409. Kiss My Eyes Shut

Bravo's restoration continued, although what was being improved or fixed was hard to tell. Trev, unshod, stood before the floor length window in Em's quarters, chest smooth and bare. Two years in space, and for all the cold quiet blackness, standing before the cosmos, as if standing before a gigantic movie screen, never ceased to humble or stir a childlike wonder at the beauty and vastness of it all. Even the most agnostic could not help but pause as nature presented its case of clockwork precision. The argument was old but the sight before the giant windows in each of Bravo's personal quarters, was not academic lecture, not inebriated barroom debate nor pulpit oration. The sight was, and remained, nothing short of a mind frail, as new with each viewing as fresh laid eggs in the rustic dawn.

Trev crossed his arms, his back (skin taut over lean muscle in fluent shapes of light and shadow) to the bed of repose behind him. Em slept on her side, one long leg, slightly bent, exposed from sheet as a dress with a deep cut, her breathing steady in the way contentment and happiness would breathe if they could. Her olivaceous skin, butter smooth with youth, as if the wind of the open seas had smoothed every edge with the master pottery hands of a loving mother nature, caring for a heart pure. Her hair lay like fine silk across her nude shoulder, her head nestled on pillow warm looking all the much like a mother bird sitting on her nest.

Trev turned, his shadow upon her sleeping frame. She looked like heaven. He took one step toward the bed and she moved as if to make room, the curve of her breast soft as the pillows, warm as her heart, called forth a cocoon of times long ago and promises to come. He stopped, caught between the view behind to match the view before as, with eyes closed and flickering with dreams, Em released a jugal rising sigh. Trev watched the bed as a man in the desert watches a shimmering oasis, and what should have been easy, became very hard.

Em stirred and with eyes still closed, stretched her arms as sheet on mountain sought the gravity of valley, natural as sunrise over forest verdant. The scent of almond waifed as a finger, inviting in words not spoken, a body hard to her bosom. Time could wait. Life was moments. This was a moment. She smiled. Trev moved as if beauty itself were pulling him forward. His mind intoxicated of chemistry, potent in ways distillers of snoot dreamed to replicate. The bed was still warm, the sheets still soft, and the light from the window, muted as winter morn, wrapped the pair in a lace of starlight. As if mare to stud, one set of arms opened and the other slid into fit, as boot to stirrup, as partners neither too long nor too short. And where lips were soft, they drew wet as the ambassadors of language bowed and curtsied in a dance known from before the time of leisure and abundance. Movements of grace flowed from mind to hand, from heart to finger, and where stress once aboded, the doors were thrown open and tension released.

Em ran her fingers through Trev's hair, her thumbs massaging his temples, her agile digits pulling him closer. Chest pressed chest and a warmth passed from flesh to flesh as two hearts became closer than the muscle and bone separating them. Running her hands over his brow, she kissed his eyes shut, licking the rise of his cheek, tasting what was once not hers. He arched his back as legs spread, his chest broad, her breath warm. From the nightstand, his comm blinked. The ship could have been on fire and he could not have cared less. Without losing his balance, he reached over, turned the comm off and in a single fluid motion, rolled Em onto her back, his head seeking to give what had been given, her mind whirling in the heaviness of her warm pouty lust.