Torchwood: Exodus Code

screen.
    ‘Eva,’ said Vlad, nudging her. ‘Did you hear anything I just said?’
    ‘No, sorry. What?’ Eva could feel herself blush. She’d been thinking about Vlad’s touch. She couldn’t help it. He had the most beautiful hands she’d ever seen in a man. His fingers were long, his nails short, the skin not soft but not rough either.
    ‘Eva!’ Vlad shook his head, using two fingers to wipe data over to the wall map.
    ‘It’s the storm,’ she said, quickly. ‘I’m a bit… nervous. I’ve never been in a bad one before.’
    Vlad softened his tone. ‘Well, don’t be. It’s not going to be that bad. Cash has a tendency towards the drama of a storm, usually so he can comfort whatever grad students we have on board.’ Vlad smiled, squeezing Eva’s shoulder. Heat shot up from her toes to her tummy. Vlad leaned back on his chair, rubbing his fingers over his lips, concentrating on the data streaming across his screen.
    Then he turned, gripped the arms of Eva’s chair and dragged her to face him. Leaning into her, Vlad kissed her, his lips soft on her mouth, his tongue parting them gently. She returned the kiss, her own mouth hungry for his. She tilted her head back, exposing the pale skin of her neck, letting Vlad’s mouth trace a line of soft kisses from her lips to her neck, his warm lips, his long fingers, moving across her bare shoulders, under her sweater to her hardening nipples. Without shifting him, Eva reached up and loosened her hair, then grabbing a handful of his, she guided him to her lap.
    ‘Jesus, look out!’ said Vlad, lunging over Eva to catch a heavy nautical compass tipping from the shelf before the storm crashed it on top of her.
    ‘Are you OK?’ he asked, still leaning over her.
    Eva was most definitely not OK. Vlad’s scent was intoxicating. ‘I’m fine. Really.’
    She wanted to grab his shoulders and jump his bones, no, not jump him, nail him, screw him, fuck him right here on the cold, hard floor. Eva squeezed her nails into her palms, shocked at her thoughts. She shoved Vlad out of her way and stood up. Forgetting to brace herself against the ship’s angry rolls, her chair slammed against the back of her legs and she toppled into Vlad’s arms.
    ‘Do you need me to strap you down?’ he laughed.
    Oh, God, yes, she thought.
    ‘I’m sorry. Sorry,’ she said, stepping out of his way. ‘Still developing my sea legs.’
    ‘Well, make it fast,’ he said, sliding her chair back to her desk and setting the compass inside one of the metal storage lockers in the room. ‘Because I need you—’
    A soft moan burst from Eva’s lips. Vlad looked at her, quizzically. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? You look flushed.’
    ‘I do feel hot,’ she said, then quickly added, ‘I mean warm… warm.’
    ‘OK,’ said Vlad, thinking that this was why he preferred working alone. Vlad had raised a force field around his heart years ago. He was personable, polite and participated in the crew’s card games and movie watching, but he perceived his fellow shipmates as nothing more than sophisticated computers, hard-wired to behave in certain ways. They were necessary to the job at hand but immaterial to his personal development.
    Vlad had accepted the position as analyst on the
Ice Maiden
after much of the funding for his research on deep-water morphic fields had dried up when his mentor at the University of Prague had disappeared with most of the funding. Vlad’s passion for the oceans and his insane knowledge of computers were currently running in second and third place to the growing resentment towards the man who’d stripped him of his future.
    ‘If you think you can stay focused long enough,’ said Vlad, standing in front of the wall map and reading some of the information he’d just posted, ‘can you run a cross-check of the data from the Paracel Islands with this recent deep-water event off the coast of Wales?’
    ‘Why?’ said Eva, trying not to stare at his ass or at the way his faded jeans sat on the muscular curve of his hips, a thin scar set in the hollow above his pelvic bone. Or how his hair curled over the frayed top of his Ziggy Stardust T-shirt.
    ‘Have you got something?’ she asked. Oh, you do, she thought, you really do and I want it. Good grief, what was happening to her? Horny didn’t begin to describe these feelings.
    She turned back to her computer, the pulsing plot points on the map mimicking her racing heartbeat. Eva knew when she had signed up for