So, with regret, did the woman crawling into covers. Pretty backside, when he looked that direction. Pretty rest of her. Not highly coordinated, getting her blanket over her fully-dressed rump.
“Damn nice guy, Tom. You are. Wish you were just a little, little bit not so nice.”
God, now, now, she invited him, when his skull had started to fog from the inside and the rest of him hadn’t a desire for anything but face down in the pillow.
But, hell, Bed Manners, his Polly spacer used to say, and taught him ways at least to see she got to sleep.
So he hauled himself up off the mattress, came over to sit on her bed. She hadn’t left much room at the edge and she was fading, but he’d made the trip—he took her hand in his—pretty hand, limp hand. Fingers twitched. Eyes opened.
He leaned over and kissed her mostly on the mouth. Her fingers twitched again. He figured he’d done his bit for politeness and told himself bed was waiting on the other side of the room, but… but she was so damn pretty, she was so damn crazy, he just sat, her hand in his, thinking how with his Polly girl you didn’t need much to figure what she was thinking.
But with Saby… with Saby…
Hell, he thought. He was physically attracted, he was in the mood and now she was zeroed out.
He shifted down to the end of the bed, not too gently, hoping to rouse a little attention by quasi-accident. Didn’t work. He wanted her. Still. And worse. He grabbed her ankle under the blanket. Shook her foot. Hard.
Not a twitch. He sat there a moment, thinking it was a hell of a thing to do to a guy.
But if he woke her out of this sound a sleep she was going to come out of it mad.
Which wasn’t the reaction he wanted.
The bed was wide enough. It was the last night before board-call, and he didn’t think he was going to sleep, now, he was just going to lie there, wide awake, and worry.
But hell, too, if he was going to turn up in somebody’s bed uninvited. There was a rude word for that. So he got up and headed for the bath and a—he glanced at the clock—an 0558 hours shower.
“Tom.”
Now she was awake. She sat up on an elbow. The glitz blouse sparked blue in the night-light. “You want to?”
“Want to, what?” He was in a mood to be difficult. Now she wasn’t. She reached out a glitter-patterned arm, a mottling of shadow and light.
“Do it, you know.”
“Were you asleep?”
“No,” she said, to his surge of temper. “Curious.”
“Curious, hell! I’m not interested!”
“I’ve got a ship to protect!”
Loose logic always threw him. He got as far as the bathroom door. And stopped. And looked back.
“From what? From me? I’m not the one walking the corridors in the deep dark, thanks, I’ve been screwed, or something like it, by one of your night-walking shipmates, and nobody asked my permission.”
“Shit,” Saby said, and sat upright. “You’re kidding.”
“It’s no damn joke. I’m not flattered.—I prefer to be awake, thank you, the same courtesy I give anybody else.”
“Shit, shit, shit. “ It was dismay he heard. Saby got out of bed. “ ‘Scuse me. It’s not me that did it. I know who. Damn her. I’m sorry.”
That was fine. So it wasn’t Saby crawling the corridors. He never had thought so. And he didn’t need the shower, now, but he wasn’t inclined to sleep, now, any time soon, and the bath was an excuse not to deal with Saby.
“Tom.”
“I’m not in the mood, now. Forget it.”
“Tom. Wait. Talk.”
“What’s the difference? I’m going back. Nothing in hell else I can do. You win. You’ve got all the answers.”
“It’s not going to be like it was.”
“Like what? Shanghaied off my ship? Is that going to change?”
“Other things can change. You can work into crew. The allowances are huge, I mean, it’s not just the captain picking up the tab, the hired-crew lives real well. You couldn’t do better on Sprite. “