Chapter 2

"God, that was a mistake," Jorie heard someone say nearby.

He couldn't open his eyes because they were pasted shut. His ears were partially blocked and his limbs didn't work well.

A hand pushed his shoulder. Wanting to complain, Jorie opened his mouth but only a grunt emerged. The hand pushed harder.

"I'm dying here. Let me be," he said.

"You fucked me," Kita said, with distress in her voice.

Jorie's eyes flew open. He saw a hazy outline of a naked woman sitting up and rubbing both sides of her head.

"Only because you told me to," Jorie said.

"You told me to get naked."

The image in front of Jorie came into focus and she was beautiful. Her breasts were small and round and her nipples were sticking out. What captured his attention, though, was the sight of the muscles in her arms and shoulders and how the muscles flowed down her chest and her abdomen.

"You're beautiful," he said.

"You picked a fine time to tell me, after you banged the hell out of me. I'm sore down there," Kita said.

Jorie had a perplexed look on his face.

"You told me to go faster. I did."

"I didn't mean that you should bang the living daylights out of my pussy."

She was upset and her distress was written all over her face.

"No," Jorie said, shaking his head in protest. "You said 'go faster' and I could not not do what you said. It was like a command that I had to obey."

"I felt the same way when you told me to get naked," Kita said.

"Yeah, I wanted to kiss up and down your body before you told me to fuck you. You said 'fuck me' and what I wanted to do just flew out of my head."

Kita grabbed the bottle of purple liquid and held it up to the fading rays of the late afternoon sun. "I think there are more attributes to this liquor than intoxication. If I said and you did, and you said and I did, maybe there is a hypnotic agent in this mixture. This stuff is dangerous."

Jorie sat up rubbing his temples to fight back the throbbing veins of pressure.

"Your concoction also produces a hell of a hangover."

Standing up, Jorie tried to maintain his balance and had a hard time staying vertical. A vague flash of vertigo swam through his senses, forcing him to sit back down.

"I didn't mean to hurt you, Kita," he said. "I wanted to bed you, but this isn't quite what I had in mind."

"You think that I'm beautiful?" she asked.

Jorie nodded that he did.

"Too bad. I think you're kind of cute as well, but I never planned to have sex with you, Jorie."

Jorie was devastated.

"Why?"

"You're a first-contract scientist with no results whatsoever halfway through your stay. The betting pool says you're out of here in less than three months, Jorie. I don't want to get tangled up in you only to have your carcass yanked from the planet. There are a billion scientists between here and the imperial city, and hundreds of thousands of sites. When you leave here, I'll never see you again. I don't want to go through that anguish once more."

"You would throw away three months of heaven because of fear of the future?" His heart was thudding in his chest, in rhythm with his headache.

"You want me to believe that you are a slice of heaven?" Kita asked. The incredulity in her voice was irksome.

"I could be, but you definitely are," Jorie said.

He wavered between the feelings of defensiveness and fawning. He was a grown man and yet the teenage pimples were suddenly blossoming across his face, or so he thought.

"You'll say anything to a girl when she's naked," Kita said. Her coyness disarmed his fears, boosting his confidence for the moment. When she showed him a slight smile at the corners of her mouth, he was awash with relief.

"I've got my gear in my cargo hold. Would you like to camp out here tonight with me and let me prove that I'm not a selfish jerk?" Jorie held his breath.

Kita simply said yes and lay back down on the blanket, closing her eyes. Jorie tried rising again and found his balance restored. He set up camp.

The pain of their headaches was muted by analgesics, but the queasiness in their stomachs and tension in their necks didn't abate. With a little bit of food in their stomachs, they curled together in the warmth of the field tent and slept off the rest of the aftereffects.

In the morning Jorie awoke to the delectable sensation of female flesh pressing against his own frame. His mouth tasted like something had died on his tongue, but the sheer pleasure of Kita's closeness was worth any residual effects of yesterday's experiment. He snuggled closer and spooned her from behind.