The morning after …

She woke in the unaccustomed position of feeling a body next to her. Someone had an arm draped across her, touching her. She didn’t move, pretended like she was still asleep. Listened. Someone breathing, other than her. And a smell, not like one she’d known before. More … masculine. A man. A man lying next to her, his arm across her waist. Her naked waist. She could feel the hairs on his forearm, and his hand was laying against her side. Against her breast. She opened her eyes. There was enough light coming in through the gap between the old curtains to see the ceiling, so enough to see who it was who had invaded her bed. Enough light to kill him. She moved her head slowly around, to look at the intruder.

Oh.

Brown hair falling over his forehead. Long lashes twitching on his cheeks. The mouth she remembered whispering her name as he kissed up and down her skin was now open slightly.

It all came flooding back now. The bar. The fight, finishing just as she walked in. The man standing, swaying a little, about to be shot in the back. Couldn’t let that happen. Didn’t let that happen. And when he turned and she saw those blue eyes sparkling at her … she’d always been a sucker for eyes that colour.

Then drinks. Quite a number of them. But they weren’t drunk by any means when they went to that room, took off their clothes and she touched heaven. By the time they finally fell asleep in each other’s arms the night was waning.

“Was it good?” Zoe asked softly.

“I didn’t have much to compare it to,” Freya admitted. “Actually, nothing to compare it to, so as far as I was concerned it was the best.”

“And now?”

“Haven’t changed my mind.”

They were sitting in the room Hank had set up in the lower crew quarters, bringing everything a pregnant woman might need down from their usual bunk. It was a little cramped.

“And yet it didn’t come to anything.” Zoe shook her head. “I knew he could be stubborn sometimes, but this …”

He opened his eyes