Page 35 (1/2)

“Nothing you could have done,” Rio says

This causes Strand to bang the ainst the wall “I know that,” he snaps “Doesn’t change anything, because you still have to go over and over it in your head It sounds crazy, I know, est pilot and well, you know uys—see, to them I’m the skipper It’s my fault because who else is there to blame?”

She goes to hiazes idly out of the , stands behind him, and slips her arms around his chest He puts his hands over hers She brushes his ear with her lips, and he twists in her grip to face her He kisses her, soft at first, gentle and alue with hers, and it is as if

someone has attached them both to electric wires

They kiss madly, almost violently Rio pulls his tie off and throws it toward the bed and goes to work on the buttons of his uniform She is disappointed to find the OD T-shirt beneath,never before forht, she suddenly nos that she wants very badly to see and touch and taste bare flesh

What a?

She pushes his shirt down and off impatiently, then forces hi T-shirt from his body

Whatever I’

She has always iined this moment as a type of surrender That’s certainly been Jenou’s notion: you surrender at long last to the ht here, right now She is not surrendering, she is pushing the pace, she is practically forcing herself on him

One more step and it will be too late

Okay, then: one more step

Finally Strand begins to undress her, so much more carefully, slowly, uncertainly than she had done to hi hard, when she is down to her bra

“Iuhhow is this thing attached?” His voice is octaves lower than normal

Rio laughs shakily “It’s an army bra, so it makes no sense” She reaches the snaps at the sides, pulls thes the bra to the floor

For a otten to be self-conscious about her body, which has always been described unhelpfully by Jenou as “boyish” But all of that, all of that shyness, all of that modesty, all the lessons incessantly drilled into her head by her mother, seem very far away and uni to full boil, not entirely right in the head, not at that ain but with a ragged, desperate urgency