Page 43 of Star-Born Anomaly
Since Foster died, there weren’t many days Wynn didn’t wake up with a tight ball of nausea in her stomach, or a knot in her throat. Today it felt a little different, and her brain hadn’t caught up.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. A slice of gray cloud-covered sky shed dreary light through her quarters. A distant rumble of thunder broke the silence.
How could a storm last so long? She wished she had access to the grid if only to see how the system traveled over New Asia. It rarely rained, which was why she needed her irrigation system for the outdoor fields. Storms were rare, and usually short and violent.
Notlongand violent.
Thoughts of the storm brought on images of her visitor. She’d left him alone, unsupervised, for way too long. Who knew what he could have gotten into.
Wynn leaned upward, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. A chill permeated the air in her quarters. She frowned, eyes scanning to her PALM to check the building’s ambient temperature, when she remembered she’d removed it again.
Maybe Iax had been messing with the environmental settings.
She swiped her hand over her face. Her temples throbbed in time with her heartbeat, the pain migrating behind her eyes. For the millionth time, she wished she could just take a painkiller like everyone else and have it work. Not that she hadn’t tried.
Her gaze moved to the skin of her unblemished arm. Another wave of embarrassment shuddered through her at being caught in the washroom. She swallowed it down, not even sure if Iax had understood what she’d been about to do.
How could he not?
Cool air swirled around the exposed skin of her arms and legs. She only ever wore shorts and a tank top to bed, but the chill of the room made her wish for sweaters and long pants. Shivering, she hopped out of bed, then paused at the threshold of the washroom.
She waited for it, the falling, out-of-control sensation, that itchy need to crawl out of her skin, but it never came.
“Steam, hot,” she said, stepping fully inside.
The shower compartment filled with a fine mist. Wynn undressed and stepped inside, allowing it to wash away everything from yesterday and heat her bones. The floor was cold beneath her feet when she stepped out, but at least her body was warm.
Her morning rituals complete, and dressed in an identical set of clothes as yesterday, Wynn slid on her PALM and paused at her door. What would she find?Not a dead man.She’d been certain of that the day before and had been so very wrong.
Unease and eagerness battled equally with each other. Wynn inhaled a fortifying breath and pressed the door’s control panel.
An empty hallway greeted her. Her shoulders relaxed a fraction, but then worry seeped in. Where was Iax?
She stepped into the corridor, the low pile of the carpet pressing against the soles of her feet. A glance toward the kitchen revealed the empty container of soup on the counter.At least he’d eaten.
Hand trailing along the wall, she closed the gap to Foster’s quarters, then hesitated. Could Iax be sleeping? She raised her hand and swiped her PALM across the control panel. The door slid open, revealing an empty room, unchanged from yesterday. The bed looked slept in, but not any different from that first night.
Wynn turned and moved toward the lab. Her feet stopped when she caught sight of Iax in front of the window. His glasses lay atop his jacket, which hung over the back of one chair. Broad shoulders filled out the material of his shirt, narrowing down to trim hips that made her mouth water in a wholly inappropriate way.
Why him? Why was this the first time she experienced genuine attraction?
She pushed that shit down, not wanting to examine it this early in the morning, but couldn’t tear her gaze away. Iax stared into the storm like he needed to memorize it.
One tentative step, then another, she crossed the room to stand beside him. He didn’t acknowledge her except for a slight twitch of his body.
Centering her focus where he stared, she inhaled a surprised breath. Was it just her, or was the storm subsiding? The rain seemed thinner, not the thick buckets it had been yesterday; the wind had died down too. Maybe it was finally on its way out.
Casting him another glance, she accessed the terminal, checking on what the central hub had recorded over the night. Continued rain and wind, but yes, it had died down in its ferocity while the temperature steadily dropped.
With a touch of her hand, she accessed environmental controls, raising the ambient temperature and the in-floor heating. The carpet beneath her bare feet warmed, chasing away the lingering chill.
“What are you staring at?” The question popped out of her mouth, scratchy, her first words of the day.
He didn’t answer right away, and she stared in the same direction, examining the gray-on-gray horizon.
While she watched, the rain slowed, but it also changed. Hints of white intermixed with the moisture, first just one here, one there. Then more bloomed, catching the dull light of the cloud-covered sun, and the rain disappeared altogether.
It took her a minute to process the glints.Snow!She’d never seen snow before, and her heart leaped at the sight of it. It was unreal and magical, swirling in little vortexes to float lightly to the ground. Mesmerized, she couldn’t look away.
