what you wish for. You keep talking like that, and I might never leave.”
He leaned closer to her and smoothed his hand over her blonde waves, settling her hair and completely unraveling her composure in one fluid movement.
“Why don’t you go check that top drawer and see how worried I am about you leaving?” And with that cryptic statement, he kissed the tip of her nose, retrieved her coffee cup, and left the room with a wink. “Refill.”
What the fuck does that even mean?
She finished the apples and peanut butter, refusing to let her curiosity get the better of her.
Evelyn had never been the most patient person, but she knew she was going to have to cultivate more of the annoying quality if she was going to figure out how to harness her talent.
She wiped her hands on the inside of the robe pockets and headed to the top drawer of the dresser.
It was full of her clothes.
It wasn’t all of her things, but there was a good selection of the bits and pieces she’d worn on the ship more than once.
She headed to the closet and opened the sliding panel.
There, next to Aiden’s neatly hung clothing, was a selection of her clothes too unwieldy or delicate to chuck in a drawer.
Her beloved cardigan was the first thing she spotted.
Her most worn shoes were on the floor next to Aiden’s boots.
She sat back on the bed, eyes fixed on the closet.
He’d moved just enough of her things to say “You have a place here if you want it.”
Did she?