When he paused again, bending himself even smaller, her impulse to needle him waned. Dammit, she remembered that yearning for “something else” too well, those long, lonely nights when she’d secretly known even the promise of a big score wouldn’t be enough. “You want to”—she wiggled the fingers of one hand—“chant at the cosmic dust, or whatever.”
“If I could make it more than just dust, coax it into…”
She waited a heartbeat, but he seemed lost. “Into what?”
“A chance,” he said finally. “There haven’t been any stone singers since the loss of our homeworld. So all I know is what I’ve read. But it calls to me sometimes.”
She swallowed. “Like I heard Roxy?”
“Except Iwantedto hear it. Once, when I was only a little taller than Oliver, I tried singing to my corner of the hatchery that Amma had set me to dusting.”
Intrigued, she sat up straighter. “What did you make?”
“A whirlwind of pebbles that got everywhere that wasn’t already a mess. Since then, I’ve tried a few more times.” He trailed off again.
“What do your friends think of your art? Your brother?” When he glanced away, she shook her head. “You haven’t shown any of them anything?”
“I already told you, none of us have ever known a stone singer. And we don’t have spare raw materials for me to waste, so I stopped trying. But meeting you and the other Earther brides inspired me again.”
She shook her head. “Oh no. Don’t you dare put this on me. I’m nobody’s muse, not for anything, ever.”
He just blinked at her, shadows shifting in his opalescent eyes. “It seems your IDA profile was right about pushing people away. But if you do that in space, you’ll just float off in the other direction.”
He fiddled some more with the shuttle controls—whether for real or just as an excuse to end the conversation, she wasn’t sure. Not that it mattered. As Ollie had told them all on the transport, gravity was actually the weakest of the fundamental forces of nature. Maybe everything was doomed to drift apart.
Probably no one mentionedthatin Sil’s romance novels.
***
Kinsley woke to a cold whisper down the back of her neck.
Considering she was on a climate-controlled spaceship, that probably wasn’t good news.
But when she sat up and looked around, nothing seemed amiss. No screaming, not from the ship’s alarms or Sil—
“What’s wrong?”
A pair of glowing silver eyes popped down from the bunk above her. When they’d settled in for the night (did it count as night in space?) Sil had taken the top sleep slot since he was taller, and she hadn’t argued.
Belatedly recalling his presence above her didn’t stop her from screaming in surprise—although she cut off the sound as soon as her sleepy brain caught up with their hurtling speed across the universe.
Sil rolled off the upper bunk, landing in a crouch beside her. “Kinsley?”
She swallowed back another inappropriate sound, a curse this time. “Nothing’s wrong. I was just… You startled me.”
“You were restless. I felt your breath change.”
Ugh. She did not want him to be feeling her breath.
It had been too long since she’d had a satisfying sleepover, but she’d always snuck out before morning breath became a problem.
Well, they weren’t sleeping anymore. “Why would I be restless? I’m just really thrilled about this delightfully whimsical threesome with an alien and a rock with separation anxiety on a semi-stolen spaceship.”
His antennae quivered. “From what I understand, threesomes are often sexual in nature. And I’m not certain that Roxy could satisfy if you would request such a relationship.”
“Oh, butyoucould? Because you read romance novels?” She lifted one eyebrow, then the other.
Yes, she was being provocative—or maybe just bitchy. Because it had been a long time since she’d had any “somes” besides her own damn self.
