2352-APRIL-18
The sound of a shower running woke me and I glanced at the bedside chrono. 05:30. Diane would be getting ready to relieve Francis about now. She was probably in the shower, too, and the thought brought a little pang. The sheets were a crumpled mass and stuck to me in several places. I stretched languidly. My arm slid across the warm spot where Alicia had been. I did not want to move, and I was not terribly sure I could.
She came out rubbing a towel across her hair and otherwise naked and proudly unselfconscious. That was a good sign, I thought. She smiled when she saw me. “You look pretty pleased with yourself this morning,” she teased.
“Well, not to brag, but you look pretty pleased yourself,” I teased back.
She grinned a little satisfied grin and made a hmm sound in her throat as if considering it. “Yes,” she said finally, “I am.” Then she giggled, not at all girlishly.
“You have the duty?” I asked suddenly aware of the time, place, and circumstance.
She shook her head. “Not until tonight, but I’ve got an officers’ briefing at 09:30 I need to back aboard for. What about you?”
“My off-day. Clear until 18:00.”
She finished toweling off and draped the wet towel on a chair. She stretched as unselfconsciously as a cat, arching her back and rolling her shoulders. I could see her eyes catch sight of my jacket hanging in the open closet. She padded over to it and stroked the corduroy as if patting some animal. She looked at me with a raised eyebrow and asked, “May I?”
I propped myself up on my elbows. “Sure,” I said, amused by her fetish for Roubaille.
She slipped it off its hanger and slid it around her naked torso. I was surprised to see that it was a bit large on her. She had seemed, somehow, bigger. She pulled it tightly around her and I felt myself wishing I were that jacket, so she had wrap me around her naked body like that. Then I remembered that she had—just a couple of stans before.
“What are you grinning at?” she asked.
“What are you grinning at?” I returned.
“This coat feels amazing against my skin.”
“You’ll pardon my saying so, but it looks amazing against your skin,” I told her.
“Oh?” she purred. “You like this look?”
“Um,” I said with a considering tone. “I don’t know. Could you walk over there and back for me once, just so I can get the full effect?”
She giggled in the back of her throat and sashayed across the room. The coat was not long enough, even on her, to cover completely. The glimpses as she walked away were as stimulating as when she started back. I was absorbed in the view.
“It seems as though you do like the look,” she said. She let the coat fall open as she walked. She did not stop at the edge of the bed but crawled on her hands and knees until she was right on top of me—hands planted in the pillows on either side of my head and knees straddling my hips. She lowered her torso until her breasts just touched my skin and her lips were less than a centimeter from mine. “Yes,” she breathed, with an experimental rolling of her hips. “You do like this look. I can tell.”
“Yes,” I gasped as she lowered herself onto me. “I think it’s a very good look for you.”