Sweet Starfire

into her berth a few seconds later. The knowledge that she was truly at the beginning of her quest once again swept over her, making her considerably less sleepy than she had been only moments before. She sat cross-legged on the bunk, closed her eyes, and sought the calming influence of the evening meditation ritual. She was halfway through the elaborate sequence, of silent logic when Severance spoke from die bottom bunk.
    “Do you always spend that long in the lav?”
    Cidra opened her eyes with a start. Instantly visions of herself darting naked across the cabin to retrieve her robe leapt into her mind. “I thought you were asleep,” she said weakly.
    “I dozed off waiting for you to emerge from your bath. Rule number one on board Severance Pay is that passengers don’t treat the water supply as if it comes from one of those inexhaustable fountains in Clementia.”
    “I assumed it was a recirculating, full-recovery system.” She was embarrassed and offended.
    “No system is one-hundred-percent full-recovery. You lose a little every time you use the lav.”
    “I understand,” Cidra said stiffly. “I will be more careful next time.” She gave up trying to meditate and crawled under the covers.
    On the bottom bunk Severance folded his arms behind his head and stared thoughtfully up at the bunk above. Chewing out a Harmonic always made a man feel guilty. He’d felt the same way whenever he’d lost his temper with Jeude.
    Damn it to a renegade’s hell, though , Cidra was not a real Harmonic. There would undoubtedly be ample opportunity to remind himself of that fact during the next two weeks. He allowed himself to dwell for a lingering moment on the sight of her nude body outlined in the dim console lighting as she padded quickly across the room to don her robe.
    Small, sleek, with an unmistakably feminine grace. Her breasts were delicately curved, just the way he had imagined they would be earlier when he’d unbound her braids. Nicely rounded buttocks too. Lush and tantalizing. She wasn’t a beauty, but she was intriguing on too many levels for his peace of mind. And she was not a Harmonic, regardless of what she thought or wished to be.
    For some reason it was becoming important that he make her admit that. Severance realized he wanted Cidra to acknowledge fully that she was a real Wolf, just as he was.
    It was a long while before he went to sleep.
    The smell of hot coffade and a steaming prespac breakfast brought Severance awake eight hours later. He opened his eyes slowly, letting himself luxuriate in the fragrance. The little fake Saint was obviously up and about. He stretched slowly and climbed out of the bunk. Fred had vacated the premises earlier. He was draped over the back of the console seat, watching
    Cidra slip another prespac into the ship’s heater. Severance yawned loudly, and Cidra whirled around, smiling. The smile slipped, and her eyes went momentarily quite wide as she absorbed the fact that he was naked. After a startled instant she turned hurriedly back to the heater.
    “Good morning, Severance. Are you hungry? I hope you don’t mind me digging out the prespacs. I was just thinking, this could be one of my shipboard duties, couldn’t it? Getting the meals ready?”
    The deliberate chattiness of her voice amused him. He stepped into the lav, leaving the panel open. “I’ve got news for you. Shoving a food prespac into a heater and pulling it back out again doesn’t exactly constitute a full-time job. Now, if we had a grill on board and some fresh food, I might be willing to negotiate.”
    “Still,” she insisted, “it is a task, however small. And we have to agree on something useful for me to do.”
    He leaned out of the lav, reaching into a storage bin for the trouser portion of his gray shipsuit. “Afraid of getting bored?”
    “No. But I definitely want to work my passage, Severance.”
    He didn’t respond to that—didn’t dare respond. With a grim effort, he forced the panel shut behind him. He had spent too much of the night envisioning exactly how she could make herself useful on board, and Severance knew Cidra would be repelled by the graphic pictures he had formed of her. When he stepped out of the lav a short time later wearing only worn, close-fitting trousers, he said simply, “We’ll think of something.”
    “You keep saying that, but what will we think of?” She set the steaming prespacs on the small serving table and handed him a mug of