When Ice left Alana in his office, he wasn’t sure where he was going. He only knew he needed time to think without distraction. Alana’s pessimism about her purpose there bothered him, but he couldn’t convince her of anything until he figured a few things out for himself.

He walked for a while, thinking about the things she said about how hopeless it would be to try to teach a people with no empathy how to love. On the surface, that sounded correct. But Ice knew that Crimeans once loved each other and reproduced. There was art, music, dance. It had taken both the misguided Arcana system and enough technology to provide options for ordinary romance and coupling to drive out the survival instinct in his people. But that instinct had been there, for most of Crimean history.

If it was there before, they only had to find a way to bring it back.

As often happened when he walked to think, Ice ended up in his lab. Alana was either still in his office working on the problem, or she’d been escorted to a meal or back to her room to rest. Maybe even to the emperor, who expected progress reports as often as possible.

He sat at one of the desks in his lab and stared at a Sylvian dish where he’d begun growing a bacterium that had started to thin some of their staple crops in Farm Eighty-Nine. He was tasked with finding a way to neutralize it without damaging the host plant. Maybe if he focused on that for a while, better answers about the most pressing problem would present themselves as if by magic?

A few hours later when Ice’s experiments with a new herbigel didn’t have the effect he’d hoped, he crossed his arms in frustration. He was sure he’d formulated it correctly.

But you keep getting distracted thinking about Alana’s lips.

The way Alana had sat in his lap kept coming back to him, too. The feel of her bottom and thighs against him, not just the warmth but the softness, had proven an unfortunate distraction. And the kiss weighed heavy on his mind. The taste of her lips had been surprisingly pleasing, and the color—a moist, deep pink—had been so…delectable. He’d wanted to taste them again and feel them against his mouth. The pull of it was shocking.

Ice had decided that his desire for her lips was because they were the color of lintenfruits at the peak of ripeness, when they were the most delicious. Lintenfruits were his favorite, and her lips had matched them perfectly.

Surely that was it. It couldn’t be anything more. The color had made him think they would taste as sweet and enticing….

Ice gasped at the tightening across his lower stomach and the heaviness between his legs. His chest felt as if warm fingertips were gliding up and down, and his breath caught in his throat.

The feelings were pleasant but strange. No matter how hard he tried to focus on the bacteria in the dish before him, he kept seeing flashes of Alana’s naked body, her nipples nearly the same shade as her lips.

Would they taste the same?

Ice wanted to know. And no matter how much he told himself it was scientific curiosity, the hard cock between his legs was proof of the lie.

He wanted to kiss Alana. He wanted to touch her. Not merely to see what it was like, or to find a way to end their problems.

He wanted her simply because he did. He could think of little else.

Ice went in search of her to tell her of his feelings. He doubted she shared his enthusiasm, but at least he could explain these new sensations to her and perhaps aid the mission they were both on.

More than that, he longed to be in the same room. To see her and be near her, even if he couldn’t kiss her and taste her body under his tongue.

The attachment.

Yes, the attachment!

Ice’s heart raced as he approached her door. He remembered her complaints that morning, so even though the door wasn’t locked, he knocked.

“Come in.” Alana’s voice was thick.

As Ice entered, she was just swinging her legs over the side of the bed. He clasped his hands together at his waist. “Did I wake you?”

“No, I wasn’t asleep yet. Just resting.” She stood, frowning. “What’s wrong? You’re flushed.”

Ice touched his own face, surprised, and found it less cool than usual. “Nothing’s wrong. But I have some information that might help you.”

“Yeah?” Alana stretched, her full breasts rising as she did so, her back curving. Again, Ice had the strongest urge to reach out and touch her.

“Yes. I’m not sure why I’ve reacted to you the way I have, but when you sat on my lap and kissed me, things began to happen.”

Alana approached him. “Oh? What things?” She stepped directly in front of him, and there was an almost gravitational pull between them. He leaned in.

“I could think about little else while I tried to do my work. I became physically aroused while sitting at a desk in my lab.” Ice stretched his neck and took a deep breath. “I realize this may be asking too much, but if you’re agreeable, perhaps you could do those things again so we can monitor my responses.”

Alana blinked slowly, then put both her hands on Ice’s chest. His heart jumped. Perhaps she felt it, because one corner of her mouth turned up. “For scientific purposes?”

“Yes.”

Alana tilted her body so that she pressed against him. Her hands slid down until they slipped around his waist. “A necessary experiment.”

He nodded.

“Tell me what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking.” Her eyes shone as she looked into his.

“I’ve never had urges like this before. Not even during my adolescence when some others did seek sexual relief in some way. I was always too busy studying. No one ever aroused me like this.” Ice stroked his hand over Alana’s cheek, then down the reddish waves of her hair. “It’s possible you’ve awoken some instinct in me, some desire for physical closeness. And we need to figure out how that’s happened, because it could be the key to our problem.”

Alana’s smile faltered. “Then we should get to your lab and monitor your reactions scientifically as we run several experiments. Shouldn’t we?”

Shouldn’t they?

Perhaps that would be a step they could take later, if it became necessary. Right now, Ice was confident he’d remember enough about the next several moments to make detailed notes later.

Strangely enough, that seemed far less important to him than having Alana’s hands on him, his hands on her, right now. Without anyone observing.

“No. I…that’s not necessary. Not yet.” Ice moved to sit on the edge of Alana’s bed. He’d gone from wanting to explain and discuss the situation to learn from it to desperately needing to feel her weight against him again.

Before he could ask her to sit, Alana moved in front of him. She hesitated briefly, then sat in his lap. But this time, she straddled his legs and moved her body as close to his as possible.

Ice gasped when she stopped. The heat between her legs warmed his groin, and his cock reacted instantly. Alana circled her hips in his lap, rubbing against his hardening flesh and making each breath harder to take than the last.

“You really want this, don’t you? And not just because it’s science…”

“Yes, Alana,” he said. “The mission is of utmost importance, but right now, all I can think about is kissing you.” His hand slid between them so he could press his fingers against Alana’s sex and feel it through her thin clothing. “And burying myself in this heat.”

Alana ground herself against his fingers. When her lips pressed against his, they didn’t taste like lintenfruit, but they were still the most delicious thing he’d ever known.