Shying Away (Pt. 3)--Who She Was

It had been a long gorram day working on the new skiff with Wash and Mal, one that had sucked ass to a degree unparalleled in Jayne's experience. Whereabouts back on Govanne Mal'd found the busted up, broken down heap of trouble-ridden gos se, Jayne couldn't begin to guess even if he wanted to expend the energy, which he most certainly did not. But the captain had paid cash for it and was damned single-minded about how it would hold wind again if they just spent enough time turning screws and welding pieces to it while listening to Wash crack damn fool jokes the whole time. Gorram it, what a shit-ass day.

But he had to admit the shit-assiness of it was mitigated somewhat when he ran into Shy on his way to shower the day off his skin. When he passed through the passenger lounge on his way to the shower closet, she got a whiff of him where she was sitting by herself reading and set aside her book without a word. Rising, she took his hand and dragged back to his bunk where she told him the scent of his sweat made her hot, and jumped on him. The resulting sex was loud, strenuous and more than a little dirty--which did not suck at all. Except, of course, when it did. Literally.

So all in all, Jayne decided maybe there was some gorram balance in the 'verse after all. Even if Wash's smart-ass jokes had to be a part of it. He bent his free arm--the one not wrapped around Shy's damp, naked, tattooed shoulders--behind his head and closed his eyes. There were worse ways for a man to live, he supposed, as he began to drift off into a well-earned working man's sleep.

"Who was she?"

Shy's voice in his ear perked Jayne right up the way a bucket of ice water upended over his crotch might. Never, ever, not even once, did those words coming from a woman lying naked with him mean anything but badness. Sometimes the running-out-the-back-door-trying-to-pull-on-his-pants-while-getting-shot-at kind of badness.

Jayne thought about pretending he was asleep but de