you down after all.”
She giggled and wrapped her arms around his waist. “The night’s still young.”
He groaned low. “Risk had better discharge you soon.”
Her heart raced at the thought of being alone with Cipher. She couldn’t get out of this hospital fast enough.
Chapter Nine
Swinging her legs back and forth from her perch on the edge of the hospital bed, Brook kept her hopeful gaze on the door of her hospital room. This morning, Risk had finally decided she was healthy enough to be discharged into her mate’s care.
She smiled giddily at the thought of finally seeing her new home. She had so many questions. What did home look like on a spaceship? So far, everything she had seen was bright, clean and sterile with lots of gleaming metal and shiny plastic.
Surely, their quarters weren’t so plain. How big would they be? Smaller than her cabin? Larger? And what kind of technology would there be?
She had already explored all the technology available in her hospital room. The tablet had been a revelation. She had never in her life had that many books at her fingertips. All the books she had read before now had been heavily used copies with soot-stained pages passed around the mine camps until they were falling apart. Most of them had been texts on mining or farming or survival, but there had been a handful of adventure stories and even once a romance. She had never dreamed of being able to visit a library. Now, she could hold an entire library in her hands and read whatever she wanted whenever she wanted.
Movement outside her room caught her attention. She straightened up and stopped swinging her legs when she realized it was Cipher. Unable to stop smiling, she greeted him a bit shyly when he stepped into her hospital room. “Hi.”
He grinned. “Hi.”
“You come here to break me out finally?”
“The warden has decided you’ve done your time, but he warned me you were anything but a model prisoner.”
“Sorry,” she said, blushing at the thought of the trouble she had caused two mornings ago when she had tried to figure out how the stickers on her chest relayed her heartbeat to the machine on the wall. “I didn’t mean to cause such a ruckus with their Code Blue or whatever it was.”
“I know you didn’t,” he said gently and crossed the distance between them. He dwarfed her even as she sat on the tall bed. Up here, in his world, she felt impossibly small. As if reading her mind, he said, “Risk has given you a nutritional plan to follow. He wants you to gain at least ten percent of your current body weight before—" He stopped abruptly and swallowed. “Well, let’s focus on the ten percent.”
“Before what?”
Cipher slowly lifted his hand until he cupped her face. His touch elicited a flutter of excitement in her belly. Her time in the infirmary had been somewhat akin to torture. The obvious desire between them burned brighter with each passing day. Their restrained kisses and curious touches left them both aching for more. Today—finally—they were going to have the privacy Cipher demanded they have the first time they were together.
“Before we try to have a baby,” he explained. His gaze searched her face as if trying to read her response. “If you want to have a baby,” he added. “We haven’t talked about that or what it means for our relationship but—"
She interrupted him by turning her face and kissing his palm. He inhaled sharply, and she smiled up at him. “I want to have a family. Someday,” she added. “With you.”
“Good,” he said roughly. “That’s what I want with you. If you decide to stay,” he amended. “You don’t have to stay. You can go. If you want. I won’t keep you against your will.”
Amused by his rambling, she gripped his big wrist in both her smaller hands. “I want to stay.”
“If you change your mind...” He hesitated. “It’s okay if you want to change your mind. It happens sometimes. There’s no pressure from me for you to stay. If you realize in a few weeks that you want to go to the colonies and live free and experience more of life, I’ll let you go. I won’t fight it.”
She had never imagined Cipher to be uncertain about anything. She sensed that what he wanted more than anything was for her to stay with him, to build a future and a family together. Yet, he seemed afraid to project those