Chapter Nine
When Ice left Alana, he busied himself with work. He arranged for Crimean volunteers to come to his office early the next morning in the hopes of helping her. She’d been so curious about him. If she could ask questions of many Crimeans, perhaps she’d find the answers she was looking for.
Sleep didn’t come easy for Ice that night, and when he did sleep, it didn’t last. The attachment he felt for her didn’t go away like he’d hoped. When he nurtured his attachment, he found himself useless.
He couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t work. He even couldn’t form a coherent sentence without sounding like he drank himself into his impaired state.
What has gotten into me?
Why has that human female gotten under my skin so much?
He got up early and went to Alana’s room not long after lightrise. He stepped into her room, pleased to find Alana already awake.
“Holy hell!” Alana stood next to the bed, naked. She turned her back to him and reached for the clothes that lay on top of the sheets. “Do none of you ever knock on a door before barreling through it?”
“No. If the door isn’t locked, it’s an invitation to enter. Did no one explain that?”
“Clearly not.” She pulled pants on, the sli
ck fabric sliding over the curve of her buttocks. Ice found them mesmerizing for some reason. The round, full side of her breast showed as she pulled on a top. When she turned, she frowned at him and crossed her arms. “You could have turned around.”
“Forgive me. You didn’t ask me to, so I didn’t realize you wished that.” She had asked him to on the ship, but not this time. Humans were confusing.
Alana sighed and shook her head. “It’s all right. I’ll learn your ways…eventually.”
Other things confused Ice, too. When he’d told her on the ship that her naked body had no effect on him, he’d been telling the truth. It still didn’t have an effect on him, exactly, but he noted that he did find her form pleasing to look at.
Very pleasing.
He’d felt neutral on the ship. Curious. This time, he’d enjoyed seeing her body. The thought went through his mind that it might be the same thing people used to see in artwork.
The attachment. Could this correlate to why he found her more pleasing?
Ice had no time to consider it. Perhaps he’d spend time thinking about it later, but right now Alana needed to get to work. And he needed to help her.
On the way back to the Ministry of Science, Ice explained that he’d arranged several interviews to help her understand what she was dealing with. She seemed impressed, and asked for some way to take notes of the meetings. Fortunately, Ice had arranged all that while he couldn’t sleep.
Once they arrived, she looked around the room with her hands on her hips. Then she tossed her long, auburn hair over her shoulder, and Ice had that same sensation of enjoying the sight, though he couldn’t understand why.
“So, this is your office?”
“Yes. Feel free to consider it as much yours, for the time being. If you should need to use lab equipment for anything, simply ask.”
Alana shrugged and smiled. “I promise I won’t. Not a scientist.”
Ice pulled a holocube from a cabinet. “Since you don’t have a neuracom, you will need this to record or write down your notes.” He showed her how it worked.
“So, this is basically a computer,” she said.
“More advanced than what you have on Earth.”
“Of course. Are you bragging?”
He smiled. “Do I sound like it?”
“Definitely. And you smiled. I think that was the first time I saw you genuinely smiling since we got off the ship. I like it.”
“I take that as a compliment.”